Hansjürgen Bulkowski – PRO 21: Ein schriftlicher Vorgang. With Milan Knížák, Jürgen Ploog and Experimental Art Documentation, 1971

Bulkowski, Hansjürgen – PRO 21: ein schriftlicher Vorgang [PRO 21: A Process in Writing]. Düsseldorf: self-published and distributed by Hansjürgen Bulkowski, 1971. 8vo. Unpaginated (approximately 100 pp.). Original photographic wrappers. With an English summary.Issue 21 of Hansjürgen Bulkowski’s experimental publication PRO, assembled and distributed by Bulkowski in Düsseldorf in 1971. PRO brought together writing, correspondence, drawings, photographs, diagrams, scores and other documentary material, treating the publication itself as an evolving process rather than a conventional literary periodical. The issue is independently bibliographically recorded as Bulkowski’s PRO 21. Of particular interest is the inclusion of Milan Knížák’s Zeremonien, advertised within the issue as a VICE publication comprising 114 pages, 24 full-page photographs and 15 drawings. Knížák’s presence places the publication in direct contact with the international Fluxus and action-art milieu with which PRO intersected. Other reproduced material includes experimental diagrams and communication projects, a contribution by Jürgen Ploog concerned with body, language and communication, and work involving visual notation, handwritten texts and conceptual processes. The issue also documents Bulkowski’s distribution of “Tonbänder, akustische Vorgänge” — tape recordings of acoustic works by writers, artists and musicians — and contains a bibliography of poetry titles published in German together with an English-language summary. PRO 21 was sufficiently connected to the international artists’ publishing network that a copy is documented in material relating to Ulises Carrión and Other Books and So.