VOSTELL, Wolf
Great Bear Pamphlet #09. Berlin and Phenomena

Facsimile edition. Originally published in 1966 by Something Else Press.

This pamphlet records Vostell’s two titular large-scale performance pieces “Berlin” and “Phenomena,” both carried out in mid-60s Berlin alongside a host of accomplices. 

Originally published by Something Else Press between 1965 and 1967, the Great Bear Pamphlet series was envisioned by founding editor Dick Higgins as a “poor man’s keys to the new art,” or a means of exposing the most vital work of the time to a mass-market audience, and vice versa. The series made uncompromisingly radical work maximally accessible, with slim, chapbook-like publications of a mostly uniform, pared down design. Taken together, the pamphlets constitute a firsthand survey of the sixties avant-garde (Higgins, Barbara Moore, and Emmett Williams all had a hand in the editorial process) that is both sweeping and utterly unique, transmitting a still-vibrant signal of expanded possibility in art, music, and poetry. Presented here in a facsimile edition, the Great Bears epitomize the utopian vision of Higgins and Something Else. [publisher’s note]

Published by Primary Information, 2007
Zines / Facsimile & Reprints / Performance