The University of Chicago opens Concrete Happenings with a Fluxus-inspired screening in the concrete bowels of a parking garage.

For one night only, a section of the University’s Campus North Parking Garage will be closed to traffic and parking spots turned into screening spaces for several of artist Wolf Vostell’s experimental film and video works related to automobiles. Short looping works like Berlin-Fieber (1973), a happening that involved cars driving and parking in different locations in Berlin, and Ruhender Verkehr (1969), a repeated fragment of a 16mm documentary of the creation of Vostell’s first concrete car sculpture, will be projected onto the walls and floors of the garage, between and behind real cars in the ground and lower levels of the partially empty parking structure.

This event launches Concrete Happenings, a collaborative series of public exhibitions, talks, performances, and other programs organized by UChicago Arts to mark the return of Vostell’s 1970 concrete car sculpture Concrete Traffic to public view in its new home on campus.

The screening, sculpture, and Concrete Happenings initiative will be introduced by Christine Mehring, Professor and Chair, Department of Art History, and Lisa Zaher, UChicago Arts Conservation Research Fellow.

The evening also features German food and the debut of Arcade Brewery’s Concrete Traffic, a biting rye beer inspired by Vostell’s colossal sculpture.

Presented by UChicago Arts and the Smart Museum of Art, with funding support generously provided by the Reva and David Logan Foundation and the University’s Department of Cinema and Media Studies and Film Studies Center.

Image: Wolf Vostell, Berlin-Fieber, 1973, 16mm transferred to video. © The Wolf Vostell Estate.