Begun in 1960, they related to his sculpture intheir references to everyday life and their emphasis on visual and spatialrelationships.

Snapshots from the City,
Performance at Judson Gallery, Judson Memorial Church, New York.
February 29, March 1-2, 1960.

The performances usedmusic and sound but not words. Casts of nonprofessional volunteers joinedOldenburg in developing the incidents, which were then set down in scriptsand cues.

Each performance was presented three or four times in frontof a live audience.

From 1960 to 1966, the nature of these performances went through severalstages. In the first, unrelated fragments of actions, real or imaginary, werepresented sequentially or simultaneously, as in Ironworks/Fotodeath. In thenext stage, which Oldenburg named Ray Gun Theater, the fragments--among them Injun (N.Y.C.) I and II and World's Fair I and II--were set, more by association than logic,into plots sharing a certain theme. These were the most intimate of theartist's performances. In the third stage, the emphasis was on the setting,from which the actions were derived. For example, Birth of the Flag I and IItransplant the cast of the earlier performance Washes from a swimming pool inNew York City to a stream upstate. Birth of the Flag I and II, unlike theothers, were enacted specifically for film, without a live audience. The filmis more fragmentary than intended because parts of it were lost in aburglary.

"Theater is the most powerful art form there is because it is the mostinvolving. . . . I no longer see the distinction between theater and visualarts very clearly . . . distinctions I suppose are a civilized disease."

--Oldenburg, 1962

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