Anti-Happening refers to Koller’s 1965 manifesto, ‘Anti-Happening (System of Subjective Objectivity)’. In opposition to the notion of a ‘happening’ as a way of actualising group identity, in his manifesto, Koller stated that his concept of the ‘anti-happening’ aimed at a ‘cultural reshaping of the subject, at awareness, at the surroundings and the real world’ [i]. Unlike happenings, these actions do not involve the staging of psychologically expressive performances.  As the art historian Piotr Petrowski has noted, it is part of ‘an attitude that aims to erase the boundaries between different art tendencies (art and anti-art, modernist and neo-avant-garde painting), between different forms of neo-avant-garde practice (performance, conceptual art, Fluxus) and, above all, between art and life’[ii].

[i] Kathrin Rhomberg and Roman Ondák (eds.), Julius Koller: Univerzálne Futurologické Operácie, Cologne 2003. p.126.

[ii] Piotr Piotrowski, In the Shadow of Yalta: Art and the Avant-Garde in Eastern Europe, 1945–1989, London 2009.