Wolf Vostell

Early documentary about the pop art scene and happenings in Germany.

Documentary by Helmut Herbst.

A sartorially resplendent woman of few words arrives in Berlin with plans to live out the rest of her days as a drunkard.

In 1973, Wolf Vostell, an artist associated with Fluxus, made a happening in which participants were required to perform a series of ritual, obsessive actions, such as “go to the trunk of your vehicle, there open and close the trunk 750 times and 375 times put a white plate in it and take it out 375 times.” Described by Ottinger as a documentation of what Vostell called “dé-coll/age-happening”, the film is an illustration of her creative method, a surrealist act, a separate work of art, and a strange object. She would later describe her method as “fragments of reality assembled in an unusual manner”.

The German artist Wolf Vostell and his family moved to a little village in Cáceres (Extremadura/Spain) in the seventies. In the middle of this primitive environment, he founded a contemporary art museum in connection with the local inhabitants, thus turning Malpartida into the first Fluxus village.