Fluxus Heidelberg Center BLOG

1962 – 2012 Fluxus in Wiesbaden

2012-01-07T23:10:00.000-08:00

Fluxus 50

1962 – 2012 Fluxus in Wiesbaden

Fluxus: Internationale Festspiele Neuester Musik lautete der Titel einer Reihe heute legendärer Veranstaltungen und Konzerte, die 1962 im Wiesbadener Städtischen Museum stattfanden. Sie markierten den Beginn einer Kunstbewegung, die bis heute entscheidenden Einfluss auf viele künstlerische Positionen ausübt.
Anlässlich des 50-jährigen Jubiläums veranstaltet die Stadt Wiesbaden, die seither als ein Ursprungsort der weltweiten Fluxus-Bewegung gilt, ein Fluxusjahr, an dem sich zahlreiche Institutionen und Kultureinrichtungen der Stadt beteiligen: Im Museum Wiesbaden wird eine Ausstellung über Geschichte und Praktiken von Fluxus gezeigt. Das Staatstheater bringt eine Inszenierung des Stückes SAM von Katharina Schmidt auf die Bühne, das die Rollenverteilung von Zuschauer und Akteur in der Kunst hinterfragt. Weitere Ausstellungen entstehen im Nassauischen Kunstverein, in einem eigens von Fluxus-Künstler Ben Patterson entworfenen Fluxus-Pavillons und im Kunsthaus Wiesbaden. Auf Schloss Freudenstadt werden tägliche Fluxus-Aktionen stattfinden, die die Besucher aktiv einbinden. Eine Filmreihe und eine Klangwerkstatt für Kinder und Jugendliche runden das Jubiläumsfestival ab.

Künstlerische Leitung: Alexander Klar, Elke Gruhn, Matthias Schenk, Ulrich Meyer-Husmann, Manfred Beilharz. Mitwirkende Künstler/innen: Benjamin Patterson (US), Alison Knowles (US), Ben Vautier (IT), Takako Saito (J), Emily Wardill (GB), Jimmy Robert (BR), Asil Sungu (TR), Katerine Seda (CZ), Armando Queiroz (BR), Johannes Stüttgen, Uwe Oberg, Dirk Marwedel, Wolfgang Schliemann, Axel Schweppe u.a.

Das Projekt findet an rund 15 verschiedenen Orten in Wiesbaden statt.

S parten:

Bühne und Bewegung

Termine:
01.01.2012 - 31.12.2012	verschiedene Orte, Wiesbaden	1962 – 2012 Fluxus in Wiesbaden

Kontakt:

Kulturamt Wiesbaden
Schillerplatz 1-2
65185 Wiesbaden
www.wiesbaden.de

New books by John Held - USA

2011-12-21T22:45:00.000-08:00

A set of two books have been published at TAM-Publications.

Part – 1 (page 1-439) and Part -2 (page 440-919) of the book “Where the Secret is Hidden” , Collected Essays, 1979-2011 containing 106 essays written over 30 years on the 20th Century cultural avant-garde including Duchamp, Cage, Mail Art, Fluxus, BiY, zine and artist publishing, international cultural networking, performance art, rubber stamps and other artistic mediums the mainstream considers marginal. Each essay is illustrated with the publication in which it first appeared or an associated item. (see: http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/iuoma for more details of both parts)

An Achill cottage industry

2011-11-08T22:03:00.000-08:00

An Achill cottage industry
BOOKS: Achill Island seems an unlikely base for a Belgian and South Korean book artist duo, yet that’s where Franticham decided to set up. ANDY DEVANE finds out what drew them there

WHEN BELGIAN book artist Francis Van Maele first laid eyes on an abandoned cottage on Achill Island in the mid-1990s, he was entranced. Situated in Dugort village, in the shadow of Slievemore mountain, the cottage was just metres from the Atlantic. In 2005, after becoming the cottage’s owner, he set up home there and established Red Fox Press, a printing studio in which he creates his own limited-edition books.

That same year, while exhibiting at a book fair in Seoul, Van Maele asked if he could sit next to South Korean artist Antic-Ham at a sushi bar. It was to be the beginning of an artistic journey that would shape both their lives and careers. Over the summer the pair created what was to be the first of many books together, Night in Seoul. When it came time to say goodbye, they decided to make collage “diaries of separation” – started by one in Achill and finished by the other in Asia.

That winter they spent a month in London, where they combined romance with an intense artistic collaboration. It was then that they decided to merge their artistic identities and work as one unit, and so Francis and Antic-Ham became Franticham.

Mirroring the visual poetry of her books, Antic-Ham speaks in deep, poetic terms. When first separated from Van Maele, she had a sudden urge to go to the coast, and although the East China Sea is quite a distance from Blacksod Bay, she imagined that if she were a fish she could swim, somehow, all the way to Achill Island. Since then the fish motif has become prevalent in their collaborative work.

Antic-Ham was born in Seoul in 1974, and she divides her time between South Korea and Achill, spending about seven months a year in the latter. She is highly focused on her work, and insists that although love is the most important thing in her life, work is of equal importance.

Van Maele was born near Bruges in 1947, and ran a successful publishing house in Luxembourg before moving to Ireland. Although silk-screen printing is a labour- intensive process, he makes it sound almost effortless. “You can print on anything: paper, cardboard, boxes. You can print text, simple images and very elaborate art work. You just need a good table, hinges, a few screens and colours. All the printing is done here in Dugort.”

Given their remote location, the couple’s level of self-sufficiency in the production of such specialised work is remarkable. As Van Maele explains, “smaller books are laser-printed or inkjet-printed in our conservatory, and all bookbinding is done here as well. We use about 20 different kinds of papers, depending on projects, and we order them in the UK and Luxembourg or send them from South Korea.”

“Most of our books are limited editions and most of our collectors are in the US, then the UK, Europe and Australia. We make less than 1 per cent of our sales in Ireland.”

Van Maele is bemused to see his early work sell at auctions on the continent for 10 times its original sale price.

The couple travels to about 10 book fairs a year in cities such as London, Paris, New York and Frankfurt. They describe the fairs as essential for meeting collectors and librarians, who represent the bulk of their business, and although they enjoy visiting big cities, they are always happy to return to their adopted Achill.

The island’s rugged beauty and Atlantic air appear to fuel their creative energy. “I can’t imagine living in any other place,” says Van Maele, adding that one advantage of living on Achill is having plenty of time to work undisturbed. Despite this, the couple open their studio every summer, although Van Maele notes wryly that “as the signs do not say ‘coffee shop’ or ‘craft shop’, people coming in are already filtered”.

Canadian filmmaker Heather Fletcher met the pair in London in 2005. “Being a hopeless romantic, I was enraptured with their story,” she says. The next year she flew to Ireland to make a short film of the Franticham story. Over four days, which she describes as a “magical experience”, Fletcher produced Lost Seouls – Diary of Two Fish , a touching 14-minute film of Franticham’s life and work.

Like exotic birds swept off course, this colourful couple cut a dash as they stroll along Dugort’s Golden Strand. Van Maele says: “I think we are very fortunate to combine life and work. We’re on the exact same wavelength, and we enjoy it fully.”

See redfoxpress.com. Heather Fletcher’s film Lost Seouls – Diary of Two Fish is on YouTube

FLUXUS-EREIGNISSE IN EUROPA 1962-1977

2011-10-27T08:45:00.000-07:00

„Die Irren sind los …“

FLUXUS-EREIGNISSE IN EUROPA 1962-1977

Ausstellungen - Konferenzen - Aktionen - Publikationen. 2012

„Die Irren sind los“ - ritzte ein Zuschauer im September 1962 in das Plakat des ersten Fluxus-Festivals in Wiesbaden. Der 50. Fluxus-Geburtstag 2012 ist Anlass eine neue Sichtweise auf die radikalen künstlerischen Aktionen zu präsentieren. Eine multimediale Ausstellungsinstallation dokumentiert die Fluxus-Ereignisse der 1960er und 70er Jahre und lädt zur aktiven Begegnung mit Künstlern, Zeitzeugen und Aktionen ein, die als Interviews, Filme, Klangbeispiele und Dokumente gezeigt werden. Sie ist im Sommer/Herbst 2012 in Berlin, Budapest, Kopenhagen, Krakau, Paris, Poznań, Vilnius und anderen Orten zu sehen.

Ab 1962 wurde eine Reihe von Städten in ganz Europa Schauplatz von Fluxus-Ereignissen. Eine lose Formation junger Künstler wurde bekannt, als sie sich auf der Bühne die Haare rasierten, „eine Weile mit Butter und Eiern hantierten“, einen Konzertflügel zerlegten und laut kreischten. Ein Sturm der Entrüstung bei Publikum und Medien brach los: „Musik mit Ei“, „They hang up cabbage and say it’s art“, „Neueste Musik im Irrenhausstil“ – hiermit waren Aktionen von Eric Andersen, George Brecht, Philip Corner, Dick Higgins, Alison Knowles, George Maciunas, Nam June Paik, Ben Patterson, Mieko Shiomi, Ben Vautier, Emmett Williams und vielen anderen gemeint. Sie hatten es sich zum Ziel gemacht, die Grenzen der Kunst zu sprengen und den bürgerlichen Kunstbegriff zu überwinden.

Was bleibt von den revolutionären Aktionen der 1960er und 70er Jahre in der Gegenwart?

Während die noch aktiven Künstler sich bemühen, Fluxus-Ideen und Aktionen lebendig und inspirierend zu erhalten, versucht eine wachsende Zahl von Kunsthistorikern, Fluxus-Geschichte in ihrer Vielfalt zu erforschen. Dennoch ist das Wissen über die europäischen Fluxus-Ereignisse noch in rudimentärem Zustand. Daher ist es an der Zeit, in einer internationalen Kooperation Forschungsergebnisse zu bündeln, bislang unentdecktes Material zugänglich zu machen, und vor allem Künstlern und Zeitzeugen Gehör zu verschaffen.

„Die Irren sind los …“ FLUXUS-EREIGNISSE IN EUROPA bietet:

Eine Rekonstruktion der europäischen Fluxus-Ereignisse in einer interaktiven und multimedialen Ausstellungsinstallation, die Aufschluss über die historischen Performances, ihre Rezeption und ihr Publikum gibt, sowie über die Entwicklung des Fluxus-Netzwerks
Auf die Veranstaltungsorte zugeschnittene dokumentarische Ausstellungspräsentationen zu den örtlichen Fluxus-Ereignissen
Do-it-yourself-Fluxus-Installationen, die eigene Realisierungen von Fluxus-Stücken durch die Besucher im Ausstellungsraum ermöglichen
Aktionen im öffentlichen Raum
Performances und Begegnungen zwischen Künstlern und dem Publikum
Symposien und Diskussionen
Publikation(en) mit extensiver Dokumentation der historischen Ereignisse.

KÜNSTLER

Eric Andersen (DK), Philip Corner (US/IT), Geoffrey Hendricks (US), Bengt af Klintberg (SE), Milan Knížák (CZ), Alison Knowles (US), Jarosław Kozłowski (PL), Vytautas Landsbergis (LT), Larry Miller (US), Ann Noël (GB/DE), Ben Patterson (US/DE), Willem de Ridder (NL), Tamas St.Auby (HU), Ben Vautier (FR) und viele andere

KUNSTHISTORIKER / KURATOREN

Petra Stegmann (DE, Idee, Koordination) mit Bertrand Clavez (FR), Elisabeth Delin Hansen (DK), Peter van der Meijden (NL/DK), Henar Rivière Ríos (ES/DE), Heike Roms (DE/GB), Caroline Ugelstad (NO)

VERANSTALTUNGSORTE/PARTNER

Berlin, Akademie der Künste

Budapest, tranzit.hu

Kopenhagen, Nikolaj Kunsthal

Krakau, MOCAK museum of contemporary art in kraków

Paris, Goethe-Institut

Poznan, University of Arts in Poznań

Vilnius, Contemporary Art Centre
http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif
KOOPERATIONSPARTNER

Fachhochschule Potsdam (Studiengang Interface Design, Supervision: Prof. Matthias Krohn)

In Berlin wird die Ausstellung vom Hauptstadtkulturfonds Berlin gefördert.

source: http://dieirrensindlos.tumblr.com/

Fluxus today (Berlin 21-22 Oct 2011)

2011-09-20T21:51:00.000-07:00

Akademie der Künste, Berlin, October 21 - 22, 2011
Registration deadline: Oct 14, 2011

FLUXUS TODAY. Action Art in Performance, Research, Exhibition, Archive

Conference in preparation for the exhibitions „The lunatics are on the loose …“ EUROPEAN FLUXUS FESTIVALS 1962-1977.

As guest at Akademie der Künste | Hanseatenweg 10 | 10557 Berlin
21 - 22 Oct 2011 | in English

Discussions will focus on innovative presentations of action art, meeting academic standards as well as those of a broad public. The conference will reflect the specific situation of Fluxus, in which the classical boundaries between professions are blurred and artists are also archivists, art historians and curators also perform, and collectors research and curate as well. Performance interventions by Eric Andersen, Ben Patterson, Willem de Ridder and Tamas St.Turba will contribute to the intertwining of theory and practice. The conference takes place within the exhibition A ROOM FOR JOHN CAGE.

Concept: Petra Stegmann

PROGRAMME

Fri 21 Oct | 11 am - 6 pm | Akademie der Künste | Hanseatenweg 10 | 10557 Berlin

I.
RESEARCHING FLUXUS. EUROPEAN FLUXUS FESTIVALS 1962-1977
11 am - 1:30 pm

Henar Rivière (FU Berlin/Universidad Complutense de Madrid): IF WE CAN CALL EVERYTHING FLUXUS ... ON THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN FLUXUS AND ZAJ
Bertrand Clavez (Université de Rennes 2): FLUXUS IN FRANCE. AN ANTHOLOGY OF MISUNDERSTANDINGS
Peter van der Meijden (University of Copenhagen): WHIPPING POST COPENHAGEN
Heike Roms (Aberystwyth University): CAN A NETWORK HAVE MARGINS? WHEN FLUXUS CAME TO WEST WALES (1968)
Petra Stegmann (Potsdam): FLUXUS CONCERTS IN EASTERN EUROPE. THE LOCAL PERSPECTIVE
chair: Elisabeth Delin Hansen (Nikolaj Kunsthal Copenhagen)

II.
Johannes Odenthal (Akademie der Künste Berlin): A ROOM FOR JOHN CAGE. Curator’s tour of the exhibition
2:30 – 3:15 pm

III.
EXHIBITING FLUXUS – DOCUMENTATION AND PARTICIPATION
3:15 - 6 pm

Matthias Krohn (Fachhochschule Potsdam): INTERACTIVE DESIGN PROJECTS FOR A DIGITAL FLUXUS ARCHIVE
Astrit Schmidt-Burkhardt (FU Berlin): MACIUNAS’ LEARNING MACHINES. VISUAL REPRESENTATION IN THE PREDIGITAL AGE
Zsuzsa László (tranzit.hu): BETWEEN TEXT AND PERFORMANCE

————————————————————

OPENING
TOTALLY FLUXED UP

Fri 21 Oct | 8 pm
SCHAU FENSTER – Schauraum für Kunst | Lobeckstr. 30-35 | 10969 Berlin

With performances by

Eric Andersen | THE IDLE WALK
IPUT (superintendent: Tamas St.Turba) | OCCURRENCE
Ben Patterson | BRING HAMMER AND NAILS
Willem de Ridder | FLUTE CONCERT / MANIPULATION EVENT

————————————————————

Sat 22 Oct | 11 am - 6 pm | Akademie der Künste | Hanseatenweg 10 | 10557 Berlin

IV.
COLLECTING FLUXUS. FROM ACTION TO OBJECT
11 - 11.30 am

Harry Ruhé (Fluxus collector Amsterdam): THE ADVENTURE OF COLLECTING EPHEMERAL ART

V.
PERFORMING FLUXUS. PRACTICE AND RECEPTION
11:30 am - 1:30 pm

Hannah Higgins (University of Illinois Chicago): THE EVENT SCORE: A CASE AGAINST REPERFORMANCE
Gunnar Schmidt (Fachhochschule Trier): THE ART OF PIANO DESTRUCTION. FLUXUS BETWEEN POPULAR ENTERTAINMENT AND SHOCK THERAPY
THE FLUX-LABYRINTH IN BERLIN 1976. EYE-WITNESS-INTERVIEW

VI.
INSTITUTIONALIZING FLUXUS. ARCHIVES AND ACCESSIBILITY
2:30 - 6 pm

Skaidra Trilupaityt? (Lithuanian Culture Research Institute, Vilnius): THE GLOBAL INDUSTRY OF LITHUANIAN FLUXUS: THE STORY OF POLITICAL APPROPRIATION
Jon Hendricks (Museum of Modern Art, New York): WHY FLUXUS?
Adrian Glew (Tate Britain, London): TATEBRITFLUX
Caroline Ugelstad (Henie Onstad Kunstsenter, Oslo): ARCHIVE FLUX
chair: Ben Patterson

With performance interventions by Eric Andersen, Ben Patterson, Willem de Ridder and Tamas St.Turba.

Free admission
Registration requested untill 14 Oct 2011
Franziska Arsand: info@europeanfluxusfestivals.eu

further information:
www.thelunaticsareontheloose.tumblr.com
www.dieirrensindlos.tumblr.com

The project is funded by Hauptstadtkulturfonds Berlin.

With kind support Botschaft des Königreichs der Niederlande.

Reference:
CONF: Fluxus today (Berlin 21-22 Oct 2011). In: H-ArtHist, Sep 19, 2011 (accessed Sep 21, 2011), .

GEORGE MACIUNAS AND BEYOND: FLUXUS NEVER STOPS

2011-09-20T11:43:00.000-07:00

Keith A. Buchholz

Curator

GEORGE MACIUNAS AND BEYOND: FLUXUS NEVER STOPS

In the time it took to organize this show, major shifts occurred – shifts in location, works to be shown, participants, activities, and ideas of what Fluxus was, is , and could be. A call for works was put out to the “Eternal Network” of Artists, Non-Artists, Poets, Flux people, and Friends to interpret the idea of Fluxus, and in doing so, honor the legacy of George Maciunas, the founder of Fluxus, who was born in Kaunas and emigrated with his family to the United States.

The premise for the show was simple – interpret the concept as you like, using the idea of Textile as a point of departure. Both Flux people and Mail Artists share the inherent love of found materials, and alternative processes. Works range from Found and altered objects, to postcards, boxes, digital images, film, publications, poetry, E-mail, and performance scores. The works often have some handmade quality, and in the process of curating the show, nothing is edited. Some unwritten rules of the network are: “Show everything that you receive” and “All artists are given equal billing”. As you explore this exhibition, feel free to handle the objects, open and close the boxes, and interact with the works. Fluxus works are tactile works – Meant to Communicate and Inform.

When Fluxus started, roughly 50 years ago this year, Maciunas brought together a wide variety of artists who were working outside the boundaries of what was seen as art by the general public. In Al Hansen’s “On Fluxus” (which has been republished in a pamphlet form as part of this exhibition), he states that “Fluxus rejected what was felt to matter in the New York and European art machinery.” In many ways it still does.

Recent institutional interest in Fluxus has changed some things, as the cheaply made multiples (intended to derail the value of art) have become fetishized. Values of early Fluxus works have risen dramatically, and an expanding crop of Curators and Collectors have enshrined works made during Maciunas’ lifetime, drawing and end date on Fluxus at 1978 with George’s death. With most Movements in art this would be easy, but Fluxus, a fluctuating group of international artists, has never considered itself a “Movement”. Artists have continually been drawn to Fluxus, and have taken up its banner since the exit of its chairman, sometimes with the blessing of its early participants, sometimes bravely on their own, building networks that eventually interweave with others to form the broad spectrum seen in this exhibition. It can be guaranteed that no matter how remote, these artists, by minimal degrees of separation, can draw a path back, directly to George.

In the words of Dick Higgins, a member of that first circle of George’s, “Fluxus has a life of its own, apart from the old people in it. It is simple things, taking things for themselves and not just as part of bigger things. It is something that many of us must do, at least part of the time. So Fluxus is inside you, is part of how you are. It isn’t just a bunch of things and dramas, but is part of how you live. It is beyond words.” George’s gift for organizing and developing such a network, which has been described as “An Attitude”, “Way of Life”, and “An extended family”, is bigger than anything a date or label can contain. We salute George best by continuing on this path. Ben Vautier may have said it best, “Fluxus Never Stops!”

source: http://www.bienale.lt/2011/?p=371&lang=en

50 Jahre Fluxus Wiesbaden

2011-09-20T10:14:00.001-07:00

50 Jahre Fluxus Wiesbaden - Joseph Beuys und Johannes Stüttgen. | © wiesbaden.de

Im kommenden Jahr wird die Wiesbadener Fluxus-Bewegung ihren 50. Geburtstag feiern. Als Einstimmung auf das Fluxus-Jahr 2012 fand am 16. September eine erste Veranstaltung unter dem Motto "Fluxus = Gegenwart = Zukunft" im Schloss Freudenberg statt, eine weitere folgt am 11. November.

Vortrag Johannes Stüttgen am 11. November im Schloss Freudenberg

Am Freitag, 11. November, wartet dann um 20 Uhr ein Vortrag von Johannes Stüttgen zum Thema Fluxus. In den "Kunst Nachrichten" äußerte sich Joseph Beuys dann im Jahr 1985 wie folgt: "(…) dass man stattdessen etwas bringt, bevor es da ist, wovon die Ursache später kommt… Die Ursache liegt in der Zukunft, und logischerweise ist die Wirkung in der Gegenwart eher da, als die Ursache in der Zukunft zu finden ist".

Zu den beiden Fluxus-Veranstaltungen sind alle eingeladen, die sich, sei es als Lehrer, Schüler, Künstler oder ein an den Fragen der Kunst interessierter Mensch, der sich mit der Bewegung vertraut machen will.
"Lesung und Gespräch - Der Ganze Riemen" am 16. September mit Johannes Stüttgen und Matthias Schenk

Am Freitag, 16. September 2011, stand der Abend im Schloss Freudenberg unter dem Motto "Lesung und Gespräch - Der Ganze Riemen", die Protagonisten der Veranstaltung waren Johannes Stüttgen und Matthias Schenk. Johannes Stüttgen war Meisterschüler und Mitarbeiter des legendären Joseph Beuys. Der bekannte Künstler, unter anderem auch Lehrer an der Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, sagte im Jahr 1966 folgendes: "Den Namen Fluxus hatte ich noch nie gehört und die, die mich von der bevorstehenden Veranstaltung unterrichteten, konnten offensichtlich auch keine genaue Auskunft darüber geben, was Fluxus eigentlich ist und was es bedeutet".

source: http://www.wiesbaden.de/kultur/bildende-kunst/veranstaltungen/50-jahre-fluxus.php

Fluxus-Begründerin stellt in Aachen aus

2011-09-17T09:36:00.000-07:00

Aachen.

In Mary Bauermeisters Kölner Atelier versammelte sich in den 60er Jahren die Avantgarde der internationalen Kunst- und Musikszene, etwa John Cage, Nam June Paik, Christo und der Komponist Karlheinz Stockhausen, mit dem sie lange liiert war.
Spektakuläre Happenings leiteten die Fluxus-Bewegung ein. Als die Aachener Avantgarde der 60er Jahre aktiv wurde, zeigte Bauermeister ihre Werke schon in New York.

Zur Eröffnung ihrer Ausstellung «Renaissance of Optics» ist die 77-Jährige am Montag, 19. September, 19.30 Uhr, in der Aachener Volkshochschule (Peterstraße 21-25) zu erleben. Die Schau läuft bis 31. Oktober.

Infos: http://www.az-web.de/news/kultur-detail-az/1815137?_link=&skip=&_g=Fluxus-Begruenderin-stellt-in-Aachen-aus.html

Follow Fluxus 2011

2011-09-17T04:23:00.000-07:00

Die Ausstellung „Die Suppe ist gegessen“ begleitet das gleichnamige Projekt, mit dem Kateřina Šedá in den kommenden Monaten die Stadt Wiesbaden mit dem tschechischen Dorf Nošovice verbindet. Die tschechische Künstlerin ist die vierte Trägerin des Stipendiums „Follow Fluxus – Fluxus und die Folgen“, das jährlich vom Nassauischen Kunstverein Wiesbaden und der Landeshauptstadt Wiesbaden vergeben wird.

Während ihres dreimonatigen Aufenthalts in der hessischen Landeshauptstadt entwickelte Kateřina Šedá einen neuen Schritt für ein Langzeitprojekt, dass sie vor drei Jahren im tschechischen Nošovice begonnen hatte. Inmitten des Dorfes errichtete der koreanische
Automobilhersteller Hyundai ein gigantisches Produktionswerk, wodurch eine geographische und soziale Teilung des Ortes entstand. Als Kateřina Šedá 2008 das Dorf besuchte, beobachtete sie eine für sie bis dahin nicht gekannte Gleichgültigkeit und Resignation. Einerseits ignorierte der koreanische Automobilproduzent die gewachsene Ortstruktur, andererseits war die Bevölkerung unfähig, sich gegen die Errichtung des Werks zu wehren oder an die neue Situation anzupassen.

„NEDÁ SE SVÍTIT“ (wörtlich: „Es ist kein Licht“, sinngemäß: „Da kann man nichts mehr machen“), war die Antwort der meisten Bewohner auf Šedás Nachfrage nach dem Huyndai-Werk und zugleich der Ausgangpunkt für ihre kreative Auseinandersetzung mit der Resignation in Nošovice. Ganz im Sinne der sozialen Plastik, wurde die Suche nach Auswegen zu ihrem ünstlerischen Projekt, das sie solange fortführt, bis die Einheit des Dorfes wiederhergestellt ist.

Alle Aktionen und Projekte, die um die Zukunft des Dorfs und die Wiederannäherung seiner Bewohner kreisen, sind fortlaufend aufeinander aufgebaut und in ständiger Transformation. Während des dreimonatigen Aufenthalts in Wiesbaden kam Kateřina Šedá zu der Erkenntnis, dass die hessische Landeshauptstadt, im Gegensatz zu Nošovice, eine in sich geschlossene, funktionierende Einheit ist. Zwei Aspekten – der Übersetzung des tschechischen Sprichwortes „NEDÁ SE SVÍTIT“ in die deutsche Sprache und der besonderen Prägung Wiesbadens durch das Wasser ‒ schrieb sie innerhalb dieses Erkenntnisprozesses eine tragende Rolle zu.

Wann

Dienstag, 27.September 2011 - 17:00 Uhr

Wo

Nassauischer Kunstverein Wiesbaden, Wilhelm 15, 65185 Wiesbaden

Wieviel

k. A.

Veranstalter

Nassauischer Kunstverein Wiesbaden Websitek. A.

Line-Up

k. A.

source:
http://www.port01.com/events/Deutschlandweit/27.09.Follow_Fluxus_2011_Nassauischer_Kunstverein_Wiesbaden-1-310047.htm

Southbank Centre

2011-09-02T23:56:00.000-07:00

John Cage, "River Rocks and Smoke: 4-11-90 #1," 1990.
(c) The John Cage Trust at Bard.

John Cage
Every Day is a Good Day
A Hayward Touring Exhibition from Southbank Centre
12 August–18 September 2011

Hayward Project Space
Hayward Gallery
Southbank Centre
Belvedere Road
London
SE1 8XZ
www.southbankcentre.co.uk

Admission Free.

This Hayward Touring exhibition is a celebration of the visual art of the American composer, writer and artist John Cage (1912–1992). Following an acclaimed tour around the country, the Hayward Project Space will present an abridged version of the exhibition featuring forty to fifty of Cage's works on paper. The exhibition was conceived by artist Jeremy Millar, and organised by Hayward Touring in collaboration with BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art and the John Cage Trust.

To coincide with the exhibition the pioneering ensemble Apartment House celebrates the work of the groundbreaking composer with John Cage Night (13 September, Queen Elizabeth Hall). The programme includes a performance Cage's iconic silent work of 1952, 4'33". This event open's Southbank Centre's International Chamber Music Season 2011/12.

John Cage was one of the leading avant-garde composers of the twentieth century and closely connected with art and artists throughout his long career. He collaborated frequently with Robert Rauschenberg and the dance choreographer Merce Cunningham, was a friend of Jasper Johns and Marcel Duchamp, and was a major influence on the Fluxus artists of the 1960s and '70s. It was not until he was in his mid-sixties that he began to practise seriously as a visual artist himself, producing over 600 prints with the Crown Point Press in San Francisco, as well as 260 drawings and watercolours. In these works he applied the same chance-determined procedures that he used in his musical compositions.

This display presents works on paper spanning his whole visual art career, including his extraordinary Ryoanji series, described by the art critic David Sylvester as 'among the most beautiful prints and drawings made anywhere in the 1980s'. In these works he drew around the outlines of stones scattered (according to chance) across the paper or printing plate, in one case drawing around 3,375 individually placed stones. He also experimented with burning or soaking the paper, and applied complex, painstaking procedures at each stage of the printmaking process.

Inspired by John Cage's own practice, the exhibition differs markedly from a conventional show. The work will be selected and hung according to chance operations, using a computer-generated random number programme similar to the Chinese oracle, the 'I Ching', which is essentially a random number programme. This will result in works being hung at different heights and in arrangements and groupings that no curator would ordinarily choose. Cage himself, who disliked linear displays, employed this method in several exhibitions, notably Rolywholyover, in Los Angeles in 1992, which he described a 'composition for museum'.

The book accompanying the exhibition 'Every Day is a Good Day: The Visual Art of John Cage' is the first to cover all aspects of John Cage's graphic art, with more than sixty plates and other illustrations. It includes interviews conducted by Jeremy Millar with people who knew Cage well and are authorities on his work; a 'Cage Companion' of quotations and commentaries on important aspects of his life and work; and a substantial extract from an interview with Cage by the American art critic Irving Sandler. ISBN 978-1-85332-283-9.

Opening Hours 10am–6pm every day.
Late nights opening Thursday and Friday until 8pm only when the main exhibition galleries are open for Tracey Emin: Love is What You Want until 29 August.

John Cage Night
Apartment House
13 September 2011, 7.30pm, Queen Elizabeth Hall

Pioneering ensemble Apartment House presents an evening of music by one of the true iconoclasts of 20th-century music, John Cage, coinciding with the Hayward Gallery's touring Cage exhibition Every Day is a Good Day. Apartment House was formed in 1995 and is a regular visitor to Europe's leading contemporary music festivals and specialises in developing composer-focused programmes. Programme includes:
4' 33"
Radio music for 8 performers
Child of tree for solo percussion
Concert for piano & orchestra/Fontana mix
String Quartet in four parts
Music for nine
0' 00" (4' 33" No.2)

Prior to the concert at 6pm there will be a special preview of John Cage: Every Day is a Good Day, with an introductory talk on Cage's visual art. Admission free to ticket holders.

Fluxus since 1978

2011-08-27T00:24:00.000-07:00

Weasel words performance on Wikipedia

After the death of George Maciunas in 1978 a rift opened in the movement between a few collectors and curators who placed Fluxus in a specific time frame (1962 to 1978), and the artists themselves, most of whom continued to see Fluxus as a living entity held together by its core values and world view. Different theorists and historians adopted each of these views. Fluxus is therefore referred to variously in the past or the present tense. The question is now significantly more complex due to the fact that many of the original artists who were still living when the controversy arose are now dead.

Scholars who study Fluxus have argued^{[weasel words]} that the unique control that curator Jon Hendricks holds over a major historical Fluxus collection (the Gilbert and Lila Silverman collection) has enabled him to influence, through the numerous books and catalogues subsidized by the collection, the view that Fluxus died with Maciunas. Hendricks argues^[where?] that Fluxus was a historical movement that occurred at a particular time, asserting that such central Fluxus artists as Dick Higgins and Nam June Paik could no longer label themselves as active Fluxus artists after 1978, and that contemporary artists influenced by Fluxus cannot lay claim to be Fluxus artists. The Museum of Modern Art makes the same claim dating the movement to the 1960s and 1970s.^[5]^[9] However, the influence of Fluxus continues today in multi-media digital art performances.

Other historians and scholars^{[weasel words]} assert that although Maciunas was a key participant, there were many more, including Fluxus co-founder Higgins, who continued to work within Fluxus after the death of Maciunas. There are a number of post-1978 artists who remain associated with Fluxus. Some were contemporaries of Maciunas who became active in Fluxus after 1978. While there is not a large Fluxus artist community in any single urban center, the rise of the Internet in the 1990s has enabled a vibrant Fluxus community to thrive online. Some of the original artists from the 1960s and 1970s remain active in online communities such as the Fluxlist, and other artists, writers, musicians, and performers have joined them in cyberspace. Fluxus-oriented artists continue to meet in cities around the world to collaborate and communicate in "real-time" and physical spaces.

from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fluxus on August 27th 2011

CAMH helps resurrect the work of a new-media pioneer

2011-06-18T02:20:00.000-07:00

Retrospective shows why an artist who nearly vanished into obscurity decades ago is relevant today

By DOUGLAS BRITT Copyright 2011 Houston Chronicle
June 17, 2011, 11:18AM

Read more: http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/life/main/7615218.html#ixzz1PiCuGRl2

The most recent works in the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston exhibition Stan VanDerBeek: The Culture Intercom are nearly 30 years old, making them dinosaurs in the young field of new-media art.

VanDerBeek was an inexhaustible experimenter whose work drew attention from the likes of the U.S. military, NASA and IBM. But many technologies whose artistic possibilities he once tested are virtually obsolete. Anyone who brings a cellphone to the exhibit has more computing power in his pocket than VanDerBeek could ever tap, even when he was making computer-generated films using the first moving-image programming language at Bell Labs.

Yet the first museum survey of this underground filmmaker, installation artist and new-media pioneer's work couldn't be better suited to an institution that defines itself as "an idea and a place shaped by the present moment." Technology wasted no time leaving VanDerBeek's innovations in the dust, but we're still catching up to their implications.

CAMH director Bill Arning, a former curator at the List Visual Arts Center at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Boston, where the show recently appeared, sums up VanDerBeek's currency in the exhibition catalog, which should become an indispensable resource for scholars of an artist who nearly vanished into obscurity after dying in 1984 at age 57.

"Throughout the 1960s, '70s, and early '80s, VanDerBeek was an inspiring one-man-research-and-development department for using untried forms and forcing them to reveal their interior poetics," writes Arning, who co-curated the survey with his List successor, João Ribas.

Take VanDerBeek's 1970 "telephone murals," created while he was a fellow at MIT's Center for Advanced Visual Studies. Wishing to allow for the simultaneous exhibition of artworks at multiple sites, VanDerBeek composed a mosaiclike mural of images he could transmit — one at a time, requiring about 10 minutes to send an 8½-by-14-inch unit — using a Xerox Telecopier to any location with a phone line and a similar machine.

Did VanDerBeek's experiments usher in a global golden age of telephone-mural art? Not quite. One was simultaneously exhibited at five Boston-area venues in 1970. Minneapolis' Walker Art Center and the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., also commissioned telephone murals.

Yet it seems uncannily prescient in anticipating today's media simultaneity, as does his contemporaneous proposal — one of many — for an "Artist in Residence to the World" program that was not only international, but also multimedia and multidisciplinary in nature.

"What VanDerBeek points to as the current capacity of artists - and indeed almost anyone with access to the technology and bandwidth - to collaborate on new-media projects, especially involving web interfaces, as 'portability, compatibility and technical integration of new medias' has indeed become 'an essential style for the artists of the future," catalog contributor Michael Zryd writes.

The show includes photos of VanDerBeek's Movie-Drome (1963-1965) the prototype of which he converted from the rounded top of a mail-order grain silo to an audiovisual laboratory and theater outfitted with dozens of film, slide and overhead projectors along with a mixing board and other editing and sound equipment. Hinting at part of what drome visitors might have experienced, the show includes an approximate restaging of VanDerBeek's 1968 Movie Mural, a semi-chaotic installation combining film excerpts with slide and acetate projections in a constantly changing collage. A VanDerBeek manifesto "called for a multitude of 'dromes' to be positioned throughout the world, each linked to an orbiting satellite that would store and transmit images through the various sites," catalog contributor Gloria Sutton writes. "Through the Movie-Drome, VanDerBeek sought a model for a real-time, programmable communications system."

Like his Movie Murals and Robert Rauschenberg's "combine" paintings," VanDerBeek's surreal early films, made by combining disparate pieces of footage with animations of collaged elements he cut from magazines, were part of an shift toward what art historian Leo Steinberg called the "flatbed picture plane," one that became "a surface to which anything would adhere. It had to become whatever a billboard or a dashboard is, and everything a projection screen is."

VanDerBeek's association with Rauschenberg dated to their overlapping student days at Black Mountain College in Asheville, N.C. Theater Piece No. 1, a 1952 event there simultaneously combined poetry readings atop ladders by John Cage, M.C. Richards and Charles Olson; Rauschenberg's pre-minimalist White Paintings hanging from the ceiling while he played scratched records; a piano composition by composer David Tudor; and a spare dance performance by Merce Cunningham. Later described as the first art "happening," the event profoundly influenced VanDerBeek's thinking "about how you can make things grow and collage things together."

Years later, VanDerBeek would team with Cage, Cunningham, Tudor, engineer Billy Klüver and composer Gordon Mumma on the multimedia Variations V (1965/1966), which was staged at New York's Philharmonic Hall and for a German TV broadcast in Hamburg. VanDerBeek's films — a mix of archival newsreel footage and popular film and TV programs — were projected on screens as dancers' movements triggered photocells that were wired to tape recorders and short-wave radios. Video artist Nam June Paik added television manipulations from the Hamburg performance, a projection of which is included in the CAMH survey.

For all his technophilia, VanDerBeek's writings, as well as films like Science Friction (1959), which bombard viewers with mad-scientist imagery, often relayed concerns about technology's dark side, particularly in a nuclear era.

Still, the survey's overall impact is exhilarating. (It also includes early paintings, collages made as stills for early stop-action films and Poemfields, hypnotic computer-generated films that used early image-processing systems.) The VanDerBeek survey and its catalog join CAMH's outstanding 2010 retrospective for long-overlooked Fluxus artist Benjamin Patterson as major achievements, the kind of reclamation projects that demonstrate the crucial role contemporary kunsthalles have to play in the development of art history.

douglas.britt@chron.com
Source: http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/life/main/7615218.html

21er MMPM - Mainzer Minipressen Messe - Germany

2011-06-12T02:13:00.000-07:00

Redfox Press meets Nobody Press, Fluxus Heidelberg and TAM-Publication at the 21er MMPP in Mainz - Germany. Francis van Maele, Antic-Ham, Litsa Spathi, Ruud Janssen

Good Clean Fun: Fluxus Artist Ben Patterson To Stage Mass Face-Washing in New York

2011-05-28T01:09:00.001-07:00

Courtesy Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles

A detail of Benjamin Patterson's "String Music," 1960

As one of the earliest practitioners of Fluxus, Ben Patterson has been subverting the definition of art for decades. Early actions involved willful mishandling of string instruments ("Solo for Double Bass") and the skillful application of whipped cream to a "shapely female" ("Licking Piece"). This Friday evening at New York's Third Streaming project space, he'll present "Please Wash Your Face," a Fluxus action originally connected to a collector's item he produced way back in 1964.

"Contained in a small plastic box was a paper towel, a small bar of soap, and the instruction 'Please wash your face,'" Patterson explains. "As far as I know, this will be the first performance of the piece with total audience participation. People will come to the stage — or optionally, to the bathroom — and wash their face. Afterward, there will be a moderated discussion on the subject: 'How is washing your face in public a work of art?'"

"My work during these last 50 years has always directly engaged the public, generally with success," Patterson continues. "For example: In 1963, I presented 'A Very Lawful Dance for Ennis' at Times Square. Simply stated, the instructions asked the performer to cross the street, backward and forward, again and again, obeying the traffic signals. We began the performance on this evening with a group of about 10 friends. However, within 15 minutes we were joined by at least 100 random passerby and other local Time Square habitués, who apparently thought it was a good thing to do!"

If you think public face-washing can still be an artistic statement in the 21st century — or are simply turned on by the idea of engaging in voyeuristic hygiene rituals — join Ben Patterson at Third Stream on Friday, April 1, at 6pm. The one-time action occurs in tandem with a more comprehensive survey show at Studio Museum in Harlem, "Born In The State of FLUX/us: Scores," from March 31 through June 26.

source: http://www.artinfo.com/news/story/37366/good-clean-fun-fluxus-artist-ben-patterson-to-stage-mass-face-washing-in-new-york/

Fluxus Heidelberg Design

2011-05-27T23:34:00.000-07:00

New wing of the Fluxus Heidelberg Archive

2011-05-15T08:55:00.000-07:00

Danger Event #2

2011-05-15T08:53:00.000-07:00

This copy of Danger Event #2 (for Dick Higgins) by Owen F. Smith (USA) is part of the Fluxus Heidelberg Archive.

Nobody @ sky

2011-04-17T23:20:00.000-07:00

Liebeserklärung mit Fluxus

2011-04-03T03:59:00.001-07:00

Historic newspaper article from April 25th 1996 (almost 15 years ago) in the Heidelberg Newspaper (Germany) documenting some steps by Litsa Spathi at an exhibition where she presented her work. She donates one of her works to the VHS in Heidelberg (on photo)

Source: Fluxus Heidelberg Center Archive.

String Theory by M. Taggert

2011-03-20T04:07:00.001-07:00

Felt: Fluxus, Joseph Beuys, and the Dalai Lama [Paperback]

2011-01-16T22:51:00.000-08:00

Felt: Fluxus, Joseph Beuys, and the Dalai Lama [Paperback] by Chris Thompson (Author)

Review

"Felt introduces us to a new generation of experimental performance scholars, seeking simultaneously art historical, experiential, and poetic points of entry into the important art of our time. Chris Thompson clearly has a defining role to play in this process and does it with aplomb."—Hannah Higgins, author of Fluxus Experience

"In the end, Felt is a letter lovingly recounting the often fragile moments in which artists have put themselves on the line to try to bring about a transformation in the human spirit. Thompson’s answer to his own question—‘what happens when nothing happens?’—seems to be, quite a lot."—Andrew Murphie, co-author of Culture and Technology

Product Description

Felt provides a nonlinear look at the engagement of the postwar avant-garde with Eastern spirituality, a context in which the German artist Joseph Beuys appears as an uneasy shaman. Centered on a highly publicized yet famously inconclusive 1982 meeting between Beuys and the Dalai Lama, arranged by the Dutch artist Louwrien Wijers, Chris Thompson explores the interconnections among Beuys, the Fluxus movement, and Eastern philosophy and spiritual practice.
Building from the resonance of felt, the fabric, in both Tibetan culture and in Beuys’s art, Thompson takes as his point of departure Deleuze and Guattari’s discussion in A Thousand Plateaus of felt as smooth space that is “in principle infinite, open, and unlimited in every direction,” its structure determined by chance as opposed to the planned, woven nature of most fabrics. Felt is thus seen as an alternative to the model of the network: felt’s anarchic form is not reducible to the regularity of the net, grid, or mesh, and the more it is pulled, tweaked, torn, and agitated, the greater its structural integrity.
Felt thus invents its methodology from the material that represents its object of inquiry and from this advances a reading of the avant-garde. At the same time, Thompson demonstrates that it is sometimes the failures of thought, the disappointing meetings, even the untimely deaths that open portals through which life flows into art and allows new conjunctions of life, art, and thought. Thompson explores both the well-known engagement of Fluxus artists with Eastern spirituality and the more elusive nature of Beuys’s own late interest in Tibetan culture, arriving at a sense of how such noncausal interactions—interhuman intrigue—create culture and shape contemporary art history.

Product Details

* Paperback: 320 pages
* Publisher: Univ Of Minnesota Press (February 25, 2011)
* Language: English
* ISBN-10: 0816653550
* ISBN-13: 978-0816653553
* Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.5 x 1.5 inches

source: www.amazon.com

Do-it-Yourself (new book)

2011-01-16T22:46:00.000-08:00

The 'Do-it-Yourself' Artwork: Participation from Fluxus to New Media (Rethinking Art's Histories) [Hardcover]

Viewers of contemporary art are often invited to involve themselves actively in artworks, by entering installations, touching objects, performing instructions or clicking on interactive websites. Why have artists sought to engage spectators in these new forms of participation? In what ways does active participation affect the viewer’s experience and the status of the artwork? Spanning a range of practices including kinetic art, happenings, environments, performance, installations, relational and new media art from the 1950s to the present, this critical anthology sheds light on the history and specificity of artworks that only come to life when you -- the viewer -- are invited to "do it yourself."

Rather than a specialist topic in the history of twentieth- and twenty-first century art, the "do-it-yourself" artwork raises broader issues concerning the role of the viewer in art, the status of the artwork, and the socio-political relations between art and its contexts.

From the Inside Flap

Viewers of contemporary art are often invited to involve themselves actively in artworks, by entering installations, touching objects, performing instructions or clicking on interactive websites. Why have artists sought to engage spectators in these new forms of participation? In what ways does active participation affect the viewer’s experience and the status of the artwork? Spanning a range of practices including kinetic art, happenings, environments, performance, installations, relational and new media art from the 1950s to the present, this critical anthology sheds light on the history and specificity of artworks that only come to life when you – the viewer - are invited to ‘do it yourself.’ The volume consists of fifteen essays by art historians, critics and curators, which are divided into three sections. Part I addresses the emergence of spectator participation in the 1960s, while Part II brings together in-depth case studies of specific participatory practices in the 1960s, 1970s and 1990s, analysing the issues that they raise in their very modes of operation. The more general critical essays in Part III map out a range of theoretical approaches to the ‘do-it-yourself’ artwork. Together, the three sections provide invaluable historical perspectives and theoretical tools for scholars, students, artists and readers interested in contemporary art. Rather than a specialist topic in the history of twentieth- and twenty-first century art, the ‘do-it-yourself’ artwork raises broader issues concerning the role of the viewer in art, the status of the artwork, and the socio-political relations between art and its contexts.

Product Details

* Hardcover: 336 pages
* Publisher: Manchester University Press (June 22, 2010)
* Language: English
* ISBN-10: 0719081440
* ISBN-13: 978-0719081446
* Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.1 x 1.1 inches

source: www.amazon.com

Weserburg Museum Presents Exhibition of Work by Robert Rehfeldt

2011-01-01T04:54:00.000-08:00

Weserburg Museum Presents Exhibition of Work by Robert Rehfeldt
The Weserburg Museum presents an exhibition of work by Robert Rehfeldt on view now through 6.02.2011.

Robert Rehfeldt was one of the most well-known and most important artists in the German Democratic Republic (GDR) of the 1970s and ’80s. He was a draughtsman, graphic artist, painter, filmmaker, action artist, visual poet and mail artist. His worldwide artistic connections made him a contact partner for numerous artists in the East and West. He would have celebrated his eightieth birthday in January 2011. The exhibition thus also pays homage to an exceptional artist who, undaunted by Socialist Realism and the doctrinaire bureaucracy of the GDR, created a complex oeuvre characterized by a unique brand of visual and linguistic subversiveness.

The exhibition of the Research Centre for Artists’ Publications is the first to focus on his entire graphic oeuvre, which mirrors the story of a restless and uncomfortably non-conformist artistic career in its many facets. In addition to lithographs, etchings, woodcuts and silk-screens, Rehfeldt executed cliché prints which incorporate the principle of sequencing and are among his most interesting printmaking works. For the latter, he also made use of montage techniques of Mail Art merging semantic and artistic structures. His statements or word works, for example ‘Künstler rührt Euch, sonst werdet ihr weggetreten’ / ‘Artists, bestir yourselves, otherwise you’ll be dismissed’ exist as postcards or stamp prints and in a kind of “cross-writing” become visual poetry. These art-mail letters or Contart News are graphic works and letters at once.

Aside from original prints and two important graphic portfolios, the exhibition will also feature graphic posters, artist’s postage stamps, small-scale graphic works in the form of postcards, stamp works and Mail Art works. These will be further supplemented by exhibition posters, photographic works and cinematic activities providing an impression of Robert Rehfeldt’s artistic oeuvre as a whole. Numbering over two hundred, the individual works will be presented at the Research Centre on two exhibition levels.

In cooperation with the Research Centre for East European Studies at the University Bremen

Image: Hommage à Lenin, 1978, ©VG Bild-Kunst Bonn, 2010

Weserburg Museum of Modern Art
Teerhof 20 28199
Bremen Germany
Fon: +49–(0)421–59 83 9-0
Fax: +49–(0)421–50 52 47
E-mail: mail(at)weserburg.de

www.weserburg.de

2010-12-23T08:27:00.001-08:00

Foto: Sascha Dressler, © Nam June Paik Estate, New York 2010, Kunststiftung NRW, Düsseldorf

Vater aller Videokünstler
Liverpool, Tate Liverpool, bis 31. März 2011
Dezember 2010
Videokünstler, Performer, Komponist – Nam June Paik war von allem mehr als nur ein bisschen. Und damit gilt der in Süd-Korea geborene und in Japan aufgewachsene Künstler als Vorreiter der Video-Art.

Die Tate Liverpool zeigt ab Mitte Dezember eine große Retrospektive seiner Arbeiten. Unter anderem zu sehen ist die Installation „Laser Cone“ aus seinem Spätwerk, in dem er sich zunehmend mit der neuen Technik des Lasers auseinandersetzte.

Paiks künstlerische Karriere begann Ende der 1950er Jahre in Deutschland, wo er zuerst Musikgeschichte an der Universität München studierte. Später arbeitete er mit Karlheinz Stockhausen und Joseph Beuys zusammen. Von der Komposition über die Fluxus-Bewegung entwickelte sich Paik im Laufe der Jahre mehr und mehr zum Videokünstler. Er begann mit dem von ihm entwickelten Videosynthesizer durch Farb- und Tonveränderungen TV-Bilder zu manipulieren. Diese bildeten die Basis seiner Installationen. Bereits 1973 nahm er mit seinem Video „Global Groove“ die Entwicklung der Musikvideos vorweg.

Ebenfalls Teil der Ausstellung sind Paiks „TV-Buddhas“, eine Installation mit Bronze-Buddhas, die vor einer Videokamera sitzen und über ihre eigenen Aufnahmen meditieren. Seit den 1980er Jahren stellte Paik hauptsächlich große Multi-Monitor-Installationen her. Er ordnete die Bildschirme, auf denen verschiedene Videosequenzen ablaufen, zu großen Skulpturen an.

Insgesamt sind über 30 seiner skulpturalen Werke zu sehen, wie etwa die großen Roboter-Skulpturen, aber auch graphische Werke und viele Handzeichnungen. Anhand zahlreicher Fotos, Briefe und Texte können die Besucher der Ausstellung die Arbeits- und Denkweise des 2006 in den USA verstorbenen Künstlers nachspüren.

In seinen Arbeiten hat Nam June Paik Zeit seines Lebens scheinbar paradoxe Phänomene miteinander verbunden und die Grenzen der Kunst auf verschiedenen Ebenen verschoben. Für Paik war Kunst ein ständiges Hinterfragen gesellschaftlicher, politische und ökonomischer Prozesse, ein permanentes Experiment eben. „Auf wie vielen Ebenen sich kritisches Bewusstsein materialisieren kann, machte Paik in jedem seiner Werke deutlich – unabhängig davon, ob es sich um Musik, Performances, Videos, Zeichnungen oder Skulptur handelt“, schreibt die Kuratorin der Retrospektive Susanne Rennert im Katalog zur Ausstellung. „Existenziellen Fragen ging der ausgebildete Musiker und Komponist, der auch Philosophie und Kunstgeschichte studiert hatte, mit Ironie, Humor, intellektueller Schärfe und akademischer Gründlichkeit nach.“

Nam June Paik

Tate Liverpool – Albert Dock, Liverpool L3 4BB, Großbritannien, 17. Dezember 2010 bis 31. März 2011, Dienstag bis Donnerstag 10-17.50 Uhr

source: http://www.uptown-online.de/galerien-und-ausstellungen/archiv/2010/12/vater-aller-videokuenstler/

Nam June Paik - Art Center Prize 2010

2010-11-26T10:40:00.001-08:00

Nam June Paik Art Center Prize 2010
Prize winner: Bruno Latour

Ceremony: November 26th 4:30 p.m.
Forum: November 27th 2:00 p.m.

Nam June Paik Art Center
85 Sanggal-dong, Giheung-gu,
Yongin-si, Gyeonggi-do
446-905
Republic of Korea
T: + 82 (0) 31 201 8543
F: + 82 (0) 31 201 8515
chaeyoung@njpartcenter.kr

The Nam June Paik Art Center Prize, an international yearly award, announces its 2010 solo-recipient, Bruno Latour. To respect Nam June Paik's philosophy and creativity, the international jury and Nam June Paik Art Center Advisory Council reexamine Paik's theoretical dimensions that hold urgent recognition and support. Based on the idea, the Prize opened its doors to internationally renowned researchers, thinkers and organizers of Paik studies and the jury selected the recipient among 8 strong nominees from around the world.

For the international jury panel the members were: Director of Le Consortium Xavier Douroux; Professor of Univ. Paris 1 Anne-Marie Duguet; Director of Kunsthalle Bremen Wulf Herzogenrath; former Director of Gwangju Biennale Wan-kyung Sung. The jury selected a person who will provide a new theoretical framework of Nam June Paik.

Some excerpts from the discussion: "[The recipient] has to be a high mediator to connect Paik's thinking and action to the actual interests of intellectual and perceptive world," said Xavier Douroux. According to Anne-Marie Duguet, "I find Latour's thought very much in tune with Paik's one. ... None has the radical and deep thinking of Latour." "We are honored to give this year's Prize to Prof. Bruno Latour, and we are sure that master minds of both Latour and Paik will meet together to open up an unforeseen dimension in the future study of Paik. This will be a historical and strong statement," said Nam June Paik Art Center Director Youngchul Lee.

The selected winner of 2010 Nam June Paik Art Center Prize, Bruno Latour (b. 1947), professor of Science Po Paris and Vice President of Research for the same institution, has been honored for being the forefront thinker who opened new ways of thinking with his theories bridging fields of philosophy, techno-science, scientific visualization, anthropology and politics. He is the author of numerous books dealing with scientific practice and political philosophy of nature, including We Have Never Been Modern, dealing with his theory of "Symmetric Anthropology," "Politics of Nature" and "Reassembling the Social." He co-curated two important exhibitions at ZKM, Karlsruhe, titled Iconoclash (2002) and Making Things Public (2005). These exhibitions are now regarded as a revolutionary way of linking art and science and they have resulted in the recent creation of a new program in ''political arts'' in Sciences Po.

The Nam June Paik Art Center Prize will be endowed to the recipient on November 26th by the Governor of Gyeonggi Province at Nam June Paik Art Center. The Award ceremony comprises an exhibition composed of Paik's major works specially supported by Shuya Abe, a Japanese technician who collaborated with Paik in creating Paik-Abe Video Synthesizer (1969).

On November 27th, the day after the ceremony, Bruno Latour will give a public lecture titled 'The Time of Critique, The Time of Composition-Art and Politics Today.'

The Nam June Paik Art Center is supported by Gyeonggi Cultural Foundation and Gyeonggi Province.

Nam June Paik Art Center
85 Sanggal-dong, Giheung-gu,
Yongin-si, Gyeonggi-do 
446-905 Republic of Korea 
T: + 82 (0) 31 201 8554 
F: + 82 (0) 31 201 8530 
chaeyoung@njpartcenter.kr

In The Brown Foundation Gallery

2010-11-07T04:25:00.001-08:00

Benjamin Patterson: Born in the State of FLUX/us

Benjamin Patterson’s restaging of Nam June Paik’s One for Violin, 1962.
Benjamin Patterson and Peter Kotik, SEM-Ensemble performing at the Akademie der Bildenden Kunst, Vienna, June 1992.
Courtesy the artist. Photo: Wolfgang Traeger.
Opening reception: November 5, 2010, 7-10pm
On view: November 6, 2010 - January 23, 2011

Benjamin Patterson: Born in the State of FLUX/us is a retrospective of the artist’s career, which now spans nearly fifty years. The exhibition includes both early and recent work by the artist that range from annotated scores and books to painting and sculpture. Video documentation from performances and audio files of Patterson’s music will also be featured. As a founding member of Fluxus, a loose and international collective of artists who infused avant-garde practices of the day with humor and anarchic energy, Patterson helped revolutionize the artistic landscape at the advent of the 1960s and usher in an era of new and experimental music. Now in his seventies, Patterson is being discovered by a new generation of artists. Benjamin Patterson: Born in the State of FLUX/us marks the artist’s first major exhibition, bringing together a multitude of works never before seen in the United States. The exhibition is curated by CAMH Senior Curator Valerie Cassel Oliver.

Iconic works by Patterson, including Paper Piece (1960), Variations on Double Bass (1961), and later Lick Piece (1964), have all become staples in the Fluxus performance handbook. For the first time, his annotated scores and instructions for performances will be on exhibit. Accompanying these scores is audio and video documentation of the artist’s performances over the last five decades.

In addition to scores and performance documentation, Born in the State of FLUX/us will feature a series of unique artist books, puzzle poems, paintings, sculptures, and installation works created by Patterson. More than a hundred works—works that are often provocative, with a tongue-in-cheek humor—are featured in the exhibition along with ephemera from Patterson’s “ordinary life.” For twenty years, Patterson withdrew from his career as an artist to embrace an “ordinary life.” During this period, Patterson was employed as a reference librarian, became an arts administrator, and entrepreneur, launching his own music management company, Ben Patterson Ltd.

After a nearly twenty-year hiatus, Patterson reemerged in the 1980s to resume his prolific career as an artist. In 1989, Patterson returned to Europe to live, creating a vast repository of scores, paintings, and sculptures that have been assembled in the United States for the first time with this exhibition.

source: http://www.camh.org/exhib_MAIN.html

In Conversation with Jonas Mekas

2010-11-06T01:14:00.000-07:00

In Conversation with Jonas Mekas

by Juliet Helmke, Noah Dillon, Margaret Graham, Taylor Bell, Caroline Dumalin, Sara Christoph, Tom Winchester, Aldrin Valdez, Jilliann Hertel, Suzanne Brancaccio, Nayun Lee, Ambereen Karamat, and Marco Greco

On the occasion of his recent solo exhibition To New York With Love at James Fuentes Gallery, Jonas Mekas, the indefatigable advocate of American independent cinema, graciously took the time out of his busy schedule to meet with the graduate students of the Art Criticism and Writing program at the School of Visual Arts for an in-depth conversation.

Portrait of the artist. Pencil on paper by Phong Bui.

Juliet Helmke: What was the impetus behind borrowing money for that Bolex camera two weeks after you had arrived in New York?

Jonas Mekas: Because I wanted to make movies! [Laughter.]

Helmke: Did you always want to pursue filmmaking?

Mekas: Not always. I was born on a farm and when I came to New York I was already 27. So imagine the many, many things that preceded that. But I had arrived at that point where I wanted to make movies. And to make movies, you have to have a camera. Just to begin to fool around.

Noah Dillon: What was your youth in Lithuania like? How did you come to realize that you wanted to be an artist and/or a writer? Was there some pivotal moment or experience that encouraged you? Did your parents support this desire?

Mekas: I think, and I am not saying this as a joke, I was first hit by the Muses when I was about 6 years old. One evening I improvised my first rural epic poem to my father, all very down to earth, very realistic, about the work my father did that day, going to the mill, taking horses into the pasture, etc. I remember that moment as if it happened today. I remember my voice, I remember the intensity, I remember how my father listened to it in amazement. He could hardly believe it. All I have been doing since is trying to approach the intensity, concentration, and ecstasy of that moment, of that evening. And yes, my father and my mother always knew I would be leaving the farm for something else, and they always supported me. Because I was needed on the farm I was taken to primary school only when I was 9. So I started reading and writing very late. But from age 6 I began keeping a diary in pictures, drawings. As soon as I learned to write, at age 9, I began writing it, and writing poetry. I published my earliest poetry in children’s magazines at age 12. I buried all my early diaries and writings, since they contained stuff against Soviets and Nazis, before running from Lithuania in 1944. I have no doubt they have well rotted by now.

Margaret Graham: In your films, old and new, there seems to be a distinct rejection of time as a linear entity; the past is the present is the future. Was this a conscious decision in the editing or did it manifest naturally as an extension of your personal philosophy?

Mekas: Actually, I’m making video now. Video cameras record images on tape, movie cameras record on a filmstrip. Both films and videos are moving images, motion pictures. But the instruments are very different. The same is true for painting: the different means available all lead to the same end. As to conscious decision making, I do everything automatically and intuitively. I’m neither a psychologist nor philosopher and therefore don’t know much about it. I suspect that it’s a combination of unconsciousness and consciousness, guidance or knowledge. I don’t think I’m stupid. When I have a need to film something, it comes from the unconscious, but will go on to touch upon the conscious. It’s very difficult to distinguish them.

Taylor Bell: Your work seems to focus on the past and the concept of transience—the constant comings and goings of the people around you. Why do you think that is, and how does cinema allow you to re-discover this theme?

Mekas: Really? Can you name me one example where people talk about the past? Besides, the video camera can film only the present, what’s there now. I cannot film the past. The footage that I’m recording right now while talking to you will be past in one year. So I have 60 years of past material, but nobody in it talks about the past. It’s always about now: drinking, singing, and so on. As time goes, it becomes past. And it will be.

Caroline Dumalin: Yet in the 365 Days Project, which is dedicated to your loved ones, your deceased friends and peers are equally present as the living. I’m referring to your visits to Jean Genet’s prison and Joseph Cornell’s house and the use of archival footage of Harry Smith and Nam June Paik. Do you consider video a supreme medium for remembrance, more so than any other today?

Mekas: I happened to be there in Paris, in that area where Genet was in prison. I didn’t plan on videotaping it beforehand. It just happened. It’s nice to have some documentation of important figures, writers, poets, who have affected your life. They’re like your friends, so you record a memory, you pay tribute to them. It’s very normal.

Sara Christoph: Your relationship with the camera is indeed remarkably natural. It almost feels like an extension of you, as if it were an integral part of how you process the surrounding world. After the 365 Days Project was over, in January of 2008, did you go through any sort of withdrawal, or did you continue to film for a little bit?

Mekas: No. [Laughter.]

Christoph: One of the films in the Pieces series posted on your website narrates your experiences in Andy Warhol’s Factory on East 47th Street. You discuss his screen tests as being one of his most original contributions to the art world, one that is often overlooked by museums. I’m wondering how these film portraits influenced you, and if there is a connection with your recent video work, considering the often direct relationship between your face and the camera?

Mekas: I was just stating a fact. It was not a question of influence at all. Everybody’s doing their own thing. Although in some cases there are influences. One way or the other, all of us influenced each other continually, often by confirming something. For instance, around 1960, I began filming with my Bolex camera and became especially interested in orchestrating with single frames. Then I saw Marie Menken’s work, and she had been doing the same thing since 1955! It’s not necessarily influence, but a confirmation that you’re on the right track.

Dumalin: On the day marking the middle of your project, July, 2007, you admitted that you were still “struggling with the images of reality, how to imbue it with, transport it into poetry.”

“World Trade Center Haikus” (2010). Single channel video. Betacam SP / DigiBeta Master. 13 minutes, 58 seconds. Edition of 3 + 2 AP. Image courtesy the artist and James Fuentes LLC.

Mekas: It’s a big struggle and I’m still struggling now. Poets have always struggled. The haiku, for example, is the art-form which absolutely comes closest to reality and is also the formal ecstasy of what poetry can achieve. In cinema, the camera can only film reality, that is, what is in front of it. But how to achieve this formally? It’s a question of essence and how to structure it, so that it can contain reality and at the same time transport it into a completely different plane! It is a challenge I think that poets have—and we will be facing it forever. I have been trying in the 365 Days Project, I continue to try today, and I will keep trying until the day I won’t be able to try anymore.

Dumalin: It’s interesting that you put the concentrated form of the haiku and reality side by side, seeing as life itself is often a bothersome storyteller, wearing us out with irrelevant plots, repetitions, and digressions. Did your struggle specifically involve finding beauty or highlights in each and every day of the year, like it usually does for most people?

Mekas: Highlights come from what you are, what interests you. You go through life as a sleepwalker until something unexpectedly stops you, jumps at you, touches you, and then you look. There are sounds all around and suddenly you listen to something. Why? Because your whole past dictates to which things you are attracted at certain moments. You notice something and you don’t know why.

Dumalin: Like an antenna?

Mekas: Ezra Pound’s “Artists are the antennas of the human race.” Yes, there is no answer as to why you suddenly stop, notice, or film something. It’s not just with haikus, there was also a period when the poet William Carlos Williams went down to reality.

Graham: Apart from the haiku, what are your thoughts on the dichotomy between form and content in art? Is one more important for you than the other?

Mekas: In 2001, the architect Raimund Abraham invited me to teach a cinema course at the Cooper Union. The course title was something like “Beautiful, Inescapable, Absolute Relationship Between Technology, Form, Content, Style.” You cannot detach any of those things. As to technology, what you can do with 8mm, you cannot do with 35mm and vice versa. Likewise, what you can do with inks you cannot do with watercolors or oils. The tools already determine the subject. Every new tool, like video or internet, opens up completely new possibilities of content. And it brings with it something else that did not exist before. So it’s all interrelated, absolutely connected.

Graham: I believe that also goes for Ezra Pound’s idea of making everything new. In our day and age, artists are mostly concerned with the formal aspect because of the feeling that the content has all been done before, it’s all been said before. But how it’s said——

Mekas: You cannot create new art just by concentrating on new forms! But on the other end, you see, this crazy concentration on new forms could pull in the content. Some people get obsessed with some formal thing. To really bring it to life, you may need a new technology.

Dillon: In that regard, can you explain what video means for you now as opposed to film in that early period?

Mekas: It’s something very basic. For instance, the Bolex is very different from the Mitchell, which is one of the key cameras in Hollywood commercial cinema. When I carry my Bolex and see a moment happening, I subtly press my button and the camera rolls and captures what’s in front of it. With video, I see something, I pull out the camera, I connect the power, and press it. By then already four seconds have passed. The climax of the event is gone. Video gives me the post-event. That’s one thing. The Bolex got me into restructuring reality completely by means of single frames. With video you can only do that by editing with new technology. But not while taping; it runs continuously. So I got involved, very involved with exploring the possibilities of single, long takes, without editing. I gravitated to real life situations. Video also permits you to go into any situation. You don’t have to carry lights! It’s a different tool. With video, my editing became choosing those moments where I succeeded in catching unique moments of real life. And it has nothing to do with what I did with my Bolex, with colors, and rhythms. That ended around 1990. One of the reasons I switched from film to video was that sometimes when I was traveling abroad, or going to universities, they had seen my films and they asked, “Can you show how you do it?” That’s finished. Because if I would try to show them, I would just imitate what I did before.

Tom Winchester: When you interviewed Emile de Antonio in 1969, he described his work as “collage” and claimed that such a method is necessary in film, to make the real come out of all that mass of footage. Do you agree?

Mekas: Not “necessary!” That doesn’t matter. More and more filmmakers were recording reality. That was the reality. And of course, de Antonio thought that was already a lot of material. Then video came in! Imagine what he would say about that amount of material! [Laughs.] It’s very normal, there’s nothing special about it. Every filmmaker shoots one hundred times more film than what you see on the screen as a final. And the same happens now with video.

Aldrin Valdez: In the January 12 entry of the 365 Days Project you mention that you didn’t feel like doing anything particular that day, apart from listening to beautiful music. Could you elaborate on the importance of music in your life?

Mekas: There’s not much to say. I grew up in a village where everybody sang. There were no orchestras, no rock bands, no nothing. But in the evenings, on the weekend, after and during work, we were always singing. So it became part of my life very early on.

Graham: What would you do if you couldn’t make movies anymore?

Mekas: I would do what I did before I came to New York. When I did not have a camera, I was writing. One’s obsessions or drives gravitate to the means that permit one to do what one wants to do. In the displaced persons camp in Europe, you could not get cameras or film. But here I could get it. So I did. One always works. Or, maybe, I wouldn’t do anything! Who knows?

Helmke: The way you film people is quite informal and, from what I understand, it’s easy for the subjects to forget they are being filmed.

Mekas: People don’t usually take me seriously. [Laughter.]

Helmke: In that case, do you have to be aware of their reactions?

Mekas: No! We are here, right now, in this room, by this table, but we are not consciously trying to be aware of each other. We are just here, sitting, conversing. We are just being what we are. So it’s the same whenever I’m filming whatever I am. The awareness is there, but we don’t think about it.

Helmke: Have you ever hesitated to exhibit anything that you have captured on film?

Mekas: No. I never film anything that is improper in some way. I don’t know what I would have to film in order to be embarrassed by it later. I don’t get into such situations. I am a very normal human being with a very normal life. If I’m embarrassed, I’m embarrassed that I filmed it so badly! And if I have done so, then I cut it out and throw it out.

Lee Ann Norman: When you were writing about film of the’50s to the ’70s, the country was in a state of great cultural, political, and social transformation.

Mekas: Same as now.

Norman: Exactly. So I was wondering how you see the role of experimental film in society in the present? Do you suppose it has changed from then?

Mekas: It never really had a role. [Laughter.] It was always part of cinema, as an art. The avant-garde is like a frontier, the frontline of cinema. And all cinema—including Hollywood—reflects reality. In fact, sometimes the worse the film the more it reflects real life. The other thing is that it has become more complex since the ’50s. Imagine cinema today as a big tree with different branches—as there is with literature or any other art. There are narrative as well as non-narrative or more abstract types of branches. Narrative forms can branch into drama, fantasy, musical, film noir, detective, western, etc. Then, of course, you have documentary: journalistic writing in newspapers and magazines, and cinéma verité in cinema. Non-narrative forms were developed after 1950, mostly in the United States. Later, in 1980, England and France took over. So, what’s the function of literature and poetry? What’s the function of narrative and non-narrative cinema? What happened is that, until the ’50s, cinema could express only one part of what we are all about. That is: the desire to listen, stories, experiences, of say 1,001 Arabian Nights. But we also need to express those older, more subtle parts that cannot be expressed through narratives, through characters, through protagonists, and instead only in literature and dance and music. Very indirectly cinema had to develop all those other forms. And it has developed in those last 60 years, so that now cinema is a full art just as literature or any other art and just as our human experience can be expressed through cinema. That’s what happened! That’s where we are.

Dillon: Your writings from the ’60s and your later films have a deep moral sense to them. What kind of morals, do you think, were driving your films in that early period?

Mekas: Muslim, Christian, Rosicrucian, Taoist, Pantheist. Where I come from, I’m basically a Pantheist. Does that answer your question? [Laughter.] It’s right to be nice and good. Be free and do everything that you wish as long as it does not interfere, damage, or hurt others. There is a limitation to freedom. I don’t believe in total freedom.

Jillann Hertel: You do seem free of institution, yet your work is being taught all over the world in film and media studies programs. What do you hope—if you hope anything at all—is being relayed about your body of work in these sort of institutional settings that you would want students to take away?

Mekas: I don’t know what people get from my films or writings. Each one gets what one needs at that moment and at different times. I don’t know. I cannot answer that. I consider myself a maker of things. I’m a farmer. You can do whatever you want and keep moving ahead. I’m still moving ahead.

Suzanne Brancaccio: In your writings from the ’50s and ’60s, you express an obvious distaste for Hollywood cinema.

Mekas: No! I was very much into Hollywood cinema! I actually began in writing scripts—I want that to be known. I started Film Culture magazine in 1954. It came from a bunch of friends: Peter Bogdanovich, Andrew Sarris. We spent our nights on 42nd street, which in 1953, ’54, ’55, had like 15 movie theaters playing all night. Different genres or the same films, we knew it and we loved it and that’s why we started the magazine. And it was, for 10 years practically, dominated by writings about and interviews with Hollywood directors of the world, meaning the world, Hollywood. And then, 10 years later, I noticed that there is so much coverage already of commercial cinema, and that there was so much happening in the independent field—the avant-garde as it was called, “underground”—and decided that I should give more space to that. In the beginning I was reviewing Hollywood and independents at the same time. I was the only writer on cinema in the Village Voice. And then the time came around, ’58, maybe ’62, when there was so much happening not only in commercial film, but also in the independent film, for instance the Nouvelle Vague was coming. I felt it was impossible for me to see and cover everything. I told Andrew Sarris, my co-editor at Film Culture, “You cover the commercial, and I will just concentrate on the independents.” That’s when a new sort of direction came in.

Nayun Lee: What if you did not live in New York? Can you imagine your work and life without New York City?

Mekas: No, I cannot do that. Maybe I would have become another Joseph Conrad. Because just before I got my papers made by the United Nations refugee organization so that I could come to the United States, I was enlisted to work on a ship between Le Havre, France, and Sydney. So before I was called to the ship, suddenly somebody in Chicago made some papers for me to come work in a bakery in Chicago. And I said, “Okay, here I come!” But then the ship landed in New York, by miracle. I came out on the 23rd street pier, went up a few floors, looked through the window and said to my brother, “New York! We’re in New York! Chicago? We would be crazy to go to Chicago! We are in New York!” [Laughter.] And that was it.

Brancaccio: In Letter to Penny Arcade, you attribute a lot of who you are to New York, a place that you say “saved your sanity.”

Mekas: In the post-war period I think I was becoming totally disillusioned with everything. Finished. I did not believe anything. So, when I came to New York, I was suddenly like, look, there is something interesting, something alive, something exciting.

Brancaccio: How do you think your experience here has shaped who you are as both an artist and a person, in relation to your earlier years in Lithuania?

Mekas: In Lithuania I was in paradise. Then I was thrown out of paradise. No use in talking to you about paradise, because paradise, in my childhood, involved a lot of humanity, imagination, and poetry. And then you are suddenly thrown out into reality and into the West. In my childhood there was poetry, and the rest was prose. Both are real—they are part of the same.

Ambereen Karamat: Can you tell me about your poetry in relation to your film and writing?

Mekas: I only answer this indirectly. We have now, what, seven arts? And those seven arts express a different aspect of our being, our experience, our total memory, the needs of our bodies down to the deepest atoms of our being. There’s dance, there’s drama, there’s singing. If we would need only one, if it would be that simple that we could express ourselves only through, let’s say, dancing, that would be great! But, we are more complicated. We cannot express all that we are and progress further only through dancing—we have all these other aspects. What I’m trying to say, what I can express through poetry, I can only do through poetry, not through cinema, motion, or images, and what I can do through moving images, can only be done through that. So it’s like different aspects of my being, the totality of what I am, my experience. We need cinema and all those arts—not for self-expression or recording the past, but as a tool for moving forward and growing. Self-expression, creativity…who needs it! [Laughter.]

Marco Greco: In your essay “Experimental Film in America,” you wrote that the mistake of those filmmakers who try to adapt James Joyce’s stream of consciousness method to cinema is that they adopt no moral stand. Do you consider experimental film within the same category, meaning, is there morality within experimental film?

Mekas: Everybody has moral sense, whether it’s experimental or not experimental. You may have a kind of weird morality. But what is morality? How we perceive humanity and our relation to it? That’s unavoidable, that’s part of it; you cannot separate it. We are moral even when we are immoral, whatever morality is in any given society. But you cannot detach it, it is there. How you relate to other human beings, that’s maybe what morality is.

Image courtesy the artist and James Fuentes LLC.

Graham: It seems like you’re filming all the time, and you say that you’ve been filming since you
got a camera. And you have hours and hours of these motion pictures in storage. Do you ever watch things that you’ve filmed? How much time do you spend watching your films in relation to how much time you actually spend filming?

Mekas: The early film stocks were made of nitrate; they were fragile and inflammable. Some museums, like the Museum of Modern Art, never screened them because it was dangerous. But then they discovered they were deteriorating, melting, and becoming gooey. But Henri Langlois, who ran The Cinémathèque Française, was always screening the originals, and his originals were always in good shape! And why? Because he was constantly airing them, and the Museum of Modern Art was holding this precious old stuff that was “dangerous,” and because they were not aired, much of it was self-destroyed. And Langlois was always laughing, “Enjoy, screen those films, they like to be screened!” And his prints survived and now MoMA is borrowing them. [Laughter.] Likewise, I discovered that my film color footage from 1950 is still in good shape, because I never put them in any special place. Those which were kept in rooms and remained unlooked at, faded, and eventually chemicals gathered and destroyed the film. Books like to be read, music likes to be played, film likes to be screened and seen, and the same with video, people, drinks, and everything else.

Dumalin: You recently presented at James Fuentes’s gallery work titled “World Trade Center Haikus.” It brought to mind the Destruction Quartet from 2006, which you showed exactly one year ago at the same location and also incorporates your old footage of the WTC Towers. In both films, 9/11 is detached from its date. In Destruction Quartet it is seen from and connected to earlier damaging histories, such as the demolition of the Berlin Wall. “World Trade Center Haikus,” on the other hand, is mostly composed of archival footage of your family and, therefore, seemed to me like its intimate, gentler counterpart. Did your emotions toward the event change a lot between the making of both films and do they account for this in your eyes?

Mekas: Both pieces came by pure accident. Destruction Quartet was an answer to Liutauras Psibilskis’s request to participate in a show in Sidney that he was putting together around the theme of destruction. I reviewed all the film and video footage that I had regarding “destruction.” The four pieces that I chose from my material cover a wide range of destruction: political, terroristic, and artistic. The new piece, “World Trade Center Haikus” was a result of me going through unfinished, unedited film material which was beginning to fade, and it was about time that I did something with it. As I was going through it, I discovered that I had many, some 50 different views of the World Trade Center that I had filmed between 1970 and its destruction. Just around the same time, as I was going through the footage, James Fuentes called me telling me that he wanted to open his new gallery with my work, preferably with downtown material. That was it. I made the decision right there and then to make my own Hokusai cycle, “WTC Haikus.” It was all dictated by the footage itself and by the call of a friend. While pulling out the WTC footage, however, I decided to leave some of the preceding and following footage in, which was, in most cases, family footage. That personalized the haikus and made them more intimate. I did not want it to be just plain buildings. I have to tell you that I liked to look at the buildings from a distance but whenever I had to be inside the WTC buildings, for one reason or other I felt a kind of terror and was happy to leave them. I never felt good inside them, for what reason I do not know. I did everything to avoid them. By the way, in 2005 I went to Mount Fuji, hoping to film it. I stayed near it for three days but the clouds that covered Mount Fuji never parted, and I never saw it. I went back to Tokyo without seeing it or filming it.

Dumalin: The beginnings of Fluxus in SoHo have received a great deal of attention lately. Billie Maciunas published a memoir of her late husband George around the same time that the book Illegal Living: 80 Wooster Street and the Evolution of SoHo was released. At the launch reception of the latter on September 21, you shared some inspiring stories about George’s commitment to the cooperative. The present focus on historical Fluxus made me wonder about the legacy of Fluxus as art today. Is there still a place for its ideas in these times? Do you see any young artists working in a similar spirit now?

Mekas: Fluxus’s most intense period ended, I think, with the death of George Maciunas in 1978. But again, like the seeds planted by the other art movements of the 20th century, they are embedded in whatever artists are doing today. But there is a sort of neo-Fluxus movement happening very actively in Lithuania. Some 10 months ago, in a Soviet era Health Ministry building, a Ministry of Fluxus was opened, with many daily activities and many—maybe a hundred or more—rooms available to artists to do their stuff. I was there this past May and I found it very exciting. Nothing like that is happening in Paris or New York. The way I see it, Fluxus resembles in some ways the Warhol phenomenon. Both Warhol and Maciunas produced so much work, that every year or so a new aspect of Warhol is being presented for the first time. It will be same with George Maciunas. I think, for the next 10 or 15 years, exhibitions devoted to different aspects of Fluxus in museums. Which means, Fluxus is not yet history.

Dumalin: The activities of Jonas Mekas certainly aren’t. A large retrospective of your work, curated by Hans Ulrich Obrist, has been scheduled to take place at the Serpentine Gallery in London in 2011. Can you reveal anything about that or future projects you feel passionate about?

Mekas: Next week I will be in London and that’s where we’ll make the final decisions regarding my Serpentine exhibition. All I can tell you now is that it will consist of several installation pieces I have shown in other galleries or museums, including “World Trade Center Haikus.” But most of the works, films, videos, installations, etc., will be new. I have been very busy these last three years and much of what I’ve done nobody, not even my friends, has seen. To coincide with the Serpentine exhibition, there will be other satellite exhibitions of different aspects of my work taking place in Budapest, Vilnius, Paris, and a few other places. To answer your question about what I am doing now, I just completed a two hour movie, Sleepless Nights Stories. There are about 20 stories in it, it’s a new kind of narrative. It’s not like anything else I’ve done before. And now, for the next couple of months, I will do nothing much else but work on completing and editing all of my film footage that I still have on my shelves, fading. It will be my last movie as a film, my Fading Film. I say “nothing else” but I know at the same time that I’ll be putting more stuff on my jonasmekasfilms.com. And who knows what else I may become involved in during the next weeks and months? I am a very weak person; I do not know how to say no

Joseph Beuys - Parallel Processes

2010-11-04T23:02:00.000-07:00

Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen / Photo: © Angelika Platen.

Joseph Beuys - Parallel Processes
11 September 2010 – 16 January 2011
Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen
K20
Grabbeplatz 5
40213 Düsseldorf
Germany

www.kunstsammlung.de

By affecting an inextricable unity of artistic thinking and action, Joseph Beuys (1921-1986) became one of the most charismatic creative personalities of the 20th century. His multifaceted oeuvre—which continues to exert an influence on contemporary artistic production—is still featured and discussed under the most diverse aspects. Through ten major installations and large-scale sculptural works, the exhibition "Joseph Beuys. Parallel Processes" (Sept 11, 2010 – Sept 16, 2011) at the Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen am Grabbeplatz in Düsseldorf examines a variety of themes and clarifies Beuys's "expanded conception of art." Political and artistic utopias are fused now into "social sculpture" in order to provide new perspectives onto society. During the exhibition, well-known artists will discuss their views of Beuys at the Schmela Haus.

Through his activities, Joseph Beuys expanded our concept of the work of art: he believed in the power of art to change people, and he imagined both social and artistic utopias. Manifesting itself progressively has been his worldwide influence, one that remains detectable even in the most recent art production. Among the altogether circa 300 works on view at the Kunstsammlung am Grabbeplatz and at the Schmela Haus are masterworks such as "zeige deine Wunde (Show your Wound)"; 1974/75), "The pack (das Rudel)" (1969), and "Fond IV/4"(1970/71).

A number of installations, on loan from major museums and private collections, are leaving their permanent locations for the Düsseldorf exhibition the first time since the death of the artist. Shown in Europe now for the first time is the large-scale installation "Stripes from the house of the shaman 1964-72" (1980). Also featured is a comprehensive selection of drawings, objects, plastic images, and relics from Beuys's actions, all of which establish interrelationships between art and life in singular ways.

Coming together in "Parallel Processes" are sculptural and pictorial aspects, theoretical reflections, and art actions, along with this artist's idiosyncratic transformations of working materials and objects, to form an extraordinary portrait of Joseph Beuys's unique lifework. Invested with a new contemporaneity and urgency are both the sculptural qualities of his art and its performative potential. Experienced with great immediacy throughout nearly 3000 ft._ of exhibition space is the complex network structure which joins Beuys's artistic oeuvre into a coherent totality.

A comprehensive catalog (ca. 432 pages) with color illustrations of all exhibited works guides the reader through the presentation's various "parallel processes." There are essays by Marion Ackermann, Gottfried Boehm, Wilfried Kuehn, Isabelle Malz, Maja Naef, and Johannes Stüttgen. Sharing her views in an interview is internationally recognized action artist Marina Abramovic. In addition, a special city map identifies the locations in Düsseldorf which were invested with a special significance during the life of this professor at the local art academy. Guided tours to these sites will also be available.

This exhibition forms part of the program of the Quadriennale 2010, organized by the regional capital of Düsseldorf. A scholarly collaboration between the Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen and Friedrich-Schiller Universität in Jena has received substantial support from the Federal Ministry for Education and Research (BMBF). Under preparation since 2009 by a team of young researchers and commencing this coming January is a symposium on Beuys. The setting will be the former Galerie Schmela, recently acquired by the Federal State of North Rhine-Westphalia-a venue where Joseph Beuys made art history with his exhibitions and actions during the 1970s and 1980s. The program draws upon the participants' catalog texts on the individual works and on the thematic areas which preoccupied Beuys. Exploring a range of possibilities for presenting Beuys's works during the run-up to the exhibition was the successful lecture series BEUYS AUSSTELLEN? (Exhibiting Beuys?; Nov 12, 2009 – June 24, 2010), organized by the Kunstsammlung and developed in collaboration with Prof. Wilfried Kuehn and the Hochschule für Gestaltung in Karlsruhe.

Exhibition curators: Marion Ackermann, Isabelle Malz

The exhibition is supported by the exclusive sponsor HSBC Trinkaus & Burkhardt AG and by the Federal Ministry for Education and Research. Media partner is Verlagsgruppe Handelsblatt GmbH.

Nam June Paik - Porträt des Videokünstlers

2010-10-31T09:25:00.000-07:00

Originaltitel: Nam June Paik ? Porträt des Videokünstlers
Episodentitel: Porträt des Videokünstlers
Genre: Menschen
Länge: 60 Minuten

INHALT

Der koreanische Künstler Nam June Paik (1932 - 2006) gilt als ein Pionier der Video- und Medienkunst. Bevor sich Paik der Bildenden Kunst zuwandte, studierte er Musik und Komposition in Japan und Deutschland. Seine künstlerische Laufbahn fing mit Fluxus-Aktionen im Rheinland an. Schon bald interessierte er sich für das Medium Fernsehen und begann seine ersten Experimente. Durch Manipulation des laufenden Fernsehprogramms erzeugte er verzerrte und abstrakte Bilder, die er 1963 erstmals in seiner legendär gewordenen Ausstellung "Exposition of Music - Electronic Television" in Wuppertal zeigte.1964 siedelte er nach New York über, wo er sein Interesse an der elektronischen Bildbearbeitung weiter vertiefte, Fernseher in seine Installationen einbaute und sich dem noch jungen Medium Video zuwandte. Nam June Paik war von 1979 bis 1995 Professor an der Kunstakademie Düsseldorf. Sein Schaffen wurde mit zahlreichen Einzelausstellungen und Preisen gewürdigt. Dreimal nahm er an der Documenta in Kassel teil. 1993 gestaltete er mit dem Künstler Hans Haacke den Deutschen Pavillon auf der Biennale von Venedig, der mit dem Goldenen Löwen für den besten Länderpavillon ausgezeichnet wurde. 1996 erlitt er einen Schlaganfall und war seitdem auf den Rollstuhl angewiesen. Nam June Paik starb im Alter von 73 Jahren in Miami Beach, Florida. Aus Anlass einer Werkschau, die noch bis zum 21. November 2010 im "museum kunst palast" in Düsseldorf zu sehen ist, gibt der Film einen Überblick über Nam June Paiks künstlerische Arbeit und stellt Familienangehörige, Wegbegleiter und Mitarbeiter vor, darunter seine Witwe Shigeko Kubota, sein Neffe Ken Hakuta, die Kuratoren John Hanhardt und Wulf Herzogenrath sowie die Kölner Künstlerin Mary Bauermeister. Das Porträt verbindet Werkdarstellungen mit Gesprächen über Paiks Arbeits- und Denkweise sowie sein Selbstverständnis als Künstler.

source: http://www.cinefacts.de

Die Galerie Epikur bittet zum Salon (28.10.2010)

2010-10-28T08:45:00.000-07:00

Manfred Leve: Nam June Paik und K.O. Götz

Galerie ist mehr.
Die Galerie Epikur bittet zum Salon

Vom Medium zur Kunst oder Als das Denken noch interaktiv sein wollte: Nam June Paik

Olaf Reitz: Lese-Collage aus den "Niederschriften eines Kulturnomaden"
Mittwoch, 03. November 2010, 19.30 Uhr

Unkostenbeitrag für Imbiß und Getränke: 5,- Euro. Aufgrund der großen Nachfrage bei räumlich begrenzter Teilnehmerzahl, ist eine Anmeldung unter info@galerie-epikur.de erforderlich.

Nach den großen Retrospektiven zu Gerhard Hoehme, Informel und Abstraktem Expressionismus, zeigt das museum kunst palast in Düsseldorf parallel zur Beuys-Schau im K20 das Lebenswerk von Nam June Paik.

"Mein experimentelles TV ist nicht immer interessant, jedoch nicht immer uninteressant,
wie die Natur, die s c h ö n ist, nicht, weil sie sich schön verändert, sondern einfach, weil sie sich verändert."

Mit diesem programmatischen Bekenntnis beginnt Paiks "Nachspiel" zu einem Theorietext, den er 1963 anläßlich seiner legendären Ausstellung "Experimentelles Fernsehen" in der Galerie Parnaß in Wuppertal verfaßte. Als Visionär und Praktiker einer Übertragung der Prinzipien von DADA und FLUXUS auf die neuen elektronischen Techniken wurde Paik zum Pionier der Medienkunst.

Seitdem wurden die Medien längst zu Alltagsselbstverständlichkeiten, und Paiks Vision eines weltumspannenden Satellitenfernsehens von 1974 realisiert. Die Medienkünste haben darüber ihren avantgardistischen Status eingebüßt: was alle machen und haben, kann für niemanden mehr bahnbrechend sein. So hielt schon Joseph Beuys Paik - in aller Freundschaft - vor, Amerika habe ihn korrumpiert. ?Der Rückblick auf das Werk des ersten Medienkünstlers mit globaler Wirkung zeigt nicht nur den eingetretenen historischen Abstand, und das schnelle Altern einer ästhetischen Avantgarde, die ihre Praxis an den technischen Fortschritt bindet. Er gibt auch Gelegenheit, das aktuelle Verhältnis von Medien und Kunst zu erörtern - und an die Kunst als Ur-Medium zu erinnern.

Dazu trägt Olaf Reitz, in Wuppertal lebender Schauspieler, Regisseur und markante ‚Stimme', der in Zusammenarbeit mit Autoren und Musikern eine eigene Form der Lese-Performance entwickelt hat, seine Lese-Collage aus Nam June Paiks "Niederschriften eines Kulturnomaden" vor.

Wir freuen uns, Sie begrüßen zu können.
Andreas Steffens, HansPeter Nacke

Galerie Epikur Wuppertal
HP Nacke
Friedrich-Ebert-Straße 152a
42117 Wuppertal

Tel. 0202 - 4 26 52 62
Fax 0202 - 8 31 67
Mobil 0171 - 32 35 238

Öffnungszeiten
Di - Fr 14 - 19 Uhr, Sa 13 - 18 Uhr
und nach Vereinbarung

Abbildung:
Manfred Leve: Nam June Paik und
K.O. Götz im Rahmen der Eröffnung der Ausstellung "Exposition of Music - Electronic Television", Galerie Parnass, Wuppertal, 11.03.1963, Leihgeber: AFORK, Archiv künstlerischer Fotografie der rheinischen Kunstszene, Düsseldorf / museum kunst palast © Manfred Leve

source: http://www.artfacts.net/de/institution/galerie-epikur-wuppertal-349/nachrichten/-5735.html

Danger - Ejection Seat

2010-10-28T07:31:00.001-07:00

Envelope from Litsa Spathi (Netherlands) which included a signed copy of one of her "Digital Fluxus Performances on Facebook", May-June 2010, published by Nobody Press

The booklet contains the complete discussion that evolved on facebook as a reaction to the statement "Fluxus military aircraft ejection seat" for people who declare Fluxus dead! It is the second booklet in the series of Facebook Discussions. This copy is 24 pages thick and is a lot of food for thought.

I notice some others also are suddenly interested in documenting their Facebook discussions, but the discussions published by Litsa Spathi are the first ones to realize a complete score. The images is placed to provoke the discussion. The discussion is well documented and reprinted in a wonderfully edited booklet in full colour. The bookles also has some original prints of rubberstamps in it and the original logo "DANGER - Ejection Seat".

with the booklet also these two artistamp Sheets with all kind of variations of the "Ejection Seat" warning shield.

ILLEGAL LIVING

2010-10-04T22:38:00.001-07:00

ILLEGAL LIVING

80 Wooster Street and the Evolution of SoHo

ROSLYN BERNSTEIN
+
SHAEL SHAPIRO

Published by the Jonas Mekas Foundation

http://www.illegalliving.com/

After Fluxus follows LUXUS

2010-09-21T23:58:00.001-07:00

"After Fluxus follows LUXUS - Flux is over--->it is time for LUXUS" by Litsa Spathi

2010-07-03T01:43:00.000-07:00

Fluxus In The Tropics from jurgis didziulis on Vimeo.

Fluxus Poetry

2010-07-02T23:30:00.001-07:00

Franticham's assembling box 5

2010-07-01T10:00:00.000-07:00

A5 box with signed contributions from 23 invited artists
Visual poetry, collages, prints, multiples and objects
40 copies signed and numbered 1/40 to 40/40
July 2010
Only 15 copies available for sale
Price: 70 euro / 100 $ / 60 UK st.

Contributions from:

Antic-Ham, South Korea - Vittore Baroni, Italy - Lancillotto Bellini, Italy - Carla Bertola, Italy
Anna Boschi, Italy - Bruno Chiarlone, Italy - Fernando Delgado, Argentina - Picasso Gaglione, USA
Pierre Garnier, France - Klaus Groh, Germany - Ruud Janssen, Netherlands - Susanna Lakner, Germany
Serse Luigetti, Italy - Tim Mancusi, USA - Keiichi Nakamura, Japan - Litsa Spathi, Netherlands
Uwe Petruch, Germany - Mercedes Resch, Argentina - Matthew Rose, France - Christine Tarantino, USA
Francis Van Maele, Ireland - Alberto Vitacchio, Italy - Sean Woodward, UK

=============================================================

FRANCIS VAN MAELE
REDFOXPRESS
Dugort, Achill Island
County Mayo, Ireland

WEBSITE - http://www.redfoxpress.com
BLOG - http://franticham.blogspot.com
FLICKR - http://www.flickr.com/photos/45993006@N08

info@redfoxpress.com or phi@phi.lu
Tel.: 00353 - (0)98 - 43784

Recent publications: http://www.redfoxpress.com/new.html
Visual Poetry collection: http://www.redfoxpress.com/dada.html

Fairs and exhibitions

University of Leeds, 13th Artist's Book Fair, 12-13 march 2010
Glasgow artists' book fair, 17-17 April 2010
Seoul 7th Artists' Book Fair, 12-16 mai 2010
Marché de la Poésie, Place St Sulpice, Paris, 16-20 june 2010
Gallery 360°, Tokyo, 1-24 July 2010
London Artists' Book fair, Whitechapel, 23-26 September 2010
Frankfurt Book Fair, Stand 4.1-L528, 6-10 october 2010
New York Art Book Fair, 4-7 November 2010
Small Publishers book fair, Conway Hall, London, 12-13 Nov. 2010
Codex Book Fair, Berkeley, California, 6-9 Febr 2011

Books can be ordered by email to Info@redfoxpress.com
or by paying to Paypal to phi@phi.lu

Who is buying Redfoxpress books: http://www.redfoxpress.com/collections.html

Object Strategies Between Readymade and Spectacle at Museo Reina Sofia

2010-06-26T09:49:00.000-07:00

Piero Manzoni, Mierda de Artista, 1961. Tres latas y papel impreso, 6 cm de diametro y 4.8 cm. de alto cada unidad. Fondazione Piero Manzoni, Milan, en colaboracion con Gagosian Gallery.

MADRID.- The exhibition New Realisms: 1957-1962 illuminates a turning point in the art of the second half of the 20th century — the point of rupture in the postwar period, which created the artistic conditions for what we now know as “The Sixties.” While that decade has been codified art historically with terms such as Pop, Fluxus, Minimalism, and Conceptual Art, the relatively short period that might be said to have generated its key criteria has been resistant to such naming. And, while there have been exhibitions featuring various groupings of its artists – often framed nationalistically and spanning full careers — New Realisms: 1957-1962 radically limits the time frame to their first years of invention, while opening up the field by uniting the work of European and American artists in parallel trajectories.

This exhibition takes as its focus the transformative five-year period 1957-1962: beginning at the culmination of modernism, and ending at the cusp of postmodernism. It tracks the passage between the last moment of the reign of abstract painting and the subsequent critical narrowing of diverse activity with the consolidation of (American) Pop Art. The interest here, then, is neither painting nor Pop, but the developments that could be witnessed each year in between, with all the terms in flux. Writing regular reviews in this period, Donald Judd saw the change afoot, and became frustrated with the generalizations that were already being made.

It is half a century since the strongest statements of this moment (however ephemeral they might have seemed at the time) were formulated. Over fifty years have passed since Yves Klein performed the definition of his monochrome blue, and Allan Kaprow presented his first “Happening.” It is fifty years since the founding in Paris of the fragile critical construct known as Nouveau Réalisme, and almost as long since the influential New York art dealer Sidney Janis tried to convert that term to American currency with his “New Realists” show, which is said to have announced and established American Pop Art in one and the same moment. But the present exhibition has little use for terms asserted by galleries or canonized by critics. It seeks to re-open the story of this period before it was distilled into names and categories; it asks the visitor to explore the work of this finite period, year by year, and allow it to unfold and change, as if considering its place in history for the first time. With it, we are indeed able to witness the new forms and new media (as one 1960 exhibition titled it) as well as the new artistic strategies, actions, and performances, which make these years of protean experimentation still among the richest of the 20th century.

In Europe, the abstract painting celebrated in the 1950s was variously dubbed Taschisme, Art Informel, and Art Autre. In the US it was called Abstract Expressionism or Action Painting. This approach so dominated the international art world that almost every artist in the present exhibition — artists who were only emerging at the moment of the late 1950s — started out painting in this manner. It is their range of moves to get “out of abstraction,” which constitutes the first chapter of the exhibition.

In 1957, Marcel Duchamp gave a lecture called “The Creative Act” at the American Federation of the Arts in Houston, Texas. In that influential statement Duchamp argued that the meaning the work of art would accrue in the course of its existence (immediately, and in the future), would not be determined by the initial creative gesture but in the realm of the spectator, and the work’s historical reception. Delivered just months after the dramatic death of Jackson Pollock, Duchamp’s statement suggested new artistic criteria. Pollock’s painting was far from a straightforward example by 1957. It had already been rendered as a kind of spectacular performance through the film and photography of Hans Namuth – and figures like Georges Mathieu in France had taken this literally, making painting into a public act.

In France that same year, Yves Klein sought to fracture the legacy of abstract painting into a spectrum of definitions that used the performative force of all painting’s meanings to date. Over the course of five exhibitions in the first half of 1957 Klein defined his project dramatically as the “specialization” of something like pure artistic energy, which he dubbed the “immaterial.” At the time, the Americans Allan Kaprow and George Brecht were at work on texts that likewise re-theorized the painterly act in relation to current concerns with real space and real time. They developed their own senses of Pollock’s “legacy” through Duchamp’s concept of the creative act and Cage’s emergent model of indeterminacy – whose development they witnessed in his classes at New York’s New School for Social Research. Both Duchamp and Cage de-emphasized the expressive initiative of the artist to focus on the function of the “receiver.” Building on these sources Kaprow charted a “logical” path from painting-to-Environment-to-Happening, while Brecht extended chance procedures and the logic of the readymade temporally, by scoring objects he redefined as “Events.”

By 1958 Jean Tinguely was extending painting into a mode of performance that relinquished authorship. His “Méta-matic” machines – devices for making works of art — allowed spectators to complete the work themselves. Although this was but a short step from Duchamp, Tinguely soon made an impressive shift in scale and spectacular impact. Towering over the artist, his Méta-matic Nº 17 was presented at the first Paris Biennial of 1959, manned by “mechanics” sporting white t-shirts stamped with the work’s title. Notwith standing this unique “mascot,” which stood outside the exhibition space, that Paris Biennal actually revealed the extent to which painting still very much dominated the French scene. The torn poster works of Tinguely’s soon-to-be colleagues in Nouveau Réalisme — the décollagistes Raymond Hains, Jacques Villeglé and François Dufrêne — appeared there crammed into a room of abstract painting, the radicalism of their “anonymous lacerations” committed on street advertising completely ignored. Meanwhile, in the same context, the press roundly criticized the American Robert Rauschenberg for the everyday elements he had included in his “combine” paintings. Soon after, Tinguely left Paris for New York, where, in March 1960 he staged his largest machine to date, the self-destructive Homage to New York, which “happened” for 30 minutes in the garden of the Museum of Modern Art.

Major events such as this aside, it was actually the small galleries on both sides of the Atlantic that were providing the most progressive platforms for advanced art at the turn of 1960. In New York, the Martha Jackson Gallery presented New Forms, New Media, which would serve as the model for the Museum of Modern Art’s Art of Assemblage one year later, while the Reuben Gallery was hosting an extensive roster of new time-based works under the umbrella of Happenings. Following Kaprow’s Happenings and Brecht’s Events were theatrical works by Claes Oldenburg, Jim Dine, and Robert Whitman. For the 1959-60 season Dine and Oldenburg pioneered “The House” and “The Street (respectively) – as well as hosting the performances of their peers – in the basement of a local church on Washington Square (The Judson Gallery). A few months later at the Reuben Gallery Whitman pioneered the use of film as an integral part of his “theater piece” American Moon (whose performance and set appear as part of the present exhibition). One year later, in 1961, Oldenburg moved out of the gallery altogether defining his own space, performance, and work as “The Store,” on East 2nd Street.

In the crucial years of 1957-60, Iris Clert in Paris made one landmark gesture after another in shows of Klein, Tinguely, and Arman (including the famous statements of Le Vide and Le Plein). During 1959-60 in Milan, Piero Manzoni launched his Azimut Gallery (along with the publication Azimuth), incorporating it into his own burgeoning conception of the work of art. That Manzoni published Jasper Johns’ works in Azimuth and showed Klein at his gallery Azimut, offers just two indications of his extraordinary grasp of the forces transforming the art object at an early moment. Meanwhile, Galerie Addi Køpcke in Copenhagen would bring Manzoni into contact with Daniel Spoerri and other peers who were redefining art in ways that related to his own moves. There Spoerri presented his trash baked in the form of rows of bread rolls mounted on board in 1961 —just months before Manzoni would test that food item as an achrome. In another singular event that could not have been lost on his Italian peer Spoerri made an exhibition of grocery items with the label “attention, work of art.”

Along with Guido Le Noci’s Galleria Apollinaire – which presented the landmark 1957 show of Klein and the earliest Nouveau Réalisme exhibitions, and others such as Galleria Naviglio, Galleria Arturo Schwarz drew a great deal of new creative energy to Milan. Having assumed an important role in the 1950s by representing the historical avant-garde, Schwarz also recognized the advantage in 1960-61 of opening up his space to younger artists. Breaking into the forefront of the new generation, he presented an entire show of the tableaux pièges of Spoerri, and a dual exhibition of Arman’s accumulations along with the multi-colored plastic sculptures of Martial Raysse. 1961 also saw Spoerri’s introduction in Cologne of the work of his Nouveau Réaliste peers in his enactment of Der Koffer, a work which seemed to extend the legacy of Duchamp’s Boîte en valise into the realm of performance. Finally, perhaps Spoerri’s largest-scale statement of 1961 was his collaboration with the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam on the exhibition Art in Motion (or Moving Movement), which show-cased the most experimental moving and participatory works by artists from Paris, and all over Europe, to New York.

By 1962 the international circuits were very much in place, and the extensive experimentation seemed to be settling into more iconic statements. And at that same moment, other founding figures began to fall away. Rauschenberg is a pivotal case here. Having made indispensible statements about the status of the index and the fate of painting between 1949 and 1953, and having teamed up with Cage to extend these premises, he was the first figure to chart a viable pathway out of Pollock, and thus crucial for artists like Kaprow. In the 1950s and early 1960s he played a key role not only with his own shows, but with singular gestures in unexpected contexts like his contribution of the “money-thrower” to Tinguely’s Homage to New York in 1960 and the grand historical fact of his having lent Duchamp’s Bottle Rack to MoMA’s The Art of Assemblage in 1961. Then there was the extraordinary Rauschenbergian contribution to Dylaby, the collaboration on a dynamic labyrinth with his European peers, which followed in 1962. But after that, those connections, and that integral involvement seemed to dissipate. Figures who had not been part of any group much less any programmatic definition of “new realism” emerged strongly toward the end of the most radical years of development. Yayoi Kusama’s “accumulations” of phalluses in the form of soft studded objects emerged – as strong a statement as any other of that decade. And while figures like Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein had seemed quite separate in developing cogent contemporary statements, it is clear that their works prior to 1962 had defined a “new realism” as radically as any other artist of that moment.

In October 1962, Sidney Janis took all of this into account with his exhibition The New Realists. The present exhibition – 50 years later – takes stock of that rare moment to rethink the first codification of these practices. Defining a different ground than that of French Nouveau Réalisme, the present show (and title) removes the specificity of the French and of the singular. New Realisms, in the plural, aims to question and to define freshly what it might have meant to create a “new realism” at the turn of the 1960s. Pausing just at the moment when the legacy of the readymade was ripe for recoding one more time, it asks what all those extraordinary and radical acts amounted to – those acts that resisted the spectacular objectification of Pop Art.

Source:
www.artdaily.org/index.asp?int_sec=2&int_new=38726

Chronische Fluxitis

2010-06-26T08:30:00.000-07:00

Führung

Chronische Fluxitis

Joseph Beuys, George Brecht, Robert Filliou, Richard Hamilton, Yoko Ono, Daniel Spoerri und viele mehr: Das Sammlerpaar Maria und Walter Schnepel konnte die Hände nicht vom Fluxus lassen. Dabei ist eine beachtliche Sammlung namhafter Fluxuskünstler entstanden, mit der nun das passiert ist, was die Vertreter der avantgardistischen Kunstrichtung aus den 60er Jahren gar nicht wollten: Sie ist im Museum gelandet. Wie geht nun das Neue Museum Weserburg mit diesem Widerspruch um? Es konzipiert eine Ausstellung, die die Werke wieder in ihre Entstehungszeit einordnet - und ein Beziehungsgeflecht zwischen Kunst, Gesellschaft und Politik der 60er, 70er und 80er Jahre generiert.

source:
http://www.taz.de/1/nord/bremen/artikel/?dig=2010%2F06%2F26%2Fa0076&cHash=83e5bbecef

Mail from J.F. Chapelle - France

2010-06-20T06:09:00.000-07:00

MoMA - Unpacking Fluxus

2010-06-15T09:25:00.000-07:00

Posted by Gretchen Wagner, Curatorial Assistant, Department of Prints and Illustrated Books

Various artists. Fluxkit. c. 1965. Vinyl-covered attaché case with screenprint, containing objects in various media. The Museum of Modern Art. The Gilbert and Lila Silverman Fluxus Collection Gift, 2008

“Thus there is in the life of a collector a dialectical tension between the poles of disorder and order,” philosopher and critic Walter Benjamin observed in his 1931 lecture Unpacking My Library. In the museum’s tidy spaces, where a predominant curatorial objective is to make sense out of the jumbled reality of things, this opposition between organization and chaos captures the imagination. As my colleagues and I begin to work with the Gilbert and Lila Silverman Fluxus Collection Gift recently acquired by the MoMA—highlights of which are currently on view in the Fluxus Preview exhibition on the fourth floor—Benjamin’s proposal repeatedly comes to mind.
Those familiar with the activities of the artists associated with Fluxus during the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s will not be surprised to learn of the diversity of this landmark collection. Thousands of films, scores, drawings, multiples, artist products, architectural designs, installations, event objects, and performance photographs and recordings are among the objects included—many of them made with the intention of trouncing traditional claims for art, and the museums and galleries that at the time sustained those rigid assertions. This radical refusal of anything established or fixed echoed the strategies deployed by many artists antsy to shake things up in the latter half of the twentieth century, namely those who embraced collective practices and turned away from painting and sculpture as dominant forms.

This blog post initiates a series of entries that will highlight our encounters with these Fluxus artworks as they emerge from the crates, bins, and bubble wrap in which they arrived. By giving visibility to this exciting—albeit at times messy—process, we hope to provide a unique point of access to the collection that might not otherwise be available, either in the polished domain of the exhibition space or in the finely edited catalogue. Moreover, we intend to draw attention to the irreverently revelatory accomplishments of the Fluxus artists and to their profound influence on art today.

We hope you stay tuned…

Gretchen L. Wagner, Curatorial Assistant, Department of Prints and Illustrated Books

Lily Goldberg, 12-Month Fluxus Intern, Department of Prints and Illustrated Books

Gillian Young, Temporary Cataloger, Department of Prints and Illustrated Books

source: http://www.moma.org/explore/inside_out/2010/06/14/unpacking-fluxus

Fluxus Type Thing: A Review of Frank O'Hara

2010-05-26T02:34:00.000-07:00

The New York School of Poetry inspired a type of poetics that were smorgasbord in nature—rife with influence from confluent arm forms, representative of artistic revolution, and transcendent of both temporality and spatial limitations. This movement began in the 1950s and spanned into the late 1960s, taking inspiration from Surrealism and contemporary avant-garde art movements, such as action painting—a style of painting that is smeared and dribbled instead of carefully painted on (see Jackson Pollack and William deKooning). Jazz, improvisational theatre, abstract expressionism, and Impressionism all preceded and influenced the New York School, which served as a reaction to the Confessionalist movement of poetry. Instead of showcasing the intimate and sometimes sordid details of the life of the poet, as in Confessionalism, the New York School focused on outward observations: light, observational and sometimes violent happenings (like in Frank O’Hara’s poem “Poem (the eager note on my door)”), worldly opinions and stream-of-consciousness. The most notorious members of the New York School were mostly queer, Harvard educated art reviewers who overlapped with the Beat movement and glorified metropolitan living.
Impressionism was a major influence of the New York School of poets. By using visible brush strokes, open composition, and the emphasis of light and its changing qualities to accentuate the passage of time, Impressionism was very much an artistic revolution that rebelled against classical, studio painting. The plein air techniques brought painting out of the confines of indoor studios and into the open air. As a result, light became a fixative aspect of the Impressionistic movement. Ordinary subject matter was used—boats, people on docks, and day-to-day happenings were documented, pressed upon the memory in what functions as an archive of temporality. By painting people and objects as they move and shift through their day, Impressionism included movement as a crucial element of human perception and experience.
This approach was quite practical; movement cannot be expected to take place within the confines of studio space no more than fresh tabloids can be seen from ones couch. The exposure of the artist to the human element and environment highlighted the importance of vitality, life, and action. Impressionism also featured unusual visual angles of the ordinary by capturing momentary and transient effects of sunlight, intensifying color schemes, and emphasizing the immediacy of art.
Because of the profound influence of Impressionism upon the New York School movement, many of the poets of that classification were more apt to show the spontaneity and urgency of light, time, and space. In Kenneth Koch’s poem, “The Circus”, the movement is frantic, showing the urgency of the events surrounding the speaker. Frank O’Hara’s poems famously include shards of light, fragments of flurried activity, and impassioned ejaculations of thought and speech. Upon listening to O’Hara’s spoken word, I remembered hearing him introduce his poem “Poem (Lana Turner has collapsed!)” by saying, “These next two poems are sort-of walking-around-New-York type poems, which I like to write. I think the events in them are quite explicable, not just the events themselves, but what I am thinking about as I see them.” Spontaneous and direct, O’Hara and other New York poets poetry focuses on the action-painting of city life: headlines, tabloids, weather, traffic patterns, and lunch quietude. In the aforementioned poem, O’Hara talks about his reaction to Lana Turner’s fall in relation to the events that were simultaneously happening around him in the bustling city.
“Lana Turner has collapsed!

I was trotting along and suddenly/it started raining and snowing/and you said it was hailing/but hailing hits you on the head/hard so it was really snowing and/raining and I was in such a hurry/to meet you but the traffic/was acting exactly like the sky/and suddenly I see a headline/LANA TURNER HAS COLLAPSED!/there is no snow in Hollywood/there is no rain in California/I have been to lots of parties/and acted perfectly disgraceful/but I never actually collapsed/oh Lana Turner we love you get up”
As he reads this poem, O’Hara’s voice gets more and more distressed, frantic, and hurried—the typical walking-around-New-York type poem has turned urgent. A life is on the line, no! A legacy is in jeopardy. The Impressionism of this poem shines through in the short brushstrokes (short line-strokes), interjections of emotion in the middle and end (“LANA TURNER HAS COLLAPSED” and “oh Lana Turner we love you get up”), and the en plein air technique of outdoor painting—the traffic is acting exactly like the sky. The two parallel plains of ceiling (sky/heavens) and floor (earth, traffic) are mirroring each other. The light is passing through the sky and marking time as the cars are passing along the asphalt, moving people from point to point. The interruption of the collapse of Lana Turner comes with the proclamations “there is no snow in Hollywood/there is no rain in California”—amidst this flurry of activity, O’Hara puts in his tiny brush strokes of temporality. Those two lines slow the pace of the poem; surely, nothing can mar the legacy of sunshine and fame, golden hours upon the stage. There is no thick dampening snow or imperfection in the Great Gold State, but here it comes! A legacy collapsing is equated to the impossibility of imperfection.

Yet the imperfection is what drives this poem; O’Hara is “painting” the world as he sees and perceives it, en plein air, not from still-life. There is motion is this poem—in fact, action is the crux of the poem. As in a good Impressionistic painting, O’Hara focuses his subject matter on the immediacy and urgency of the day to day, the passing of time, and the critical job of documenting the metropolitan life.
Though the Fluxus art movement did not influence the New York School of poets, it ran concurrently (1960s-present) and was confluent with some of the ideals of the former. Fluxus is difficult to define—it lives within liberal parameters, occupies copious amounts of space, and blurs the lines between medium, not all of which are artistic. In short, it defies taxonomy as a categorical style. Instead of a manifesto, there seems to be a call-to-arms that has historically brought forth battalions of performers, musicians, and videographers. “The name Fluxus, derived from the Latin word that denotes a continuous passing or flowing, suggests the fluidity between media that marks the artistic activity if this time period.” Fluidity helped to facilitate the currents of an intermedial form, allowing for artistic flexibility while still, true to its nature, creating a theoretical framework.
A contributing factor to this creative blitzkrieg is the absolute lack of traditional artistic vehicles, beginning with the Fluxian challenge of museums of “temples of high culture”. (Halbreich, 1). Instead of showcasing work in galleries or curatorial spaces, Fluxus instead exists generally in places of non-art: churches, houses, warehouses, etc to allow for the disintegration of the artist-appreciator relationship. Public accessibility and critical freedom are keystones to the longevity of this fluid form.
Along with public facility, Fluxus artists promoted the agenda of the dispensability of their own talents. “For many artists associated with Fluxus, their works and performances were intended to transgress boundaries, decentralize their own activities, and gradually lead to the elimination of the category of fine art.” (Smith, 36). ‘Decommodifying’ art was a way in which purveyors and virtuosos alike deconstructed the previously established barriers of fine art, breaking them down to a kind of eccentric normativity. Though objects and tangible medium found ways into Fluxus demonstration, performance and music were more common, as they did not require curators; they were also more in line with the ephemeral nuances of the form.
The longevity of this fluid activity has been questioned by generations of art scholars; in fact, Fluxus is still ever-present today. The brilliance of this endurance lay in the crux of the movement: temporality (ephemerality), and ambiguity. The evanescence of performance has several advantages that contribute to this: the changes that recreation ultimately brings, and the lack of tangible object. Without concrete record of an event happening, there is no commodity, and therefore, a forgetting that leads to artistic renewal. As for ambiguity, Judith Butler explained the principle of life outside the box, stating that she wished that the word ‘queer’ would forever remain vague and complicated, and therefore eliminating potential structural threats. George Brecht had a parallel idea, specifically related to the nature of this post-Dadaist activity: “Each of us had his own ideas about what Fluxus was and so much the better. That way it’ll take longer to bury us.” (24) Temporality aided ambiguity, forming together the chameleon-like creature that still exists today.
A basis of creative fluidity is that it can adequately translate into the common day-to-day. Artistic execution, in all Fluxian media, greatly concerned itself with how abstraction could be made a part of life. Not only were household objects admired for their non-aestheticism, but mass-production became incorporated into ideas of non-art. At Yoko Ono’s San Francisco MOMA exhibit in 2004, she had on display an old-fashioned 25 cent machine, full of little blue boxes. It was called “Sky Machine”, and had a tag underneath that invited people to put in a quarter and take away a piece of the heavens. The natural world, heavens included, is represented here as integrating a day-to-day occurrence—seeing the sky—into art, or art into sky; the point being that soon both subjects become interchangeable.
The seemingly contradictory phrase that kept popping to mind while studying Ono’s work was an idea of tangible liminality—the notion of art that exists on a threshold you can feel, but occupies a space between medium—not hybridity. Upon entering the MOMA exhibit, viewers were invited to sit down and play a game of chess on Ono’s ceramic chessboard. At second glance, it becomes obvious that the board and the pieces of both “sides” are completely white—thus negating the rules of chess. Still, many played and found themselves jumbled into a world devoid of signifiers. In short, a household object was recreated into an artistic threshold. The playing of said object created a liminal space that transgressed rational boundaries. The act of toying with the sculpture therefore became crucial to the art itself, and immensely accessible. “(Fluxus is) the extraordinary which remains latent in the undisclosed ordinary.” (Stiles, 19). By all means, this was a piece that smacked of Fluxus.
While living in Santiago, Chile, I had the good fortune of seeing an exhibit of Nicanor Parra’s work. Parra is a poet who invented the concept of anti-poetry; non-prose that escapes the pomp and tradition of previously canonized works. His poems are highly colloquial, and often straddle the line of the intermedial—focusing mostly in sculpture. A highly resonant piece for me was one that consisted of a bird cage that encased a large dildo inside. The placard below it read: “La Felicidad Cautivada” (Captured Happiness). Another was called, “A Future Suicide Note: Chao (colloquial goodbye). I won’t tolerate mood music.” In both works, Parra translates real life objectification into art, and then releases them back into life, while emphasizing and disclosing the ordinary.
Both Parra and Ono continue to create resonant art that transcends space and medium, tramples traditional ideas of fine art, and embraces interactivity. That the artists of the Fluxus period questioned the intrinsic value of art is a moot point; the value is not tradition, but rather, resonance—the prolongation of sound by reflection; reverberation. The tangible limin continues to be the ever-transformant new frontier. “Fluxus is a new cultural paradigm, related to the breakdown of boundaries between artistic media, cultural conventions, and even political states…A larger movement toward a global humanism.” (Stiles, 22). This movement is concurrent with the ideals of the New York School of Poetry in many ways—the urgency and decomodification of art and poetics, the artist/poet as the everyman, and the integration of the natural world.
In Yoko Ono’s blue box exhibit, she blurs the lines between nature and art, signifying the ease of deconstruction; sky and art can be thought of as two separate things, or not. In Frank O’Hara’s poem, “Homosexuality”, he occupied a similar tactic to shorten the brush strokes of the living world by harmonizing himself and his metropolitan surroundings into art and poetics.
“14th Street is drunken and credulous,/
53 rd tries to tremble but is too at rest. The good/
love a park and the inept a railway station,/
and there are the divine ones who drag themselves up and down the lengthening shadow of an/ Abyssinian head
/in the dust, trailing their long elegant heels of hot air
crying to confuse the brave "It's a summer day,
/and I want to be wanted more than anything else in the world."”
In the above poem, O’Hara employs a similar temporal tactic that recalls ideas of Impressionism, much like in “Poem (Lana Turner has collapsed!)”. First, he assigns anthropomorphic characteristics to New York City—14th street is intoxicated and 53rd is resigned. The parts of the city act together as a band of characters, a Great Recreational Anatomy of blurred lines and intentions. Love, if it is good, is a park—constant, peaceful, and pastoral. If it is inept, it is in constant action, a railway station that is home to transients and the homeless. New York City, in this poem, is at binary odds with itself, juxtaposed between good and bad, stationary/static and bustling. The “divine ones” further the cast of characters; at this point, it is unclear whether O’Hara is discussing prostitutes or buildings/areas of the city, but it does not matter anymore, because he has created his own Ono blue box exhibit. The anthropomorphic pieces of sky/city/streets have taken on human or natural characteristics and have thus been blended into the human paradigm. At the end of “Homosexuality”, it is no longer necessary to claim the divine ones as either human or structure because they have become one. Human and city are one in the same.
In the end of the poem, O’Hara interpolates the sigh of emotion that he exhibited in the poem about Lana Turner. “It’s a summers day and I want to be wanted more than anything in the world.” The characteristic end-lines of O’Hara’s poetry inspire a unique kind of longing in the reader that further allows accessibility into his poems; the subject of want and desire are left ambiguous, though they exist through the characters of the divine ones. Because of the blurred lines between people and cities in this poem, the expressed desire of the ambiguous subject leaves the ‘wanting to be wanted’ as a queer or skewed structure of lust. After all, the ‘good love’, and presumably desirable love is a park, static and fertile. The inept love is transient and characteristic of a changing chameleon. The breakdown between the two ideas (love, which is an abstract, liminal idea and the concepts of the concrete, corporal metropolis, which is physical and tangible) creates the same kind of breakdown as the Fluxus movement—tangible liminality that exists upon a threshold you can feel, but is without hybridity.
In my opinion, Frank O’Hara’s greatest love poem is the highly acclaimed “Having a Coke With You” in which his love for Impressionistic art and his love of his lover spill over one another in a dalliance of light, passing time, and the urbane and sexy representation of urban nature.
“Having a Coke with you/
is even more fun than going to San Sebastian, Irún, Hendaye, Biarritz, Bayonne/
or being sick to my stomach on the Travesera de Gracia in Barcelona/
partly because in your orange shirt you look like a better happier St. Sebastian/
partly because of my love for you, partly because of your love for yoghurt/
partly because of the fluorescent orange tulips around the birches/
partly because of the secrecy our smiles take on before people and statuary/
it is hard to believe when I’m with you that there can be anything as still/
as solemn as unpleasantly definitive as statuary when right in front of it/
in the warm New York 4 o’clock light we are drifting back and forth/
between each other like a tree breathing through its spectacles/
and the portrait show seems to have no faces in it at all, just paint/
you suddenly wonder why in the world anyone ever did them/
I look/
at you and I would rather look at you than all the portraits in the world/
except possibly for the Polish Rider occasionally and anyway it’s in the Frick/
which thank heavens you haven’t gone to yet so we can go together the first time/
and the fact that you move so beautifully more or less takes care of Futurism/
just as at home I never think of the Nude Descending a Staircase or/
at a rehearsal a single drawing of Leonardo or Michelangelo that used to wow me/
and what good does all the research of the Impressionists do them/
when they never got the right person to stand near the tree when the sun sank/
or for that matter Marino Marini when he didn’t pick the rider as carefully/
as the horse/
it seems they were all cheated of some marvelous experience/
which is not going to go wasted on me which is why I’m telling you about it”
In “Having a Coke With You”, O’Hara is discussing the concept of confluence, or fluxus, itself; He is writing with all of the culture and worldliness known of the New York School, along with describing Impressionism in relation to his lover, upon whom he would rather look than any portrait at all (“except for maybe the Polish Rider”). In this sexy blend of metropolitan musings, “walking-around-New-York” type poetics, and depictions of art reviews, O’Hara is again blending Impressionistic art with people, statuary, the city, and nature (“like a tree breathing through its spectacles”), while using metered light to measure temporality and space. Because, truly, what is the use of an appreciation for art if you have no one to share light with you?
This particular poem reads almost theatrically, as if O’Hara was setting a stage and the descriptions of surroundings (as blurred as they are) were stage directions. The accessibility and inclusion of the reader in this very private moment also blurs the lines between artist and viewer/reader, which is something characteristic of artists of the Fluxus movement. Without the barrier, or the literary triangle, of piece/author or artist/viewer or reader, the taxonomy of art becomes muddled, and one does not know if they have read or actually experienced the fluent emotion of such a beautiful piece.
The confluence of these three art forms as represented in Frank O’Hara’s poetry is profound—together, they create a template for archiving queer desire and the urgency of human motion. Jorge Luis Borges, in his short story “Pierre Manard, Autor de Don Quixote”, stated that there are no original stories anymore, just stories that have been recycled, retold, and reconsidered. This concept, though originally applied to Cervantes’ magnum opus Don Quixote, is applicable to all kind of revolutionary and reactionary art that forks from another or, in this case, washes over one another, mingles, and decommodifies. Because of the nature of heteronormative traditional archive, art also makes a wonderful space for documenting histories that would otherwise be erased. In the case of Frank O’Hara, his experience as a queer art reviewer in the 1960s is forever recorded and archived through “Having a Coke With You” and other love poems, of the which there were many. His spontaneity and directness in poetics allowed his work to be a direct representation of plein air city life, where the traffic acts exactly like the sky, love is manifested in city dwellings, and divine ones are neither flesh nor metal.

source: http://www.xomba.com/fluxus_type_thing_review_frank_ohara

Art_Detox-Litsa_Spathi_May_2010

2010-05-13T04:04:00.001-07:00

Art Detox Hemelvaart Performance by Nobody/Litsa Spathi

Yoko Ono's speech to Mayors For Peace, May 4th 2010

2010-05-13T00:35:00.001-07:00

MAYORS OF THE WORLD FOR PEACE SPEECH:
POWER TO THE PEOPLE
Yoko Ono Lennon, May 4th, 2010

We are gathering here this evening with one concern all of us have. What can we do to stop Hiroshima and Nagasaki from being repeated again to destroy the lives on this planet? This time, it will not be two cities. It will be the world.

It seems the choices we have are either to blow up the planet with all its lives, or stay alive maimed, and slowly die from cancer or other unpronounceable ailments we don't have the cure for yet. Of course, there is another choice. A good one, the one we are all hoping for. But it's up to us to do something about it. There is no big powers we can count on.

The governments of the world owe their very existence to the backing of powerful corporations, so, sadly, their initial allegiance will have to be to the corporations, not to the people.

Remember Mad Cow disease? It was covered up for ten years in the United Kingdom, while people were dying from it and not knowing why. At the midst of it, a minister demonstrated on TV to show how it was safe for him and his son to eat beef. This was made as a strong gesture of assurance to the people! People were in a shock, watching that program on TV, still not wanting to believe that a minister of a powerful position may have to comply to the wishes of corporations even at the risk of endangering people's lives - and in this case, his son's. Yes. All of us are good at burying our heads in the sand.

I've read a very interesting article a few years ago by Michael Fitzgerald called Militarism:

Fitzgerald spoke of being the son of a working class Navy man, and has realized how millions of Americans depended on the permanent war economy for their livelihoods - not limited to people in the military, but people who worked as defense contractors and their employees. "A person cannot be elected to be the President of the country, unless they are supported and voted by the military and defense Industries," he says. Therefore, "if the President does not take the nation to war, he will not be able to stay President." The article refers to the fact that Lyndon Johnson said, privately, he feared impeachment if he pulled out of Vietnam. Well, that's a hell of a statement. If some people immediately wished to bury their heads in the sand again, I understood why.

Most recently, last week, to be exact, the State of Arizona shocked the world by announcing a new law, which seemed predictablly, to point to a very grave future of this country, and for the people who are still holding on to the American dream. The American dream once was a dream for all world citizens. And this announcement from Arizona confirmed the worst to us. John Cory immediately hit back with a strong article called "STORY IN SIX WORDS." . He mentioned that there was a legend that a colleague once bet Hemingway he could not write a story in ten words or less. Hemingway used six: "For sale. Baby shoes. Never used." John Cory wrote his own six words at the end of his article: "For sale - By owner - American Dream."

But, when it was at the darkest, something incredible happened. Our dream was not over yet! It took such a sad situation for people of America to stand up. But we did.

An ocean of people protested Arizona's new law on May Day in every American city right after the law was announced. One light, a big one, was lit in the world of darkness. Now we know where we are going - towards the light, together. No more burying our heads in the sand!

In such a historical moment, it is very important that the tragedy of Hiroshima and Nagasaki be brought up again as a reminder of what can happen to the world if we forget, and fall back to the world of darkness.

Mayors of the World, Thank you for being here in this room, at this very historical moment in America, to encourage and inspire all of us - that we can do it! What the big power of the government can't do, we can. We of this planet are still in our embryonic stage. But with your efforts and the strong wishes of the people of the world, I know we can and we will create a peaceful world for ourselves and for this planet.

One day, not too far in the future, we will see ourselves living peacefully and having fun together on this planet without War. Let's look forward to that day and start working intelligently, to make it happen. Clearly, if the whole world stood up and spoke out for World Peace, we'll get it.

Please pass my message to the people of your towns and the cities - I say to them that we can do it. We can do it together. With your help, with the help of the mayors of the world, our voice will be made still stronger. We are the Family of Peace.

Ladies and Gentlemen, Thank you again, for your wisdom and courage to speak out as the Mayors of the World. You are opening the door to many professional people who will learn from your stand.

Let's all stay well till we achieve World Peace.

POWER TO THE PEOPLE!

Yoko Ono Lennon
May 2010, new york city.

Das Theater ist auf der Straße - Die Happenings von Wolf Vostell

2010-05-04T12:24:00.000-07:00

Wolf Vostell
Wolf Vostell während des Happenings Die Brotvermessung an der Kölner Oper
15.3.1969

Das Theater ist auf der Straße - Die Happenings von Wolf Vostell

Museum Morsbroich - Germany

06. Juni 2010 - 15. August 2010
Eröffnung: Sonntag, den 6. Juni 2010, um 12 Uhr

Wolf Vostell (Leverkusen 1932–1998 Berlin) gelang es durch seine herausragende Innovationsfähigkeit und sein ausgeprägtes Kommunikationstalent Bildende Künstler, Schriftsteller und Musiker aus aller Welt zu vernetzen und in kollektive Aktionen einzubinden. Zwischen 1954 und 1988 realisierte er über 50 Happenings. Vostells bahnbrechender Schritt aus dem Atelier hinaus auf die Straße ebnete den Weg für Ereignisse (Happenings), die seine Mitmenschen in den künstlerischen Prozess einbezogen, um sie zu kreativem Handeln in der Gesellschaft zu bewegen.

Die Ausstellung ist eine Kooperation mit dem spanischen Consorcio Museo Vostell Malpartida im Rahmen der Projektreihe Europäische Partnerschaften der Kunststiftung NRW und des Goethe-Instituts.

Sie präsentiert als große Überblicksschau Vostells collageartig komponierte Happenings, die in ihrer Multimedialität eine Verbindung von bildkünstlerischen, musikalischen und theatralischen Ausdrucksformen schaffen. Vostells Skizzen und Happening-Partituren, Manifeste, Foto-, Film- und Tondokumente aus Vostells Happening-Archiv in Malpartida treffen in der Ausstellung auf eine Vielzahl weiterer hochkarätiger Leihgaben: Happening-Relikte, im Kontext der Happenings entstandene Objektbilder und Skulpturen sowie größere Environments. Sie zeigen Wolf Vostell als allseits treibende Kraft und Getriebenen des ganzheitlichen Projekts einer Verbindung von Kunst und Leben.

Die Ausstellung wird kuratiert von Fritz Emslander (Museum Morsbroich) und José Antonio Agúndez Garcia (Consorcio Museo Vostell Malpartida).

Es erscheint ein Katalog in deutscher und spanischer Sprache.

Unter dem Titel Wolf Vostell - Reise nach Italien präsentiert im zeitlichen Vorfeld der Austellung das Goethe-Institut Mailand in Zusammenarbeit mit der Fondazione Mudima und dem Museo Vostell Malpartida eine Retrospektive des 1998 verstorbenen Wolf Vostell. Die Ausstellung ist vom 28. April bis 28. Mai 2010 in der Fondazione Mudima in Mailand zu sehen.

Weitere Informationen:

Museo Vostell Malpartida: http://www.museovostell.org/

Goethe-Institut Mailand: http://www.goethe.de/ins/it/mai/kue/de5589521.htm

Fondazione Mudima: http://www.mudima.net/

Ray Johnson : The Tutelary Years of Ray Johnson 1943-1967

2010-05-04T04:21:00.000-07:00

From BMC to NYC - The Tutelary Years of Ray Johnson 1943-1967. Issued by Black Mountain College - Museum Arts Center. Published in 2010 (ISBN 0-9774138-2-9). The 48 pages thick booklet has several articles in it and is highly illustrated in full color. The show was curated by Sebastian Matthews.

The catalogue includes these articles:

Message(s) in a Bottle - Notes of an Unlikely Curator (Sebastian Matthews)

My Ray - A personal Recollection (Arthur Secunda)

How to make an artist - The teaching of Josef Albers and Ray Johnson's Work (Julie J. Thomson)

Code Word; Ray (Kate Erin Dempsey)

Ray Johnson Aboveboard (William S. Wilson)

Illustration in the catalogue on page 17 : RAY in Josef Albers'class at Black Mountain College 1945-48 , Photo by Hazel Larsen Archer.

The catalogue contains illustrations that are new to me. Probably because the writers of the articles show some works from their collections.

Fluxus Speaks (1990)

2010-05-01T23:59:00.000-07:00

Exhibition at the Stendhal Gallery

2010-04-25T22:57:00.000-07:00

Find more videos like this on International Union of Mail-Artists

Dadaland, Fluxus, Mail-Art and Rubber Stamps. Video of the exhibition at the Stendhal Gallery, New York. Curator: John Held Jr. April 15th till May 29th 2010. Video by Ruud Janssen

New books

2010-04-25T11:49:00.001-07:00

On the Webshop from TAM-Publications (see besides this text) you will notice that two new books bave been published this month:

1. The lecture I gave at the Stendhal Gallery in New York was based on two sources: The essay I wrote for the Gallery and a slideshow I used at the Willem de Kooning Art Academy. I combined these two sources. The lecture was recorded on video by 3 sources (Mark Bloch, USA - Larry Miller - USA, Cecil Touchon - Canada). To make the sources available I made a 110 pages book out of these. Download of the files is currently for free.

2. The IUOMA was 20 years old. The period 1988-2008 is documented with a book containing texts by Ruud Janssen, Vittore Baroni, Wilma Duguay, Tulio Restrepo, Geert de Decker and John held Jr. Lots of illustration from the rich history of the IUOMA. Also for this book the material the download will be free for the first time.

see: http://stores.lulu.com/iuoma

FRANTICHAM'S ASSEMBLING BOX NR 2

2010-03-27T08:17:00.001-07:00

VISUAL POETRY AND WORKS INFLUENCED BY FLUXUS

A5 box with contributions from 23 invited artists
Visual poetry, collages, prints, multiples and objects
This is a project on invitation only
40 copies signed and numbered 1/40 to 40/40
Only 15 copies available for sale
Price: 70 euro / 100 $ / 60 UK st.

Contributions from:
Fernando Aguiar, Portugal - Antic-Ham, South Korea - Anna Banana, Canada - Vittore Baroni, Italy
Robert Brandy, Luxembourg _ Keith Buchholz, USA - Bruno Chiarlone, Italy
David Dellafiora, Australia - Klaus Peter Dencker, Germany - Klaus Groh, Germany - Susanna Lakner, Germany
Pascal lenoir, France - Jim Leftwich, USA - Serse Luigetti, Italy - mIEKAL aND, USA
Bernd Reichert, Belgium - Gianni Simone, Japan - Litsa Spathi, Germany - Pete Spence, Australia
Carol Stetser, USA - Sztuka Fabryka, Belgium - Thierry Tillier, Belgium - Francis Van Maele, Ireland -

You can also order by email at info@redfoxpress.com

Exploring Intermedia - James Clegg

2010-03-27T01:03:00.000-07:00

How many ways was Fluxus ahead of its time?

(What follows covers a large amount of ground and so I apologise for the current malnourishment of references and quotations)

There are a lot of strange ideological assumptions underlying my question here. Perhaps the most important is that it assumes that time is a singular kind of line towards progress that might allow me to look at an historical movement like Fluxus and say, “you know, given the historical trajectory of such-and-such, Fluxus was amazing!” But this idea of time has been largely discredited, it is a construct that doesn’t fit at all with a reality that is teaming in all kinds of ‘directions’. Moreover, it seems completely inconsistent with Fluxus, which was amazing because it emphasised that reality was teaming in all directions, experienced and fleeting, rather than trying to section off neat little parts of it. But, it was not amazing because it pre-existed a singular development of artistic practices (there isn’t one, outside the fabrications of art history or the particular gloss of certain exhibitions).

My question is ideological for less philosophical reasons too. It allows me to introduce words such as ‘amazing’, which I’ve done here none too subtly. To say something was ahead of its time implies it was not only more advanced, but also better from our standpoint today. This doesn’t help to found an objective study as I’m trying to do here, and we must really think carefully about the implications of the way we have conceived of our standpoint today. Whose standpoint is this? Who benefits from it? What does it include or preclude from what we consider to be ‘today’?

So why ask this question at all? Well, despite the worrying nature of some of these problems, we still need some way of orientating ourselves. Regrettably understanding relies on a certain ability to focus on somethings and ignore others (what we’re wanting to do is find different things to focus on, so hopefully we stop ignoring other important things. A study is always relative to many, many others – and broader cultural ideas too. We don’t need to say how things are, but supplement the picture created by all these other forms of understanding in a way we feel might make up for some omissions.)

An Image of the way we need to stop thinking!

Thinking about trends within contemporary art and we are given a list of adjectives that seem to correspond to a lot of what Intermedia and Fluxus was particularly good at highlighting, so many years ago: Relational Aesthetics, Everyday life, Networks, Global Art, Appropriation, Re-enactments, New Media. And this is why such a question, though problematic, might help lead us on to more helpful questions in the future.

Anna Dezeuze has written a particularly good article about how Fluxus was in many ways more radical than the conception of relational aesthetics advocated by Nicholas Bourriaud (also see Dezeuze 2006). Here Dezeuze highlights the way that Fluxus artists such as George Brecht and Alison Knowles challenged institutional conventions that separate everyday life and art. Brecht’s Three Chair Event for example, raises questions that are still pertinent today (see my review of a recent exhibition in Glasgow called votive).

Fluxus works could also be considered open works, in that the event scores used by the artists require the participation of others. The group of artists making Fluxus performances could obviously be considered a network too, but I think the key point here is that Fluxus works are never supposed to be autonomous works of art. In this way, they are radically different from the way objects are presented in Galleries behind display cases or as untouchable wall pieces – as if complete without the actions of people (though obviously concealing the actions of those who ‘perform’ the works autonomy into being by not touching it, guarding it, cleaning around it, labeling it, speaking about it in particular ways etc.)

Here also, there is more than a passing connection to globalization (reference to be added). The work of Nam June Paik, for example, seems always to be discussed in relation to the speed of Global relationships, and indeed the artists aspirations are always to transcend local cultural boundaries. Paik was himself indicative of the migratory types of artist making up Fluxus, which we might remember was an International Movement. Allan Kaprow was also (later) keenly interested in the work of Marshal McLuhan, who was important in opening up discussions on The Global Village. McLuhan’s excentric work, written with Bruce A. Powers, made a strange argument about the changing of humanity’s brain orientation towards a state less rational and more creative – an interesting but somewhat strange study compare to the ludic activities of Fluxus.

Finally, as the Intermedia programme pursued in Iowa and for a long time led by Hans Breder, and considering Paik and Knowles pioneering of Video Art, attests, Fluxus was also open to media, including new media. Not being defined by products Fluxus didn’t really discriminate art forms and therefore opened up opportunities for an exploration of new technologies. This can be seen in the work of Pat Badani who is one of the few artists to openly acknowledge the important influence of Fluxus on her own work.

So, how many ways was Fluxus ahead of its time? Well, as you can see, it seems to link to many of the art-worlds current obsessions, and in many ways it remains more complex and challenging that a lot of what preceded it (and my long term commitment to it must be able to expand on this and explore it much further). I’m certain that my list here could also be expanded in lots of different directions. For now, let’s think about why Fluxus was ahead of its time in so many ways. And here, I think we must return to our acknowledgement of the ideological assumptions our guiding question made… and here is a speculative answer:

What if Fluxus seems so ‘ahead of its time’ because it broke with so many rules of art? Because art doesn’t progress in any simple way these rules weren’t broken and broken for good, but were more subtly reinstated (and never really disappeared anyway) by practices which require art to conform to certain ‘rules’, or lets say models, in order to form a system that requires a cultural, academic, social and aesthetic economy to be in place. It requires the trading of objects, and here I don’t mean ‘objects’ in a strict sense of material things, but also objects of thought, objects of style … relatively solid units that can be exchanged. How many times have you read a gallery blurb in order to find out the ‘idea behind’ a work of art. Isn’t this to establish the terms of your relationship with it? Isn’t it to help you confirm (even if by completely disagreeing with it) what looking at the artwork can give you? Mmmm… well as I borrow techniques for studying these questions from fields like Anthropology I might be able to offer a much richer account of this process (peoples’ actually very complex relationship with things, with art). But this seems like a reasonable model, something to work with. Fluxus seemed so ‘ahead of its time’ because it traversed so many boundaries that the tangible ‘ideas’ and physical ‘untouchable’ artworks that institutions (and not just galleries but places of art instruction and education) keep restoring. We’re not going forward, or backward, but territories and objects are constantly being marked out against the liminal reality Fluxus tried to highlight. I think Fluxus seems so ‘ahead of its time’ because it remains a relitively open pool of ideas to which we can return (and hopefully in order to re-enact rather than simply historicise) that help to expose restrictions in artistic practices and ways of thinking that might always be there as part of the general economy that is art.

(I might be idealising Fluxus here. I’m conscious of that, but need to do a lot more before I can make a more subtle and informed series of claims.)

References
•Dezeuze, Anna (2006) Everyday life, ‘relational aesthetics’ and the ‘transfiguration of the commonplace’. In Journal of Visual Art Practice, 5, 3. pp 143-152.

source: http://blog.eca.ac.uk/exploringintermedia/2010/03/26/how-many-ways-was-fluxus-ahead-of-its-time/

Art and Life

2010-03-27T00:57:00.000-07:00

Transfiguration of the Commonplace
Anna Dezeuze -Variant issue 22

The Old 'Art and Life' Chestnut

'Art is what makes life more interesting than art.' Such was the apt definition provided by Robert Filliou, a French artist who was affiliated to the Fluxus group in the 1960s.1 The relation between art and life has long been a recurrent trope of aesthetics and artistic practice of various kinds, and the 1960s was a period when artists seemed particularly concerned with this issue. Robert Rauschenberg, for example, famously said: 'Painting relates to both art and life. ... (I try to work in that gap between the two).'2 Allan Kaprow, the inventor of 'happenings,' stated on his part that 'the line between art and life should be kept as fluid, and perhaps indistinct, as possible.'3
If it is by now widely acknowledged that the opening of art to life in the 1960s radically changed the definition of art, then these three statements alone point to important differences between the forms that this relation (between art and life) can take. Acting in the gap between art and life like Rauschenberg does not imply the same kind of activity as creating works which, according to Filliou, serve somehow as marginal tools to make life more interesting than art. And surely there is quite a substantial distinction between keeping a line fluid, and blurring boundaries altogether, even if Kaprow tentatively aligns one with another.
My contention is that the reasons why these differences are, more often than not, neglected by art historians and philosophers alike is that discussions tend to forget the other term of the relationship. Instead of asking 'what is art?,' shouldn't we be asking: what is life? This question is obviously much too general to be answered by any one single person, and could indeed be considered as the main question of philosophy and other forms of enquiry. When it is posed in a specific context, however, a more precise focus can be singled out for discussion. In the cases of Rauschenberg, Kaprow and Filliou, for example, it is clear that their concerns lay specifically in the realm of everyday life, and in particular the everyday life that had been excluded so forcefully by the Abstract Expressionist generation of painters and Clement Greenberg's formalist criticism.
In order to explore the relations between art and what has variously been called the everyday, the commonplace, the ordinary, the banal, I will be referring in particular to two texts: Arthur Danto's landmark work, The Transfiguration of the Commonplace, and a more recent book by the French curator and critic Nicolas Bourriaud, Relational Aesthetics. While sketching out the ways in which these two authors responded to the emergence of the everyday in artistic practices ranging from Andy Warhol and Fluxus to 1990s contemporary art, I will also examine their ideas in the light of theories of everyday life, in particular Michel de Certeau's 1980 Practice of Everyday Life. Specific artistic practices will be the guiding thread in this discussion, for it is artists who pose the questions that aesthetics struggle to answer.

The Conditions of Transfiguration
Between art and everyday life, there is no difference ... The difference between a chair by Duchamp and one of my chairs could be that Duchamp's chair is on a pedestal and mine can still be used.
George Brecht4

One of Danto's greatest achievements lies in his analysis of the sudden visibility of the everyday in 1960s art. Danto has often recounted how seeing Warhol's Brillo Boxes at the Stable Gallery in 1964 was the trigger for his reflections on the differences between artworks and everyday objects. The Warhol Boxes, he explains in the introduction to The Transfiguration of the Commonplace, 'so totally resemble what by common consent are not art works' that they 'make the question of definition urgent.'5 Analysing key notions of illusionism, mimesis, belief, interpretation, style and expression, Danto develops the argument that one of the differences between a Brillo box and the new 'Brillo-box-as-work-of-art' is the fact that the artwork takes the non-artwork as its subject-matter and simultaneously makes a point about how this subject-matter is presented. The mode of representation thus creates a surplus meaning which does not allow the two objects to be equated one with another.
'Make a salad.' This 1963 Proposition by Alison Knowles is cited by Arthur Danto in a recent essay on Fluxus as one of many examples of the group's engagement with everyday life. In this discussion, Danto also quotes Brecht's statement (cited above) about the difference between his chairs and Duchamp's readymades. Brecht's contribution to the 1961 exhibition Environment, Situations, Spaces (Six Artists), at the Martha Jackson Gallery in New York, was the placement of three different chairs in various parts of the gallery. Since viewers had no indication that these chairs were part of an artwork, some visitors sat on them without a second thought, much to Brecht's satisfaction.
In the same essay, Danto extends to Fluxus his earlier discussion of Pop art, revisiting specific ideas from The Transfiguration of the Commonplace which, indeed, seem to fit Fluxus like a glove. In particular, Danto points to the fact that in the 1960s he shared with Fluxus an interest in Zen, and he reproduces a quote by Zen Buddhist Ching Yuan which he had included in The Transfiguration of the Commonplace:
Before I had studied Zen for thirty years, I saw mountains as mountains and waters as waters. When I arrived at a more intimate knowledge, I came to the point where I saw that mountains are not mountains and waters are not waters. But now I have got to the very substance I am at rest. For it is just that I saw mountains again as mountains and waters once again as waters.6
The idea that there is nothing internal to these three experiences which distinguishes them obviously from one another was in tune with Danto's preoccupations with the absence of differences between artworks and mere things. What, indeed, is the difference between performing Knowles' instruction and the act of making a salad that many of us regularly perform? As in the case of Warhol's Brillo Boxes, Danto concludes:
What Fluxus helped us see is that no theory of art could help us pick out which were the artworks, since art can resemble reality to any chosen degree. Fluxus was right that the question is not which are the art works, but how we view anything if we see it as art.7
In their critical study of Danto's aesthetics, Greg Horowitz and Tom Huhn have discussed the conditions required for this 'transfiguration' of the everyday into art.8 The question they ask is the following: does Pop according to Danto allow the everyday to take over art ('a return of the everyday in art') or is it rather a moment in which art seizes the everyday for its purposes ('a return to the everyday by art')? If, as in the former, Pop marks a return of the everyday in art, then it means that there is no possibility of its redemption, since transfiguration can only occur when there is a distance that allows the everyday to be presented as art. Pop, Horowitz and Huhn conclude, therefore needs to be a return to the everyday by art in order to remain art. If Pop artists did embrace the everyday, then, in contrast with Abstract Expressionists before them, they nevertheless kept a critical distance from it by using it for other purposes than presenting the raw everydayness of their material - in order, for example, to comment simultaneously about the state of art, the accelerating production and increasing sophistication of packaging and advertising.9 When Danto claims that Warhol and Fluxus question 'how we view anything if we see it as art,' he is thus implicitly positing this distance from the everyday. As Horowitz and Huhn suggest, the experience which allows the viewer to bind art and the everyday according to Danto can only function if this distance is introduced even before any artistic process takes place: in order to make the everyday available for aesthetic experience, the artist, and the viewer, need to have detached one specific aspect of the commonplace (its novelty, its aesthetic qualities, its strangeness ... ) from its original 'rawness'.
While I agree that this 'pre-aestheticising' process operates in Pop, I would like to argue that Fluxus works such as Brecht's Three Chair Events or Knowles' Proposition shrink the distance presumed by Danto, in order to explore the rawness which aesthetics seeks to exclude for the sake of transfiguration. This aesthetic distance was preserved by Danto, and the Pop artists, by eliminating one particular aspect of the everyday's rawness: use and habit. Brecht has recounted how once he tried to sit down on the chair included in Rauschenberg's 1960 combine, Pilgrim, only to be stopped and told that he could not. Recalling his frustration, Brecht explained: 'After all, if it's a chair why shouldn't you sit in it?'10 Unlike Brecht's, Rauschenberg's chair can no more revert to its initial function than Warhol's painted wood Brillo boxes. By shifting the emphasis from object to performance, Fluxus works emphasise use and habit, and thus establish a radically different relation to the commonplace. Fluxus picked up another aspect of Zen: the full embrace of everyday activities such as eating, drinking and sleeping. For, whether Ching Yuan saw mountains as mountains or whether he saw mountains as not mountains would never have prevented him from climbing one of them when he wanted to go for a walk. In doing so, he may have been performing a Fluxus score by Takehisa Kosugi (Theatre Music, c. 1963) which simply reads: 'Keep walking intently.'

Relational Aesthetics
I started to make things so that people could use them ... [My work] is not meant to be put out with other sculpture or like another relic to be looked at, but you have to use it ...
Rirkrit Tiravanija11

Thirty years after the birth of Fluxus in 1962, artist Rirkrit Tiravanija presented Untitled (Free) at the 303 gallery in New York, a work in which he decided to put all the things he found in the storeroom and office into the gallery itself, using the storeroom to cook Thai curries for the visitors to the gallery and leaving the leftovers, kitchen utensils and used food packets in the gallery when he was not here. This work is typical of what Nicolas Bourriaud called a new 'relational art,' which requires a new kind of 'relational aesthetics' in order to account for its emergence and to describe its characteristics. Relational art, according to Bourriaud, is characterised by the fact that it takes 'as its starting point human relations and their social context, as opposed to autonomous and exclusive art.'12 Hence, relational aesthetics must be 'an aesthetic theory consisting in judging artworks in terms of the inter-human relations which they show, produce, or give rise to.'13
Bourriaud's relational aesthetics could be seen as an alternative to Danto's transfiguration of the commonplace because it seems to focus precisely on the terms which the latter excludes. Bourriaud for example explains that contemporary works such as Tiravanija's should not be considered as spaces to be walked through but instead as durations to be experienced, where the performative aspect of the work is more important than either objects to be viewed in space or the space of the gallery itself. Focusing on the relations between the artist and the gallery visitors, the interactions between the guests, and the atmosphere created by Tiravanija's cooking obviously shifts the emphasis away from the finished object towards the process, the performance, the behaviours which emerge from the artist's everyday intervention. It is much more difficult to define what the form of the work actually consists in. Whereas Danto systematically tried to define the Fluxus and Pop works as ontological entities, Bourriaud is content with describing 'form' as nothing more than a 'coherent plane' on which heterogeneous entities can meet; it must be unstable, open to exchange and dialogue.14
Instead of an opposition between art and the everyday articulated in the transfiguration of the commonplace, Bourriaud describes art as a 'social interstice.' Bourriaud borrows the term 'interstice' from Marx, who used it to describe exchange spaces which can escape from the dominant capitalist economy (barter is one of his examples). For Bourriaud, artworks exist in such a space, a space that is part of the global system but nonetheless suggests the possibility of alternative exchanges. Bourriaud singles out in the global capitalist system one particular aspect of everyday life which art can resist by multiplying new 'social interstices': the commercialisation and spectacularisation of inter-personal relations in everyday life.
By emphasising events, performance, and behaviours; alternative modes of exchange over unusable, commodified objects; by privileging flexible notions of form instead of trying to define art, Bourriaud's relational aesthetics seem to be more able to describe the nature of the everyday in works by Tiravanija and Fluxus alike. Yet, if Danto's aesthetics may be too restricted to encompass the variety of relations between art and everyday life, Bourriaud's ideas, for their part, suffer from not being precise enough. There are many obvious reasons for this: Bourriaud is a critic rather than a philosopher, an advocate rather than an analyst of these artists, and he is clearly implicated in the commercial and institutional art world (he is the co-director of the Palais de Tokyo, which was founded a few years ago as an institutional showcase for contemporary art in Paris). Perhaps there is even a deliberate decision on the part of Bourriaud to elude, for the sake of packaging a new generation of artists, the crucial questions of how exactly inter-personal relations have become commercialised and spectacularised, and how getting together to have a curry with Tiravanija somehow resists this state of things. What I would like to underline here is that, despite his apparent embrace of the everyday, Bourriaud, like Danto, seems to take for granted a universal definition of the commonplace. Only by retrieving the specificity of the everyday can the works discussed by Bourriaud and Danto be extracted from the rhetorical uses to which they have been subjected.

Describing the Everyday
If [Michel de Certeau's] Practice of Everyday Life is seen as attempting to register the poiesis of everyday life through poetics, then it is a poetics that articulates activities rather than expresses identities - a poetics of uses rather than users.
Ben Highmore15

Knowles' proposition to 'make a salad' relates to an act that we perform in our everyday life, and the form it takes evokes very directly an object of everyday life: the recipe. In her study of cooking as a practice of everyday life, Luce Giard explains that:
In every language, recipes comprise a kind of minimal text, defined by its internal economy, its concision and its low degree of ambiguity.16
Knowles' Proposition is certainly presented in a concise and minimal format, but it does not, however, provide any of the information which is considered to be 'indispensable' in a recipe: it states neither the ingredients nor the utensils and techniques to be used, and the name of the prepared dish is generic rather than particular, leaving the whole process as ambiguous as possible (Knowles says 'salad' rather than 'Greek salad,' or 'salade niçoise,' for example). Thus, while we can conclude that Knowles' piece is actually totally useless as a recipe, we can also see how it uses the format of the recipes to explore key characteristics that are relevant both to Fluxus and to cooking. Four of these dimensions can be briefly outlined here. Firstly, authorship for recipes is usually collective, if not anonymous. Similarly, Fluxus as a group explored ways of undermining the highly personalised traditional notions of authorship both through collective production and an increased reliance on reader/spectator participation. Secondly, recipes can be transmitted orally as well as through publications, which is also the case for many Fluxus scores: you do not need Knowles' book to own Proposition. Swedish folklore specialist and Fluxus artist Bengt af Klintberg highlighted the relations between these two aspects of cooking when he explained that Fluxus 'reacted against the pompous image of the artist as a genius with a unique, personal style' by creating 'simple pieces filled with energy and humour, pieces without any personal stylistic features, pieces that could be transmitted orally just like folklore and performed by everyone who wanted to.'17
The third aspect of recipes which Knowles' Proposition brings to the fore is the complex relations which recipes set up between process and result. Any cook knows that sometimes, for practical reasons, you may need to replace one ingredient by another, but of course, if you replace too many ingredients, then it becomes a whole new recipe. In Fluxus pieces, which emerged from the context of experimental music, this relation between the specific and the general is akin to the relation between a musical score and the ways of performing it. How badly does a score by Mozart need to be played before ceasing to be a Mozart piece? This complex question is central to any study of musical performance. The performative dimension of the recipe is closely linked to the fourth, and final, characteristic which I would like to list here. The recipe is one tool among others within a process, and cannot be considered as an isolated object: it is necessarily part of a wider, more complex, network which includes ingredients, implements, spaces, family life, tradition and innovation, to cite only some of the terms analysed by Giard.
Thus, viewed from the perspective of art, Knowles' work questions traditional notions of authorship and the status of the artwork, but if it were to be encountered in a recipe book, for example, it may be read as liberating for the cook. By reducing the instructions to a generic invitation, Knowles frees cooks from the stringent demands of the recipe, which dictate a type of behaviour and emphasise the finished product, to be judged according to absolute criteria of quality. Everyday life becomes a practice to be explored, rather than a boring routine that needs to be transfigured by art.
The term 'practice of everyday life' is a translation of the title of Michel de Certeau's 1980 L'Invention du quotidien (literally the 'invention' of the everyday), and it was in the second volume of this book that Luce Giard's analysis of cooking was included. In Relational Aesthetics, Bourriaud actually refers to de Certeau and the 'invention du quotidien' when he writes about relational practices such as Tiravanija's. For example, Bourriaud claims that the practice of everyday life is 'not an object less worthy of attention' than 'the messianic utopias' specific to modern art.18 In this opposition between everyday practices and 'messianic utopias,' Bourriaud follows de Certeau's distinction between tactics and strategy. Strategy, according to de Certeau, is a means of calculation and manipulation in order to gain power over another, in situations where the distinction between one's own space and the other's is clear-cut. In contrast, tactics describe actions which take place solely within the 'other's space' because it is impossible to isolate the two spaces from each other. The 'interstice' occupied by relational art according to Bourriaud seems to be the very space of everyday life in which de Certeau places tactics, those everyday ruses with which some members of society 'tinker' with the dominant social order for it to work in their favour.19 The question of whether relational art is politically radical or not is thus closely related to the general issue of whether, as de Certeau claims, certain tactical practice can effectively subvert the everyday life in which they are embedded.
De Certeau's considerable contribution to the study of everyday life has been not only to highlight the complexity of everyday practices such as cooking, walking or inhabiting living spaces, but also to reflect on the methods for studying these practices. As Ben Highmore has explained, de Certeau sought to create a general poetics of everyday life which aims at achieving the generality of a science without losing sight of the singularity of the actual - an issue that resonates with Fluxus event scores which oscillate between the extreme generality of the instruction and the inevitable specificity of each individual performance of its terms.20 De Certeau's poetics successfully capture the singularity of everyday life, but encounter problems when trying to theorise the political, subversive potential of its practices. This issue, which is one of the central problems of studies of everyday life throughout the twentieth century, plagues Bourriaud's relational aesthetics as well. To analyse Bourriaud's text, it would thus be useful to start by unpacking the models of everyday life to which he is referring. In the process, one would find that he seems to be combining de Certeau's non-oppositional theorisation with references to Situationist thinkers such as Guy Debord and Henri Lefebvre, who came from a Marxist tradition obviously bent on a transformation of capitalist society.
The tension between conflicting models of the 'critique of everyday life' is arguably inherent to the very works acclaimed by Bourriaud. Janet Kraynak has aptly criticised discourses such as Bourriaud's which describe Tiravanija's work as generous offerings providing an alternative exchange logic to commodity fetishism.21 Tiravanija's art, Kraynak argues, occupies an ambiguous position which exceeds such simplistic celebrations of a supposed return of everyday life in art. On the one hand, she explains, Tiravanija's work embraces the shift in the new globalised economy from the production and exchange of material objects to that of an equally alienating 'symbolic capital'. On the other hand, however, it simultaneously reveals the increased homogenisation of cultures as they enter the new symbolic order of global capitalism. Where Fluxus could still dream of a de-commodified everyday life based on collaboration, participation and other modes of 'folkloric' exchange, 'relational art' in the 1990s marked an embrace, rather than a rejection, of the museum, as well as a return to traditional modes of authorship - Tiravanija's presence, as Kraynak points out, is by now acknowledged to be a necessary aspect of his work.

Conclusion
Both Danto's Transfiguration of the Commonplace and Bourriaud's Relational Aesthetics are significant attempts to grapple with the new relation between art and life explored by successive generations of artists. While Danto's reflections successfully highlight the importance of the everyday in works by Warhol or Fluxus, I have suggested that his ontological enquiry is restricted by the static polarity it sets up between art and a commonplace which remains in essence everything that is not art. Bourriaud's definition of relational aesthetics introduced post-structuralist, Deleuzian notions of flow and dynamic forms that are more amenable to capture the nature of practices by Fluxus or Tiravanija. Nevertheless, as I have shown, the kind of everyday practices which Bourriaud celebrates remains sketchy, as he refuses to address the ways in which they participate in, or resist, a dominant social order. Studies of everyday life such as de Certeau's complement enquiries such as Danto's or Bourriaud's by disrupting reductive descriptions of a universal everyday and looking at the specificities of the practices with which art practices stand in dialogue.
Filliou's quip about art being what makes life more interesting than art may suggest that art should become less interesting - indeed, works such as Knowles' Proposition, Brecht's Three Chair Event or Tiravanija's meals, deliberately ask to be dismissed as unremarkable occurrences which exist in the same time and space as everyday activities, in a way that neither Rauschenberg's 'combines' nor Warhol's Brillo Boxes could ever dream of. At the same time, the important thing about Filliou's definition of art is that it exists as a dynamic, reversible movement, in which the artwork can make life more interesting not because it is as boring as life, but because life is at least as complex as art. It may seem paradoxical to conclude that we may need simple, often literal, forms of art to tell us about the complexity of everyday life. And it may seem rather pathetic that we need to be told that everyday life is complex in the first place. Yet the question of whether, and how, the everyday can be studied is in fact a complex topic in itself - a topic that requires a further discussion, over a salad or a Thai curry, it goes without saying.

Notes
1 Robert Filliou (1970) 'Interview', quoted in Robert Filliou: Génie sans talent, (2004) exh. cat. (Villeneuve d'Ascq: Musee d'Art Moderne Lille Métropole), back cover.
2 Robert Rauschenberg (1959) 'Untitled Statement,' in Dorothy C. Miller, ed., Sixteen Americans (New York: Museum of Modern Art), p.58.
3 Allan Kaprow (1966) Assemblages, Environments and Happenings (New York: Harry N. Abrams), p.188.
4 George Brecht (1965) 'A Conversation about Something Else: an Interview with George Brecht by Ben Vautier and Marcel Alocco,' in Identités, nos. 11-12; rep. in Henry Martin, ed. (1978) An Introduction to George Brecht's Book of the Tumbler on Fire (Milan: Multhipla edizioni), p.71.
5 Arthur Danto (1981) The Transfiguration of the Commonplace: a Philosophy of Art (Cambridge, MA, & London: Harvard University Press), p.vii.
6 Ching Yuan, in D.T. Suzuki, Zen Buddhism: Selected Writings of D.T. Suzuki, quoted by Danto (2002) 'The World as Warehouse: Fluxus and Philosophy,' in Jon Hendricks, ed., What's Fluxus? What's Not! Why., exh. cat. (Brasília: Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil), p.31. This passage is reproduced in The Transfiguration of the Commonplace, p. 133.
7 Danto, 'The World as Warehouse: Fluxus and Philosophy,' op. cit., 31.
8 Greg Horowitz and Tom Huhn (1998) 'The Wake of Art: Criticism, Philosophy and the ends of Taste,' in Greg Horowitz and Tom Huhn, eds., The Wake of Art: Criticism, Philosophy and the ends of Taste (Amsterdam: G+B Arts International), pp.1-56.
9 For such an analysis of these different aspects of Warhol's works, see Benjamin Buchloh (1989) 'Andy Warhol's One-dimensional Art, 1956-1966,' in Kynaston McShine, ed., Andy Warhol: a Retrospective, exh. cat. (New York: Museum of Modern Art), pp.39-61.
10 George Brecht (1967) 'Interview with Henry Martin,' in Art International, vol. XI, no. 9, rep. in Henry Martin, p.80.
11 Rirkrit Tiravanija, quoted in Janet Kraynak (1998) 'Rirkrit Tiravanija's Liability,' Documents, no. 13, p.36.
12 Nicolas Bourriaud (1998) Esthétique relationnelle (Dijon: Presses du réel), p.117 (my translation). An English translation by Simon Pleasance and Fronza Woods was published in 2002 (Relational Aesthetics, Dijon: Presses du réel).
13 Bourriaud, p.117.
14 Bourriaud, p.115.
15 Ben Highmore (2002) Everyday Life and Cultural Theory: An Introduction (London and New York: Routledge), p.156.
16 'Dans chaque langue, les recettes de cuisine composent une sorte de texte minimal, défini par son économie interne, sa concision et son faible degré d'équivocité.' Luce Giard (1980) 'Faire-la-cuisine,' in Michel de Certeau, Luce Giard, Pierre Mayol, L'Invention du quotidien, vol. 2: Habiter, Cuisiner (Paris: Gallimard), 1990 ed., p.303 (my translation).
17 Jean Sellem (1991) 'The Fluxus Outpost in Sweden: an Interview with Bengt af Klintberg', in Jean Sellem, ed., Fluxus Research, special issue of Lund Art Press, vol. 2, no. 2, p.69.
18 Bourriaud, p.14.
19 Michel de Certeau (1980) L'Invention du quotidien, vol. 1: Arts de faire (Paris: Gallimard), 1990 ed., p.xxxix.
20 Highmore, ch. 8. For more about the general and the specific in Fluxus scores, see Ina Blom (1992) 'The Intermedia Dynamic,' in Ken Friedman, ed., Fluxus Virus, 1962-1992, exh. cat. (Cologne: Galerie Schüppenhauer and Kölnischer Kunstverein), p.216.
21 Kraynak, pp.26-40.

Anna Dezeuze is a Research Fellow at the AHRB Research Centre for the Studies of Surrealism and its Legacies.

source: Variant issue 22 http://www.variant.org.uk/ variantmag@btinternet.com

Fluxus & Happening

2010-03-27T00:25:00.000-07:00

archives and collections (by J. Seegers)

This is a list of public and private collections with records of Fluxus artists, holdings of original Fluxus works and objects by individual Fluxus artists. These collections also include Fluxus multiples edited, designed and published by George Maciunas; Something Else Press books and multiples edited, designed and published by Dick Higgins; along with multiples and books published by such Fluxus-related publishers as Edition Block, Edition Hundertmark, Vice Versand or Editions Conz.

ARCHIVES OF AMERICAN ART
Ken Friedman Papers, 1969-1978
Materials relating to Friedman's career, his art and his involvement in Fluxus and Fluxus West, including correspondence; exhibition announcements; bulletins; newsletters; clippings; card files of names and addresses; postcards; catalogs; press releases; journals; notes; comic strips; printed materials; material for "Annotated Bibliography on Zen Buddhism"; a cassette tape; manuscripts; writings about art projects; Fluxus mailing lists; examples of correspondence art, stamp art, and newspaper collages; receipts; photographs and slides; brochures; and artifacts.

ARTPOOL
Artpool, founded in Budapest in 1979 by György Galántai and Julia Klaniczay was an attempt to create an alternative art institute. Artpool was established at a time when art forms out of keeping with the official cultural policy were denied access to the public. Subsequent to the political changes of 1989, Artpool, which already had an international reputation, was officially recognized and in 1992 the Artpool Art Research Center opened to the public with funding from the Budapest Municipal Council. The collection of sources covers 300 meters. The archive and library house primarily documents relating to the Hungarian avant-garde art movements of the 70s and 80s, as well as sources on the new international art trends of the past 30 years: Fluxus, performance, sound poetry, visual poetry, artists' bookwork, mail art, artists' stamps, artists' postcards, artists' periodicals, copy art, computer art and video art. A sound, a video, and a slide archive are also available to researchers. [reading] Geza Perneczky, 'The Artpool Archives. The Story of a Hungarian Art Collection', in New Hungarian Quarterly (1989) 192-196.

GETTY RESEARCH INSTITUTE
Jean Brown Collection Jean Brown and her husband Leonard, were early collectors of Dada and surrealistic ephemera. When Leonard died in 1971 and Jean moved to Massachusetts, her collection grew rapidly. Upon exhausting Dada and Surrealist sources, Brown acquired materials from those movements, especially Fluxus, mail art and concrete poetry, which grew out of Dada and Surrealism. Many of these artists worked on the fringes of the established museum and gallery system and showed their work in alternative spaces or created alternative distribution systems. Brown maintained close friendships with many of the artists whose work she collected, including George Maciunas, Dick Higgins, Ken Friedman, Peter Frank, and Rimma and Valery Gerlovin, to name a few. Brown became a part of the international mail art network. Every major mail artist sent her examples of their work. Eventually, she found it impossible to keep up with the quantity of mail she was receiving and by the mid-1980s had stopped answering their letters. After her dead in 1994 the collection was acquired by the Getty Center for the arts and Humanities. See also the website of To & From Davi Det Hompson Correspondents.
[finding aid] Inventory of the Jean Brown Papers, 1815-1995 (Bulk 1916-1985) / prepared by Lynda Bunting (1997), in the Special Collections of the Getty.
[interview] Jean Brown, interviewed by Richard Ca´ndida Smith and documented in the Art History Oral Documentation Project (Oral History Programme, University of California, Los Angeles, and the Getty Centre for the History of Art and the Humanities, 1993).

HARVARD UNIVERSITY ART MUSEUM
Barbara and Peter Moore Fluxus Collection In July, 2005 the Harvard University Art Museums announced the acquisition of the Barbara and Peter Moore Fluxus Collection. The Moore Collection is a large and comprehensive group of works assembled by Barbara and Peter Moore, both of whom were involved with the Fluxus movement as close friends and sometime collaborators with artist George Maciunas, the movement's principal organizer. [source: Resource Library]. The Barbara and Peter Moore Fluxus Collection features a remarkable range of Fluxus editions and multiples dating from the movement's inception in the early 1960s through the late 1970s. The Moore Collection consists of 121 works, including pieces by Yoko Ono, Claes Oldenburg, George Brecht, and Christo, among many others, as well as early and rare examples of many key multiples, a number of unique and rare works, and prototypes or models for editions.

HOOD MUSEUM OF ART
George Maciunas Memorial Collection The George Maciunas Memorial Collection was founded by Jan van der Marck, Director of Dartmouth College's Hopkins Center Art Museum and Galleries in 1978. A steering committee for the collection was established 'To honor George Maciunas and to bring together, as a tribute to this remarkable artist, a collection of works of art and documents to be held in trust at Dartmouth'. Members of the committee included many of Maciunas' friends such as Billie Maciunas, Jean Brown, John Cage, Jon Hendricks, Claes Oldenburg, and Nam June Paik. The collection consists of 479 works by Fluxus artists including Maciunas as well as many others.

MUSEUM AM OSTWALL
Sammlung Siegfried Cremer (I) The Museum am Ostwall houses important collections related to Fluxus. In 1988 the museum acquired the collection Feelisch. In the early ninties the museum was able to add part of the the collection of Siegfried Cremer. [catalogue] Dieter Daniels und Barbara John (Hrsg.), Sammlung Cremer. Bestandskatalog (Stuttgart : Edition Cantz 1991-1994) 3 vols. Vol. III was published on the occasdion of the exhibition 'Sammlung Cremer - Schrift und Bild', Museum am Ostwall, Dortmund (1994). Sammlung Feelisch [catalogue] Sammlung Feelisch, Museum am Ostwall / Text, Layout und Konzeption Peter Schmieder; red. Mitarbeit, Alexander Braun, Rosemarie E. Pahlke (Museum am Ostwall : Dortmund 1993).

MUSEUM MODERNER KUNST
Sammlung Wolfgang Hahn
The collection Wolfgang Hahn (Cologne) is since 1978 housed at the Museum Moderner Kunst in Vienna. [exhibition catalogue] Kunst der letzten 30 Jahre. Sammlung Hahn (Museum Moderner Kunst : Wien 1979) 2 vols. [exhibition catalogue] Sammlung Hahn (Wallraff-Richartz Museum : Köln 1968).

MUSEUM OF MODERN ART
Franklin Furnace Archive
The collection of the Franklin Furnace Archive, New York is housed at the Library of the Museum of Modern Art. The Franklin Furnace Archive was founded by Martha Wilson in 1976 as an archive of artist's books and an exhibition and performance space. Through 1994, programs included an archive of artists' books, periodicals, postcards, soundworks, manifestoes and broadsides; travelling shows of artists' books; historical and thematic exhibitions of published work by artists; and a reference library on various fields of avant-garde expression.
Following the sale of the archive to the MoMA Library in 1994, Franklin Furnace continued to operate as an alternative artists' space. The archive also includes secondary materials such as books, exhibition catalogues, ephemera, sound recordings, photographic portraits of artists, performance documentation, newsletters, and periodicals relating to the collection. In addition, the archive contains documentary materials generated by Franklin Furnace, such as exhibition planning records and correspondence, published checklists and catalogues, and records relating to acquisitions. [source:MoMA].

NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY MUSIC LIBRARY
Foundation for Contemporary Performance Arts
The Foundation for Contemporary Performance Arts Music Manuscript Collection was compiled by John Cage in the 1960s to support the projects of the Foundation. The collection consists of nearly four hundred manuscripts composed by 272 composers. The manuscripts can be viewed by appointment at the Northwestern University Music Library. [finding aid] Notations. Music Manuscript Collection.

[publication] John Cage (comp.), Notations (Something Else Press : New York 1969).

HENIE ONSTAD KUNSTSENTER
Fluxus Collection.

STAATSGALERIE STUTTGART
Archiv Hanns Sohm
"Das seit 1981 in der Staatsgalerie Stuttgart beheimatete Archiv Sohm ist keine »Kunstsammlung«, sondern eine umfassende Zeitdokumentation aus Korrespondenzen, Fotos, Büchern, Katalogen, Zeitschriften, Filmen, Videos, Aktionsrelikten und Objektkunst.
Hanns Sohm (1921-1999) konservierte durch das Aufheben von authentischen, nirgendwo sonst bewahrten Dokumenten jene heute oftmals als »Neo-Dada« bezeichnete Gegenkultur, die in den 1960er und 1970er-Jahren ihr weitestes Spektrum erlangte. Zeugnisse intermediärer Phänomene wie Beat-Szene, Happening, Fluxus, Wiener Aktionismus, Konkrete Poesie, die multimediale Produktion Dieter Roths, Zero, Undergroundliteratur und Künstlerbücher sind im Archiv ebenso einzusehen wie die über die Protestbewegungen Situationismus, Gruppe »Spur« und »Subversive Aktion« erfolgte Grenzüberschreitung der Kunst ins politische Handeln der »68er«." [exhibition catalogue] Thomas Kellein, "Fröhliche Wissenschaft". Das Archiv Sohm (Staatsgalerie Stuttgart : Stuttgart 1986). Published on the occasion of the exhibition 'Fröhliche Wissenschaft', November 22, 1986-January 11, 1987.

STATENS MUSEUM FOR KUNST
Sammlung Ursula und René Block
[catalogue] Samling, Sammlung, Collection Block ... [Cover title Hovedet gennem muren = Mit dem Kopf durch die Wand = Head through the wall] / udstillingens tilrettetæggelse og redaktion af katalog Elisabeth Delin Hansen, René Block (Copenhagen 1992; 2nd ed. Wiesbaden 1996).

THE TATE GALLERY
Archive Collection David Mayor/Fluxshoe/Beau Geste Press
The David F. Mayor Archive Collection is housed at Tate Gallery Archives. This large archive comprises three distinct groups of material relating to three areas of David Mayor's life: Mayor's own papers, 1960-1989; the 'Fluxshoe' touring exhibition, 1968-1974 (which includes material by and about Fluxus artists, 1959-1989, and material by and about Shoe artists, 1961-1963); and the records of the Beau Geste Press, 1971-1983. The bulk of the archives were purchased from David Mayor in February 1981, with additional material donated by Mayor in March 1982 and again in May 1992.

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA
Ken Friedman Collection 1964-1971
The bulk of the materials in the Ken Friedman Collection date from 1967 to 1970 -- for Friedman, a period of expansive production of Fluxus materials and a continuing commitment to Happenings/events, collaborations, and the Unitarian Universalist Church and its affiliate organizations of Free Religious Youth (FRY) and Liberal Religious Youth (LRY). The collection best documents graphic design of the period (with many examples from Friedman's Fluxus offset press), works of the Fluxus group and publications by Aktual. Numerous scenarios, musical compositions, prose and poetry works are also included. Another interesting facet of the collection are the works and correspondence by poet d.a. levy and New York Correspondence School founder Ray Johnson. The collection is housed at the Mandeville Special Collections Library, Geisel Library, University of California, San Diego [finding aid]The Register of Ken Friedman Collection 1964-1971 (Finding aid generated: 2006-07-27).

UNIVERSITY OF IOWA
Alternative Traditions in Contemporary Art
Serving as an interface among University of Iowa facilities (the Museum of Art, the University Libraries, and a number of academic units) Alternative Traditions in the Contemporary Arts (ATCA) is committed to the collection and preservation of works and papers of contemporary artists and to the facilitation and dissemination of research related to the post-World War II avant-garde.
Individual ATCA Collections:
ATCA Artists' Works and Correspondence Collection [finding aid]
ATCA Periodicals and Zines Collection [finding aid]
ATCA Rubber Stamp Art Collection [finding aid]
ATCA Comics Collection [finding aid]
The Artists' Television Project
Artwords and Bookworks
Bergus Zine Collection
The CAYC Conceptual Art Collection
The Buster Cleveland Collection [finding aid]
The Steven Durland Correspondence Art Collection [finding aid]
The Albert M. Fine Collection [finding aid]
The Fluxus West Collection [finding aid]
The Ken Friedman Archive and Collection
The Dick Higgins Collection
The E.F. Higgins III Collections
The Alice Hutchins Collection [finding aid]
The Estera Milman Collection [finding aid]
The Lil Picard Papers [finding aid]
NC92 Networker Databank Congress
Artifacts of the Eternal Network [finding aid]

WESTFAELISCHES LANDESMUSEUM
Sammlung Siegfried Cremer (II)
Since 1974 the collection Cremer was housed at the Westfälisches Landesmuseum für Kunst und Kulturgeschichte, Münster. In 1991 Siegfried Cremer split up his collection: part was housed at the Museum am Ostwall, Dortmund and part went as Sammlung Stiftung Cremer to the Hamburger Kunsthalle. In 2004 the latter returned to the Landesmuseum Münster.

PRIVATE COLLECTIONS
Sammlung Andersch
[catalogue] Fluxus aus der Sammlung Andersch / hrsg. vom Bielefelder Kunstverein in Zusammenarb. mit Erik Andersch, Andreas Beaugrand und Friedemann Malsch (Pendragon Verlag : Bielefeld 1992). Sammlung Ute und Michael Berger [exhibition catalogue] Ulrich Meyer-Husmann (Hrsg.), Multiples und Objekte aus der Sammlung Ute und Michael Berger (Museum Wiesbaden : Wiesbaden 1984). Published on the occasion of the exhibition in Wiesbaden, 7 February-12 August 1984. [exhibition catalogue] Ulrich Meyer-Husmann (Hrsg.), Zwischen Zeichnung und Video. Sammlung Ute und Michael Berger (Museum Wiesbaden : Wiesbaden 1985). Published for the exhibition held in Museum Wiesbaden, October 22-December 29, 1985. [reading] Niklas Jacobs, 'Kirchhoff/Berger zwei Wiesbadener Sammlungen', published on the site of Freunde der Kunst im Museum Wiesbaden eV.
Archivio Francesco Conz Vicolo Quadrelli 7 – 37129 Verona - Italy [interview] 'An Interview with Francesco Conz', in 22, No. 4 Umbrella (December 1999) 95-99.
Sammlung Klaus Groh

[interview] Judith H. Hoffberg, 'A Conversation with Klaus Groh', in Umbrella 20, No. 3/4 (October 1997) 108-109.
Emily Harvey Foundation
In 1982 Emily Harvey established Grommet Gallery on Broadway in SoHo with artists Christian Xatrec (her second husband) and Jean Dupuy. In 1984, she bought the gallery space (formerly George Maciunas's studio) and changed the name to Emily Harvey Gallery; she specialized in the work of Fluxus artists. Among the artists she showed were Maciunas, Geoff Hendricks, Eric Anderson, Alison Knowles, Dick Higgins, Charlotte Moorman, Ben Vautier, Daniel Spoerri, Ay-O, Emmett Williams, Carolee Schneemann, Lamonte Young and Nam June Paik. From her third husband, Venetian sculptor Angelo Colombo, she inherited a number of properties in Venice. She opened another gallery there, Archivio Emily Harvey, in 2001, and laid the groundwork for the Emily Harvey Foundation, which includes her archives and exhibition spaces, and provides residencies to artists and writers in Venice and New York. Harvey's personal collection and extensive library and archives, which include prime examples of books published by Dick Higgins under the Something Else Press imprint, will also become part of the foundation's assets. All materials and art works will be made available for research and for rotating exhibitions in the Venice and New York spaces.
Jonas Mekas Collection

[exhibition review] Jill Connor, 'Fluxus. To George With Love', in The Brooklyn Rail (October 2006). Review of the exhibition 'Fluxus : To George With Love. From the Personal Collection of Jonas Mekas', Maya Stendhal Gallery (February 16–April 15, 2006).
Gilbert and Lila Silverman Fluxus Collection Foundation
[collection catalogue] Jon Hendricks (ed.), Fluxus etc. The Gilbert and Lila Silverman Collection (Cranbrook Academy of Art Museum : Bloomfield Hills MI 1981).
[collection catalogue] Jon Hendricks (ed.), Fluxus, etc. Addenda 1. The Gilbert and Lila Silverman Collection / catalogue by Melanie Hedlund ... et al. (Ink & : New York 1983).
[collection catalogue] Jon Hendricks (ed.), Fluxus etc. Addenda II. The Gilbert and Lila Silverman Collection / catalogue by Melanie Hedlund, Jon Hendricks (Baxter Art Gallery : Pasadena 1983). Published on the occasion of the exhibition at Baxter Art Gallery, California Institute of Technology (September 28-October 30, 1983).
[catalogue] Jon Hendricks (comp.), Fluxus Codex. The Gilbert and Lila Silverman Fluxus Collection, Detroit, Michigan (New York 1988).
Ellsworth Snyder Collection
Collected by concert pianist Ellsworth Snyder, who knew several of the artists personally, the collection consists of objects, posters, programs and all kinds of publications. The artists includes among others Christo, Beuys, Cage, Oldenburg and Yoko Ono, as well as the usual Fluxus suspects, George Brecht, Maciunas, Vostell, Robert Watts and Ben Vautier.
[exhibition catalogue] Fluxus Necessarius. The Ellsworth Snyder Collection of Fluxus Multiples and Ephemera (Roth Horowitz Anderson : Los Angeles 2002). Published to coincide with the 'Fluxus Necessarius' exhibition at Roth Horowitz Anderson Gallery, Los Angeles (February 14-March 30, 2002).

source: http://members.chello.nl/j.seegers1/flux_files/fluxus_archives.html

Fluxus Holland Stamp

2010-03-26T23:41:00.000-07:00

THE LAST VISPO

2010-03-08T10:28:00.000-08:00

COMMON GROUND ART GALLERY
in conjunction with
RAMPIKE Magazine
Very Proudly Present

T H E L A S T V I S P O
: selections from the upcoming anthology
edited by Crag Hill and Nico Vassilakis
(This selection compiled by Volker Nix)

Opening reception: Saturday, March 13th, 2010, Windsor, Ontario
Exhibition runs until April 10th, 2010
∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞

Way back in 2008, American writers Crag Hill and Nico Vassilakis put out a world wide call for submissions for an upcoming anthology of visual poetry. Slowly, in the two intervening years, a 300 page book of such work has been brought together which covers the decade between 1998 and 2008, and features well over 125 different seasoned and emerging writer/artists from around the world. Cut to March of 2010; while these intrepid editors are busily shopping this gargantuan (and very colourful) manuscript around to an array of would-be publishers, Common Ground Art Gallery of Windsor Ontario has jumped at the opportunity to be the first gallery in Canada to exhibit a sneak peak at what these editors are hoping to see published sometime later this year.

Haven't the foggiest notion as to what The Last Vispo is? Should you find yourself in the area, there's no quicker way to answer that question for yourself by attending the reception we are holding in honour of the many artists, writers and editors who have all profoundly contributed to the curious phenomenon of visual poetry; a veritable black sheep on the landscape of our language arts. So come on down to Common Ground the evening of Saturday March 13th beginning at 7 pm and see for yourself what all the fuss is about.

The following artists from The Last Vispo have works currently on display in the gallery:

mIEKAL AND (U.S.A.), Hartmut Andryczuk (Germany), Petra Backonja (U.S.A.), Michael Basinski (U.S.A.), Guy R. Beining (U.S.A.), Marc Bell & Jason McLean (Canada), John M. Bennett (U.S.A.), Carla Bertola (Italy), Jaap Blonk (Holland), Chrisitan Bok (Canada), Daniel f. Bradley (Canada), Nancy Burr (U.S.A.), Mike Cannell (England), David Baptiste Chirot (U.S.A.), Jo Cook (Canada), Judith Copithorne (Canada), Klaus Peter Dencker (Germany), Brian Dettmer (U.S.A.), Fabio Doctorovich (Argentina), Maria Damon (U.S.A.), Amanda Earl (Canada), Shayne Ehman (Canada), Greg Evason (Canada), Oded Ezer (Israel), Luc Firens (Belgium), Angela Genusa (U.S.A.), Jesse Glass (Japan), Robert Grenier (U.S.A.), Bob Grumman (U.S.A.), Scott Helmes (U.S.A.), Geof Huth (U.S.A.), Serkan Isin (Turkey), Michael Jacobson (U.S.A.), Karl Jirgens (Canada), Alex Jorgensen (U.S.A.), Chris Joseph (England), Joe Keppler (U.S.A.), Dirk Krecker (Germany), Edward Kuleman (Russia), Jim Leftwich (U.S.A.), Troy Lloyd (U.S.A.), Carlos M. Luis (U.S.A.), Jeurgen O. Olbrich (Germany), Sonja Ahlers (Canada), Donato Mancini (Canada), Cy Machina (Canada), Keiichi Nakamura (Japan), Marko Niemi (Finland), Rea Nikonova (Russia), Christopher Olsen (Canada), Clemente Padin (Uruguay), Michael Peters (U.S.A.), Nick Piombino (U.S.A.), Ross Priddle (Canada), e.g. vajda (U.S.A.), Marilyn Rosenberg (U.S.A.), Jenny Sampirisi (Canada), Suzan Sari (Turkey), Serge Segay (Russia), Douglas Spangle (U.S.A.), Litsa Spathi (Greece), Pete Spence (Australia), Matina Stamatakis (U.S.A.), Miroljub Todorovic (Serbia), Cecil Touchon (U.S.A.), Aysegul Tozeren (Turkey), Stephen Vincent (U.S.A.), Reid Wood (U.S.A.) and James Yeary (U.S.A.). -- ENOUGH ! ENOUGH !

But wait, that's not all !

Karl Jirgens, editor of Rampike Magazine (since 1979!) and former Head of the English Department at the University of Windsor currently on sabbatical, (and ALSO one of two local Windsorites whose work will be featured in this upcoming anthology), had the fortuitous good fortune to choose this exact time to bring out his latest issue of RAMPIKE Magazine; an issue coincidentally devoted entirely to the musings of visual poetry, at that! So, in conjunction with this special exhibition featuring selections from The Last Vispo, Karl has very generously offered to bring a stack of the newly minted visual poetry issue of RAMPIKE to the reception to be given away free to all interested parties who attend this reception. So if you don't know what Vispo is, this exhibition of selections from The Last Vispo coupled with the latest issue of Rampike Magazine will certainly go a long way in furnishing a very concrete example for your edification, amusement and enjoyment !

Furthermore, (if poetry is not your thing and you're more easily given over to pursuits of the boogie woogie kind) local artist/musican KERO, featured on the cover of this issue of RAMPIKE, will provide his unique post-electronic musical stylings at some point during the course of the evening.

This, as with all Common Ground events, is FREE and OPEN to the public.

COMMON GROUND
3277 Sandwich St.
Windsor, Ontario
N9C 1A9
CANADA

519-252-6380

Fluxus, Mail Art and Rubber Stamps

2010-03-05T11:02:00.000-08:00

Greetings from Daddaland: Fluxus, Mail Art and Rubber Stamps
Stendhal Gallery
New York, New York

April 15- May 29, 2010

Stendhal Gallery will present the exhibition, “Greetings from Daddaland: Fluxus, Mail Art and Rubber Stamps,” opening April 15 – May 29. The exhibition is drawn from the collections of John Held, Jr. of San Francisco and Picasso (Daddaland) Gaglione of Chicago, collectively known as The Fake Picabia Brothers.

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.

Coupling his passion for collecting sets of antique rubber stamps (dating from the 1920s), and his penchant for Fluxus inspired works, Gaglione began creating rubber stamp box sets to accompany exhibitions by contemporary artists and to honor historic figures of the 20th Century avant-garde, who had influenced his artistic practice.

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.

In the production of the rubber stamp boxed sets, Gaglione and Held, worked closely with noted art historians. Their exploration of Yves Klein’s “Blue Stamp,” created and mailed for a 1957 gallery exhibition, brought them into contact with the late Pierre Restany, the French critic who formulated Nouveau Realism. Their work on the history of French/American artist Arman, lead Held to the artist’s studio in New York City, where he not only was interviewed, but created original drawings to be made into rubber stamps.

By the time the Stamp Art Gallery closed in late 1997, Fluxus related rubber stamp box sets produced included “George Macunias: Passport Photographs by Peter Moore” (1996), “Belgium Fluxus by Luce Fierens” (1996), “Jeff Berner: Self Portrait Stamps” (1997), “Fluxus Commemorative” (1995), “Ken Friedman: Faux Fluxus West Edition” (1995), “Geoffrey Hendricks: Cloudsmith” (1997), “Geoffrey Hendricks: Identification Kit” (1997), “Alison Knowles: St(r)ing Piece” (1996), “Takako Saito: Enjoy Your Life” (1997), “Mieko Shiomi: Endless Music” (1997). Ruud Janssen: TAM Rubberstamp Archive (1996).

In addition to Gaglione and Held’s interest in Fluxus, other box sets mark their interest in Dada (Bay Area Dadaists, Marcel Duchamp, Raoul Hausmann), Russian Futurism and Constructivism (Zaum poets, Tatlin), Kurt Schwitters, Nouveau Realism (Klein, Arman, Tinguely), Conceptual Art (Dieter Roth, Tom Marioni) and Mail Art (Ray Johnson, buZ blurr, Richard Craven, Ulises Carrion, Guglielmo Achille Cavellini, Robin Crozier, Ed Plunkett, Endre Tot and May Wilson).

A complete collection of Stamp Art Gallery catalogs have been previously acquired by the Museum of Modern Art Library, New York. Held has also compiled collections for the Getty Museum and the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution. The works on display are drawn from his personal collection with new rubber stamp works produced by Gaglione, now living and working in Chicago under the rubric of Stampland.

source: http://stendhalgallery.com/?p=3395

Mail from Fluxus Dakota - USA

2010-03-04T11:37:00.000-08:00

Mail from Fluxus Dakota - USA

2010-02-27T00:24:00.000-08:00

Mail from Fluxus Dakota - USA

2010-02-21T08:59:00.000-08:00

Fluxus in Berlin

2010-02-13T08:07:00.001-08:00

Hamburger Bahnhof / Museum für Gegenwart
Invalidenstraße 50-51
10557 Berlin

Ausstellung / Kunstausstellung

Kurzbeschreibung:

Mit "Die Kunst ist super!" präsentiert sich der Hamburger Bahnhof neu. Auf über 10 000 Quadratmetern werden Werke der Nationalgalerie, Sammlung Marx und Friedrich Christian Flick Collection sowie der Sammlung Marzona in Szene gesetzt.

Eintritt: 12 Euro, ermäßigt 6 Euro

Inhalt:

Im Erdgeschoss des Hauptgebäudes werden die Bewegungen Fluxus und Happening vorgestellt. Fluxus, "das Fließende", wandte sich gegen traditionelle Kunstvorstellungen und deren Materialwirkungen. Die Happening-Künstler wiederum bemühten sich, in komplexen theatralischen Aktionen neue gedankliche Impulse und veränderte Verhaltensweisen beim Zuschauer hervorzurufen.

Neu präsentiert wird auch der bedeutende Werkkomplex von Joseph Beuys in den Räumen des Westflügels. Dieser weltweit einzigartige Bestand an Werken und Filmdokumenten zeigt eindrücklich Beuys' Bestreben, den Kunstbegriff zu erweitern. Mit seinen provozierenden Skulpturen aus ungewöhnlichen Materialien wie Fett und Filz und seinen filmisch überlieferten Aktionen und politischen Handlungen wird ein Einblick in die Gesamtheit des Denkens von Beuys vorgestellt.

Parallel dazu sind in der Kleihueshalle unter dem Thema Vanitas Hauptwerke aus der umfangreichen Sammlung Marx versammelt. Vanitas bezeichnet Bildthemen und Symbole, die an die Vergänglichkeit alles Irdischen erinnern und die Vergeblichkeit des Strebens nach Reichtum, Sinneslust und Berühmtheit anmahnen.

Die zentrale Halle ist zwei großen installativen Arbeiten gewidmet, die um die Themen Modell und Rekonstruktion, Illusion und künstlerische Reproduktion kreisen. Roman Ondáks Installation "It Will All Turn Out Right in the End" ist zunächst nicht mehr als eine große Kiste, hinter den Pfeilern des Seitenschiffs abgestellt. Doch die Simplizität der äußeren Erscheinung wird konterkariert, sobald wir die Installation betreten und uns in einer detailreichen Nachbildung der berühmten Turbinenhalle der Tate Modern in London wieder finden. Für die Installation "Waggon" hat der polnische Künstler Robert Kusmirowski einen historischen Güterwaggon im Maßstab 1:1 aus einfachen Materialien nachgebaut. In dieser Arbeit wird der Betrachter durch die vorgeführte Sinnestäuschung in ein Spiel von Realität und Illusion, Geschichte und Gegenwart eingebunden. Diesen beiden Werken zur Seite steht ein die Kunstgeschichte des 20. Jahrhunderts maßgeblich bestimmendes Kunstwerk: das "Fahrrad-Rad" von Marcel Duchamp.

Im Obergeschoss des Hauptgebäudes werden unter dem Titel Modellversuche 1 + 2 Arbeiten von Gerd Rohling, Alfred Keller, Lyonel Feininger, Hans-Peter Feldmann und Jochen Alexander Freydank präsentiert.

source: http://kunden.wundermedia.de/morgenpost.de

Programm Fluxus 3000

2010-02-04T09:48:00.000-08:00

FLUXUS 3000
Zehn Versuchsanordnungen zur Zukunft der Performancekunst

4. – 27. Februar 2010 | geöffnet zu den Veranstaltungen.
Eine Veranstaltungsreihe von PROJEKT PERINEUM 2000 | Konzept: Carmen Runge

Eröffnung: Donnerstag, 4. Februar 2010, 19 Uhr / Symposion Teil I
Finissage: Samstag, 27. Februar 2010, 19 Uhr / Symposion Teil II

Spektakel, Inszenierung, Infiltration des Alltags, Subversion, Theater, Körperarbeit:
Was ist und was will zeitgenössische Performancekunst? Und was macht sie zeitgenössisch? Kann Performance authentisch sein? Oder ästhetisch? Oder politisch relevant? Oder alles zugleich? Kann man als Künstler den Zuschauer noch bewegen? Und was kann man überhaupt bewegen? Die Kunst? Die Gesellschaft?

Welche Tabus kann man noch brechen? Und wozu sollte man? Und sind die Grenzen der Performance ausgereizt, wenn alle Tabus gebrochen sind?

FLUXUS 3000 wird insgesamt zehn Performances Münchner Künstler präsentieren, die Fragen wie diese aufwerfen und künstlerisch verhandeln – als Performances über Performance. Der zum „black cube“ umgestaltete Ausstellungsraum fungiert als offener Inszenierungsrahmen und Depot für die Relikte der einzelnen Veranstaltungen. Zwei Gesprächsrunden zwischen jungen Performern und etablierten Performancekünstlern und Theoretikern ergänzen zur Eröffnung und zur Finissage das Programm.

PROGRAMM | Beginn der Veranstaltungen jeweils 19 Uhr

Do, 04. Februar 2010
Intro (Eröffnungsgespräch)
Performance: Peter Bulla: Love Squad against performance about performance

Sa, 06. Februar 2010
Dorothea Seror: NON GRATA

Di, 09. Februar 2010
Philipp Gufler: Narzissus

Do, 11. Februar 2010
Tina Trümmer: Tina Trümmer und das süße Leben

Sa, 13. Februar 2010
Stefanie Trojan

Di, 16. Februar 2010
Heike Jobst & Angela Stiegler: Death Without Dying

Sa, 20. Februar 2010
Stephan Janitzky: postproblematisches verhalten / katastrophe
inhalt: puh – a lectureperformance again …

Di, 23. Februar 2010
Isabelle Pyttel: TRAN

Do, 25. Februar 2010
FUNDA: Die Fatiha

Sa, 27. Februar 2010
Outro (Bilanz)
Performance: Max Schmidtlein & Barbara Spiller: macht kaputt, was ihr wollt und mögt

Fluxus 3000

2010-02-04T09:27:00.000-08:00

04. Februar 2010
Feiern & Kultur, Gute Werbung

Spektakel, Inszenierung, Infiltration des Alltags, Subversion, Theater, Körperarbeit: Was ist und was will zeitgenössische Performancekunst? Und was macht sie zeitgenössisch? FLUXUS 3000 wird insgesamt zehn Performances Münchner Künstler präsentieren

Kann Performance authentisch sein? Oder ästhetisch? Oder politisch relevant? Oder alles zugleich? Kann man als Künstler den Zuschauer noch bewegen? Und was kann man überhaupt bewegen? Die Kunst? Die Gesellschaft?

Welche Tabus kann man noch brechen? Und wozu sollte man? Und sind die Grenzen der Performance ausgereizt, wenn alle Tabus gebrochen sind?

FLUXUS 3000 wird insgesamt zehn Performances Münchner Künstler präsentieren, die Fragen wie diese aufwerfen und künstlerisch verhandeln – als Performances über Performance. Der zum “black cube” umgestaltete Ausstellungsraum fungiert als offener Inszenierungsrahmen
und Depot für die Relikte der einzelnen Veranstaltungen.

Eröffnungsgespräch am Donnerstag, 4. Februar 2010, 19 Uhr im Laden Lothringer Straße 13: Mit Dr. Heinz Schütz, Dorothea Seror und weiteren Gästen.
Performance: Peter Bulla: Love Squad against performance about performance

Zehnteilige Performanceserie 4. – 27. Februar 2010 Eine Veranstaltungsreihe von PROJEKT PERINEUM 2000 Konzept: Carmen Rung
Mehr Infos: www.lothringer13.de/laden

New developements

2010-01-31T07:49:00.000-08:00

Once an egg has been laid, you never know what will become of it. The egg needs to be treated right and kept warm. And only a short period later you will see what comes out.

Fluxus is connected to life and changes that come within that life. The start of something new is always the most fascinating moment.

Just watch what happens.

Archives FHC updated

2010-01-01T06:55:00.001-08:00

On the website of the Fluxus Heidelberg Center you can find a complete archive of this Blog. Access at:

http://www.fluxusheidelberg.org/fhcblogarchive.html

From the Fluxus Heidelberg Center the very best wishes for a healthy & Fluxing new 2010!

Fritz Kahn - Man Machine / Maschine Maschine

2009-12-29T23:26:00.000-08:00

Die erste Monografie über Fritz Kahn: Von Uta von Debschitz und Thilo von Debschitz

Dieses weltweit erste Buch über Fritz Kahn wurde als hochwertiger Bildband konzipiert, da Fritz Kahn in Bildern dachte, sprach und schrieb. Für die Buchillustrationen ließ er seine Bildideen von professionellen Zeichnern in den unterschiedlichsten Stilen der frühen Moderne umsetzen.
Eine Auswahl dieser Illustrationen, vor allem die Analogien sowie grafisch oder inhaltlich besonders interessante Arbeiten, stehen im Mittelpunkt von „Fritz Kahn – Man Machine / Maschine Mensch“ (Beispielseiten hier).
260 Bilder auf 208 Seiten, darunter auch zahlreiche bisher unveröffentlichte Original-Illustrationen, Fotos und Dokumente ermöglichen dem Leser, sich selbst ein Bild von Fritz Kahn zu machen.
Einführende Texte – ein Zeitungsartikel von Fritz Kahn, ein Portrait und Kapiteltexte der Autoren, ein kulturwissenschaftlicher Essay von Prof. Cornelius Borck und eine Chronologie von Miriam Eilers – sowie Original-Bildunterschriften in deutscher und englischer Sprache geben erste Einblicke in sein vielschichtiges Leben und Werk.
Als Sonderbeilage enthält jede Monografie ein großformatiges Poster mit Kahns berühmtem Motiv „Der Mensch als Industriepalast“ (Reproduktion der Posterbeilage aus „Das Leben des Menschen“, 1926). Wer seine Buchbestellung über diese Website vornimmt, erhält zusätzlich ein Postkartenset mit acht ausgewählten Fritz-Kahn-Motiven als persönliches Dankschön von den Autoren – solange der Vorrat reicht. Das Postkartenset und das (ungefaltete) Poster können unabhängig vom Buch auch gesondert bestellt werden; diese Artikel sind bei keinem anderen Anbieter erhältlich.
http://www.fritz-kahn.com/

Man as Industrial Palace: the impact of Fritz Kahn

2009-12-29T00:25:00.000-08:00

A German, Jewish gynecologist, artist, and popular science writer extraordinaire, Fritz Kahn (1888-1968) is considered by many to be the founder of conceptual medical illustration.

Kahn produced a series of books during the 1920s on the inner workings of the human body using metaphors of modern industrial life. His modernist visualization was fitting since he was writing during a time of great industrial and technological change, especially in Germany.

Medical illustration before this period was very literal in its representation. Medical illustrations were used mostly in medical education and so the body was portrayed as accurately as possible mainly from cadaver dissections.

Max Brodel had already established the first medical illustration graduate program in the United States in 1911 at Johns Hopkins. Tom Jones, a student of Brodel, established his own program at the University of Illinois at Chicago in 1921. Frank Netter was a young man in his mid-20s, soon to become one of the most recognized medical illustrators in the world. These men set the standards in medical illustration with their extraordinarily detailed styles.

In the early 20th century, public health was becoming an increasing concern with diseases such as diabetes, tuberculosis, and venereal disease becoming more common. It was obvious that initiative be taken to teach the public about their body and their health. Public health posters were produced to make people aware of the dangers of these diseases and ways to avoid contracting them.

While medical illustration was slowly spreading across America, Fritz Kahn was gaining great popularity in Germany with his successful 5 volume textbook on anatomy and physiology entitled Das Leben des Menschen; eine volkstÃ¼mliche Anatomie, Biologie, Physiologie und Entwick-lungs-geschichte des Menschen (1926). [translation: The life of humans; a popular anatomy, biology, a physiology and a history of the development of humans]

The 5 volume set had over 1500 images including a poster of his famous illustration, Man as Industrial Palace.

Fritz Kahn had his own mission to educate the public on the human body, something he took very seriously. The success of his textbooks at the time was a combination of a lucid style of writing accompanied by captivating visuals portraying the body as a machine complete with

factory workers
switchboards
assembly lines
pipes
wires
pressure valves
pumps
In his piece entitled Man as Industrial Palace (above), you can clearly see the hierarchy of departments within the body factory, with the center of operation located at the top of the head.

By illustrating the body as a factory, Kahn was able to relate the bodyâ€™s complex organic interior to the industrialized space so common in society during that period. Kahn was part of a â€œvisual educationâ€ movement that came with developments in color photography, motion pictures, animation, and artful printed graphics used as a revolutionary way of instructing. It was a movement to help popularize science and medicine. Kahn used all of these mediums in his work to show how the body functions.

Kahnâ€™s illustrative style was heavily influenced by the modern artistic movement, which flowered in the early 20th century. Such styles include Cubism, Expressionism, Surrealism, and Futurism.

Kahn spoke the publicâ€™s language both rhetorically and visually, which made him successful at what he did. He had a huge impact on medical illustration for the public and on illustrations of the body in commercial graphics.

His overly conceptual style did have its shortcomings of course. Oversimplifying the complex structure of the human body into the cold lifeless structure of a machine may have had little educational value in the end. But if his goal was to educate the public of the basics of human function, then a mechanical metaphor would suffice. Like machines, we need fuel, need to regulate temperature and pressure, and above all need to be maintained to function optimally. Even today we are hard pressed to escape the model of the body as machine. We still often refer to the heart as a pump, joints as hinges, and the brain as a circuit board.

As our ability to produce hyper-realistic illustrations and animations of the anatomy and physiology of the human body increases, there is still a need to go back to the oversimplified basics,
the ball and stick figures of molecules.
the lock and key models of enzymes and proteins.
the lever and hinge models of muscles and joints
Simplicity is the current buzzword in the design community. I think it was John Maeda that said â€œsimplicity is about subtracting the obvious, and adding the meaningful.â€ Applying meaning to the simple, like Kahn did, paves the way for more complex understanding.
The trend in medical illustration and animation today is to produce the most realistic representations possible. And weâ€™ve succeeded in creating some groundbreaking visual effects of the human body.

But, I think we as medical illustrators and animators need to step back and find new ways to reinvent the simple; to truly make an impact on education. Itâ€™s easier said than done, however. Simple is often the most complex thing to achieve.
- by Vanessa Ruiz
Sources and further reading

National Library of Medicine Dreaming the Industrial Body
British Library Fritz Kahn’s Body Machines
Mind and Brain in Weimar Culture pdf
Take a look at what Harvard is doing to simplify understanding of human physiology as an example.

Man as Industrial Palace

2009-12-29T00:10:00.000-08:00

Vintage German artwork on digital steroids, or why you house a factory.
In 1926, German writer and artist Fritz Kahn created his famous Der Mensch als Industriepalast (Man as Industrial Palace) poster. Kahn’s illustrations compartmentalized the body’s functions in great detail, brilliantly depicting human physiology through analogies with an industrial factory.His work was a visual commentary on industrial modernity and an intersection of two timeless fascinations — with machines and with the human body.
In 2006, German visual communication and animation student Henning Lederer discovered Kahn’s poster and decided to resurrect this complex and unusual way of explaining the body, growing on the original work and translating it into motion graphics. He made himself a cabinet with a mix of analog and digital objects and technologies, and set to creating Industriepalast — an interactive application based on the poster.
In 2006, German visual communication and animation student Henning Lederer discovered Kahn’s poster and decided to resurrect this complex and unusual way of explaining the body, growing on the original work and translating it into motion graphics. He made himself a cabinet with a mix of analog and digital objects and technologies, and set to creating Industriepalast — an interactive application based on the poster.
Lederer explores human physiology in six cycles — five representing the five main biological systems, and one melding them together into the complex human factory Kahn had envisioned.- By Maria Popova

Man as Industrial Palace

2009-12-29T00:09:00.000-08:00

Der Mensch als Industriepalast [Man as Industrial Palace] from Henning Lederer

War is Over

2009-12-13T02:09:00.000-08:00

http://imaginepeace.com/news/archives/9063

Join in in this project of Yoko Ono to celebrate 40 years!

Historial facts (interview with John & Yoko 40 years ago):

“Henry Ford knew how to sell cars by advertising. I’m selling PEACE. And Yoko and I are just one big advertising campaign. It may make people laugh, but it may make them think, too. Really, we’re Mr and Mrs Peace”
John Lennon

The WAR IS OVER! campaign was originally launched by John and Yoko on 15th December, 1969. Billboards with the inscription “WAR IS OVER! (IF YOU WANT IT) Happy Christmas from John and Yoko” were placed in 11 cities worldwide: New York, Los Angeles, Toronto, Rome, Athens, Amsterdam, Berlin, Paris, London, Tokyo and Hong Kong. Along with these billboards leaflets were distributed, posters plastered up, newspaper advertisements placed and radio announcements made.

When John was asked how much the billboards cost, he replied “I don’t know- but it is cheaper than someone’s life.”

Digital Fluxus Performance - Something I can't Explain

2009-10-30T06:17:00.000-07:00

The card that Nico van Hoorn (Netherlands) sent to me has inspired me to send him the results of a Digital Fluxus performance that I did for him. The digital recording is published before the mail actually is sent.

Genres collide with help of change, time, concept

2009-10-26T01:30:00.000-07:00

source:The University of Wisconsin-Madison’s premier independent student newspaper

Art, music, theater combine to create captivating pieces

By Sarah Witman
Sunday, October 25, 2009 8:29 p.m

Many artists consider themselves to be scientists of beauty, using precise structure and methods to find the perfect balance, symmetry and chroma of their pieces. However, artists of the Fluxus movement from the 1960s leave these conventions by the wayside, instead choosing to construct an artistic method that relies completely on chance, simplicity and fun. Coined by artist George Maciunas — from the Latin word “flux,” meaning in motion with constant change — Fluxus was a challenge to artists to bring together all aspects of the arts including choreography, music, theatrical performances and visual art.

Composer John Cage and choreographer Merce Cunningham were among the first founders of Fluxus, and it is their work, the work of their contemporaries and followers that bring this era-expounding exhibit to life. A strong linear theme manifests itself in much of the artwork behind widely varied media, from color photo etching to spit bite and sugar lift aquatint to arrangements of everyday objects. Many of the pieces in this particular exhibit are bestowed by the estate of ellsworth snyder — non-capitalization intentional — another Fluxus artist whose own work is also in the gallery. A friend and colleague of Cage, snyder wrote a doctoral dissertation of the style and times of Cage’s life for UW-Madison, the first ever written about the experimental artist.

For those who have seen the gallery just upstairs, “Robert Rauschenberg’s America,” which opened last month, there is one piece that will be all too familiar. It turns out that Rauschenberg had a hand in the Fluxus scene, and thus “Cage and Cunningham: Chance, Time and Concept in the Visual Arts” contains one of his works as well. The placard flanking the piece informs viewers that during the Fluxus years it was not unusual to see the trio of Cage, Cunningham and Rauschenberg working together on a project, as “Cunningham choreographed the dances, Cage composed the music, and Rauschenberg designed the theatrical sets.”

While smaller than other galleries within MMoCA, the exhibit is not short on creativity by any means — something that one would expect from artists who created their own style of artistry.

An inspirational piece by Stan Shellabarger demonstrates an inspired artistic method using wood, paint and boots. The artist painted over a length of boards with multiple layers of brightly colored paints and then walked across the boards over and over again until the layers of paint wore off at each end, revealing the unique hues beneath. Shellabarger completed the piece by leaving behind his well-used boots at one end of the work. MMoCA cleverly highlights how the process of creating this piece is the real work of art by posting framed professional photos next to the work depicting Shellabarger walking over the boards. The title of one of Cage’s own works also invokes a distinct sense of the spontaneity of the movement, meshing the word decor with the name of transcendentalist poet Thoreau to entitle “Déreau.”

Fluxus was a way for artists such as Yoko Ono, Dick Higgins and Ay-O to polarize established artistic practices and the alternative way they pictured art. What better place to appreciate the motives of these visionaries than within the innovative glass walls of MMoCA.
http://badgerherald.com/artsetc/2009/10/25/genres_collide_with_.php

From The Times October 24, 2009 Yoko Ono's life of love, war and Lennon

2009-10-25T06:21:00.000-07:00

From The Times October 24, 2009
Have Beatles fans finally learnt to love Yoko Ono? She talks about building a tower of light for Lennon
http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/
arts_and_entertainment/music/article6887223.ece#

99 EVENTS

2009-10-04T02:45:00.000-07:00

Ken Friedman
99 Events
1956 – 2009

Stendhal Gallery

At http://www.fluxusheidelberg.org/publications.html you can find the digital version of Ken Friedman's latest show. 99 Events is the catalog of an exhibition of Ken Friedman’s event scores presented at The Stendhal Gallery , New York , September 10 - October 10, 2009

99 Events Copyright © 1966-1978 Fluxus

99 Events Copyright © 1956-2009 Ken Friedman

Notes to 99 Events Copyright © 2009 Ken Friedman

Ken Friedman: Event, Idea and Inquiry

Copyright © 2009 Carolyn Barnes.

31 Secret Truths - Fluxus Poetry by Litsa Spathi

2009-09-27T03:07:00.000-07:00

31 Secret Truths - 2009 by Litsa Spathi - Germany/Netherlands

Lock box containing 31 wine corks and wine opener hidden inside of a box resembling a cloth bound book. Front and back covers open independently. The box is part of the Fluxmuseum Collection in Texas - USA. The box was created as a contribution to the Fluxhibition #3: Thinking Inside of the Box - Boxes, Cases, Kits and Containers.

Article by Charles Dreyfus - FLUXUS

2009-09-03T00:42:00.000-07:00

AT THE BEGINNING OF December 1961, John Cage explained a passage from his book Silence starting with La Monte Young’s concerns (repetition of or playing a single sound over and over again); he concluded the interview hoping that Europeans become more American.
“My opinion is, not that it does something to me, but that I am able to feel in a different way, like I never felt before.”1

La Monte Young discovered Cage during summer 1959, at the Stockhausen Seminar in Darmstadt (“The Composition as a Process” in which Cage developed his ideas on indeterminate music in relation to its execution); at that time, Young worked on the West Coast where Cage was practically unknown.

The following summer, back in California, he took part along with Terry Riley, Warner Jepson and Bill Spencer in the creative workshop of choreographer Ann Halprin, at Kentfield. From the interview by Yvonne Rainer with Ann Halprin one can outline better the meaning of the use of doors and windows, as well as of the walls’ and floors’ resonance in the room in which she works.
“We utilized objects and accessories, we made use of the space in a definite way. I wanted to isolate these elements. I began to work by means of a system, thanks to which all those things became independent from the phenomenon of cause and effect; to make the music do THIS, one shouldn’t have to do THAT.”2 In the mid ’50s, George Brecht and Jackson Mac Low had also explored the diverse possibilities of the indeterminate; then John Cage invited them to present their works in his class which began in the summer of 1958 at New York’s 12th Street West. This New School for Social Research seminar was attended by Al Hansen, Dick Higgins, Allan Kaprow, composers Maxfield and Toshi Ichiyanagi (Yoko Ono’s first husband), etc., and by irregular visitors: Jim Dine, Larry Poons, George Segal. As yet, a study had not been made on the many performances derived from Cage’s classes (New York Audiovisual Group, etc.); individuals coming from the San Francisco area made their works of that period known in New York: Simone Forti, Robert Morris, Walter de Maria, Terry Jennings, Terry Riley, Dennis Johnson, Joseph Byrd. George Maciunas attended Maxfield’s classes, where he met Young; thanks to him, Maciunas, who has a degree in the History of Art and Musicology, plunged into the avant-garde. This man of Lithuanian origin, though, was certainly not inactive. He funded an orchestra of Renaissance music, playing on copies of ancient instruments he imported from East Europe along with stocks of food preserves; plus a full-time job as a designer at Knoll and in a gallery on the first floor of 925 Madison Avenue; this gallery, A/G — A for Almius (Salcius, his partner), and G for George — exhibited, according to Higgins, “terrible modern art.”3 Two series of performances most particularly attract our attention: those in Yoko Ono’s Studio at 112 Chambers Street, with La Monte Young as the organizer, which took place episodically from December 18, 1960, to June 30, 1961; and those by George Maciunas in his own gallery from
March 14 to June 30, 1961.
The name Fluxus appeared for the first time on an invitation card to three conferences by Maciunas, “Musica Antiqua et Nova,” from April 25 to May 16, 1961: “a three-dollar contribution will help to publish Fluxus magazine”). Such publication projects would come to occupy just as important a place as performance within the history of Fluxus.
When the poet Chester Anderson left New York for California in 1959, his magazine
Beatitude split in two; he asked Young to take care of an issue of Beatitude East. The magazine disappeared, and along with Anderson, the documents as well; their reappearance, and the joint efforts of Young and Mac Low allowed Maciunas to compose the layout of this book An Anthology before his departure for Wiesbaden in November 1961. Ready for printing in October 1961, An Anthology, of which certain documents had already been published in 1959, were finally printed by Young and Mac Low in 1963. Among the contributors to An Anthology living in Europe, we find the names of Claus Bremer, Nam June Paik, Dieter Roth and Emmett Williams.
Daniel Spoerri met Bremer and between 1957 and 1959 became the assistant of playwright Gustav-Rudolf Seller, the Director of the Landestheater of Darmstadt, where Bremer himself was Stage Director; in collaboration with Bremer he published Beispiele für das dynamische Theater,4 and on his own, Über das Autotheater (1959)5; he initiated Emmett Williams to concrete poetry; Roth, who was passing through Paris, joined Spoerri’s selection Art et Mouvement of the Festival d’Avant-Garde (1951) at Porte de Versailles (November 18 - December 14, 1960). Thus, in November 1961, George Maciunas arrived in Germany and immediately got in touch with Nam June Paik, the ‘European from Korea,’ already famous on the other side of the Atlantic for having cut off John Cage’s tie. At the beginning of 1958, Paik’s teacher in Freiburg, 12-tone composer Wolfgang Fortner, decided there was nothing more he could teach him, and found him a job at the Electronic Music Studio (Radio Cologne) founded by
Herbert Eimert and subsequently entrusted to Stockhausen. But before going to Cologne, Paik saw Cage’s Music Walk (October 14, 1958) at Gallery 22 by Jean Pierre Wilhelm in Düsseldorf, and fell in love with the indeterminate; he decided to meet Cage in his hotel room in Darmstadt and of Cage he retained the “sound collage” and “his sense of things which are out of order.” He also saw “Dada, Dokumente einer Bewegung” at Düsseldorf Kunsthalle (1958), and one assumes that that was the determining shock, and not for Paik alone, who started making a few tapes before he felt a need for action whose violence is “the effect more than the cause;” he is aggressive, but only toward himself, as on November 13, 1959, again at Gallery 22, where his concert lasted six minutes: electronic music for three tape-recorders and a sheet of glass to be shattered; he turned a piano upside down in front of an audience of ‘connoisseurs,’ among whom several artists from Düsseldorf, like Joseph Beuys, Winfred Gaul, Richard Goetz, Hoem. The concert was titled Homage to John Cage. Then, Mary Bauermeister’s studio (she was Stockhausen’s wife) in Cologne became the “anti-Radio Cologne” site, and starting in 1960 it presented works by George Brecht and La Monte Young; here began Paik’s fame in the United States. On the other hand, Wolf Vostell seldom attended Mary Bauermeister’s studio, since action music did not satisfy him completely; he declared that the action per se was a work of art. Beginning in 1958, following the Studio’s indifference towards his idea of ‘electronic vision,’ he made the “TV décoll/ages” whose first score, “TV décoll/ages for millions of spectators” is dated 1959. George Maciunas visited Vostell for the first time in his Cologne studio in April 1962; on his table, there was the project for the first Décoll/ages, which came out for the Neo-Dada in der Musik concert (June 16, 1962). November-April: more than five months had passed since Maciunas arrived in Germany.
Maciunas thought big. To begin with, he had planned a year and a half of concerts, from June 1962 (Berlin) to January 1964 (Tokyo), passing through Moscow etc. Everything had been planned: a big city or capital a month, and Fluxus magazine gathering all local information into a large United Front. The Neo-Dada in der Musik concert managed to take place thanks to Jean Pierre Wilhelm, but was organized by Paik. Had this concert been organized by Maciunas, “He was kind of mad, and of course he understood that this new art would be known before he made Fluxus; above all because of the concert organized by Paik and then, the same evening, because of the first issue of Décoll/ages.” (Interview by C.D. with Vostell). “Vostell always tried to be in competition; one never gets to do anything if we compete with the same thing, but he needed competition, and sometimes collaboration… (unintelligible tape) — so that Vostell never really belonged to Fluxus.” (Interview by C.D. with Maciunas).
Then why did Vostell follow this horrible tyrant, who dared to fire some virtuoso violinists from Vienna because they did not go to sleep at 10 P.M.? And what about Maciunas who got ridof Vostell? What was the magic power which enabled Maciunas to reject Paik’s personal concert in the name of the collective? To make the situation more complicated, before the Neo-Dada in der Musik concert, on June 9, in the Parnass Gallery, presented by Rolf Jährling, the concert Neo-Dada in New York took place (that is also the title of Maciunas’s exposé); Vostell and Paik were absent. Can one speak of sabotage? Ben Patterson and Maciunas (the two Americans!) presented works by Higgins, Riley, Jed Curtis, without forgetting their own. And on the very same day of Maciunas’s fast passage through the streets and at the Girardon Gallery in Paris, along with Patterson and Robert Filliou, Vostell made his happening Petite Ceinture, Cityrama II in the same city (July 3, 1962).
Festa Fluxorum, then, began its tour throughout Europe: 14 concerts in Wiesbaden in
September 1962, interpreted by Alison Knowles and Dick Higgins (arrived from New York), Paik, Patterson, Maciunas, Williams, Pierre Mercure, Karl Eric Welin, Vostell.
Maciunas, Paik, Williams, Addi Koepke, Filliou, Vostell, Higgins, Knowles, performed six concerts in Copenhagen, in November, while in Paris, the following month, Tomas Schmit and Daniel Spoerri joined the company with Domaine Poétique staged by Jean-Loup Philippe (Filliou, Gherasim Luca, Jean-Clarence Lambert, François Dufréne, Brion Gysin).
In February 1963, the experiment with Joseph Beuys took place in Düsseldorf; Alison
Knowles and Dick Higgins spread the good news by themselves in Stockholm and Oslo in March, followed once more by Copenhagen and Amsterdam in June; finally Nice, where Maciunas was received by Ben Vautier (from July 25 to August 3, before going back to New York in September).
The performers traveled with their own means, to free spaces they themselves discovered; no fees and, for the composers, no royalties (besides their own work, they played compositions by Cage, George Brecht, Robert/Bob Watts, La Monte Young, Jackson Mac Low, etc.); Maciunas, the coordinator, in spite of his poor health, spent all his nights making poster-programs, whose contents were often far removed from the actual possibilities of the executions; in a specially made suitcase, he carried the smaller accessories. In September 1963, Maciunas went back to New York, where, during the Spring, the Yam Festival by George Brecht and Robert Watts had somehow kept the American scene busy. A totally theoretical group, then, could form itself around the Fluxus-Maciunas publications, performances, objects and films.
Of the projects, 10% were carried out and realized; 70% of that 10% was distributed free to the idea-givers; Maciunas had in fact produced all the projects (except, in recent years, the ones produced by Giancarlo Politi, Gino Di Maggio, etc.); he announced them and depending on the demand he made them by hand one by one; no bookkeeping and no problems of distribution (three collectors in 1975), which was carried out by the artists themselves. Certain works, like those by Ann Halprin (remainders not used for An Anthology) reappear 15 years later. Dick Higgins founded Something Else Press (1963) and recuperated his manuscript Jefferson’s Birthday/Postface (1964) from one of Maciunas’s forgotten zones. In 1964, under Henry Flynt’s impetus, Maciunas became the executive director of a bureau for Action Against Imperialistic Culture (A.A.I.C.); their second action consisted of picketing, on September 8, 1964, in front of New York’s Judson Hall, where Originale by Stockhausen was to be performed. Henry Flynt (who introduced the concept of Concept Art back in 1961) blamed Stockhausen and his magazine Die Reihe for being a decorative element of West German ownership, but above all, he blamed him for a conference held at Harvard in 1958, in which Stockhausen had denigrated jazz; himself an exviolinist with La Monte Young, he composed and defended hillbilly music from North Carolina where he was born. Flux-schism: Paik and Higgins participated in Originale, while Flynt, Maciunas, Ay-O, Takako Saito, Tony Conrad and Ben remained outside.
A pioneer of SoHo, Maciunas set up seven real estate cooperatives between 1967 and 1968; because of his commitment to this project he came close to dying, and in fact he lost an eye. There was endless fighting with hidden forces and local authorities. Maciunas managed to renovate these cast iron buildings, some of which are architectural masterpieces; this made speculation impossible, while communal arrangements assured for the future minimum overhead expenses which were managed democratically. Thus, beginning in 1967, Jonas Mekas started his film library on the ground floor of 80 Wooster Street (The Filmmaker’s Film Library); as a matter of fact, this was SoHo’s first public place, except for Flux-Hall, a tiny space at 359 Canal Street which housed performances as well as the Fluxus shop after Maciunas’s return (1963). Eighty Wooster Street presented for the first time in the U.S. Hermann Nitsch’s Origien Mysterien Theater in March 1968, as well as Richard Foreman’s Ontological-Hysteric Theater. Then in 1969-70, Maciunas tried to establish a 60-member cooperative on Ginger Island in the British Virgin Island; of its 230 acres, 11 were reserved for a Fluxus settlement; the day before the signing of the contract, the owner died. For the last two years, a 17-building village once more gave Maciunas the opportunity to express himself: a ‘new Bauhaus’ in the countryside of Massachusetts. But the latest news from my friend is very bad. He had to go back to New York wasted by illness where, on the 9th of last May, 1978, he died.

Charles Dreyfus is a performance artist and an art critic. He lives and works in Paris.

Notes:
1. Interview by Roger Reynolds, at Ann Arbor, beginning of December
1961, in John Cage, C.F. Peters Editions, Frankfurt 1962, p. 52.
2. Tulane Drama Review, volume 10 n. 2, New Orleans, Winter 1965, p.145.
3. Dick Higgins, Jefferson’s Birthday/Postface, Something Else Press, New York 1964, p. 66.
4. In Movens, Wiesbaden 1960.
5. In Zero n. 3, Düsseldorf 1960.

source: http://www.flashartonline.com/interno.php?pagina=articolo_det&id_art=206&det=ok&title=FLUXUS

Something Else Press: Exploring the Ways and Means of Communication

2009-06-25T04:59:00.000-07:00

By Steve Clay

Designed, edited and produced by Dick Higgins, Something Else Press books contain offbeat and avant-garde writing in a neat and tidy yet quirky and distinctive form. The Press began in 1964 following Higgins’s break with Fluxus founder George Maciunas, and embodied the many of the concerns which identified the then nascent art movement.

Early titles include Jefferson’s Birthday/Postface (1964), Higgins’s collection of performance scores about which the jacket copy reads: ‘Jefferson’s Birthday consists of all the things Dick Higgins wrote, composed or invented between April 13th, 1962 and April 13th 1963 inclusive, on the assumption that the bad work one does is just as valid as the interesting work. So some is lousy. So? Some is terrific. Hurrah for the Irish! And hurrah for Thomas Jefferson! And Daniel Webster too!’ Jefferson’s Birthday was produced back-to-back with Postface, Higgins’s account of the background and beginning of Fluxus. He thus connects theory to practice a theme that would be pursued and enacted throughout his career.

Other early publications include New York Correspondance School of Art pioneer Ray Johnson’s The Paper Snake (1965). Here is a bit of Higgins’s somewhat polemical jacket copy description: ‘The meaning in Ray Johnson’s work is not logical, like an Aristotelian syllogism, but counter logical, like a psalm. All art… ‘Al Hansen’s A Primer of Happenings &Time/Space Art (1965) was another early title, as was Rumanian born nouveau realiste artist Daniel Spoerri’s 1966 classic, An Anecdoted Topography of Chance (re- Anecdoted Version) ‘Done with the help of his very dear friend Robert Filliou and translated from the French, and further re-anecdoted at random by their very dear friend Emmett Williams, with one hundred reflective illustrations by Topor’.
Dick Higgins’s 1969 collection foewaomwhnw (disguised as a prayer book) contains his defining essay ‘Intermedia” in which he first describes and elaborates artworks which ‘fall between media’ arguing that the social conditions of the time (early to mid 1960’s) no longer allowed for a ‘compartmentalised approach’ to either art or life. Indeed the range of works published by Something Else exemplify a very diverse approach: first American editions of several of Gertrude Stein’s works including The Making of Americans (1966); a reprint of Henry Cowell's New Musical Resources (1969); Merce Cunningham’s Changes: Notes on Choreography (1968); John Cage’s anthology of radial musical scores Notations (compiled and produced with Alison
Knowles and published in 1969); A Sailors Calendar by Ian Hamilton Finlay and Gordon Huntly(1971); Jackson MacLow’s aleotoric and systematic composition Stanzas for Iris Lezak; Richard Meltzer’s The Aesthetics of Rock (1970); One Thousand American Fungi by Charles Mcilvaine and Robert K MacAdam(1973); and Emmett Williams’s Anthology of Concrete Poetry (1967) which still stands, along with Mary Anne Solt’s Concrete Poetry: A World View (Indiana University Press, 1970) as one of the defining gatherings of the subject. Artist’s books, critical theory, early Modernism, concrete poetry, amusement, Fluxus, back to the land hippie culture
– through the use of conventional production and marketing strategies, Dick Higgins was able to place unconventional works into the hands of new and often unsuspecting readers.

In Two Sides of a Coin: Fluxus and Something Else Press, Higgins notes his style of publishing (large edition books in a ‘trade’ format) in contrast to that of Maciunas, who stressed the original, the hand-made or hand-assembled book/object that was necessarily produced in relatively small editions. Both Manciunas and Higgins rejected the ‘Helvetica look’ which dominated commercial design at the time (early to mid sixties); Maciunas, in Higgins’s words ‘…favoured a tight energetic look, which he achieved by using sans serif types, especially News Gothic, which he then juxtaposed with old-fashioned and florid display faces…’ Higgins describes some of his own ways around the ‘Helvetica look’ thus: ‘…I set poems and short chapters flush bottom on the type pages (usually they are set in the middle). I used larger and bolder running heads at the tops of pages than is customary in order to tie the page together and because I liked the legibility it gave to a sometimes rather scattered or unorthodox page. Since I did not wish to develop favouratism among type faces, I used whatever faces a particular supplier had, often making my selections by means of chance operations, using dice … [this] gave the Something Else Press books their look of old but new.

In addition to pamphlets, cards, newsletters, posters and other ephemera, Something Else Press had published over sixty book titles when it ended due to personal health and departmental problems in 1974. Peter Frank’s Something Else Press an annotated Biography (MacPherson and Co, 1983, now out of print) is a generally excellent source of information about the publications and the aesthetic and intellectual curiosity which drove them. Other useful sources include The Something Else Press – Notes for a History to be Written Someday published in The New Lazarus Review (Vol.2, n,I, 1979; ¾, 1980) as well as the essay Two Sides of a Coin: Fluxus and Something Else Press (published in Higgins’s Modernism Since Postmodernism: Essays on Intermedia (SDSU Press, 1997) Modernism Since Postmodernism is the final volume in Higgins’s critical trilogy which also includes A Dialectic of Centuries: Notes Towards a Theory of the New Arts (Printed Editions, 1979) and Horizons: The Poetics and Theory of the Intermedia (Southern Illinois University Press, 1984). Higgins’s scholarly projects include Pattern Poetry: Guide to an
Unknown Literature (State University of New York Press, 1978) and On the Composition of Images Signs and Ideas (De Imaginum Signorm et Idearum Compositione) by Giordano Bruno, edited and annotated by Dick Higgins, translated by Charles Doria and with a foreword by Manfredi Piccolomini (Willis, Locker & Owens publishing, 1991).

Toward the end of his career, Dick Higgins voraciously collected the works of American commercial trade book designer Merle Armitage (1893-1975) and authored the yet-to-be published Merle Armitage and the Modern Book. One of the projects sadly left unfinished at the time of Higgins early death was A Theory of the Book, which was to be published by Granary Books. The concept for this book had been developing in Higgins’s mind for years; he’d even compiled an extensive bibliography, which was later found in his computer files. A lovely obituary for Dick Higgins (1938-1998), written by Ken Friedman, appears in Judith Hoffberg’s
Umbrella (Vol. 21, n. ¾, 1998) and is reprinted in Umbrella: The Anthology (Umbrella Editions, 1999).

Steven Clay is co-author (with Rodney Phillips) of A Secret Location on the Lower East Side: Adventures in Writing 1960-1980. He is also an editor, curator, archivist and publisher of Granary Books. He lives with his wife and their two daughters in New York City.

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