The results of Summers' multiple, art-related activities have often appeared as part of his concept of VEC (Visual, Experimental, Concrete), which he originated in 1973.
We see him clutching an umbrella, dressed in a rain coat, sitting on a folding chair in the middle of a down-pour of paper released from the ceiling of the space.
This impeccable note-keeping and care exhibited for ephemera raises the act of collecting to the level of Sado (Tea Ceremony)--a gesture both precise and humanly generous to the present- (in artifact) -yet-absent artist—and is carried out by Summers almost as an end in itself.
Summers himself signals the importance (and the praxis) of the ARCHIVE in the Janssen interview (See reference 2), in which he tells of an early VEC action (1977) in Den Appel in Amsterdam.
That is, destruction/ conservation of the object are obverse sides of the same coin: both extremes exist on the same continuum in which gesture takes precedence over content, action over being.
In addition, the individual contributions of artists known and unknown add to the multiplicity and complexity of this single project, which, finally, can be appreciated as a work of art in itself.
Following Beuys, and other artists of the 1960s like Jerzy Grotowski, Summers inhabits the enviable position in which the subjunctive mode is the operative norm in daily life.
Similarly, like Beuys, (or Duchamp, for that matter) Summers achieves many of his artistic goals through maintaining a network of personal contacts and exercising a certain charisma both on and off the stage.
Thinking of Summers' art and of VEC, we recall an illustration for a 17th-century diving apparatus we once saw: A man walking upright inside a large leather tub of captured air pushes the device before him as he searches the sea-bed for gems.
[3] Summers participated in the Polypoetry festival of Maastricht with Lucien Suel, Jaap Blonk, Fernando Aguiar, Enzo Minarelli, Tom Winter, and Jesse Glass, among others.