I've been reading a print-out an article I found on the 'net by Kathy O'Dell
entitled "Fluxus Feminus" circa 1997, which is interesting reading and
relates to Reed's posting on the women of fluxus/fluxus attitudes towards
women, and the other postings on marriage performance.
http://www.britannica.com/bcom/magazine/article/0,5744,245261,00.html
It also contains info. about the fluxus marriage performance of George
Maciunas in 1978 on the site of what now is the Emily Harvey Gallery.
"Maciunas, long past the height of his excommunication practices and just a
few months before his death, carried out a cross-dressing ritual at his own
1978 Flux wedding.[15] He exchanged with his soon-to-be-wife, Billie
Hutching, his white tuxedo shirt and bow tie for her short, black, strapless
slip and long-haired wig. One wonders, when imagining this scenario, if
thoughts of the "Fluxus femme'-in-us" could have been an unconscious
motivating factor, along with all the other more conscious factors Maciunas
proclaimed (his aversion to artists not sticking to his preferred lineup of
performances, as cited by Knowles, or his dislike for "overt sexuality" and
"theatrical excess," cited by Schneemann) in at least some of his earlier
excommunications? The ability of all the artists discussed to both write from
their bodies and acknowledge that they have already been written, though once
(perhaps) threatening, toward the end of Maciunas's life was (perhaps) a
reminder that the "feminine" is not entirely about nature nor entirely about
society and, therefore, not a threat to one's own biological or social
status.
That Maciunas titled his performance Black & White is telling. I would like
to think that Maciunas discovered what some of the work he and others had
dismissed had been demonstrating all along--that natural and social
conceptions of the "feminine," and the connotations of power that attend,
are not black-or-white, either/or issues. They can be constantly
mixed--exchanged, as Maciunas so provocatively demonstrates by involving
another person, a biological female, in this symbolic trade of gender-coded
props.
The "feminine," then, is shown to be both natural (the biological body does,
after all, remain after all is said and done) and something wonderfully
artificial, something that can be changed (at least in appearance, like any
"text") at will. Akin to the very field of language in which Maciunas loved
to play, the idea of "woman" was shown to be something that could be
constructed and reconstructed, neologized, put on and taken off.[16]
Maciunas's cross-dressing, then, his fake femininity through which the
threat of woman was possibly dispelled, stands as an unconsciously motivated
testimony to the successful contributions of the many women artists who have
been, at one time or another, a part of Fluxus."
I urge you to read the entire article - it's fairly lengthy, but worthwhile.
Best,
PK
Don Boyd wrote:
> George Maciunas had a Fluxus Marriage in I forget what year?
> Who would know? Owen? -Don Boyd
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