A formal Destruction Art Symposium predated and possibly inspired Warhol’s Exploding Plastic Inevitable.

Evidence

18 Indeed, scarcely a month before, London-based artist Gustav Metzger had organized a Destruction Art Symposium at which Yoko Ono performed Cut Piece and Ralph Ortiz destroyed a piano. Other participants included the Austrians Otto Mühl and Hermann Nitsch, as well as several representatives of Fluxus, Al Hansen and Wolf Vostell. — J. Hoberman, Everything Is Now, 1962

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reader’s interest in cross-Atlantic avant-garde traffic — London-to-New York transmission of ideas as a material condition enabling density. — connects to: The plastic operation is a new discursivity explosive enough to destroy centuries of discourse