Bang Arts Festival, 1964-1967

This section contains materials related to the second Bang Arts Festival, held at RPI from April 19-26, 1965.

Calls for the continuation of the Bang Arts Festival began shortly after the first festival in April 1964. The March 5, 1965 issue of the Proscript announced the festival would occur again that April, with sponsorship from the Student Activities Committee (SAC) and assistance from faculty members from the School of Arts.

The festival began with a performance entitled “Synthesis I,” a student performance utilizing sound effects, cinema-photography, and pantomime “on the cruelty, horror, and uselessness of war” (from the April 16, 1965 Proscript). The performance used “instruments of war” from an Army surplus store, and the department built faux airplanes, wooden rifles with bayonets, and bombs. The performance lasted an hour and a half, with 125 to 150 individuals participating.

There was also a dance performance, featuring Jill Johnston and a group of dancers, choreographed by Yvonne Rainer, Lucinda Childs, and Robert Morris of the New York Judson Art Theater. A panel on the “’demise’ of abstract expressionism, the ride of Op(tical), Pop(ular), and Ob(ject) art, and the ‘crisis’ of manifest in American art since 1960" was held. The second annual Richmond Film Festival presented two nights of films. Mississippi John Hurt, the Virginia Choral Ensemble, and Country Gentlemen were scheduled for a musical performance, but Mississippi John Hurt was cancelled last minute and replaced by Tom Heiman. A symposium on communications, two one-act plays from the Theater of the Absurd, and a screening of the eight-hour film “Sleep” were also part of the festival.

Items in this section include notes, choreography, as well as black and white slides and photographs of “Synthesis I,” a program for the dance performance, scratch sheets from the art panel, a schedule of the film festival, and photographs of festival co-planner Richard Carlyon dancing at an unnamed event.