Don:
Re your friend's friend's bitter opposition to your Fluxus type performance
- perhaps he felt threatened in his friendship, or perhaps he just plain
doesn't get it (fluxus), doesn'st want to admit it, and struck out in his
denial of that fact. The objection to inclusion in your performance
"because of the Dada roots of Fluxus" sounds pretty suspicious to me
inasmuch as it seems a downright silly reason to bring about such strong
emotions - I mean Dada wasn't exactly the KuKluxKlan.
As for the university system, I have had many friends instructing and thus
have been involved through them in the vicious politics that go on. I have
a friend who recently went back to university for her Masters degree and
the unilateral mindthink of the art department was numbing. She merely
smiled, turned her back, and did her own thing. The dictum at this
particularly California university to the students was exhibit, exhibit,
exhibit. I'm sure if any of the staff "exhibited" fluxist tendencies, the
chair would have been appalled.
Cutbacks in arts funding in the U.S. have the university system running
scared it would seem. Perhaps we should all move to Europe. Or perhaps we
should start an online university and call if Fluxhaus :)
While you state that throughout your career "the negative affects far
outweigh any positive effects my work may have had" I applaud you for not
allowing the negativisim of others to affect your creativity, your way of
artmaking and your way of lifemaking.
Love,
Patricia
