Allan Kaprow
Sweet Wall/Testi­mo­nials

The artist’s book Sweet Wall / Testimonials, published in 1976 as No. 42 in the Edition Block program, documents two activities by Kaprow in collaboration with the Block Gallery in two texts by the artist, drawings, and photographs by Dick Higgins and Lee Ottinger.
The now iconic action A Sweet Wall had already taken place in Berlin six years before the artist’s book was published. It documents the construction and demolition of A Sweet Wall, a wall made of concrete blocks, jam, and slices of bread, which Kaprow erected together with a few helpers on November 11, 1970, on a border strip near the Berlin Wall, not far from Potsdamer Platz in Berlin. On the evening of the action, which had taken place with only a limited number of participants (six men and one woman had participated after inquiring at the gallery), the Block Gallery hosted an event at which Kaprow reported on the action that had just taken place and other events.
Kaprow reflects on the ironic dimension of the activity A Sweet Wall in 1976: “Some art containing political references attempts to affect social change as directly and quickly as possible. Its themes are blunt and the moral choices are clear. In other cases, the art’s political content is a metaphor intended to play upon an already awakened consciousness. The politics are implicit, and are imbedded in complexes of other human and cultural meaning […] Sweet Wall, looking back six years, contains ironical politics. It is parody. It is for a small group of colleagues who can appreciate the humor and sadness of political life. It is for those who cannot rest politically indifferent, but who know that for every political solution there are at least ten new problems.”¹
The artist’s book Sweet Wall / Testimonials presents the activity in a selection of documentary black-and-white photographs by Dick Higgins, accompanied by a text by Kaprow spread over six double pages: “Berlin / empty lot / near the Wall / building a wall / (cement blocks) (approx. 30 m x 1.5 m) / cementing blocks / with bread and jam / toppling wall / removing material / empty lot.”
Under the title Testimonials, Kaprow brings together smaller activities that deal with the creation and erasure of traces. Like many of Kaprow’s activities – Kaprow’s term for happenings – that are intended to be performed again, Testimonials was first performed in Warsaw in the spring of 1976 (organized by the Foksal Gallery) and was performed again by several couples on the occasion of Kaprow’s Berlin exhibition Allan Kaprow. Sweet Wall / Testimonials at the Block Gallery in June 1976. “In Testimonials,” Kaprow explains in the artist’s book, “partners scrape, press, daub and print their marks on the environment and on one another. They also smooth them over, blow them away or sweep them up. Little is overtly accomplished by their simple and slightly absurd engagements, but they must pay attention to each other in some way. When this happens, information of another kind may be exchanged.”²
The artist’s book documents various forms of Testimonials in documentary photographs by Lee Ottinger and short descriptions and drawings by Kaprow, which function more as instructions than the text printed in the artist’s book on A Sweet Wall: “A, leaving a trail of footprint negatives (dusting white powder around shoes) / extend it for a considerable distance / B, later, follow tracks brushing up each print until trail is erased.”
The exhibition at Block Gallery showed the four-part action protocols and photographs (by Lee Ottinger) for Testimonials and the action protocol for Sweet Wall with 26 photographs on 9 panels by Dick Higgins, which were included in the artist’s book. The artist’s book is being produced in collaboration with the DAAD Artists-in-Berlin Program, of which Kaprow was a guest in 1976.
Text: Birgit Eusterschulte

¹ Allan Kaprow, in: Sweet Wall. Testimonials, artist’s book, published by Edition Block, Berlin 1976, n.p.

² Allan Kaprow, ibid.