M28 HAPPSOC

HAPPSOC Manifesto (1965)

HAPPSOC was an alternative proposition to art conceived by the Slovak artists Stano Filko (1937–2015) and Alex Mlynárčik (b. 1934) and the art historian Zita Kostrová. They derived the name ‘HAPPSOC’ by combining the words ‘happening’, ‘happy’ and ‘society’, in a somewhat ironic reference to the propaganda promulgated in totalitarian Czechoslovakia.

HAPPSOC distributed their manifesto as a flyer on 1 May 1965 to accompany their first grand-scale public intervention. Believing that everyday reality needed to be perceived in more complex ways, the group announced that from now on life itself was a work of art. Choosing the nine days of socialist celebrations from Workers’ Day on 1 May to Soviet Liberation Day on the 9th, the group claimed possession of the official parades and declared the entire city of Bratislava to be an artwork under the title HAPPSOC 1. Each day was called a ‘reality’; they sent out invitations, and made an inventory of all ‘objects’ that would ‘participate’. These included 137,936 women, 128,727 men and 48,991 dogs, as well as the city’s apartments, balconies, water supplies and other infrastructure, and landmarks including the castle and the River Danube. Through this subtle subversion, HAPPSOC were able to circumvent state control and regain their creative freedom in a similar way to that also expressed by Július Koller in his ‘Anti-Happening’ manifesto (M30) in Bratislava that same year.

* * *

What is HAPPSOC?

It is an action stimulating the receptiveness and multifaceted enjoyment of reality, released from the stream of everyday existence.

Reality, thus encountered and limited in time and space, acts by means of the potency of its relations and tensions.

Bringing this reality into the open as a new concept ushers in the recognition of the immensity and breadth of mutually dependent relationships.

It stands for gentle and all-inclusive commitment.

It is a process that uses objectivity to stimulate a subjective way of looking at things and elevating their perception to a higher level.

It is, therefore, a generally valid way of dealing with life on the basis of an ‘as found’ reality, thus making it possible to bring into full play its scope in its entirety.

It allows for the possibility of investing a chosen reality with the superreal, that is, a new reality enriched by its own charge.

It is a synthetic manifestation of social existence as such and therefore, by necessity, a shared property of all.

It links up with a whole range of happenings and processes of change and shocks by its very existence.

In contrast to happenings, it manifests itself as a singular, unvarnished reality, which remains unaffected by any immediate encroachment upon its primordial form.

For those who share this concept [of reality], the immediate environment does not merely reveal itself as a thing, but, in addition, includes as well all the relationships and chains of events that grow out of such cognition.

Its realization is not accidental, but intentional and stimulating.

It was realized for the first time between May 1 and 9, 1965 in Bratislava and thus became a manifesto of its own consummation.