From 1959 Wim T. Schippers (1942) attended a course for graphic design at the Instituut voor Kunstnijverheidsonderwijs in Amsterdam. One year later his first ‘weakness-projects’ and architectural designs came into being.
In 1961 during a temporary co-operation with Ger van Elk the ‘Nak pro Nak Foundation’ and ‘J. de Bil Foundation’ were established. One year later he showed a glass room (containing some tons of broken glass), and a salt room, along with a great number of other ‘adynamical works’ at the Fodor Museum in Amsterdam.
With Willem de Ridder he organized a March through Amsterdam in December 1963, announced by big posters and performed by six well-dressed gentlemen. Another event, performed the same day, was the emptying of a bottle of lemonade in the sea near Petten.
Other collective projects that year were a TV programme on actual art (Fluxus, Pop Art, Zero, etc) and the organization of a Fluxus concert at De Kleine Komedie in Amsterdam.
Schippers’ contribution to the program, ‘Economic Concert 1958’, consisting of one single explosion of moderate force on the stage, was forbidden by the fire brigade.
Another piece, realized at the Kurzaal in Scheveningen in 1964, consisted of the announcement: 1. Not Smoking 2. Not Eating. 3. Smoking 4. Eating. And that was, performed by five man, precisely what happened.
In 1965 Schippers participated in an exhibition of sculptures in the Amsterdam Vondelpark with a more than five meter high purple coloured chair. He was not allowed to participate in another exhibition in Zeist with a ‘negative contribution’: a pit, as a certain obstruction to enter the cultural building.
During an exhibition the same year, called ‘A Program of Smells’, the smells of oranges, pencils, anise and musk succeeded each other in the completely empty exhibition space of Drukkerij de Jong & Co in Hilversum.
With help from Wim van der Linden Schippers started making ‘sad movies’. ‘Tulips’ is a three minute colour film, showing a vase with tulips on a sideboard. During the last few seconds of the film a petal falls.
Projects that should also be mentioned are a room, the floor of which was covered with peanut-butter (Galerie Mickery, Loenersloot, 1969; in another version shown at the Centraal Museum Utrecht in 1997), and a square, decorated with 25 identical clocks and 24 dazzle-lights with non existing words, such as ‘Bonder’, ‘Darkanivap’, ’AvPlu’, etc. (Rembrandtplein, Amsterdam, 1971).
In the Netherlands Schippers is better known for his radio programs and TV shows. In his Fred Haché Shows (first telecast: 30 December 1971), and his Barend Servet /Sjef van Oekel Shows many of his Fluxus related ideas were to be found again, as well as in the theatre shows Schippers, along with Misha Mengelberg, set up at regular intervals at the Mickery Theatre in Amsterdam.
In 1997 a retrospective show, The Best of Wim T. Schippers, was organized at the Centraal Museum Utrecht.
