171, vii pp. dot-matrix-printed catalog, illustrated profusely throughout. Quarto (10 7/8 x 8 3/8 inches). Printed white self-wrappers, vertical leporello of conjoined sheets of computer paper. First few pages detached, last blank page also loose, otherwise excellent condition. Signed by Truck to introduction page. Des Moines, Iowa: The Electric Bank/Fred Truck, 1986. Fred Truck (b. 1946) is an American artist noted for his performance art and cartoon imagery using painting, sculpture, and digital constructions. In 1979, Truck organized the Des Moines Festival of the Avant-Garde, a large-scale performance festival where performance artists from around the world were invited *not* to come to Des Moines. Instead, they sent along ideas for performance works which were then performed and documented by Truck and a small group of local performers. The performances were stored in the "Performance Bank", a computer-mediated international performance art database. In 1984, Truck migrated the contents of the Performance Bank to the Electric Bank.
The introduction to this work reads, "This catalog, The Memory Bank, marks the third in the series we have published. As before, this example is devoted to publication of proposals for performance which have not been performed, as well as documentation of events done elsewhere by the originating artist. Also as before, whenever possible, the Bank performed submitted events, whether done before or not, and documented the results. This time, we performed over 56 events. Though we have published all we received, as before, The Memory Bank differs from its predecessors in that for this publication, we decided to highlight the work of eight artists whose work seemed to embody trends evident during the years 1982-1986. In addition, we highlighted several others whose work proved significant."
The catalog is divided into eight subject sections: "Dada, joyful nihilism, anarchism"; "performances in which writing or marking is important"; "real-time actions"; "body art"; "mail-art performances and satire"; "performances and the art object"; "performances and ideas"; and "epic cultural performances". The table of contents lists many more than eight artists, and includes Mel Andringo, Anna Banana, Paulo Bruscky, Guglielmo Achille Cavellini, Turk LeClair, Robin Crozier, Jean-Paul Curtay, Jean Dupuy, Robert Edgar, Robert Filliou, Peter Frank, Coco Gordon, Klaus Groh, Dick Higgins, Siglinde Kallnbach, Opal Nations, Jürgen Olbrich, Paul Rutkovsky, Siep, Chuck Welch, and Paul Zelevansky, among many others.
A fascinating work providing a snapshot of performance art in the mid-1980s. Very scarce; as of September 2025, OCLC locates only a single holding of this work in a North American institutional library.
