Am writing from \tokyo--\ben has arrived by Orient \express according to
\george Maciunas` wishes for his 70th birthday--we are going to caravan to
Mt. \fuji where \ayo has organized about 30 performances of \fluxus artists
on the mountain--don:t know much else except it is an event not to be
missed sponsored by \gallery 360 degrees in \tokyo--I have just passed my
70th and wanted you all to know that on 29 May we will be on Mt. \fuji.
Judith \a. Hoffberg
aka Umbrella
Original Message:
-----------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (FLUXLIST-digest)
Date: Tue, 25 May 2004 13:57:33 -0700
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: FLUXLIST-digest V4 #442
FLUXLIST-digest Tuesday, May 25 2004 Volume 04 : Number 442
In this issue:
==============
Re: FLUXLIST: I survived FLUXLIST and what is Fluxus?
Re: FLUXLIST: I survived FLUXLIST and what is Fluxus?
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Date: Tue, 25 May 2004 16:54:58 -0400
From: "suse" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: FLUXLIST: I survived FLUXLIST and what is Fluxus?
I am interested in the piece.
Actually, though I am absolutely nobody, I gathered up a group of folks who
have been influenced by fluxus and planned to hold an exhibition this month.
Plans generally evolved into the mud over at Birdland where the event was to
be held. It will be revived again in the future--meantime energies are being
directed toward The Buttonwood Tree. www.buttonwood.org. PS ANYONE out there
with an interest in site design is welcome to come up with a new site for
The Buttonwood Tree--we are perhaps changing the name as we go through a
process similar to mitosis--perhaps simply 'The Button'--someone is already
designated to design otherparts such as NOMA,
etc.
- ----- Original Message -----
From: "Owen Smith" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Tuesday, May 25, 2004 4:18 PM
Subject: FLUXLIST: I survived FLUXLIST and what is Fluxus?
> Wow! All I did was not check my email for a couple of days and the list
exploded with a flurry of posts. As I read through them what struck me was
regardless of the nature and direction - what has beeen generated is a
really interesting series of
> statements about fluxus, history, art, theory and the connections between
them, so for a reader point of view thank you all.
>
> As some of you know I am currently editing a special issue of Visible
Language on Fluxus, but not the usual historical stuff, more on fluxus as an
ongoing aesthetic/cultural phenomena. I am planing/hopeing to include
materials by artists who are not
> necessarily fluxus in the historical sense but have been influenced by or
see their work and iideas in relation to fluxus - so all the posted
comments have been very interesting for me to read and I have quite enjoyed
all the variety of issues and
> statements. And in the end, I guess what it says to me is that fluxus is
still alive, at least in relivance, otherwise not so many of you would feel
the way you do, and that is a good thing. . . .
>
> I am also working on a piece for the issue that might be relivant to these
discussions so I am sending it along. It is in rough draft format and I
intend to expand it with more current practices/examples, but none-the-less
I will include it here for
> your consisderation, and if you are not interested please just ignore the
rest of this post.
>
> Owen
>
>
> Owen
>
>
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Date: Tue, 25 May 2004 17:07:27 -0400
From: "Owen Smith" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: FLUXLIST: I survived FLUXLIST and what is Fluxus?
[EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
>I am interested in the piece.
Sorry the piece did not come throught the last time - here it is for anyone
who is interested.
Also Suse tell me more about this show, it sounds very interesting even if
it did not happen this time.
Owen
As evidenced by the existence of this publication Fluxus is increasingly
becoming the object of scholarly consideration. In the last ten years there
have been an ever-increasing number of exhibitions, journal publications
and even books on Fluxus.
In light of this growing recognition and attention I would suggest that we
should ask ourselves, "What is the nature of the information that we are
gaining and at what expense is this knowledge being accrued?" It may seem
peculiar to suggest that
the acquisition of knowledge about Fluxus and the construction of a history
of Fluxus is somehow detrimental, but I believe that this is often the case
and I would therefore argue that we must consider not only the particulars
through which a
history of Fluxus might be developed but also what such a process does to
our awareness/understanding of Fluxus or even to Fluxus itself.
There are two principal concerns which should be addressed: the first is
that many of the traditional accepted practices of history, art history,
and cultural institutions such as museums, are directly in conflict with
some of the basic attitudes
that I feel lie behind many of the specific Fluxus works, events and
productions. Second, I am inclined to argue that it is of greater value (in
the loosest of terms) to gain a participatory knowing of Fluxus as a means
to understanding its
potentials than to discern, decipher and determine a fixed concrete
knowledge of Fluxus through its history. This essay is not, however,
intended to offer some countervailing truth to current or traditional
practices, but rather it is a presentation
of some of the concerns that are increasingly effecting my own ideas and
emphasizes related to historical and philosophical considerations of
Fluxus. Based on the belief that it is more enlightening (in the broadest
of senses) to pursue an
understanding of Fluxus, which requires a participation in it, than a
knowledge of Fluxus, which traditionally assumes a critical or analytic
distance from the object of knowledge, the basic tack that I am taking in
this presentation is one of
advocacy about the value of Fluxus (or what we have to learn from it). In
general this advocacy is that of urging a shift from the search for
knowledge as an objective pursuit of historical truth, to the active
subjective search for interactive
understanding.
A principal aspect of the conflict between Fluxus and most historical
methodologies is that the worldview associated with Fluxus is fundamentally
connected to a rejection of the western tradition of the metaphysics of
presence. This tradition
consists of two interrelated biases: the privileging of the object
(presence) over the act (absence) and the desire to explore and elaborate a
pure, self-authenticating knowledge. As part of this logocentric bias art
history is, at the present time,
principally governed by the unwritten precept to trace the object under
consideration back to its original context of production. The operational
aspects of such a paradigm are principally structured around a view that
the object in question is
positioned in a evolutionary chain of events which the historian must trace
back in order to read the intentions and conditions of the artist as the
total and originary source of meaning or signification. The underlying
essentialist rationale of
this position further seeks to elaborate a coherent history of originality.
To locate and determine internally consistent aspects of the object of
consideration based on a general view of the nature of the world as
comprised of conceptually and
chronologically separable entities. But if one applies only these kinds of
approaches and rationales to Fluxus the results are questionable because
the Fluxus "project" exists in a direct, fundamental opposition to such
assumptions.
As I have argued elsewhere Fluxus is by nature anti-reductivist, for it
does not seek the illumination of some end or fact but celebrates a
participation in a non-hierarchal density of experience. In this way Fluxus
does not refer to a style or
even a procedure as such but to the presence of a total of social
activities. The attempt to place Fluxus in history falls into the
positivist (in the sense that human knowledge derives from systematic
study) as well as historical trap of defining
the presence of something by divining the presence of a core, whether it is
of ideas, people or activities. To define Fluxus by traditional methods (to
assign limits to nature of what is considered and consequently delimit its
master codes) is to
negate the value of such a definition. At issue then are the applicability
of the means used to describe, elaborate and determine historically and
conceptually the nature of Fluxus.
What is particularly disturbing to me is the rather insidious way in which
the system has stepped in to promote Fluxus and as a result a number of the
primary motivating concerns of the Fluxus project have become perverted
through this very act of
promotion. Fluxus was part and parcel of a general discomfort about the
commercialization of the art object, particularly as this "function" came
to dominate the cultural system in the 1950s and 1960s. Fluxus rejected the
assumptions on which this
commodification of aesthetics is based. That the artist is someone special,
a genius; that the art work, as an object, was intrinsically valuable and
that this status gave it a value beyond the value of other objects. Fluxus
works and activities
stressed non-hierarchical ways of making and knowing, specifically
emphasizing the equation of art with life. Fluxus stressed the significance
of process rather than product through the use of new media, multimedia,
intermedia and even non-media.
Replacing the culturally valorized exegesis of the accepted creative
processes of making, Fluxus initiated what might be called a, to use a
Cageian term, purposeless play. Through the historicizing process (which I
would argue often become an
unwitting or otherwise extension of the commercial system, as a kind of
research and development branch) the Fluxus search for and development of
alternative systems or processes is being dissipated and tranquilized.
Through the current exploration
of Fluxus' history, products (art works) and the artists associated with
it, the Fluxus project is becoming objectified and commercialized in ways
that are antithetical to what I feel were the aims of Fluxus.
In the process of the commodification of aesthetics it is always the
generally accepted use-value [didactic value or conceptual value], which is
discarded as an obstacle to valorization. With the subordination and
control of certain use-values by
institutions and individuals (museums, collectors, dealers and scholars),
the value of the object receives not only a qualitatively new exchange
based meaning, but it also detaches itself from the of signification
process to be replaced by static
attributes evident in the physicality of the sign. The decisive factor in
this process is the concentration into a limited set of historical and
physical characteristics of all the communicative possibilities of Fluxus.
What we are now being given
as principal to Fluxus is not the potentials of the Fluxus world view, but
the "Original" Egg kit by Bob Watts, or "actual" Fluxus works such as one
of the "famous" and "rare" Fluxkits made by Maciunas, or a piece of the
"real" violin used by Paik
in a performance of his One for Violin Solo. The Fluxus project is
converted into a monopolistic situation through the aura of originality and
the elevation of Fluxus to the status of another brand name of the history
of art, with all the prestige
that such a place carries with it. The generic, expansive and open-ended
nature of Fluxus is no longer available unless we are willing to pay the
price, for once Fluxus becomes sited in an original form and historical
location it correspondingly
becomes removed from us. Why is it that Maciunas is seen by some as central
to determining what is and is not Fluxus? Yes, he played a key role in
Fluxus, but more importantly in this context it is the fact that he is dead
and thus Fluxus as
dependant upon Maciunas is permanently fixed, controlled and determined,
for he will certainly never make another work. Such a limitation then
becomes equivalent to a historical copyright, which is in the hands of the
collectors, dealers, scholars
and museums.
What does one learn from seeing a Fluxus object in a case in a museum or
reproduced in a book? What does one gain from knowing the exact history of
any given Fluxus project? Ultimately you do have more information and more
knowledge but where does
this get you? Is it defendable to use means of recording and transmitting
information about Fluxus that are antithetical or at least antagonistic to
the Fluxus worldview? What is the validity of determining and communicating
information and facts as
a basis of knowledge (on or about Fluxus) if such processes interfere with
a fundamental understanding of the significance and relevance of such
information? The referential nature of Fluxus works and performances
reflects a recognition of meaning
as a construct of the particular framework, or situation in which it is
placed or occurs. Fluxus works can never claim to be completely original or
distinct entities, even though Maciunas often sought to stress this as an
aspect of Fluxus, because
their meaning and significance change in relation to the context in which
they are experienced. In this way Fluxus seeks to counter the prevailing
notions of the significance of materiality in relationship to the praxis of
creation and the aura of
originality. More specifically Fluxus questions the historically dependent
institutionalized processes that have come to stress a kind of aura that is
specifically dependent on originality. The concern of such traditional
emphases is to separate the
original meaning from subsequent interpretations in order to privilege the
then of history over the now of experience. In Fluxus, though, there is no
strong dependency on an determinable past or invocation of an anticipated
future. A preference is
instead given to immediacy, to the intensity of experience found in the
flow of the constantly changing present as a nexus between a multiplicity
of potential pasts and futures.
According to the field of cognitive science, one of the principal aspects
of a concept is relational definition. Any concept always enters into
relation with other concepts and thus a concept is partly defined by its
physical attributes and partly
by its relations to other concepts or the data structure in which it exists
or is placed. If this is a given of cognition the issue becomes on which
part of this schema do we place emphasis? Traditionally a priority is given
in the visual arts to
the physical attributes as reflective of, or physical evidence for (as in
sign system) the primary communicative nature of the object of
consideration. What I feel is necessary is a reverse prioritizing of this
schema in which a greater emphasis is
placed on the significance of the concept in relation to other concepts and
specifically the operational nature of such relationships as they develop
and alter our ideas, perceptions and ultimately world view. Through such an
approach what become
important is a process of expansive interaction, rather than a
product-centric notion of knowledge.
So what are we left with and how are we to consider Fluxus? Should we
abandon all perceptual, social, semiotic and other kinds of systematic
approaches to Fluxus and celebrate an anarchy of interpretation? The simple
answer is no, we should not
reject them altogether, but we should aim to open avenues of consideration
between a field of information, in this case Fluxus, and the multiple
possibilities of this material as an interactive aspect of our environment.
In consort with more
traditional approaches we must initiate other means of learning from and
responding to the Fluxus project, or worldview, particularly as related to
those aspects of Fluxus, which are not a resolution, but a continuance of
play.
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End of FLUXLIST-digest V4 #442
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