Concrete Happenings invites art-lovers and car-lovers, artists and scholars, drivers and pedestrians to confront the power of public art — the strange power of a massive sculpture produced by Fluxus artist Wolf Vostell. In 1970, in Chicago, Vostell encased a Cadillac in concrete. The product of that “happening”, Concrete Traffic, was installed in the University of Chicago Campus North Parking Garage on October 1, 2016. It will serve as the provocation for a comprehensive suite of exhibitions and interactive public programs — performances, screenings, talks, art workshops, happenings — that offer unique opportunities to engage with a crucial art historical moment and movement, and to explore the intensities with which an artwork can form and transform its publics.

Wolf Vostell, a German painter and sculptor, is considered one of the early adopters of video art and installation art and pioneer of Happening and Fluxus. Techniques such as blurring and Dé-collage are characteristic of his work, as is embedding objects in concrete and the use of television sets in his works.