The chart is an interactive lineage map. Happening sits at the center, on a timeline that runs from older movements at the top to newer ones at the bottom. The movements that influenced it appear above it, any parallel movements it developed alongside sit on its own row, and the movements it later influenced appear below. Every line is a real, cited connection between two movements: a solid line is an influence historians broadly agree on, and a dashed line is an indirect, parallel, or contested link.

For Happening (1958 – 1970s), it traces three movements that shaped it, all well-established links: Dada, Futurism and Gutai group; it runs alongside two parallel movements, all well-established links: Auto-destructive art and Fluxus; it fans out to three movements it went on to influence, a mix of well-established and looser, indirect links: Interactive Art, Temporary art and Viennese Actionism.