Unsculpt

Unsculpt was a performance collaboration between sculptor John Hilliard and artist Ian Breakwell in February 1970. It took place at the New London Arts Lab, home of the Institute for Research in Art & Technology (IRAT) in Euston, London, (the successor to the Drury Lane Arts Lab). Large paper sheets with the word ‘unsculpt’ are draped over Hilliard’s traditional sculptural forms, before they are destroyed. In the following weeks, each artist installed temporary artworks in the gallery that responded to its architectural features, before being dismantled and removed.
The whole performance is recorded to analogue video and played back to the audience at the end, integrating for the first time the act of making performance and its transformation into an art object, (a video recording, no longer extent).
In 2004, the film was digitally reconstructed with the two artists, the original black and white 16mm film, photographs and voice-recordings by John Hilliard and Ian Breakwell, in which they describe the event and the process of collaboration between the two artists.
Mike Leggett, a collaborator with Breakwell on several projects incorporating film, photography, sound and the new media of the time, video. The period marked shifts in the three artists practice away from established art forms towards outcomes that anticipated greater audience participation in influencing the nature of the art experience. M.L. (2010)

See more in Papers: Liveness, Performance and the Permanent Frame; also at Projects / Unword.