Beck Hansen’s (The Rock Musician) Book About His Grandfather, The Artist Al Hansen Titled: “Beck & Al Hansen Playing With Matches”
Beck Hansen’s (Rock Musician) Book About His Grandfather, The Artist Al Hansen Titled:
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- Beck & Al Hansen Playing With
1960’s Fluxus Art Movement founded by Beck’s Grandfather Al Hansen, was based upon the repurposing of ordinary junk & detritus and the creation of art that took the form of wave forms, and model towers created using burnt matches and match books, cigarette butts, old envelopes, used Hershey Bar wrappers, old envelopes, German beer coasters, found print advertising, erotica and politics held together with glue.
Al Hansen also wrote performative texts and intermedia poems from stream-of-consciousness remembrances of war and peace influenced by John Cage to instructions of “Happenings”, or “Crazy Theatre” that Al founded in the late 50’s. In the late ’60’s he collaborated with Andy Warhol and John Lennon.
With input from Yoko Ono he devised a Fluxus performance that involved pushing a piano off a high roof and recording the sound of hitting the ground and called it the Yoko Ono Drop. The act of pushing the piano off the roof of a building would seem to be a Happening/Event Art and the recording of it’s impact and selling cassettes would be Fluxus.
Al transformed the ordinary detritus of consumer society turning the images back on themselves to better re-evaluate their contrived beauty
Beck Hansen’s music is an extension of and is greatly influenced by his Grandfather’s work. The song on his 90’s album Odelay “Two turntables and a Microphone” is the audio equivalent of his Grandfather’s cut and paste collages. Through the use of music samples and jumbled vocals, Beck’s music places a spotlight on the imperfection and transience of all that is tangible and intangible.
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