Vision: Word of Mouth

[Various Artists]

Vision: Word of Mouth

Oakland, USA: Crown Point Press, 1980

Boxed set of 3 12” vinyl records

Edition of 1000

VISION was a journal of contemporary art published by Kathan Brown of Crown Point Press irregularly between 1975 through 1982, which was edited and curated by Tom Marioni under the auspices of his “Museum of Conceptual Art (MoCA)”. The format typically took the shape of a magazine, with Issue #5 being a box of photographs and #4 being a boxed set of vinyl records. 

For this project twelve artists from California, New York and Europe were each invited to prepare a twelve minute talk on any subject. The artists included: Marioni, Robert Kushner, Marina Abramovic & Ulay, John Cage, Daniel Buren, Joan Jonas, Bryan Hunt, Chris Burden, William T. Wiley, Brice Marden, Pat Steir and Laurie Anderson.

From the liner note: "This meeting took place on Ponape, one of the Caroline Islands in the Pacific ocean, about halfway between Hawaii and Japan, a few degrees above the equator north of Australia. Thirty-seven people met together over a period of a week in January 1980. Prepared talks by the twelve participating artists were given in the evenings before and after dinner. The days were spent exploring."

The box set includes a 4 page booklet, illustrated with black and white photographic portraits of the artists.

"In 1980, as part of a project called Word of Mouth, I was invited, along with eleven other artists, to go to Ponape, a tiny island in the middle of the Pacific. The idea was that we'd sit around talking for a few days and that the conversations would be made into a talking record.

The first night we were all really jet-lagged. But as soon as we sat down the organizers set up all these mics and switched on thousand-watt light bulbs, and we tried our best to seem as intelligent as possible.

Television had just come to Ponape a week before we arrived, and there was a strong excitement around the island, as people crowded around the few sets.

Then the day after we arrived, in a bizarre replay of the first TV show ever broadcast to Ponape, prisoners escaped from a jail, broke into the radio station and murdered the DJ. Then they went off on a rampage through the jungle armed with lawnmower blades. In all, four people were murdered in cold blood.

Detectives, flown in from Guam to investigate, swarmed everywhere. At night we stayed around in our cottages listening out into the jungle.

Finally the local chief decided to hold a ceremony for the murder victims. The artist Marina Abramović and I went, as representatives of our group, to film it.

The ceremony was held in a large thatched lean-to, and most of the ceremony involved cooking beans in pits and brewing a dark drink from roots. The smell was overwhelming. Dogs careened around barking, and everybody seemed to be having a fairly good time, as funerals go.

After a few hours, Marina and I were presented to the chief, who was sitting on a raised platform above the pits. We'd been told we couldn't turn our backs on the chief at any time, or ever be higher than he was. So we scrambled up onto the platform with our film equipment and sort of duck-waddled up backwards to the chief.

As a present I brought one of those Fred Flintstone cameras, the kind where the film canister is also the body of the camera, and I presented it to the chief. He seemed delighted and began to click off pictures. He wasn't advancing the film between shots, but since we were told we shouldn't speak unless spoken to, I wasn't able to inform him that he wasn't going to get twelve pictures, but only one, very, very complicated one.

After a couple more hours, the chief lifted his hand and there was absolute silence.

All the dogs had suddenly stopped barking. We looked around and saw the dogs. All their throats had been simultaneously cut, and their bodies, still breathing, pierced with rods, were turning on the spits. The chief insisted we join in the meal, but Marina had turned green, and I asked if we could just have ours to go. They carefully wrapped the dogs in leaves and we carried their bodies away.”

- Laurie Anderson