The Fluxus Blog  -

+ 1 - 2 | § ¶Experimental / Experiential

Where does Fluxus fit within the history of art? From the beginning of human art-making there have coexisted two streams in the history of art. Art was either made to be decorative and illustrative, or created to serve an experiential spiritual purpose. This statement is not meant to imply that decorative art cannot be spiritual or that religious/shamanistic art can't also be decorative. Clearly there are numerous examples of art that is both decorative and experiential. However, what is important is the purpose for which the art was created.

I think that to most members of the public art is viewed as serving a primarily decorative function. This assumption applies even to 'traditional' religious art which is seen to be decorative and also illustrative, but is often not seen for the deeper experiential emotions which it is meant to evoke. Art that is primarily experiential, and that is not inclined to be simultaneously decorative, is perceived by many people as being incomprehensible. It has been a lesson throughout human history, that what is not understood is generally also hated.

Fluxus is part of a tradition in art that places experimentation with the experiential nature of art as a high priority. While this tradition predates modernism and can be found in examples from throughout history, the experiential tradition has most clearly be articulated and evidenced since the beginning of the twentieth century. This is when experimentation with experiential art resulted in an overt separation of art-making from decoration manufacturing and illustration. Dada, Fluxus/Intermedia, Abstract Expressionism, Pop Art and Minimalism have elevated experimentation with concepts, and experiential "art as event" into discreet art movements. The unfortunate side effect of art as experience, art as concepts, or art as event — has been that many people have been unable to disassociate themselves from the belief that all art must be decorative or illustrative in order to be called "art". Even while Fluxus and Intermedia make art more accessible to more people, people are having difficulty accepting the accessibility of experiential art because they are finding it difficult to accept it as "art".

+ 4 - 0 | § ¶Fluxus Free Zone Intervention Event

The "Fluxus Intervention Event" is my own contribution to the living Fluxus intermedia experiment. I have designed a simple graphic, printed onto 2 in. by 4 in. labels. The labels read "Fluxus Free Zone". In smaller type they also read "Certified Official". The interventions occur clandestinely throughout the city. By applying the labels to selected sign-posts in public spaces, the entire space is declared to be a "Fluxus Free Zone".

The Fluxus Intervention Events serve to bring personal ideas into the public domain, while also questioning the rights of corporations versus the rights of individuals to bring messages into public spaces. Corporate interests have overrun public urban spaces with incessant and unavoidable demands to consume their products. The application of a tiny label into this hijacked public space helps force the issue of thinking critically about who has the right to display their messages in public spaces and how that right is either exercised or thwarted.

There is also deliberate ambiguity over the nature of what constitutes a Fluxus Free Zone. Some may be Fluxus Free-Zones, e.g. an area which is suitable for Fluxus-friendly people and events. Others may be Fluxus-Free Zones, e.g. areas in which anything Fluxus would be alien. There is also the matter of the label being "Certified Official", as Fluxus is an entirely free-form anti-organization community where the idea of anybody or group declaring with authority that an event or object is official is antithetical to the Fluxus idea and ideals. Since it is impossible for anything Fluxus to be "Certified Official", in the spirit of Fluxus, I have decided to label my labels as being "Certified Official".

The labels are also available for printout on the internet so that people can extend the Fluxus Free Zone Intervention Events into their own communities. I am also sending out labels in mail-art. My digital printmaking work has also begun to include the Interventions as I patrol Toronto with my digital camera and photograph the labels where I find them displayed. The digital prints are then further modified (Fluxified?) by the application of a Fluxus Free Zone label to each print which allows the owner of each piece to declare their own Fluxus Free Zone wherever they choose to display the work. Prints can be viewed at my online gallery at DigitalSalon.com.

+ 1 - 2 | § ¶Video as Intermedia

In the Spring 2005 issue of Canadian Art Magazine there is a three part feature article by "media arts legend" Tom Sherman called VIDEO 2005. The first part is titled "video (intermedia)".

Whenever I see video described as being "intermedia" I generally say, "Here we go again, another artist or writer who doesn't know the difference between multimedia and intermedia". But being interested in both multimedia and intermedia, I read the articles anyway. Sherman's article was different than most because it turns out that he knows the difference between intermedia and multimedia very well. In fact, he quotes Dick Higgins in the third papragraph of the article. Sherman uses a 1966 quote by Higgins ("Much of the best work being produced today seems to fall between media") to argue that video is the "between media" medium that Fluxus was missing in the 1960s.

While I credit Tom Sherman for basing his article on solid research and for giving credit to Dick Higgins and Fluxus, I would dispute his conclusion that video is intermedia, or even that video is the medium best suited to documenting intermedia. Fluxus is too fluid to be limited to any medium. And Higgins' and Friedman's idea of intermedia would extend to video as well; video is just another concrete medium, albeit one with more flexibility than most others. Still, intermedia is what is occurring between media, including between video and other media.

+ 2 - 1 | § ¶George Brecht

George Brecht was one of the early members of Fluxus in the United States. He was born in the town of Halfway, Oregon in 1924. It seems fitting that an important Fluxus artist would come from a place called "Halfway"; Fluxus being a movement that is seldom "All-the-way" to anywhere in particular.

Brecht was one of the students attending John Cage's New School of Social Research in 1958 and 1959. He was associated with many of the Fluxus and related artists of the 1960s including, Daniel Spoerri, Dick Higgins, John Cage, Ray Johnson, Ken Friedman, and Alison Knowles. An article about Fluxus, written in 1964 by George Brecht can be read online at http://www.artnotart.com, an excerpt from the article follows:

Whether you think that concert halls, theaters, and art galleries are the natural places to present music, performances, and objects, or find these places mummifying, preferring streets, homes, and railway stations, or do not find it useful to distinguish between these two aspects of the world theater, there is someone associated with Fluxus who agrees with you. Artist, anti-artists, non-artists, anartists, the politically committed and the apolitical, poets of non-poetry, non-dancers dancing, doers, undoers, and non-doers, Fluxus encompasses opposites. Consider opposing it, supporting it, ignoring it, changing your mind.

In my mind, Brecht encompasses the true spirit of Fluxus in the short statement above. Brecht was prescient in anticipating the core concepts of post-modernism while living in the midst of the modern era. Maybe the world owes much more to Fluxus than has been acknowledged to date. The idea of embracing polarity and dialogue rather than encouraging debate between conflicting positions is now being widely accepted in the popular literature around business, politics, and social issues.

+ 1 - 2 | § ¶Crispin Webb

Fluxus is much more than only an historical movement in the arts. In addition to having a rich and interesting history, Fluxus continues to be of significance to the current cultural tapestry of the world. Crispin Webb may not be a household name. He may not be a seminal figure in art history. But he is a great example of contemporary Fluxus art and practice.

Crispin performs historical fluxus events in his studio in Ohio, and scripts new events there as well. His Web site at http://www.crispinwebb.com/ is repleat with performance recordings, audio works, Fluxus objects, and written Fluxus works. In the true spirit of Fluxus, Crispin calls his work "intermedia" as Fluxus was described by Dick Higgins and Ken Friedman. He also refers to himself as being "Phony Fluxus" rather than Fluxus because of the hybrid nature of his work. I am somewhat less inclined to draw the same distinction because Fluxus has never really been very dogmatic or inflexible.

Here are a couple of ideas proposed by Crispin on his Web site:

Make a tree house in my studio with sculptures and
electronic mechanisms run on vinegar and lemons.

Rusn my whole apt by extension cord from another apt in my building or down the street. I should document this idea even if I don't actually do it.

Sell sculptures on EBay and send the buyers the sculpture and several other editions of works that I have made for them.

The last project has been realized a few times already, so if your interest is piqued by this article or by a visit to Crispin Webb's Web site, be sure to visit E-Bay to search for his work!

+ 1 - 2 | § ¶John Cage

The composer and artist John Cage was an important influence on the development of Fluxus in the United States. Cage was born in Los Angeles, California in 1912 and died in 1992. His influence was imparted through his work and through his teaching. In his work, he was known for pioneering the use of silence as a compositional tool. His most renowned work in this theme being 4'33", which consisted entirely of four minutes and 33 seconds of silence from the stage. David Bernstein writes in Corner Magazine:

The description of 4'33"--the musical analog for Robert Rauschenberg's white canvases--as a composition without sound is misleading. 4'33" was not merely a philosophical statement without any real musical content. Cage has maintained that an audience experiencing 4'33" has an opportunity to listen, in an aesthetic way, to what there is to hear. He believed that we are all free at any time and in any place to listen, in a musical way, to the sounds that are around us. He eliminated the distinction between musical and environmental sound, thus achieving a fusion of art and life in a musical context. Reference Article

Works like 4'33" encourage the audience to be mindful of all of the ambient sounds around them. Cage discovered that it is actually impossible for us to experience absolute silence. Even when placed into artificially created environments in which physical silence is close to complete, people become aware of the sounds that their own bodies make as living organisms. The pulse of our heartbeats, the 'ringing' in our ears, and the sounds made as we shift position, suddenly take on prominence, as external environmental sounds diminish. Cage was also interested in Zen Buddhism which encourages the type of mindfulness expressed in works like 4'33".

Cage's educational contibution is exemplified by his work at Black Mountain College in the early 1950s and at The New School of Social Research in New York in the late 1950s. His students at The New School included many of the early Fluxus artists, including, George Brecht, Dick Higgins, Allan Kaprow, and Jackson Mac Low. John Cage's work was featured at the first "official" Fluxus event in Europe which was organized by George Maciuanas. George Brecht, Dick Higgins, Nam June Paik, Allison Knowles, and Emmet Williams, among others also performed at this event. In 1989 John Cage wrote an autobiography which is available at http://www.newalbion.com/artists/cagej/autobiog.html. In an excerpt from this autobiography, he describes himself:

Neither of my parents went to college. When I did, I dropped out after two years. Thinking I was going to be a writer, I told Mother and Dad I should travel to Europe and have experiences rather than continue in school. I was shocked at college to see one hundred of my classmates in the library all reading copies of the same book. Instead of doing as they did, I went into the stacks and read the first book written by an author whose name began with Z. I received the highest grade in the class. That convinced me that the institution was not being run correctly. I left.

It was at Black Mountain College that I made what is sometimes said to be the first happening. The audience was seated in four isometric triangular sections, the apexes of which touched a small square performance area that they faced and that led through the aisles between them to the large performance area that surrounded them. Disparate activities, dancing by Merce Cunningham, the exhibition of paintings and the playing of a Victrola by Robert Rauschenberg, the reading of his poetry by Charles Olsen or hers by M. C. Richards from the top of a ladder outside the audience, the piano playing of David Tudor, my own reading of a lecture that included silences from the top of another ladder outside the audience, all took place within chance-determined periods of time within the over-all time of my lecture. It was later that summer that I was delighted to find in America's first synagogue in Newport, Rhode Island, that the congregation was seated in the same way, facing itself. From John Cage: An Autobiographical Statement.

We can readily make the connections between Cage and Fluxus from the excerpt above. We can also see how John Cage continues to inform and to influence the work or artists, writers, composers, and musicians today.

+ 1 - 2 | § ¶A Bit About Marcel

Marcel Duchamp was not considered to be closely associated with Fluxus. However, as Fluxus owes at least part of its historical significance to Dada, I think that Duchamp's influence needs to be appreciated. Perhaps part of the reason that early Fluxus artists tended to dissociate themselves from Dada was due to early tendencies of art journalists to call Fluxus "Neo-Dada". Fluxus artists in the early days of Fluxus needed to present themselves as something different from Dada and as something new, which they were. However, with the luxury of hindsight, it is clear that while different from Dada, Fluxus shared certain concepts with Dada. Maciuanas called for "anti-art" as did the Dada artists. Fluxus artists made use of "automatic" writing and music techniques based on selective randomness and minimal intervention by the artists. As I see it, one of the biggest differences between Dada and Fluxus is that Fluxus replaced the pessimistic nihilism of Dada with optimism and humor.Marcel Duchamp with his "ready-mades" fits in with the Fluxus propensity towards mixing humor and serious theory. The ready-mades may have been precursors to the Fluxkits and other Fluxus objects. Duchamp too, by the 1960s had stopped making art in any traditionally recognizable form and had turned to playing chess as his sole means of artistic expression. This activity can be viewed as being analogous to a Fluxus event.

+ 2 - 1 | § ¶The Collection Problem

The Gilbert and Lila Silverman Fluxus Collection is probably the largest collection of historical Fluxus objects in the world today. While it is hard to overstate the importance of preserving the history of Fluxus, collections like those of the Silverman’s present a double-edged sword. While protecting the Fluxus heritage, collectors and curators also have a vested interest in killing Fluxus and keeping it dead. If no new Fluxus objects can be created or accepted as legitimate Fluxus, then the value of the collection, especially the financial value, increases.

When the financial incentives to keeping Fluxus dead are added to the personality cult around George Maciunas maintained by the collectors and friends of Maciunas, like Jon Hendricks, who curates the collection, it presents a barrier to acceptance of current Fluxus personalities.

The barrier is artificial and is not very difficult to breach though. On a purely practical basis Fluxus was never dogmatic enough to hold onto a single, uniformly accepted identity. Also, there is no way to stop artists from continuing to work in the Fluxus form and from calling themselves and their work "Fluxus". So despite the efforts of collectors and a few historians with vested interests, Fluxus continues to live and thrive more than forty years after its inception.

+ 2 - 1 | § ¶The Maciunas Question

Was George Maciunas Fluxus?

George Maciunas is generally credited with coining the term "Fluxus". During his lifetime he was also very closely associated with Fluxus and often tried to dictate the terms of membership in the Fluxus community. After his death, a small cadre of collectors and associates attempted to declare that Fluxus died along with Maciunas.

Fluxus did not require Maciunas as much as Maciunas needed Fluxus though. George's insistent attempts to dictate the terms of Fluxus while simultaneously encouraging as many artists as he could to join him, instead had the effect of causing Fluxus to slip away from him.

Besides his close association with Fluxus, and even his coining of the word, the Fluxus movement predates Maciuanas, and continued on independent of him. Naming something is not the same as owning it, and nobody could, or can lay claim to owning an idea as amorphous as Fluxus.

+ 3 - 0 | § ¶Should a Moment Last Forever?

From an academic panel discussion on April 5, 1997:

The "whatness" of art that is designed as ephemeral, art that has the "momentary" aspect as a principal element was the subject of this panel discussion. Participants were asked to address the problems faced in documenting, collecting, preserving and archiving intentionally ephemeral works of art: i.e., those designed for specific time/space constructs, or those which are temporal by nature. Should the ephemeral work be allowed to expire? Can documentation accurately represent art that is intended to be transitory? What is it that is documented -- the moment, its essence, or only a hint of what actually transpires? Should electronic art be captured, downloaded and put through format changes? How do we handle intermedia which deal with processes of change or virtual reality? Do librarians, archivists and curators of collections have the right and/or responsibility to preserve installation art, performance art or other time arts? How can librarians, educators and artists share in documenting and creating access to these types of information? Should libraries act as conventional repositories, or spaces for audience interaction with these materials?

Moderator: Henrietta Zielinski, Bibliographer, School of the Art Institute of Chicago
Sponsor: ARLIS/NA New Art Round Table

Full Article at http://www.arlisna.org/

+ 1 - 2 | § ¶What it Was:

Perhaps the clearest description of Fluxus in the early days comes from George Brecht, as quoted by Hannah Higgins in her book, The Fluxus Experience. Brecht says,

In Fluxus there has never been any attempt to agree on aims or methods; individuals with something unnameable in common have simply naturally coalesced to publish and perform their work. Perhaps this common something is a feeling that the bounds of art are much wider than they have conventionally seemed, or that art and certain long established bounds are no longer very useful.

+ 2 - 1 | § ¶What it is:

1) Fluxus makes the mundane magical

2) Fluxus happens when one feels that life and art must be taken so
seriously, that it becomes impossible to take life or art seriously.

3) Ordinary acts and ordinary objects perceived in extraordinary ways.

4) Other ideas...

+ 1 - 2 | § ¶George Maciunas

Thanks to T. Sulaiti, who has a great page of infromation about George Maciunas because Maciunas was a family friend, I have added two short quotes from Maciunas (transcribed from scans on Mr. Sulaiti's Web site) as well as a short quote from Sulaiti. Maciunas is considered to be one of the "founding fathers" of Fluxus so I am very grateful for the firsthand information at:
http://www.slonet.org/~tsulaiti/fluxus.htm

Promote a revolutionary flood and tide in art.
Promote living art, anti-art, promote NON ART REALITY to be grasped by all peoples, not only critics, dilettantes and professionals. ~ George Maciunas

"I remember visiting George with my dad and being flabbergasted by his projects. Some of my favorites were the suicide kits and feces kits that he sold. The suicide kit consisted of small compartmentalized clear plastic boxes that contained the necessary tools to do yourself in. This kit did not include instructions so you had to get creative with some of the objects. One was a fish hook on a string that George pointed out. The hook would be swallowed then by pulling up the on string you would get to your maker."
~ T. Sulaiti (Who has several original pieces by George Maciunas on his Web site)

Purge the world of bourgeois sickness.
"intellectual", professional & commercialized culture,
PURGE the world of dead art, imitation, articficial art, abstract art, illusionistic art, mathematical art, -- PURGE THE WORLD OF "EUROPANISM" ~ George Maciunas

Source: http://www.slonet.org/~tsulaiti/fluxus.html

+ 0 - 3 | § ¶Before the Beginning

The very first post on The Fluxus Blog said that Fluxus arrived in America in 1962. While 1962 may have been the year of the first Fluxus exhibition in America, Fluxus was happening in New York in the 1950s.

In the years 1957 to 1959 John Cage was teaching a music composition course which was attended by many of the early Fluxus activists, including Dick Higgins, George Brecht and Al Hansen. This was also where and when Allan Kaprow first conceived of, and exhibited his happenings, and other Fluxus artists were creating art and music events and were producuing the scores to performing the events.

+ 1 - 2 | § ¶From an Interview with Allan Kaprow

John Held Jr. interviewing Allan Kaprow in 1988:

JH: It occurs to me that alot of this type of activity had precursors in the Dada movement...
AK: Sure. And the Futurists.
JH: ..it was in the air then too, and then it petered out in the twenties, thirties..
AK: That's right.
JH: ...forties, and then all of a sudden in the fifties - here it was again - with yourself, and the Fluxus people, and Gutai in Japan...
AK: They were before us.
JH: ...and Yves Klein and the Nouveau Realists in France.
AK: Right.
JH: It just happened again. Why? Why after all those years...
AK: There's no explanation for it. The usual kind of exhaustion principle, that the prior avant-garde had exhausted itself is true, but it's not an adequate explanation, because you don't find it happening with every exhaustion. So, why it happened pundits will have fun on speculating, and I'm sure they're all right.

Full Transcript of Interview

+ 2 - 1 | § ¶Some Fluxus Questions

What is fluxus? Is fluxus an art movement or a social movement? Is fluxus still active or is fluxus now history? Is fluxus art or anti-art? Is fluxus dada, neo-dada, anti-dada, or something else entirely? Is fluxus dead? Can fluxus be defined? Is fluxus still relevant? Was fluxus important or impotent? Dose fluxus matter? Is fluxus matter? Should anybody care about fluxus? Is fluxus collectable? Is there a dfference between fluxus and dada? Is the answer to these questions yes, no, or maybe? What is the right answer to the previous question? Is there a right answer? Does it matter?

+ 2 - 1 | § ¶How to Find the Fluxus Answers

1) Ask a fluxus expert
2) Ask another fluxus expert
3) Make sure that the two experts disagree with each other
4) Make sure that you do not agree with either expert
5) Read a book
6) Follow all of the preceding steps
7) Question everything that you learned by following the preceding steps
8) Now you have the answers

+ 2 - 1 | § ¶Fluxus Today

Fluxus is alive and well today. Some of the names have changed. The dates have certainly changed. But fluxus is an idea that cannot be killed, though many have tried to bury it anyway.

The flux is dead. Long live fluxus!

+ 1 - 2 | § ¶Forty Years of Fluxus

A great essay by Ken Friedman, Forty Years of Fluxus tells the fluxus story from 1962 to 2002. I have included a brief excerpt from Freidman's article below. There is a link at the bottom to the full article at http://www.artnotart.com/fluxus/kfriedman-fourtyyears.html

Dick [Higgins] wrote, "Fluxus is not a moment in history, or an art movement. Fluxus is a way of doing things, a tradition, and a way of life and death."

For Dick, for George Maciunas, and for me, Fluxus is more valuable as an idea and a potential for social change than as a specific group of people or a collection of objects.

As I see it, Fluxus was a laboratory. The research program of the Fluxus laboratory is characterized by twelve ideas:

globalism,
the unity of art and life,
intermedia,
experimentalism,
chance,
playfulness,
simplicity,
implicativeness,
exemplativism,
specificity,
presence in time, and
musicality.

Full article by Ken Friedman can be read here.

+ 1 - 0 | § ¶In The Beginning

Fluxus had its beginnings in Europe during the 1950s. Fluxus was introduced to America in 1962 by George Maciunas. One of the first fluxus exhibitions, the "Fluxus International Festspiele", was put on in Wiesbaden, Germany in September of 1962.

Some of the artists, performers and writers who were active in the early days were; George Maciunas, Yoko Ono, Dick Higgins, Alison Knowles, Al Hansen, Ken Friedman and Nam June Paik. Several others were involved with fluxus but did not always call themselves fluxus artists such as Ray Johnson, Allan Kaprow, and John Cage.