A dialogue with Owen Smith: Owen, I agree that the view that you put forward is the most sensible and practical approach to the question. It also seems to correspond closely to views expressed by Dick Higgins and Ken Friedman who have addressed the question in the past. I think that it also corresponds to…
Fluxus: Dead or Alive — Owen Smith (part 1)
A response from Owen Smith: My own point of view is that there is a historical Fluxus that is what it is (not dead, but more set or determined in a way) but there is also fluxus as a view and practice that is alive and well. This is another way Fluxus is like Zen…
Fluxus: Dead or Alive — Higgins / Bukoff
This quote by Dick Higgins is from Allen Bukoff’s Fluxus Portal site at http://www.fluxus.org/. Fluxus means change among other things. The Fluxus of 1992 is not the Fluxus of 1962 and if it pretends to be – then it is fake. The real Fluxus moves out from its old center into many directions, and the…
Fluxus in Space and Time
A while back I began making labels that said “Fluxus Free Zone” and then applied them in public spaces. I continue to do so. Part of the “Fluxusness” of this project was its Intermedia aspect via the interface between art/design/technology/literature/high-art-low-art/etc. But as I began experimenting with the “Red Circle with Nothing in it” project I…
Fluxus: Dead or Alive
In a nutshell, it seems to me that Fluxus is dead if (and only if) it is defined as a movement in art and culture associated with the group of artists who came together in the early 1960s with George Maciunas at its centre. However, if Fluxus is defined as an approach to art and…
cHaiku (18 syllable Haiku)
Readers of the Fluxus Blog will know that I have been working on my own variation of Haiku poetry – writing 3 line haikus that are 3, 6, and 9 syllables for a total of 18 syllables. Now that I have an established rule-form for my Haikus I have decided to give them a name…
Painting with Fluxus: From Kubota to Touchon
Fluxus has been closely associated with nearly all media forms over the years. In many ways Fluxus formed the foundation of multi-media art in the 20th century. Fluxus is after all synonymous with the term “intermedia”. Interestingly, Fluxus has never been closely associated with the most traditional of all artistic media, painting. I suppose that…
PoMo Refreshed
Premodernism: Reality is imposed from above, i.e. by the church, king, or feudal lord. Modernism: The attempt to realize a universal shared reality based on observable phenomena. Jean-Francois Lyotard described these utopic universalized stories as “metanarratives”. Postmodernism: Reality is individually constructed and structured. Metanarratives are replaced by individual narratives and/or by narratives specific to specific…
Jacques Derrida
What’s the difference between knowledge and wisdom? They aren’t heterogeneous, and you can know lots of things and have no wisdom at all. Between knowledge and action there is an abyss, but that abyss shouldn’t prevent us from trying to know as much as possible before making a decision. Philosophy is the love of wisdom….
Haiku, Senryu, Tanka, and Renga
Japanese poetry forms have become very popular for writers of poems in the English language. Al Rocheleau, an expert on the technical and aesthetic aspects of good poetry has an excellent article about the use, misuse, and abuse of the haiku. Rocheleau has a terrific short essay on the history and use of the haiku…
Acrostics, Mesostics, and Double Acrostics
An acrostic poem has a word, phrase or name spelled out vertically down one of the edges; usually the left edge. A double acrostic has one word down the left edge and another word down the right edge. A mesostic has a word or phrase down a central spine. The word is usually indicated by…
Mesostics and Fluxus
What do mesostic poems have to do with Fluxus? Fluxus is about “intermedia”. Intermedia is a term used to describe the spaces between media and the places where different media intersect. Mesostic poems were a favourite form of the composer, John Cage. Cage was a seminal early influence on the Fluxus movement. He saw his…