In 1960, Jean-Jacques Lebel oversaw and partook in the first European Happening "L'enterrement de la Chose" in Venice. For his performance there – called "Happening Funeral Ceremony of the Anti-Process" – Lebel invited the audience to attend a ceremony in formal dress. In a decorated room within a grand residence, a draped 'cadaver' rested on a plinth which was then ritually stabbed by an 'executioner' while a 'service' was read consisting of extracts from the French décadent writer Joris-Karl Huysmans and le Marquis de Sade. Then pall-bearers carried the coffin out into a gondola and the 'body' – which was a mechanical sculpture by Jean Tinguely – was ceremonially slid into the canal.