Aaron,
I've sent a text to the list that didn;t seem to make it
through but might show up later on or something.
Anyway, I have a list you may be interested in which
is dedicated to a fluxus-esque variation on the haiku forms.
There is an archive here:
http://www.one38.org/alphabet/
And instructions for signing up are on
http://www.one38.org/lists/
We are limited exclusively to exchange of haiku
and haiku variations with no discussion, which excites
some people and ostracized others. If you're of the former
group, do feel free to sign up.
Thanks for giving me a chance to plug. :)
-e.
Aaron Kimberly wrote:
>
> Cecil touchon wrote:
>
> > Hi Aaron Kimberly,
> > So tell us what you found regarding the connection between Zen and Fluxus.
> I
> > would love to hear about that.
> > Cecil Touchon
>
> Hi Cecil,
> What I learned in a brief survey of texts I had to condense into a 20 page
> paper. As with all things Fluxus, it wasn't an easy thing to pin down. But
> there are so many fleeting references to Zen in regards to Fluxus, that it
> was an issue in need of expansion. Not all Fluxus members were into Zen, and
> not all artists/performers who were into Zen were Fluxus. It was important
> to me to not centralize the movement too much in the US since the
> contributions from Europe and Asia were important. I had to look, on one
> hand, to the phenomenon of Buddhists monks leaving Asia to teach in North
> America and Europe - and the challenges that posed to modernism. Then I also
> had to look at the introduction of the "avant garde" in Asia where Buddhism
> was already readily available.
>
> I began the paper with John Cage:
> - his studies with D.T. Suzuki
> - his use of chance and the I Ching
> - indiscriminate use of sounds (which included audience participation)
> - how this related to other art like Abstract Expressionism
>
> Then I talked about the George Maciunas paradigm:
> - cohesively organized, documented and charted
> - his public/social interests and Leninist influences
> - I discussed, with the use of a few Maciunas quotations how he used the
> lingo of Zen, but really didn't embody it. e.g.. his miss-use of words like
> "Ego" where Buddhism is concerned.
> However, he also coined phrases like "Neo-Haiku Theatre" which were most
> useful for my topic. The portable, humorous, elegant, repeatable,
> iconoclastic, anti-sublime, implicative qualities of Fluxus is where I dive
> in to Zen.
>
> I compare the Fluxus aesthetic of eloquent humour with Zen teaching
> practices where humour is both an arrow penetrating the ego, and a signifier
> of understanding.
>
> Then, I discuss at length Haiku - especially in conjunction with Yoko Ono
> and her Instructions. Ono's conceptual use of language is paradoxically used
> to rest the mind. The viewer must respond intuitively. The empty state, she
> suggests, is beyond duality. Likewise, the Zen koan is language meant to
> penetrate beyond the semiotics of language.
>
> That's it in a nutshell...a "boy this got long" nutshell.
>
> Cheers,
> Aaron
