1) Eat Art
Gabriel Swossil asks if I know anything about Daniel Spoerri's restaurant,
"Eat Art." Sorry to say I don't recall too much. Dick Higgins published a
number of Spoerri books at Something Else Press that shed some light on
this, notably _ An Anecdoted Topography of Chance _, and another book of
recipes and food thoughts the title of which I can't recall.
2) Edible art, food projects and recipes
There is a rich history of food projects, food pieces, edible works, and
food events in Fluxus. You'll find discussion of some of these scattered
through the literature.
Off-hand, I recall projects and scores involving food by: Ay-O, Jean Dupuy,
Robert Filliou, Ken Friedman, Dick Higgins, Alison Knowles, George
Maciunas, Ben Patterson, Ben Vautier, and others.
Some of these projects and scores are documented in Fluxus Codex. Others
are described at various points in different histories and documents, and
in reprints of such documents as George Maciunas's newsletters. Still
others exist as independent works, for example, the little book of Fluxus
recipe works titled Cookpot that Barbara Moore compiled in the mid80s.
This would be a find subject for a small compilation by someone with the
time and energy to work through the documents and literature to collect and
organize them.
3) Food works and multiples
There is also a rich history of artifacts, multiples, objects and food by
many Fluxus artists. As mentioned, there is Joseph Beuys's piece with
Hundertmark on the fried fish bones.
Offhand, I recall only a few. Dieter Roth made a lot of food-based
sculptures and multiples including the well-known cheese suitcases and
chocolate sculptures. George Maciunas published Ben Vautier's canned Flux
Mystery Food.
The tabletop versions of my Do-It-Yourself Monument are built of sugar
cubes. I made several minimalist sculptures of licorice and I once planned
a huge political monument of cheese titled "Ostblok." I had only modeled a
small version of it when the Berlin Wall fell, rendering the sculpture
obsolete.
4) Fashion
There is also a rich history of clothing works and fashion works. The
difficulty with tracing all these is that Fluxus Codex is a superb record
of all the Fluxus multiples published by George Maciunas, but it documents
none of the Fluxus works or projects by other publishers or even those by
Fluxus artists when George wasn't involved.
There are works of Fluxclothing in the collections at Alternative
Traditions in Contemporary Art at Iowa, the Hood Museum of Art at Dartmouth
and the Henie Onstad Art Center near Oslo.
Milan Knizak was particularly inventive with clothing artifacts and
clothing events. Others of us also created clothing works and projects on
different occasions. Except for myself and some of the artists active
around Fluxus West in the 1960s and 1970s, I can't recall any specific
projects. I very much liked Diane Berendt's "Rainbow Blanket" and "Airplane
Bra," both at the Hood, and Nancy McElroy's zippered case - a small case
constructed entirely of zippers so that there were many, many ways to open
it.
In the 1970s, I was once asked to design a T-shirt. I bought a load of
plain, white cotton T-shirts. I brewed up several gallons of dark, strong
tea, and soaked the T-shirts in the brew to make a work titled "Tea Shirt"
in which food and fashion merged.
-- Ken Friedman
--
Ken Friedman, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Leadership and Strategic Design
Department of Knowledge Management
Norwegian School of Management
+47 22.98.51.07 Direct line
+47 22.98.51.11 Telefax
Home office:
+46 (46) 53.245 Telephone
+46 (46) 53.345 Telefax
email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
