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(frag.1)
The media theoretician Friedrich Kittler sees logarithmic instructions and verification processes (which can be realized in each applied material) as points of departure for most modern works of art. In light of Durer's rules of geometric construction he comes to the conclusion: A logarithm stands before each painting.
(frag.2)
The historical background for do it is to be found in the area of Ready-Made/Fluxus/Situationalism.
(frag.3)
Marcel Duchamp is the originator of operational instructions for artworks. In notes titled Speculations, such instructions are to be found: "Make a picture or a sculpture, as one who would unravel a roll of cinema film; buy a dictionary and strike out the words that can be stricken." Duchamp commented: "These notes all had something in common: they were always written as infinitive. 'A l'infinitif'' means doing things, finally doing that, which I never did."
(frag.4)
The do-it-yourself works by Duchamp described above can be permanently actualized and are (in contrast to their static counterparts) not bound to aging objects.
(frag.5)
The rules to play for The Exquisite Corpse (Le cadavre exquis boira le vin nouveau): "They sit five at a table. Each of them notes on a sheet of paper, hidden from the others, a noun, which is to serve as the subject of a sentence. After this sheet has been folded so that the script cannot be seen, they give it to their neighbor..."
(frag.6)
André Breton's operational instructions for Ecriture Automatique: "Write quickly without pre-set theme, fast enough, so that nothing is retained, and then one is not tempted to read over."
(frag.7)
In poetry there is the continuos daily praxis of the things-to-do-poems, from Frank O'Hara to Ted Barrigan and Bernadette Meyer to Eileen Myles in the present. The things-to-do-poems furthermore create a bridge to political activism, which is indeed constantly concerned with operational instructions.
(frag.8)
In the 1960s Czech collage artist and writer Jiri Kolar composed do-it-yourself instructions for exhibitions at his home. Spanish poet and artist Joan Brossa used the same form for his Projects for Poems.
(frag.9)
In 1968 Jerry Rubin initiated revolutionary moments with the battle cry "DO IT." He inverted the all-manipulative media game and himself manipulated it by playing the role of media infiltrator. Rubin understood that the revolutionary youth movement needed a logo and a name and from this conviction he created the concept of the Yippies as well as YIP (Youth International Party).
(frag.10)
Artist Joe Brainard on Andy Warhol's unmediated "do it" spirit: Andy Warhol's paintings have 'presence.' Andy Warhol's paintings have 'face.' I like 'paintings' that have 'face' and 'presence'... Andy Warhol knows what he is doing. Andy Warhol 'does it.' I like painters who 'do it.' Andy do it.
(frag.11)
Lawrence Weiner hit the point of the artists' multiple choices as follows:
1. The artist may construct the piece.
2. The piece may be fabricated.
3. The piece need not be built.
(frag.12)
Beginning in 1962 Alison Knowles wrote an important series of event scores (instructions for events carried out) which anticipate do it. These event scores were published in A Great Bear Pamphlet (1965) which included scores for Shuffle #7, 1967 ("The performer or performers shuffle into the performance area and away from it, above, behind, around, all through the audience. They perform as a group or solo...but quietly") and Proposition, 1962 ("Make a salad").
(frag.13)
The sources of relations among people and things as well as their combinations of references and constellations are brought to an explosion, in George Perec's 1978 novel, Life as Operational Instructions.
(frag.14)
Guy Debord and his partner Gil Wolman estrange operational instructions from their objective through the use of parody. Sources are scattered. The concept of the original is nullified in a situational potlatch. Debord and Wolman describe the "indifference for a sense-depleted and forgotten original...Everything can be used." Operational instructions are thus employed, as in the "psycho-geographical game of the week" for the purpose of constructing situations (cf. Roberto Orth's phantom avant-garde).
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