Musings and Information About Fluxus Past and Present
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The Fluxus Blog is written by Allan Revich of Digital Salon. It contains information about the Fluxus movement and Fluxus art, both past and present.
Allan Revich is a Toronto, Canada based artist, writer, and adult educator. In addition to writing about Fluxus, Allan writes about creative conflict resolution. He also writes traditional and experimental poetry and creates Fluxus art (visual poetry and audio), mail art, and web-based art. He has travelled extensively in Europe and North America and lived in Israel for five years in the 1980s. He has a Bachelors degree in art and psychology and a Masters degree in education.
I was recently made aware of a statement made by Fluxus artist, Ben Patterson, about the state of Fluxus post-Maciunas. As most readers of the Fluxus Blog are aware, a debate continues to swirl in various Fluxus forums and communities about the status of Fluxus after the death of George Maciunas.
I do believe that Fluxus not only
survived George (Maciunas), but now that it is finally free to be Fluxus, it is
becoming that something/nothing with which George should be happy.
~ Ben Patterson
Further evidence that reports of Fluxus' demise have been greatly exagerated.
16 July 10 - 10:25Fluxus Gallerist Harry Stendhal: From Fame to Infamy
In a lawsuit filed on behalf of well know Fluxus artist Jonas Mekas and designer Paula Scher, Harry Stendhal, proprietor the Stendhal Gallery in New York's Chelsea district, is alleged to have misappropriated money and artwork. Mekas and Scher charge that Harry Stendhal sold their pieces without giving them their
cut and is holding millions of dollars more of their work hostage.
When they inquired of Stendhal about their art and funds, they allege that he responded by email, "Don't fuck with me -- I am warning you".
OK. Let me begin by stating that I don't think that Fluxus has anything whatsoever to do directly with Judaism.
But... As someone who was born Jewish, became Israeli, and believes in no religion at all; and yet still identifies himself as "Jewish", I can see some interesting parallels between Fluxus and Judaism.
While for most people living in Western-style liberal democracies Judaism is defined simply as just a religion, for most Jews (and for most anti-Semites) Judaism is a religion AND a race AND a nationality. It is fairly easy to argue that Judaism is not a nationality in the most commonly used western sense, and it is also fairly straightforward to argue that Judaism is not a race in the most commonly used western sense. Yet, it is difficult to argue that Judaism is not some sort of unique hybrid of all of these things together. It may not be any one of these things individually, but it most definitely IS all of these things together. I could go on... but that is not the primary purpose of this blog post.
So let's get back to Fluxus. For most people with some familiarity with art history, Fluxus has been pigeon-holed as just another "art movement". But Fluxus is not really an art movement in the conventional sense of that term. For people that practiced (and continue to practice) Fluxus, Fluxus is also an attitude towards creating art and towards living life. Fluxus is a philosophy of art making and for living creatively in the world.
And here is where it gets interesting... It is not hard to argue that Fluxus is not a "philosophy". It is easy to make arguments to support the idea that Fluxus IS an art-historical movement. It is fairly straightforward to dismiss the idea of Fluxus as an attitude. But to make these arguments and dismissals, one has to ignore the feelings/positions/attitudes of the people who are most involved in Fluxus - AND to dismiss the preponderance of evidence that supports the idea that Fluxus is much more than just another art history movement. That's because Fluxus is best viewed as a hybrid that includes important elements of an art history movement, a philosophy, and an attitude. It may not be any one of these things individually, but it most definitely IS all of these things together.
So you see, Fluxus really is like Judaism - even if it does have nothing to do with Judaism!
13 June 10 - 13:50Something Else from Cecil Touchon
In the past few weeks a lively discussion about Fluxus has been taking place on Facebook. Recently, Cecil Touchon posted this interesting commentary to that discussion:
Fluxus as a group, by keeping it open and alive
is a new strategy that previous art groups have not been able to pull off in
the past but - due to most of us understanding how all that works, we are
circumventing that burial. All of this discussion is really about all of us who
were not originally associate with fluxus back in the 60's and 70's staking our
claim to the "type"or genre that could be called fluxus. I was born in
'56. I have been doing fluxus-like stuff at least since '75. I didn't know you
had to join a group - I would have thought that rather stupid at the time. I
lived in Saint Louis not NYC but a number of us were engaged in the same sort
of work. The same was going on world wide. Fluxus is really just a basket of
many trends that were current then as they are now. Now we use the term Fluxus
as a banner so that we can all find each other who have been working in
relative isolation but who share a common 'something' what we all identify as
dada/fluxus/avant/pop/retro/whatever. If fluxus came up with any new ideas that
were not already in the 'air' (which is questionable) then we have to ask, why
should those new techniques, traditions, etc be ignored. No, when we all see
new ideas that need to be incorporated into contemporary practice, we do it. If
it falls under the name 'fluxus' then you might as well call it fluxus. The
root ideas of fluxus encourage such treatment and we, in my opinion, are being
generous to fluxus by retaining the name and honoring the hard work already
done by all those known and unknown. We are at the point where constant newness
is a little bit stupid as a strategy. With the advent of the internet, we know
too much to think we are doing something no body did before. Previous
generations could maintain such arrogance by being ignorant of those things
happening at a distance.
So the old museum model of pedigree based on who knew who, where and when is
now an antiquated tehnique and not valid as a way to track things and
influences. Ideas now spread world wide in a few minutes.About Fluxus, the tension in the current discussions around Old School Fluxus
and New and Improved Fluxus is based on two different and diametrically opposed
things:
The desire to cap Fluxus around the lifetime of George Maciunas and then
build a collection of works (like the Silverman's) based directly on Maciunas
and his direct circle and his reach. This is like building the bible and then
separating out the Apocrypha. That is what has been going on. From the
collection point of view there has to be a cut off point or the collection can
never be consider complete in accord with the mindset of collectors. When the
items in the collection are clearly defined, then value can be added based on
how 'authentic' any particular thing is in relation to the collection
perimeters. Then everything else is something else; not the collection. Then
other collectors can collect with confidence that they are collecting relevant
and recognized items. It is like real estate or church sanctioned saint's
relics.
Then there is Fluxus the idea and the community. That is a lot more sloppy,
more open ended, and impossible to capture by history or by collection. It is
dynamic, wide reaching and involves so many players across so many decades that
it is impossible to deal with it. That is what all of us today are involved in
and then the whole conversation is the interaction between these two
perspectives: the collectors and the creatives or practitioners. The hard part
is on the collectors if they are trying to apply old collecting concepts to an
idea like fluxus that has always intended to defy and deflect those ideas. That
is at the root of everything in Fluxus being anti collectible and performance
based by converting it to conceptual ideas that transcend the objects or
ephemera that contain them. Fluxus art is like the moon reflected in a lake.
You can see it but it is not the moon, just a reflection. But that has not
stopped anyone from figuring out how to collecting it - it has in fact created
a whole new way of collecting and understanding what is collectible over the
last couple of decades. Even Fluxus has economics.
Conclusion: I think today we need to understand how this attempt at
anti-collect-ability was something of a failure and to then rethink how to
approach art and capitalism in less of an adversarial way. Maybe even accept
and embrace it. Then mess with it! I think it best not to work against things
when instead we can work with them.
Information about an upcoming Fluxhibition in St. Loiuis, courtesy of Keith Buchholz:
What the Fluxus?
By Paul Friswold Riverfront Times Wednesday, May 26 2010
Some people will tell you that Fluxus died in 1978 with George
Maciunas, but how can Fluxus die? The Fluxus approach to art is not any
one thing; by nature, Fluxus art is intermedia, combining sound,
object, image, text, audience and time into a single experience that
allows for both happenstance and accident. That's a way of life in the
21st century, not a dead movement.
Homecoming: Fluxus and Visual Poetry by Regional Natives, an art
exhibition featuring work by John M. Bennett, Keith A. Buchholz, Larry
Miller and Cecil Touchon, is further proof of Fluxus' ongoing vitality.
The show encourages interaction and promises fun for those open to
share in the experience — and fun is a vital element of Fluxus.
Homecoming opens with a free public reception from 5:30 to 8 p.m.
Friday, May 28, at the Regional Arts Commission (6128 Delmar Boulevard;
314-863-5811 or www.art-stl.com), and the performance begins at 7 p.m.
The gallery is open daily, and the show remains up through Sunday, July
11.
May 28-July 11, 2010
Over the past few days I've been reading some comments that were critical of the "flippancy" observed in discussions about Fluxus and on sites like Facebook and online communities like the Fluxlist. Some of this criticism has even come from Fluxus and avant-garde old-timers. I find this criticism to be, how can I say this politely... precious.
Humor and "flippancy" are as much a part of Fluxus as Fluxkits and Event Scores. It is absurd to even use the term "flippant" in a critical manner when talking about Fluxus! After all, if it isn't fun it isn't Fluxus. Fluxus uses playfulness to deal with serious matters. Just as many of the most biting social critics have been comic entertainers, Fluxus upends seriousness - or refelcts it back - in the form of jokes. It isn't always about you see in front of you... it's about how you perceive what's in front of you. Fluxus uses flippance to play with perception, in the dame way that Fluxus uses the idea of Intermedia to explore the intersections between media, to explore/investigate sensory perceptions.
Fluxus (past and present) has always incorporated humor, flippancy and good-natured irreverency. It is hard for me to imagine work more irreverent than:
For a really wonderful look at "classical" Fluxus performances, with many examples of humorous irrevence (i.e. flippancy) check out the Fluxus Performance Workbook on Scribd.
It is difficult for me to even imagine a Fluxus without flippancy! So, to every artists with a working sense of humor and in interest in Fluxus... FLUX ON!
Recently in response to an earlier post on the Fluxus Blog it was suggested that belonging to a "50 year old art movement" was absurd. My friend. colleague, and respected Ray Johnson authority, Mark Bloch, had this to say,
...I am not sure why anyone would want to embrace a 50 year old art
movement when there is so much exciting here and now. A friend of mine
likened it recently to one of the Fluxus people or someone of their
generation being alive and well in the ... See moreearly
60s and instead of embracing all the amazing change going on around
them, they would have moved to Paris to regurgitate ancient debates
about the color pallettes of Mattise and Picasso...
Fluxus is not a 50 year old art movement. It isn't even an "art movement". Art movements are framed by beginning dates and end dates. Sometimes there can be some debate about where to place the date markers, but all art movements are defined in this way. Art historians, academics, and theorists seem to have difficulty grasping the idea that not all art belongs to a "movement".
I'll try to make it as simple as I can for people that know too much about art.
1) Fluxus is not a movement, it is an attitude. It's a way to approach art and life. Attitudes do not exist between dates in calendars. 2) Fluxus should be conceptualized more like its antecedents, one of which was Zen Buddhism. It is as ridiculous to say that Fluxus ended when Maciuanas died, or when Higgins died, as it would be to say that Zen died when Buddha died. Not to say that Higgins or Maciuanas were anything like prophets or Messiahs (that would be John Cage ) ...just to illustrate that there are perfectly "normal" ways to approach art-making and living that don't require being slotted into a "movement" or time period. 3) Fluxus doesn't need a new name. The name it has works just fine. If it walks like a duck and it looks like a duck and it quacks like a duck, then it's probably a duck. Saying that Fluxus needs a new name for new artists is as ridiculous as saying that ducks in Canada should have a different name than ducks in the USA.
(with appologies to my readers for the dorky "NOT!" cliche in the headline)
23 May 10 - 18:47Photography and Fluxus: Brad Brace
I mentioned Brad Brace in my previous post about Photography and Fluxus. Below is a quote directly from Brad (from his Facebook page) in which Brad talks about his latest photo-pased project.
dISCREET pROFILES (the Oregon collection): Thousands of enlarged and enhanced photographs, mostly low-res cellphone, web-cam, and low-end digital camera self-portraits, culled from dating/social websites -- as you might expect, there is some explicit content (more than is permitted here unfortunately: you really shoul...d see them all, but take a deep breath first) -- fascinating and occasionally disturbing. You may realize that this is not the first time I've collected public imagery: notably dumpster-diving at photo-finishers' in the 70's. Whenever possible I retained any color casts, cropping and lighting. The portraits are actually very considered, sometimes selections made/altered merely to obscure the identity that they wished to presumably portray initially. Sunglasses are a popular ruse, as are close-ups of clevage, butts, feet and groins. And some, but surprising few, are filched from somewhere online, but this must be a risky choice in the event of an 'actual encounter.' How much introductory information/description do you want to put out there to begin with? There are some very creative, even artful, solutions to this dilemma. This massive 2+ GB PDF ebook is $250
(sorry about the price but it was a hellish amount of work and I guarantee you won't be disappointed or YMB), and must be ordered directly. Use my verified Paypal account to have the DVD delivered at no charge: [bbrace@eskimo.com; http://bbrace.laughingsquid.net/buy-into.html] (in two parts, each 1600 pages/photos; 6.94 x 6.94").
Techically the incredible diverse range of imagery was difficult to bring under control; despite a variety of intricate processing directions, the scripts would inevitably crash or be inable to render a decent image. These were handled individually. The sequence, in the pdfs is probably pretty much random: processing used whatever numbering systems were in place, and then renumbered everything so there was no trace of last origin. If I receive a reasonable number of orders, I'll offer another state of the union or country... but California had to be the place to begin. Sure to be a collectors' (socio-anthropologists') item! An amazing and compelling, collective portrait! The interspersed military imagery (or maybe something else), also introduces a new spin on the hopes for this already tenuous social culture. I've had to organize these in some fashion, so by state/country seem to be the prevailing approach. And given how often workers are compelled to move around, there's more of a local difference in social-sexual proclivity than you might expect. Oregon's up next: a hostile corrupt, conservative police-state that's reflected, I think in the mannerisms of its self-portraiture. It's often chosen for consumer surveys...
/:b
Brad provides these two URLs for further information:
Recently, my friend and fellow Fluxus practitioner, Cecil Touchon, sent me a copy of an email that he had sent to a mutual colleague. I have excerpted a really nice explanation about how contemporary Fluxus fits in with historical Fluxus. I have addressed this issue from a similar, but different perspective, but I think that Cecil's piece adds an interesting and complementary viewpoint.
Fluxus
from the beginning was intended as an activity for amateurs. And I say that
with all due respect. I approach it that way: as a pastime done in spare
moments. It is not the sort of thing you would expect to pursue professionally,
although I suppose one could and some have. I see people working today with
fluxus as three different groups...
Those who are retro fluxus
artists and look backwards at what fluxus was and try to sustain what it
was in the 60's and 70's and consider it over. These tend to be among
performers who like to perform the old school works.
Then there are those who have
been working parallel to fluxus for many years but just have not been
involved with the specific individuals and/or do not wish to associate
themselves with the fluxus community.
Then there are those people,
like myself and many of the gang on fluxlist who have been working in a
fluxus way for most of their lives and then discover the group - mostly
through fluxlist - then began working with each other and have decided as
a group to not rename what we do and create a new identity but rather
accept and honor what is there and make it our own and create new works,
new scores, new performances, new networks. It is the logical next step.
So we
claim Fluxus. That seems to us perfectly in keeping with fluxus principles and
we value our community. We are inclusive with each other and make plenty of
room for the old school guys - whom we love and admire and study and hang out
with as circumstance permits - and contemporary fluxus artists as well. We are
now, the last few years, unabashed in our embrace of fluxus and see it as a
perennial thing that can be and is passed from one generation to the next
uninterrupted. Starting demands continuing. We continue.
It sometimes seems to me that photography has been the forgotten child of Fluxus over the years. I suppose it is not hard to understand why... there has not been a lot of photographic work that has been identified as being explicitly "Fluxus". Unlike video, which lemds itself so readily to Fluxus interpretations, the lines between Intermedia and multimedia are ill-defined and lurry at best, static photographs find their place most often as either "documentation" or "fine art".
However, there are Fluxus practitioners that do integrate Fluxus very directly into their work. Perhaps the best example is the artist, Brad Brace. Brad has been working on a photo (and photocopier) based project for many, many years. His 12 hour ISBN Project began back in 1994 and continues online to this day. Brad describes the project as
Pointless Hypermodern Imagery... posted/mailed every 12 hours... a
spectral, trajective alignment for the 00`s! A continuum of minimalist
masks in the face of catastrophe; conjuring up transformative metaphors
for the everyday... A poetic reversibility of exclusive events...
Recently Brad has published a massive collection of "thousands of enlarged and enhanced photographs, mostly low-res cellphone-camera self-portraits, culled from dating websites...", a 2 gigabyte (plus) pdf book. It's available to collectors for $250 and can be purchasd directly from Brad Brace (bbrace@eskimo.com).
Photographs have also been used by Reid Wood (State of Being) who has been photographing street signs and and similar odd bits of street text and posting his work to the Fluxlist Blog. Also on the Fluxlist Blog are photographs by Litsa Spathi. Her partner Ruud Jansen, has many flux-like photograps on Flickr and on his Facebook page.
Another artist who has recently made direct use of photography is Allan Revich (yes, me) who incorporates reflected text from storefronts and street scenes into his Urban Reflections series of photographs. Found photographs are also a part of his visual poetry.
In fact, "found" photographs are the most common use of photography in the Fluxus milieu... being quite common in collage work. I'll address collage in another blog post though. Another realted upcoming post will cover photocopier and Xerox imaging, in which my friend and flux-colleague Reed Altemus has been especially active.
Mail Art received will be exhibited at SKYLAB in downtown Columbus OH USA
during August 2010 during the Avant Writing Symposium at The Ohio State
University (symposium is being organized by my spouse, John M Bennett-
curator of the Avant Writing Collection-part of OSU library's Rare Books
& MSS Library). As a tribute to John, who will retire from OSU
sometime around the end of this year, SKYLAB will concurrently exhibit a
retrospective of JMB's visual poetry. Our son, John Also Bennett, the
main curator for SKYLAB, will install JMB's vispo show, and I'll install
the mail art show & do the documentation. A collaboration table set
up by Jim Leftwich and other performances will happen at SKYLAB Saturday
night (time TBA) August 21st during the Avant Writing Symposium- so some
participants from the OSU Avant Writing Symposium will be there and will
see the mail art show...and may even send in their own contributions.
Hopefully, I'll have lists of addresses available as handouts to anyone
who might want to start or carry on m.a. correspondences with
participants in the m.a. show. Feel free to include blog or website
addresses you'd like to share, along with your mailing address or email
address.
Mail Submissions to:
C Mehrl Bennett
137 Leland Ave
Columbus OH 43214 USA
DEADLINE: August 1st, 2010
AND/OR send jpeg attachment under 2 megabytes to
cmehrlbennett@gmail.com Documentation to all who include their return address or email
address.
While (not yet) “officially” a Fluxfest, the weekend beginning on Thursday, April 15, 2010 is shaping up to be another exciting Festival of Fluxus in New York City. Here, courtesy of my favorite Fluxus impresario, Keith Buchholz is the itinerary so far. Be there… or be somewhere else!
Thursday, April 15th - Gaglione opening at Stendhal / Dada machine Fluxus performance:
Performers are: Picasso Gaglione, Darlene Dormel, Joshua Rutherford, Jessica
Feinstein, Keith Buchholz, Reed Altemus, Melissa McCarthy, Ruud Janssen, Christine Tarantino, and Mark Bloch. His show opens at 7pm. Performance begins at perform at 8:32 PM, sharp.
Friday, April 16th - Inside / Outside Fluxfest at Printed Matter
Performers (so far) are:
Reed Altemus, Picasso Gaglione, Joshua Rutherford, Melissa McCarthy, Perry Garvin, Ruud Janssen, Christine Tarantino, Darlene Dormel, Warren Fry, Jennifer Zoellner, Jessica Feinstein, Mark Bloch, Keith A. Buchholz, Olchar F. Lindsann, Tomislav Butovic, and whoever else shows up to perform.
The performance is at 6 pm with the first 30 minutes inside Printed Matter.
At 6:30 the festivities move outside and a banner that says "FLUXUS STREET THEATRE" will be unfurled, and begin the second part of the performance.
Printed Matter will be featuring the release of a new series of Performance score pamphlets that evening, featuring the scores of new and established Fluxus artists.
Friday Night, Following the Performance - 8pm New York Correspondence School Dinner - at Katz's Deli
Spread the word!!! - a classic meeting reemerges at historic Katz's ….
Be sure to let your friends know - It would be great to have as many folks there as possible.
Saturday, April 17th- Lectures at Stendhal - John Held Jr., Ruud Janssen,
and Geert De Decker ( Stuka Fabryka ) Lecture on Mail Art, Rubber Stamp, and
Fluxus. Tentatively scheduled for 1 PM..
Saturday Night - Please Mr. Postman! It's Sticker Dude's Birthday!
Joel Cohen (Stickerdude) hosts an evening of music and mayhem with mail artists at a coffeehouse in Brooklyn. …Details to follow in New York.
Sunday Morning - The Raid on Rutgers:
For those who wish to venture out on the train, the Post Neo Absurdists have put together an informal tour of HISTORIC FLUXUS SITES on the Campus of RUTGERS. See where the FLUXMASS really happened… And lots more! Hosts Olchar, Warren, and Tomislav have done all the footwork - this will be fun!
Gaglione and Held presented a showcase for Fluxus, Mail Art and rubber stamp art at The Stamp Art Gallery in San Francisco during the mid-nineties. The current exhibition documents the gallery’s activities through posters, exhibition catalogs, performance documentation, mail art, artist postage stamps and rubber stamp box sets made to commemorate the various exhibitions.
In putting together the rubber stamp box sets, Gaglione and Held
followed the example of Fluxus impresario George Maciunas in his
production of Flux-Kits. These inexpensive yet elegent multiple
editions set the tone for the production of these post-Fluxus editions.
Fritz Kahn (1888-1968), a German, Jewish gynecologist, artist, and popular science writer
extraordinaire, is considered by many to be the
founder of conceptual medical illustration.
06 January 10 - 12:46A Call for Submissions (SLOPE issue 47)
A message from Amber Nelson:
Hi
I (Amber Nelson) am guest editing the upcoming issue of SLOPE (issue 47) on the intersection of poetry and film. I think Fluxists tend to be artists that are able to extend intersections farther than other people and I was wondering if you or your compatriots might be interested in submitting. I'm looking for poetry, film, essays, multimedia, other... however one might see these intersections occurring. For example, I was looking at the fluxus blog and saw a video on Man as an Industrial Palace and thought that was both beautiful and interesting and is obviously filmic, but also poetic in many ways. Here is a link to the guidelines: http://www.slope.org/slope47/index.html
Matthew Rose: Collage has a long and rich history in Modern Art, beginning formally with Picasso's and Braque's experimental canvases in the early 20th century, cutting newspapers and wall papers and adding them to their canvases. The effects were to inject a sense of found realism into their tableaux and change forever the illusion of the picture plane. Since then, of course, collage has become a dominate form of artistic production. Schwitters most well known works are collage pieces; the Dadaists brought collage into a new world not only with physical art works but with performances in a kind of audio and perceptual collage. Painting, as a result of all this early 20th century activity was forced to change, and one might say that all painting now is influenced by collage.
As an artist who has long worked the medium of collage in both cut paper and paint, how do you assess the state of the art of collage?
Cecil Touchon: I would have to say that the state of the art just now is very much alive and the number of artists working in the medium is growing. My efforts to understand and advance this constructive medium have, aside from my own art making, been in the area of developing an online community of collage artists around a central hub which is the International Museum of Collage, Assemblage and Construction (collagemuseum.com) that I founded in 1998.
The museum began as an online virtual museum and then, through various projects, has developed into a significant archive of actual collage and assemblage art. The collection numbers in the thousands of actual works. My intention has been to create a focal point for collage art. I hope to draw artists together working in this medium so that we might all know each other’s work. Communicating together as colleagues, we discuss issues related to collage such as its history, techniques, materials, copyright and archival issues. We also share information about artists currently working in collage. I also wish as to inspire and promote exhibitions. Through this continuous banter it is possible to get a sense of what everyone is thinking about and what ideas are circulating...
I have excerpted only the very beginning of the interview. The full interview includes images, illustrations, and photographs, in addition to an exceptionally thoughful commentary on contemporary collage.
.
) ...just to illustrate that there are perfectly "normal" ways to approach art-making and living that don't require being slotted into a "movement" or time period.
