Thoughts on Fluxus part 2 (of 3)
In a general sense all Fluxus activities seek to question meaning and
significance as fixed, pre-determined, or even determinable through the
functioning of what has been described as "higher social contracts,"
that is social situations as a manifestation of power relations and
knowledge. Fluxus enacts existence (activates it) but does not fall
back on ontologies as a justification for the processes on which it
depends, or more simply, participates in. Thus, Fluxus does not seek to
explore or manifest the ultimate nature of existence, reality and
experience, it instead establish conditions, mostly through the
performance and presentation of the works themselves, which are based
on a of a recognition of a fundamental importance of situational
conditions in the creation and recreation of meaning. In relation to
these situational processes, and the works which enact them, Fluxus
seeks to shift from traditional utilitarian based proscriptions to a
more open-ended participation in the processes themselves.
From the very beginning, in the late 1950s and early 1960s, Fluxus
refused to see the creative arena as clearly or rigidly segmented into
various arts. Many of the processes utilized by Fluxus artists directly
illustrate and enact the diacritical workings of communication (in art,
language, music, etc); the joining of disparate elements from within
established meanings to create new and unexpected forms, meanings and
awarenesses. This essay in looking at a variety of disparate Fluxus
experiments and ideas, some of which might not seem to be literary, or
poetic in nature, is a reflection of this aspect of the Fluxus attitude
which see no validity in categorization. Thus, even though individual
works may and do vary in degree of emphasis toward one art or another,
they are also what Dick Higgins has called intermedial. For one of the
most radical acts of Fluxus is to see all works as literary, musical ,
visual, and performative rather than just one form or another. This
aspect of Fluxus then is the basis for the title of this paper "Between
the Verbal and the Visual: Fluxus explorations in hearing literature,
reading art and seeing music." Fluxus challenges our traditional
separation of media into types and/or genres as part of a process of
exploration of a larger cultural shift; from a text based linear
culture to a visual or field oriented culture.
In this process, or shift as I am calling it, what often resulted was
the creation of a new kind of work, works which were neither music nor
poetry, neither theater nor visual art, but some seeming new
configuration which contained elements from these traditional
categories, but was also clearly something more that just a combination
of forms. In an attempt to come to terms with such work Dick Higgins
suggested in a 1965 essay that we think of work which "seems to fall
between media" as intermedia. [Horizons, p.18]. Taken from the writings
of Samuel Taylor Coleridge the word "Intermedia" was first reintroduced
by Higgins as an attempt to "...simply offer a means of ingress into
the works that already existed..." Intermedial activity, such as many
Fluxus type works, does not signify a new combination of pre-existing
categories of approaches or media, but rather it is a more general and
crucial questioning of knowledge and experience as either discrete or
quantifiable. Intermedia as a concept is grounded on a balanced, but
shifting triad: media dispersal, experiential activity and a resultant
post-cognitive awareness. With this as an understanding the Derridian
concept of difference becomes significant not only as a means of
accessing the gaps in which intermedial forms exist, but also as a
lesson that interpretations of the concept of intermedia must shift
from a retrospective stance, which attempts to construct original
meaning or truth, to a prospective stance, which explicitly welcomes an
indeterminacy of experience and meaning. Many Fluxus type works are
intermedial in two ways; first, materially and second, conceptually.
The material aspects of Fluxus' intermedial nature is fairly evident in
the descriptors that are applied to the work; the works are called
"visual poetry," "action music" or "performance art." A work such as
Emmett Williams "Four-directional Song of Doubt for Five Voices" has
components that relate to many varied media: the work consists of a
visual score created from grid divided into one hundred squares with
one word appearing on it ten times; a textual core that creates or
carries meaning - each of the five performers is given one of the
following five words: "you just never quite know;" a sound or musical
dimension - as the piece progresses in time to the beat of a metronome
each time the performer encounter their word they say or sing it; and a
theatrical existence as the work is performed, in some cases with the
performers gesturing or even dancing as the piece progresses. What is
created then in this and other Fluxus pieces like it is an intermedial
work which is simultaneously a poem to be heard, a work of visual art
to be read and piece of music to be seen. In addition to this form of
intermedia, Fluxus works also establish an intermedial role for the
artist/poet/musician and even a cognitive intermedia, a concept which I
will return to in a moment. One aspect of the intermedial role of the
creator is fairly evident, that is if the artist is creating works that
exist somewhere between media, they themselves must act as creators in
that same space between media. Another potentially less evident
intermedial role for the artist was indicated by Ben Patterson when he
wrote that ". . . the central function of the artist [should] be a
duality of discoverer and educator: discoverer of the varying
possibilities for selecting from environmental stimuli specific
percepts and organizing these into significant perceptions, and
concurrently as an educator, training a public in the ability to
perceive in newly discovered patterns." [notes on pets, Paterson, 4
suits, p. 49] Thus for Patterson and many other individuals associated
with Fluxus the artist/musician/poet is no longer a person tied to the
craft of a particular media, but becomes an explorer of perception and
a public educator who moves between traditional media categories in a
process of discovery and communication.
Alison Knowles - Giveaway Construction, 1963
Find something you like in the street and give it away. Or find a
variety of things, and make something of them, and give it away.
Suggested performance variation - collect a group of printed materials
(from the street) and make a series of collages. Go to an art gallery
(commercial, for sale) stand in front of the gallery and give away the
collages to anyone who comes by.
