Reinventing Allan Kaprow's 'Travelog'

Chosen Stores (info from company website or mall website)

American Apparel – Hillcrest
American Apparel is known for comfortable clothing as well as provocative photography.

Abercrombie and Fitch – Fashion Valley
Abercrombie & Fitch focuses on providing high-quality merchandise that compliments the casual classic American lifestyle. The merchandise is sold in retail stores throughout the United States and through catalogs.

Banana Republic – Fashion Valley
While maintaining its sense of the classic and its superb quality, Banana Republic has increased its attention to fashion. Featuring fashions for men and women, Banana Republic means classic style that is current and self-assured but never trendy. Banana Republic also carries accessories for the home.

Hot Topic – Mission Valley
Origins-The Birth of the Loudest Store in the Mall:

It all started in 1988. Guns N' Roses, Def Leppard and Bon Jovi were #1 on the charts, and hair scrunchies, bolo ties and aviator sunglasses were everywhere. A ton of junior accessory and apparel chain stores filled shopping malls, but there wasn't a cool accessory store for both guys and girls. Then came Hot Topic.

In the fall of 1989, Hot Topic opened its doors in Westminster, California. We'd love to tell you it was a huge success, with hundreds of teens clawing their way into the store, but we'd be lying. Sales were disappointing. Some days we barely made a hundred bucks. Was founder Orv Madden's vision doomed? It was time to take a step back and re-evaluate. First, our location in the mall wasn't the best. How the heck could we sell anything if nobody could find us? Then we looked at what was selling-costume jewelry. We started buying more stuff like cross necklaces, unisex earrings and leather bracelets and got rid of hair scrunchies, men's ties and dress socks. Hot Topic found a niche and its name was music-influenced accessories. Whether it was fingerless gloves like Billy Idol or glam metal bootstraps like Poison, music was definitely the driving force behind teen fashion. After our Westminster customers gave us a reality check, we packed our bags, moved to Montclair, California and rocked their mall with the first Hot Topic store to carry all music-influenced accessories for teens.

As business increased in 1990, adding apparel seemed like a no-brainer, and what better way than to add the ultimate music fan essential-rock tees. At the time, finding a rock tee wasn't easy. You had to buy 'em from catalogs, small record stores or at concerts. It was unheard of to see a rock tee at the mall, so imagine how our customers flipped when they were able to purchase Bauhaus, The Cure, TSOL and Depeche Mode T-shirts at Hot Topic. Not surprisingly, these 4 titles blew out, so more alternative bands were added. Within a year, we had about 50 different band titles, and rock-inspired clothing lines like Lip Service and Serious were a big chunk of the business. By the end of 1990, we had opened 3 more stores in California and by 1994, Hot Topic was 50% accessories and 50% apparel. In 1995, Hot Topic had 29 stores open in the Western U.S. and one Midwest store in the Mall of America in Minneapolis, MN. We were ready to take the East Coast by storm and opened store #31 in Staten Island, NY. Our customers loved it, and we got a lot of suggestions that we took to heart. Hot Topic has always been about getting feedback, listening and testing new ideas and products. We're cool like that. Just like with the whole alternative music thing, Hot Topic customers were drawn to the underground cartoon, cult movie and comic book scenes. It was a unique culture they could call their own, and it was difficult to find merchandise from these licenses. Hot Topic brought the world of South Park, Care Bears, Superman, SpongeBob SquarePants and lots of other pop icons into our stores. In 1996, with about 60 stores, Hot Topic became a publicly traded company on the NASDAQ under the symbol HOTT. The cash from our public offering allowed us to open more stores across the country. Hot Topic, Inc. continues to rock the malls. There are Hot Topic stores in all 50 states and Puerto Rico. you.

Old Navy – Fashion Valley
Old Navy's mission is to offer affordable, fashionable clothing and accessories for adults, kids, baby, and Moms-to-be.

Sun Diego – Fashion Valley
Operating as retail stores located all over San Diego County,California , we constantly strive to bring to our customers the best selection of surf/skate/snow apparel and related hardgoods and accessories. There are six Sun Diego stores located within the San Diego area and one store in Temecula. We also have The Blue Room in Fashion Valley Mall, where we carry more specialty items. We value our customers and are proud to have served you for over 20 years. In our efforts to bring you the best and latest products in the industry, we have partnered up with over 200 different companies. We also pride ourselves on our service. Most of our employees participate in one or more of the sports that we represent. Our goal is to make you a customer for life, so we make it our mission to hire friendly and outgoing people and constantly supply them up-to-date information on the latest and greatest in our industry.

Finished form
A folder of images and gathered information, plus descriptions of the store drawn from their company website, the mall’s website and additional information from Wikipedia. Analysis of the information gathered. The purchased items in their bags with their receipts.

The Group

Stephen Hepworth (group leader)
Mary Evangelista
Laura Kwak
Rishi Chadha
Belinda Bijun Sun
George Bolster

BOOKS: Diane and Jerome Rothenberg in San Diego, California

The Rothenbergs returned to the original Travelog as inspiration, taking a photograph of a Happening in Germany, Tires, and visited bookshops in the San Diego area. They prompted the sales clerk for a book recommendation based on the photograph - encountering a range of exchanges from helpful and friendly to dismissive and abrupt.

The group chaired by Jerome and Diane Rothenberg were all present at the May 10th presentations, and, because there was some competition for the referential projects, we ended up with Lux et Obscuritas. Our prearranged group consisted of Jerome Rothenberg, Diane Rothenberg, Gail Schneider, David Matlin, Steve Fagin, Eloisa Haudenschild, Coryl Crane, and we were joined by Monica Jovanovich and Sybil Wendler and we met that afternoon and discussed doing a project that would involve groups going out to local lagoons and conducting a photographic exchange with visitors to the lagoons. We agreed to meet at the Rothenberg house the next morning to refine our ideas and proceed on our project.

At 9:00 AM on May 11th we met. Diane Rothenberg had prepared maps for north country with lagoons indicated and these maps are included in the documentation although they were not used. Our group was extremely fortunate to have Steve Fagin, the initiator of the whole project, and Coryl Crane, Allan Kaprow’s widow among our members, and Steve quickly indicated that he thought that the essential element of a service exchange in Travelogue was missing in our plans. It was immediately clear that he was right and we proceeded as a group to test ideas for a project that we could do around a service exchange, and including Allan’s interest in technological and social change. Coryl reminded us that an element of tension was also essential in the exchange.

We decided that we would explore the changing world of book purchase with the hypothesis that we might find differences between individually owned and serviced book stores, chain stores with non-invested employees, public libraries that have a service, but not a monetary exchange, and the internet. We Xeroxed and distributed copies of a photograph from a Kaprow piece of a mountain of tires with human figures against it, and our controlled procedure was to be to go in pairs to a range of book acquisition locations, to show the photograph to a service person and to ask them to choose for us books that they thought appropriate to that image. We were to make explicit that we would purchase the books they recommended, and to that end each person was furnished with $50. We were not to identify the image as an art work, nor to mention Kaprow.

The group was enthusiastic about the project and quickly separated into couples to do the task during the day. The Rothenbergs went to Barnes and Noble, Borders, and the Carlsbad Public Library, Gail Schneider and David Matlin covered several used bookstores on Adams Avenue, but had to wait until Monday because the stores were closed on Sunday; Coryl and Sybil went to an upscale private bookstore in the Flower Hill Mall where the owner immediately identified the photograph as a piece of Allan Kaprow’s; Steve Fagin and Eloisa Haudenschild went to the more upscale chain Warwicks and the bookstore at the Contemporary Museum, and Steve used the computer to do an exploration of the service transformations in on-line book purchase; and Monica Jovanovich went to several chains. We all purchased books.

The next night we met for the final meeting for each group to report on their experiences and to deliver our documentation which, in this instance, was a pile of books and photographs. On the whole, the books suggested tended to cluster around issues of pollution, environmentalism, economic inequality, recycling and tires as a subject. There was several children’s picture books, and since no one had suggested art, there were no art books. No one had had a complete lack of cooperation, but some people got more engaged and some defensive when they felt challenged. We came to no conclusions about any of this, nor could we considering the number of variables for which there was no control. But we were pleased that we had kept the project simple and with the original idea of a service exchange involving some element of tension realized by all participants.

—written by Diane Rothenberg

TRAVELOG: The Original 1968 Transcript by Allan Kaprow

TRAVELOG was a traveling activity, Travelogs in my childhood were education films which explained a part of the world we didn’t know. The word travelog sounded like pedagog and ship’s log. This one explained a part of the world we thought we knew: gas stations.

It required keeping a polaroid photo and audio-tape log of driving around to gas stations in Madison, New Jersey. At each stop a tire was changed – any tire such as the front left with the spare, or the right rear with the left one – and the choice could be different each subsequent time. The reason given was up to the passengers if the attendant questioned why it was necessary.

Permission to take pictures of the process and record the tire-changing sounds was always asked, and it usually was granted since everybody liked to be thought important. The work was paid for and another station was found. This went on for half the day. About thirty-five people in ten or eleven cars participated that mid-July, 1968.

Naturally, Madison being a medium sized town, a number of gas stations were visited by more then one car in our group. It just happened that way and was amusing. Naturally too, the attendants became curious and asked questions, and we answered as we wished. At some of the stations they were worried that the gasoline companies had sent teams of investigators.

At the day’s end everyone returned to Fairleigh Dickinson University – which sponsored TRAVELOG – to show their polaroids and play their tapes. Nearly a hundred photos were projected at random on a screen and the tapes were played over a loudspeaker. We talked about our travels and traded experiences.

The next day the whole process was repeated but without cameras or tape recorders.

Some interesting things became clear which hadn’t been. Few of us had ever paid attention to gas stations. It turned out there were two types of stations. One, the older kind, was a gas-and-repairs shop, and looked like a garage with signs attached. The other was a modern, brushed-aluminum and plastic affair which mainly pumped gas.

The first kind was a social center on a small scale; lots of cars parked around, tools, old tires, grease stains. The owner was in charge, a man usually in his late forties; his younger assistants were hot-rodders or bikers and tended to come from lower middle class backgrounds. Besides those who worked there, there were hangers-on, truckers and others similarly belonging to the automotive life. A few girlfriends also hung around drinking soda pop from the vending machine.

The second type of station was impersonal, was served not by an owner but by one or two employees who, though they would do minimal work such as changing a tire, were there to operate the pumps and process the bills and credit cards. There was next to no social life, few parked cars, and the places were very, very clean with well-lighted toilets. They were decorated shells, large facades for advertising the gas. The station was a three-dimensional billboard, a theater setting.

From conversations along the way we gathered that the older station was giving out to the modern one. The owners felt anxious. The young attendants were generally surly or indifferent, perhaps aware that their jobs led nowhere. They changed the tired aggressively and incompetently. One owner said that care maintenance and repair were things of the past, not economical.

On the other hand the “clean machine” attendants had no emotional investment in their stations. A few were college students earning summer money. One said that probably all stations would go the way of his station and would become completely self-service in time.

What are you trying to do, they asked, you’re college people aren’t you, it’s a TV gag isn’t it? Sometimes we said we were doing a Happening and then that had to be explained. It was easier to say we were doing research for the university because then the men didn’t mind the cameras and tape machines. We were on an outing and at the same time becoming aware that we were conducting a study. How do you conduct a study, I wondered, and remain part of what you study?

Another thing that we found out was that the cameras and tape recorders transformed hazy occurrences into documentary clarity – different and better then if the machines hadn’t been used. There were aide-memories that literally framed moments out of real time and that could be recalled indefinitely. I was curious to learn if the experience would become a photographic and tape-rerecorded experience.

The second day when we went out again to reproduce the activity without machines, it was no longer as festive or highlighted by uniqueness. It was a bit tedious. We weren’t receiving acknowledgement for what we were doing. We seemed like any other motorist. The machines had been costumes to insure permission to do something unnecessary. There were guarantees of interest and response about the ordinary. Some of the group chose not to do it at all. But those who did concurred that the memory of the polaroids and tapes caused each new tire change to be seen as a picture and heard as a recording. For some time afterwards, well into the next year, stops at gas stations restimulated mental playbacks of what we did.

There was another thought. Besides being field work in sociology and psychology TRAVELOG was a transportation ritual. Car culture in America. The endless road. New wheels for old. Pit stops for repairs. The pause that refreshes. Gas stations our roadside shrines. Documents as sacred souvenirs.

-AK 1968

About the Participants

Urban Think Tank
Alfredo Brillembourg & Hubert Klumpner are from The Urban Think Tank (U-TT) a multi-disciplinary design practice dedicated to high-level research and design on a variety of subjects, concerned with contemporary architecture and urbanism. The philosophy of U-TT is to deliver innovative and sustainable solutions through the combined skills of architects, civil engineers, environmental planners, landscape architects, and communication specialists.In each project the design team explores and understands issues generated by the client’s demands. U-TT was founded in 1993 by Alfredo Brillembourg and, in 1998, Hubert Klumpner joined as principal. The office consists of 10 permanent staff members working out of Caracas, Venezuela. In 2003, U-TT expanded its business activities with the addition of a New York research branch called www.slumlab.com at Columbia University GSAPP.

The U-TT Project Team for this Happening includes: Kwi-Hae Kim, and architect/designer born in Seoul, Korea, immigrated to New York in 1986. Kim is the Project Architect for U-TT and has a MA in architecture from Columbia University and a BFA in sculpture from the Rhode Island School of Design. Leonardo Lameda is a translator/interpreter born in Caraqueno and raised in Caracas. Lameda was educated at the Escuela de Idiomas Modernos, Universidad Central de Venezuela and is currently working as an interpreter and Area Coordinator for Global Exchange. Anna Wachtmeister is an architect/researcher born in Belgium. Wachtmeister has lived and worked in the UK, Germany, Italy, Egypt, and now in Venezuela. She has a diploma and MA in architecture from the Sheffield School of Architect, UK and has experience in urban development practices as well.

Song Tao
Song Tao was born in Shanghai in 1979 and graduated from Shanghai School of Art and Crafts in 1998. He resides and works in Shanghai. Song Tao has exhibited widely. Recent shows include China Poweer Station: PartI, Battersea Power Station (London, UK, 2006), China Contemporary, Art, Architecture and Visual Culture, Museum Boijmans van Beuningen (Rotterdam, 2006), Restless, MOCA (Shanghai, 2006), Bird Head, ShanghART (Shanghai, 2005), Guangzhou Photo Biennale, Guangdong Museum of Art, First Lianzhou International Foto Festival: Double Vision, Culture Square Lianzhou (2005), Zooming Into Focus: Chinese Contemporary Photography and Video from Haudenschild Collection, National Art Museum (Beijing, Mexico City and Shanghai, 2005), Shanghai Constructions, Shanghai Gallery of Art, (2005) and Light as Fuck! Shanghai Assemblage 2000-2004, National Museum of Art (Oslo, 2004).

Lin Yu
Lin Yu was born in Shanghai in 1979 and graduated from the Fudan University (Shanghai) with a Bachelor of Arts in Chinese Literature and a Master of Arts in Comparative Literature. She presently is living and working in Shanghai as a journalist and writer on art, fashion, film, design, and architecture. Contact Lin Yu at aimee.lin (at) gmail.com

Jeff Kelley
As a biographer of Allan Kaprow, Jeff Kelley has most recently written Childsplay: The Art of Allan Kaprow (2007) and edited Kaprow's Essays on the Blurring of Art and Life (2003). Kelley has written for Artforum, Art in America, Arts Magazine, Artweek, Vanguard, and the Los Angeles Times, among others. He has also contributed catalog essays to publications for the Centre Pompidou in Paris, the Mudima Foundation in Milan, Italy, the San Jose Museum of Art, the Des Moines Art Center, and the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, DC.

Lucia Sanroman
Lucía Sanromán was born in Guadalajara, México, and educated in Victoria, British Columbia (M.A., 2003, art history, University of Victoria; B.A., 1997, University of Victoria; Fine Arts Diploma, 1989, Victoria College of Art). She joined the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego as Assistant Curator in January 2006. Prior to that, she was Curatorial Associate at the San Diego Museum of Art (2003-05), where she worked on important projects including Past in Reverse: Contemporary Art of East Asia (2004), and Farsites: Urban Crisis and Domestic Symptoms in Recent Contemporary Art (2005). She has also done freelance curatorial work in México and Canada, co-directed a small contemporary gallery in Victoria, B.C., was art critic for a magazine there, and taught in Visual Arts & Art History departments at the Universidad Autónoma de Baja California, and University of Victoria. At MCASD, she worked closely with Curator Rachel Teagle on Strange New World: Art and Design from Tijuana/Extraño Nuevo Mundo: Arte y diseño desde Tijuana, and has curated exhibitions from the Museum’s collection as well as one-person exhibitions of James Drake, Yvonne Venegas, Brian Ulrich, Hector Zamora, Peter Simensky, William Feeney, Iana Quesnel and others. She worked with Director Hugh Davies on the major exhibition, Robert Irwin: Primaries and Secondaries. Sanromán’s upcoming projects for MCASD include solo exhibitions of Javier Ramirez Limon and Mara de Luca (2008); three related exhibitions that explore work by women artists from Baja California and Southern California (2009); and an research-based exhibition of architecture of the San Diego/ Tijuana Region. She is currently co-curating, with Ruth Estevez, the inaugural exhibition in contemporary art for the CUBO, the new three-story museum venue at the Centro Cultural Tijuana (CECUT) to open in September 2008. Sanromán lives in Tijuana.

Diane Rothenberg
Diane Rothenberg is a social anthropologist whose writings include Friends Like These (selected essays) and, with Jerome Rothenberg, Symposium of the Whole (University of California Press). She has also done extensive writing on various performance art projects of Suzanne Lacey.

Jerome Rothenberg
Jerome Rothenberg is an internationally known poet with over seventy books of poetry and several assemblages of traditional and contemporary poetry such as Technicians of the Sacred and Poems for the Millennium. He taught for a number of years at the University of California, San Diego.

Stephan Hepworth
Stephen Hepworth was the former curator of the University Art Gallery, University of California, San Diego. Previously he was associate curator of Bloomberg SPACE, London 2001-2007; curator of Jerwood Gallery, London 1998-2001 director of The Tannery, London 1995-1997. Independent projects include Into My World, Recent British Sculpture, Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, Ridgefield, CT, 2004; Tailsliding, a large-scale touring exhibition commissioned by the British Council, 2001-2003; and Viewfinder, Arnolfini, Bristol, UK, 2001.