#8 Hollis Frampton, Phenakistiscope, S.M.S 4, 1968.“Ball” (Side 1) & “Lollipop” (Side 2)
Kasper König (1943-2024) was one of the preeminent German exhibition organizers in postwar history. His career as a curator began in New York City, where he lived between 1968 and 1975. He established close contacts with key figures in recent American art history there and organized exhibitions such as Andy Warhol at the Moderna Museet in Stockholm (1968), Mouse Museum by Claes Oldenburg at documenta 5 (1972), and Skulptur.Projekte Münster with works by Alexander Calder, Richard Long, Donald Judd, Claes Oldenburg, and Joseph Beuys in Münster (1977).[1] He later held professorships at Kunstakademie Düsseldorf and Städelschule in Frankfurt am Main and served as director of the Museum Ludwig in Cologne from 2000 to 2012. In 1973, König undertook a lecture tour of North American universities entitled “The Book as Primary Medium for New Art”, including the School of Visual Arts (New York City), Rutgers University (NJ), the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and U.C.L.A (Los Angeles). At the same time, he sought to find a publisher for source texts on modern art based on the model of of Robert Motherwell and George Wittenborn’s “Documents of Modern Art” (1944-1972). The Nova Scotia College of Arts and Design in Halifax (Canada) took up the idea with the series “Nova Scotia Series: Source Materials of the Contemporary Art” under the direction of König, who was appointed Associate Professor of Art History there in 1973 and, between 1973 and 1975, published books with Claes Oldenburg, Yvonne Rainer, Simone Forti, Steve Reich, Hans Haacke, Donald Judd and Michael Snow.[2] This book series also gave rise to the publication of Hollis Frampton’s and Carl Andre’s 12 Dialogues, edited by Benjamin Buchloh, in 1980.[3] On January 15, 2016, Kasper König talked to Anne Breimaier in his Berlin office about his collaborations with Hollis Frampton in the late 1960s in New York City.[4]
Anne Breimaier: How often did you meet Hollis Frampton in New York?
Kasper König: There were maybe eight or nine intensive meetings, not counting the “social calls.” I actually knew Hollis much too little. I tried to convey to him that I was very happy to have gotten to know him at all. He was a very eccentric guy, but he accepted me from the outset. He was such a generous person, however, completely exhausted. When we met in the evening, around nine, he had worked for eight or nine hours and hard at that.
AB: In the lab?
KK: Yes. Then he still had his own artistic work. He must have worked himself to the bone.
AB: He was very productive. The 12 Dialogues were created as early as 1962/63. Then there was Frampton’s collaboration with Frank Stella in the late 1950s and early 1960s.[5]
KK: They all went to school together.[6] I also met him in the apartment where Frampton lived and Andre had a studio. I think this was Frank Stella’s idea. The place was below Canal Street. Dan Graham came up with the idea at the time that I should go on a tour of America to find a university press that publishes source material on contemporary art. My argument was: in the visual arts there are catalogs, but in film and dance, where it is just as important, there are none yet. One of the projects I helped launch was LaMonte Young’s. And that fell through because he had incredible copyright demands before we even had any clients (laughs). Among other things, I had done Cover to Cover by Michael Snow, who had returned from New York to Canada. I wasn’t directly involved with the book on Carl Andre and Hollis Frampton. I started with the book on Michael Asher, and (Benjamin) Buchloh finished it.
AB: Did Frampton perceive a division between the film scene and the art scene?
KK: No. I only realized later that, for example, (Peter) Kubelka, who has created a really small but extremely interesting body of work and is a great artist, could be a very reactionary guy. And he also conveyed it that way, that there is practically only him in Europe. Jonas Mekas was much more open and had a column in the Village Voice.[7] And I knew him, and Hollis approved of that too. In retrospect, it has become clear to me once again that there was a rather large antagonism between Peter Kubelka, whom I later got to know quite well, the Anthology Film Archives and Hollis Frampton, who was made out to be something of a traitor. Because he worked with video and because he not only abandoned the dogma of “film as film,” but also the system of distribution. I believe that Hollis Frampton was an incredibly reflective person. I organized that major Warhol exhibition at the time.[8] I had to get a green card, otherwise I would have had to leave the country every four months. And I ended up getting the green card through the Moderna Museet in Stockholm. I knew that Pontus Hultén was keen on Warhol, just like everyone else, so I developed a concept for him that was so compelling he couldn’t say no—namely, one that cost virtually nothing. Because everything was produced specifically for the exhibition. And for me, it was more about the question of distribution than about separating the whole thing from the production.
AB: What was your life like in 1968, when you made Surface Tension[9] with Frampton? Had you just arrived in New York?
KK: I had been there for a while, at least a year and a half. I was largely socialized in New York. At the time, I was living with Barbara Brown, a photographer. Barbara was very close friends with Frampton. And I had the feeling that Hollis was really deeply in love with her, but he was a very shy, timid person. Barbara was thrilled and said to me: You have to meet him, he’s an incredibly intense character and very complex. He’s interested in poetry and he’s a filmmaker and he works very hard in a laboratory and he’s very closely connected to art, but actually doesn’t want to have anything to do with all the trappings. And I think the starting point of Surface Tension with him was that Barbara and I had two lofts, very large, in Chinatown, very cheap and very bare, very elementary, not really decorated in any way. And that fascinated me a lot at the time because it was so American. We had a huge refrigerator, a used one that was a huge piece of furniture. And what I liked was that when you opened and closed it, it had such a sonorous tone (makes a slurping-plopping sound).
AB: Ah, I know what these are. If you were locked in them, you couldn’t get out by yourself.
KK: Yes, right. And such an object is, so to speak, like a giant American car. And one aesthetic that interested me, of course, was that of Canal Street or the Bowery where things for large kitchens or for canteens were offered, glass shelves and such things. And funnily enough, there was also a “Page Clock” for sale in Chinatown. It was an Olivetti clock, which I think reflected this aesthetic for me. Of course, this was an aesthetic that was also visible in the work of Donald Judd or Richard Artschwager or certain artists, not least through the often-quoted dictum “what you see is what you see.” This pragmatism in art didn’t directly adopt utilitarian objects, but they were certainly considered in terms of an economy of means. When I met Hollis Frampton the third or fourth time, he asked me what I was specifically interested in at the moment. So I told him that I had an idea to make a Wild West movie, a cowboy movie, that would be pacifist, but in its entire reduced macho attitude, is definitely a Wild West movie. And that as a pubescent high school student, I had founded a Gary Cooper club in the basement and still spelled ‘Gary’ wrong. And there was a poster with a red background and a black silhouette: “HIGH NOON.” I have a lot of older siblings. And this connection of a “cowboy movie” and “late night movie” was pretty hip for me at the time. In any case, Hollis Frampton had seen the books I was studying.
AB: About Western movies?
KK: Not books about Western movies but Western literature. One of the authors was called L’Amour, Louis L’Amour. And then I told Frampton about this other movie.
AB: The movie you are talking about in the second part of Surface Tension?
KK: Yes. And then Frampton said: “Let’s do it together. I’m interested in ‘time’ and you can talk about your film.” And that’s how it came about. I think I only saw Surface Tension once.
AB: Where was Surface Tension filmed?
KK: So that was a cast-iron building, right next to the Manhattan Bridge, East Broadway, Chinatown. From Chatham Square to the Manhattan Bridge, it was the last house on the right. And there was a Chinese social club, and we had two floors, Barbara and me. And Frampton filmed me on the top floor. I only had the one scene in which I tell him about my movie, and he used that. He said: “You stand there; there is the fridge and there is the page clock.” How long is the film?
AB: It lasts about nine minutes.
KK: And the fidget?
AB: You mean the way you fidget in the movie?
KK: This is a time lapse, right?
AB: Exactly.
KK: What I only found out later is that Frampton did quite a few templates for (James) Rosenquist’s montages and collages.[10] And when Rosenquist was in Cologne—and the Museum Ludwig also has some very good works by Rosenquist, I asked him about it, and he was totally enthusiastic about Hollis. He said he had such substance and that he owed so much to him because he had such great intellectual capacity. And that he enjoyed working with Hollis just for the sake of it. And that Frampton made him feel how great it was to work with him in return.
Frampton also had certain topics that he wanted to talk to me about, which I was not at all able to do.
AB: Which topics were those?
KK: That was Ezra Pound, for example.
AB: It was an interest he shared with Carl Andre, but also with Reno Odlin. How was Pound discussed?
KK: I wrote poems back then, and that interested Frampton because he knew, of course, that Pound was involved in World War II and fascism. And I was totally overwhelmed. I wasn’t able to deal with it because I didn’t know enough about it. I left Germany because of fascism. I refused military service, and then I was in alternative service. I didn’t finish it and was basically a pacifist deserter. But I can’t claim to have been a true pacifist. I only refused military service for political reasons. I actually owe that more to the climate and my siblings and the environment, a very conservative, Catholic, bourgeois situation in the Münsterland. Frampton took me seriously in some way when I myself had doubts, and in retrospect I regret not really showing myself vulnerable and going into it more.
AB: Frampton wanted to hear your European perspective.
KK: Because it was interpreted politically that way back then. Gottfried Benn was controversial, and Pound was the last thing on earth. And that’s when I realized that it was a great thing for me to free myself from this musty ideological corner of the old Federal Republic and that I could think about it relatively free of prejudice in New York. On the other hand, I understood the sentiment in Germany very well, but I didn’t worry about it. I was interested in other things. I avoided anything to do with Germany when I was in New York. I came to terms with myself, so to speak. But it’s not as if I denied my identity or anything.
AB: It is important to understand what is being said in Surface Tension in German.
KK: But Frampton understood that very well!
AB: You can see how he uses filmic means to refer to what you are saying. Did you also speak to Frampton in German?
KK: No. The only thing that remained constant was that I bought Der Spiegel on Tuesdays, and then I went to the sauna on the Lower East Side.
AB: When you say that you were influenced by pacifism, you mention in Surface Tension that you were at sea. Were you there as a sailor?
KK: No, that was the merchant navy. I quit when I was eighteen, left school and then had a seafaring profession for a year and a half. That’s how I came to America. Of course, it was a romantic attitude. But it’s interesting because there’s nothing romantic about it. It’s a factory in which you move around. I have always associated Frampton with my fascination for America, Edgar Allan Poe, (Herman) Melville, (Thomas) Eakins, that is, an idealized America that has cut the cord and has nothing more to do with Europe. So it was a world of its own — more like (Henry David Thoreau’s) Walden or (Thomas) Jefferson. Frampton even had a physical resemblance to Abraham Lincoln. He had that peculiar goatee beard. He had something, how shall I put it…
AB: … learned?
KK: Yes, or like a hermit. Incredibly sensitive, alert, bright, not arrogant at all, actually a mythical creature.
AB: I brought you something that might interest you. It’s a very early text, prose if you like, by Frampton, in German.[11] Because when we talk about sensitivity: language is a very big concern for me in Frampton’s work. As far as I know, however, Surface Tension is the only film in which a foreign language plays such a prominent role. There is, I think, another film in which Chinese is also spoken.[12]
KK: (laughs and reads a phrase from the poem by Frampton) “meine Täntchen…” (transl. “my aunties”) I was incredibly lucky to come into contact with some people through my love for Barbara Brown. Then I worked with Konrad Fischer back then. He wanted to do a gallery, and the first exhibition was to be Carl Andre, and the second was to be Sol Lewitt. And I said: “No way! I don’t want it to be a program gallery.” Then it would be Minimal Art, so to speak. In the end I was a dabbler after all. For example, I had also met Bruce Nauman in San Francisco at the time. And I was very fascinated by his work and his thinking. And I thought, as far as America was concerned, that his work was the next big thing. But at the time, within the New York scene, he was being portrayed as a typical West Coast neo-Dadaist. I organized an exhibition for the Moderna Museet, which was then banned. Bang! It can’t be done! There was a very famous exhibition in Sweden, “Four Americans,” in the early 1960s.[13] Those were four artists, two of whom became world-famous and two of whom were forgotten. The world-famous ones are Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg. And Richard Stankiewicz and Alfred Leslie are completely forgotten.
And then I said: “What interests me are five names, Bill (Copley), Cliff (Westermann), Jack (Wesley),[14] Ed (Ruscha) and Dick (Artschwager).” And I introduced some of these artists to each other and also took them to Westermann in Connecticut. And they were all enthusiastic about the idea that the universal did not exist without the local. And I was interested in the local, in the dialect. I come from the Münsterland region. And the “Five” are all very demure types, but they have to do with America and don’t fit into the category of Pop Art either, but their work is somehow connected to it anyway.
And then there was someone like Hollis, who came from the Midwest, just like these cowboy stories I told him. He was amused by them, in a childlike way, and told me what to read. After the war, we always had Tom Brock or something like that at the train stations. And Karl May, I remember, Hollis was drawn to that. And there are very few Americans who know Karl May. And then I sent Pontus Hultén a postcard of a very beautiful painting by (Fernand) Léger of a sailor with a blue and white undershirt and a tattoo of an anchor. And that’s almost illustrative, and there are names on the sailor’s arms—Babette, Marianne, …—all crossed out. I used Tipp-Ex to remove them and wrote “Dick”, “Jack”, “Ed”, “Bill” and “Cliff” on them.
AB: And the “Five” should then be shown in your exhibition?
KK: Yes. And the artists all thought it was great. And then Hultén came, who was in New York at the time, invited by Leo Castelli. And Castelli said: “Take this surly young wild dog, put this German on a leash, he’s completely insane! He wants to do this exhibition. And Artschwager, who is in my stable, is enthusiastic about it. And I definitely don’t want that.” He also explained why. He would work to ensure that American culture was represented at the highest level internationally, and then someone would suddenly make it local again. I was interested in comics, I was interested in jazz, that was also very much my relationship to America. When I was there, I went to jazz clubs all the time. I worked with Claes Oldenburg, who knew his way around. That was important for me because I got to know America as a different culture, and a 19th-century figure like Hollis Frampton was of course incredible. All the people I worked with I got to know more or less through their work, and then the person and not the other way around. In the case of Hollis, I got to know him personally first and only then his work. He wasn’t interested in promoting his work. But he told me to definitely visit Bob Huot, who I found interesting, a big guy, an ice hockey guy. And, of course, Frank Stella was the big star, and rightly so, his pictures were incredible. When I knew that you were coming today, an association suddenly occurred to me, and it was interesting: there’s this crazy movie Soylent Green (1973), I don’t know if you know it?
AB: Yes, I know it.
KK: And there is this American actor who also appears in gangster movies, Edward G. Robinson. In the movies, he still reads books and does everything that is forbidden. And in a way, Hollis is also such a mythical figure. He could also appear in a German expressionist movie as a Doctor Mabuse (laughs). He also had something of someone who protects the fire that must not go out. He didn’t go against the flow exactly, but I think he was somewhat skeptical of everything that was politically fashionable at the time.
AB: Did Frampton watch trashy movies at the theater, too?
KK: Yeah, yeah, he wasn’t shy about that at all. And what’s really stupid—and I regret it very much in hindsight—is that after I did the exhibition with Warhol for Stockholm—and I wasn’t a groupie or anything—but right when Warhol moved from Midtown on the East Side to 14th Street and established the “Factory” as a business—he offered me the chance to make a film with Taylor Mead. Warhol had actually seen Hollis’s film with me. He was sharp; he picked up on everything. But Taylor Mead was a bit like Peter Lorre, and that creeped me out. The idea of acting in something also creeped me out. It was so foreign to me. But in hindsight, it’s a shame; I should have done it.
AB: Surface Tension is usually interpreted as an examination of the film medium.
KK: It wasn’t about film in the sense of commercial film, and Frampton didn’t tell me what he had in mind. But he had a very strong pedagogical ethos. What year was Hollis born?
AB: He was born in 1936.
KK: Then he was 7 years older than me.
AB: Then it was really about him wanting to exchange ideas with you, is that how you see it?
KK: That would be an exaggeration. He was incredibly open. He was also incredibly pleased to meet someone like me, because I hadn’t encountered him in his Hollis Frampton nimbus. I also did the book with Yvonne (Rainer) at the time. And I said: “We’re not looking at books for inspiration, but you do your thing and then we’ll do ‘less is more’ and ‘economical.’ The book just has to have a decent thread stitching, but color is not that important. Maybe it’s better if you only have three or four colors and the rest is black and white.” One shows the structure, the other more the atmosphere. But not in terms of consumerism, that’s nonsense anyway.
AB: What was Hollis Frampton’s relationship to Yvonne Rainer?
KK: I think they valued each other very much. It’s true that Frampton approached me with the idea of doing this film. What I said and how I said it and in what context was his doing. But we talked about a lot of things, including the fact that he asked: “What interests you about film?”
AB: This makes it seem as if Frampton worked situationally.
KK: Yes, it would be presumptuous to give it a meta-level. It is there, of course, because he was so serious and so aware.
AB: I get the feeling that you are talking about a film project in Surface Tension that you really wanted to do with all your heart. Is that really what you had in mind?
KK: No.
AB: Can you remember exactly what your film idea was about?
KK: Yeah, sure. I already made Super 8 films when I was in the psychiatric ward.[15] And there are scenes, for example, of a wagtail pecking at horse dung close to the train station in Rheydt. And wagtails—I grew up in the village, after all—you don’t see them, they’re only found where there’s water and where it’s relatively quiet. And I was so fascinated to see a wagtail that I made a film of it, just because no one would believe it otherwise: A wagtail pecking at horse dung, which is still steaming a bit, in front of the train station, where there are taxis but also horse-drawn carriages. The nice thing about Super 8 is that you only have three minutes and, for economic reasons, you have to make sure that it’s not over too quickly. Because then it’s gone, and you have to buy a new reel.
AB: So filmmaking was actually a part of your life?
KK: Yes, but not conceptually.
AB: But in Surface Tension you tell a very specific story. The film you are describing should have three parts. And the first part is about a girl from Philadelphia who accepts an invitation to a chateau in France. And the hosts leave the girl alone for the weekend. And she takes a swan from the pond of this chateau with her into her bedroom…
KK: … which is mirrored and hexagonal.
AB: And after a turbulent scene – which, of course, reminds me of the story of Leda and the swan—in your story all the mirrors in the room are broken and the feathers are scattered on the floor …
KK: … and of course the blood and stuff.
AB: And you have a very clear idea of how the scene ends, with the girl standing in the avenue of the chateau and greeting the owners of the house again.
KK: Yes.
AB: And the most important thing for your own film is the quality of the color. You want it to look like the American commercials for menthol cigarettes. Did you have a menthol green in mind?
KK: Yes. That was grist to Hollis’s mill, of course. (laughs)
AB: And you say that all this is only technically possible if you get help from professional filmmakers. The idea for your film must have been quite concrete by then. And the second part of the film, you say, should be twenty minutes long, but it can also be eighteen minutes long and should be about monkeys and should be more of a documentary. And the third part is this hippo film.
KK: But these monkeys are gibbons. Gibbons have these incredibly long limbs. And they can hang and climb with both their feet and their hands. It’s a bit like the photos of Jackson Pollock painting. He also seems like that. (laughs)
AB: So it was the expressions of these apes that interested you?
KK: Yes, and that it has no beginning and no end.
AB: And you also observed the apes when you were in the merchant navy?
KK: Yes, I observed them a lot. In that respect, the hippopotamus was more of a volume (makes farting noises). There is this phenomenon that when hippos poop, they use their tail (makes propeller movements with his hand). And in Sudan, there is really chocolate-brown water, like oil, it moves very slowly. So the film is, so to speak, a scene of perpetuity, without beginning and without end, through the various sequences of movements. For example (Eadweard) Muybridge, I only got to know his work there, in America.
AB: Frampton also worked on him.[16] Did you talk to him about Muybridge?
KK: Yeah, yeah, he always dragged something in and showed it to me.
AB: There is also your and Hollis Frampton’s contribution to S.M.S.[17]
KK: Oh, right, yes.
AB: This is a very beautiful piece of work by you, because you also take up the themes of film and medialization in it.[18]
KK: Well, it’s extremely square, a reference to the Adenauer era in Germany.
AB: Was it important to you at the time to contribute something German to this American mail art project?
KK: As a topic, yes, of course.
AB: And the fact that a Black Forest cake is in it has something to do with a particular movie from which the stills were taken?
KK: That’s a TV program. And here you see a woman cutting a Black Forest cake. In the end, that is also very formal, that is the triangle cut out of the cake. And she also has a V-neck on the back of her sweater. And it is about (reads the title of the work) “My Country ‘Tis of Thee (…)’.” So that is, so to speak, “My country ‘either way’.” So it’s about the fact that I hitchhiked to Frankfurt when I was fourteen years old to attend the Auschwitz trial, which is of course completely absurd. But that’s the alternative to Catholic self-mortification, so to speak. Hollis was involved in S.M.S. [19] I was very good friends with (Bill) Copley, who started S.M.S. “S.M.S” is actually short for ‘Shit Must Stop’. And there were several people about whom I said: “Bill, they have to be a part of it.” And we also had very interesting meetings. One of the meetings was during the Vietnam War, when we said that Picasso should be asked to send the painting “Guernica” from the Museum of Modern Art —which was only there until Spain was a democracy again— to Hanoi. And then the New York Times would write: “Bombardment of Hanoi! The most famous political image of the 20th century is in danger!” And then there was Ronald Penrose, whom Copley knew very well, and we met and asked him to hand over this petition to Picasso. But he didn’t dare to. And then the Museum of Modern Art got wind of it and was terribly upset about what we were doing. LaMonte Young was there, Walter de Maria, (Richard) Artschwager and so on, and Hollis knew about it too. And Hollis approved of it very much, this idea of playing politically across the board, so to speak. Well, he was just a really decent guy. I have two or three of these strips on cardboard from Hollis with photos glued into them. And I didn’t even know what to do with them, because I didn’t find them that artistically exciting.
AB: What are these strips?
KK: Well, it’s a piece of thick cardboard with black and white photos stuck on it. But I think that had more to do with what he did for the Rosenquist. It was just a nice gesture, he gave it to me. We also went to Chinatown together two or three times. And I was very close with On Kawara. And Frampton and On Kawara got to know each other, too. Barbara knew her way around very well, and Hollis enjoyed going to Chinatown with us. It wasn’t expensive there, but it was very good. But Hollis had a peculiar way when you were having dinner at his place. It was very spartan. And he acted as if it were somehow special. But it wasn’t at all.
AB: What do you mean?
KK: Hollis was like that because he had done it all himself.
AB: Because he was a self-made man?
KK: No, as far as the food was concerned! He cooked it himself. But of course he was very rushed and had to work. It wasn’t a big meal, but that’s how he presented it: the potatoes come from here and the salad from there and so on. He was an incredibly polite person, extremely kind.
(KK laughs, throws his pen on the stack of papers in front of him, and reads the title of Frampton’s German poem aloud: “Leises Donnern” (transl. “Faint Thunder”).
Anne Breimaier
Kasper König
Kasper König, My country: ‘Tis of Thee’, S.M.S 1, 1968
[1] See Carmen Strzelecki & Jörg Streichert (eds.), Best Kunst. Das Leben von Kasper König in 15 Ausstellungen, (Köln: Strzelecki Books , 2016).
[2] For an overview of the series’ publications see: https://perfomap.de/map9/buch-kunst/source-materials-of-the-contemporary-arts.
[3] Benjamin Buchloh (ed.), Hollis Frampton, Carl Andre, 12 Dialogues, 1962-1963. Halifax, 1980.
[4] The interview was authorized for publication by Kasper König in 2016. The translation from German is my own.
[5] Hollis Frampton, The Secret World of Frank Stella, 52-part photographic series, black and white, 1958–1962, partially depicted in: Jenkins, Bruce L. and Susan Krane (eds.), Hollis Frampton, Recollections Recreations (Exh. Cat. Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, NY, 29.09.- 25.11 1984), 1984, 46-49.
[6] Hollis Frampton, Carl Andre, and Frank Stella were students at the Philips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts, where Andre graduated in 1953 and Frampton and Stella in the same class in 1954. See Hollis Frampton, “Letter to Enno Develing,” in: Jenkins, Bruce (ed.), On the Camera Arts and Consecutive Matters: The Writings of Hollis Frampton, Cambridge (Mass.) 2009, 279-284.
[7] On the exchange between Jonas Mekas and Hollis Frampton, see, for example: Jonas Mekas: “Interview with Hollis Frampton,” Village Voice, January 11, 1973, New York.
[8] Olle Granath, Pontus Hultén, Kasper König (eds.), Andy Warhol (Exh. Cat. Moderna Museet, Stockholm, February–March 1968), 1968 Stockholm.
[9] Hollis Frampton, Surface Tension, 1968, 16mm, 9 minutes 30 seconds, color, sound.
[10] Frampton’s photographs of decaying spaghetti he made in 1964 have been used by Rosenquist in a number of paintings and lithographs, most notably Spaghetti and Grass, 1965. Compare to: Jenkins, Bruce L. and Susan Krane (eds.), Hollis Frampton, Recollections Recreations, 21 f.
[11] Hollis Frampton, “LEISES DONNERN”, in: The Mirror (student literary magazine of the Philips Academy, Andover, Mass.), spring 1954, 96.
[12] Hollis Frampton, Ordinary Matter, 1972, 16 mm, 36 minutes, b/w, sound.
[13] The exhibition 4 Americans: Jasper Johns, Alfred Leslie, Robert Rauschenberg, Richard Stankiewicz was on display at the Moderna Museet, Stockholm, in March 1962.
[14] John Wesley went by “Jack” according to Kasper König.
[15] König talks about his time spent as a conscientious objector in German community service here. Compare to: Walter Grasskamp, Walter Grasskamp / Kasper König: Energien / Synergien 13 (Cologne: Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther König, 2013), 25.
[16] See, for example, Hollis Frampton’s essay “Eadweard Muybridge: Fragments of a Tesseract,” which was first published in Artforum 11, no. 7 (March 1973), 43-52, and later reprinted in Hollis Frampton, Circles of Confusion (1983, 69-80) as well as in Bruce Jenkins (2009, 22-32).
[17] S.M.S (short for: “Shit Must Stop”) was a project by William N. Copley and Dimitri Petrov, who self-published a total of six collector’s boxes with facsimile editions of artworks in 1968 through The Letter Edged In Press. In addition to Kasper König and Hollis Frampton, the contributors included, amongst others, Marcel Duchamp, Claes Oldenburg, Bruce Nauman, Joseph Kosuth, On Kawara, La Monte Young, Mariaan Zazeela, Lee Lozano, Meret Oppenheim and Yoko Ono. A complete list of artists with images of their contributions was provided by the Davis Museum in Wellesley, Massachusetts, at http://sms.sensatejournal.com.
[18] See list of figures #1: Kasper König, My Country ‘Tis of Thee: West Germany, 1968 (Four Views)’, four photographs under transparent paper, 13 x 13 cm, S.M.S 1, February 1968, © Kasper König (Source: image and subtitle: zikg.eu).
[19] List of figures #2: Hollis Frampton’s contribution to S.M.S was a phenakistoscope, with a sequence of a hand bouncing a ball on one side of the disc and a female mouth licking a lollipop on the other, offset print on cardboard, diameter: 17.1 cm, in: S.M.S 4, 1968.
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