Concrete Happenings

September 2016–June 2017

Wolf Vostell's Concrete Traffic (1970), parked outside the MCA before the start of its procession to the University of Chicago. (Photo by C.J. Lind)
Arcade Brewery's limited run Concrete Traffic beer, conceptualized in partnership with Concrete Happenings.
Detail of Wolf Vostell’s Concrete Traffic, 1970, after it arrived at its new location at the east entrance to the University of Chicago Campus North Parking Garage. (Photo by Erik L. Peterson).
Wolf Vostell’s Concrete Traffic, 1970, parked outside the MCA at the start of its procession to the University of Chicago. (Photo by C.J. Lind).

Concrete Happenings invited art-lovers and car-lovers, artists and scholars, drivers and pedestrians to confront the power of public art—the strange power of a massive sculpture produced by Fluxus artist Wolf Vostell. In 1970, in Chicago, Vostell encased a Cadillac in concrete. The product of that “happening,” Concrete Traffic, was installed in the University of Chicago Campus North Parking Garage on October 1, 2016. It served as the provocation for a comprehensive suite of exhibitions and interactive public programs—performances, screenings, talks, art workshops, happenings—that offered unique opportunities to engage with a crucial art historical moment and movement, and to explore the intensities with which an artwork can form and transform its publics.

Video

Conserving Concrete Traffic

Concrete Traffic Procession to the University of Chicago

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