I have met Ben "Look at Me!" Vautier (probably my favorite early-Fluxus artist) and corresponded with him a couple of times, but was unaware of his activities in regard to young artists. I would be curious to know what the relationship of these activities was to Fluxus (trying to make a connection, totally independent, etc.) Ben Vautier is a fabulous character and ball of human energy. Of all the original Flux folk, he has the best (and only?) free-standing website (i.e., not tied to an exhibition or gallery) <http://www.ben-vautier.com/>. I suspect that it is created and maintained by someone else because I have seen no original work in the digital medium by Ben...it all seems to be writings and drawings scanned and digitized & re-packaged for display in the digital realm. I have been told that he is quite famous in France (e.g., school children buy and carry book bags with his "Ben" signature and expressions on them). I hope that Ben is famous and rewarded because I think most Fluxus artists have not received the recognition and rewards that I believe they deserve (e.g., Dick Higgins being a good case of this). Ben Vautier is also famously contentious...sometimes bordering on rude?mean? in his comments and writings about other Fluxus artists (e.g., Ken Friedman) but this also seems to be part of his "shtick." I told him about my own little project, Fluxus Midwest, once (1963, cafeteria of the Minneapolis, Walker Art Center, during the kick-off of the "In the Spirit of Fluxus" exhibition). He suggested that a good activity would be to declare all New York Fluxus artists "excommunicated" from Fluxus (he seemed to be pissed at "them"). He told me that Maciunas was always excommunicating people from Fluxus. I got the impression that "excommunication" & exclusion/expulsion have been part of the history & ritual of fluxus--part of Fluxus's dysfunctional side?
[reader please remember: I am prone to sweeping generalizations, exaggerations, and simplifications based on incomplete or inaccurate information]
I also made contact with Ben Patterson one time in Weisbaden in the mid 1990s and subsequently worked with him (via fax) to set-up the online version of his Museum of the Unconscious <http://www.nutscape.com/sub-conscious/sitemap.htm> (the donor list of which has not been updated in several years...like most of my other broken-down fluxus-related websites). Bertrand, tell us more about his work with Eastern European artistic collectives (is this in the past or present?). My impression of Ben Patterson is that he is a technology luddite...I don't know if he has finally even gotten an internet connection and email address?! When Eric Anderson used to imply that none of the original Fluxus artists would participate on Fluxlist because they didn't consider it to be legitimate or serious, I always thought...."Yeah, the real reason why most of them aren't on here is because they are tech luddites and don't even have email." I suspect they all have email now, but would be curious to know how many have someone else (like a secretary) handle their email for them. Nam June Paik put up the first website on the internet devoted to Fluxus, but I don't think he touched any part of the project (it was all Paul Garrin's <http://pg.mediafilter.org/> doing, I believe )...and have never heard that he has or uses email (this from the "hi-tech" artist who coined the term "information highway")!
[reader please remember: I am prone to sweeping generalizations, exaggerations, and simplifications based on incomplete or inaccurate information]
I am thrilled to hear that Emmett Williams and Rene Block curated an exhibition last year that was 1. Fluxus in name, and 2. involved younger/not-original Fluxus artists (and I now stand corrected in my assertion that Ken Friedman is the only Fluxus artist to ever do such an exhibition). The English title was something like "Fluxus and the following one," is that correct? I want to know more (perhaps this was mentioned on the list last year and I wasn't paying attention). Is there a website for this exhibition? Anything online? Where can I get the catalog? Bertrand or anyone else...did you go, can you tell us more? For example I would like to know how this show was positioned/framed...latter day art that shows Fluxus influences, or Fluxus is still alive and marching on in new bodies, or what? And I would really like to see the work that was exhibited. This is pretty exciting to me (who believes that the world still needs a living breathing continuing Fluxus exploration)!
Does anyone know of any other/new online resources for/from Emmett Williams? Emmett was one of the first original-Fluxus artists that I know of who re-purposed some of his earlier Fluxus performance work (1996-97) into an interactive internet piece <http://www.virtualitas.net/finearts/archive/ee.shtml> on Ernest Lergon's Vitualitas Gallery. I don't know if Emmett Williams created the interatice piece himself or how active he was in it's design and function. I'm actually surprised there hasn't been more of this re-purposing/transposing early Fluxus performance work/ideas to the internet...it has always seemed like such an inviting medium. I suspect that a big reason for this that most/many of the original-Fluxus artists (who are still alive) are technology luddites. Am I wrong about this?
[reader please remember: I am prone to sweeping generalizations, exaggerations, and simplifications based on incomplete or inaccurate information] Not just in this email, but in all my emails.
I have decided to freely expose my thoughts and opinions here in hopes that others will correct or adjust them where they know them to be in error. Thank you.
Allen B
Thank you very much Allen, even if I don't share all of your views: people like Emmett Williams, Ben Patterson, Ben Vautier, or Takako Saito are much welcoming younger artists' works, and are very pleased to perform with them. Ben Vautier, who is so easily denigrated for his commitment with advertising and business proposals, is also a very important producer for young artists in the south of France, and has supported, by his influence, his relationships, and his money, dozens of projects since the begining (from Olivier Mosset (one of the members of BMPT) to La station, through the Figuration Libre). Ben Patterson have worked a lot with Eastern Europe artistic collectives, donated several master works of his to them, and performed for free with them to support their activities. Emmett always looked carefully at young artists, and he recently co-curated the exhibition in Wiesbaden in 2002 with Rene Block. This exhibition, was very controversial because of his choice to exhibit only young artists under the banner of Fluxus (Fluxus und die Folgende), and none of the "original group of Fluxus artists and anything they are still doing under the Fluxus banner" to quote you, apart of an exhibition of Emmett's own archive. However, it's true to say that Ken and Dick Higgins did much more to enlarge Fluxus and welcome new "members" within its circle, but, having done what I have done since two years, I'd like to say that the "core of historical Fluxus" have amazed me by its generosity and kindship. I 'm probably a bit young in the circuit (compared to Ken and Emily) so I haven't yet have the time to do things to be gossiped (there, it's possible I'm wrong...but no one told me about...yet), but, frankly, I've been really touched by the great simplicity of these artists, far from prima donna behaviours. Once again, I'm very young in this and still naive.On the other hand, I've seen people attending to concerts, grasping any smallest relief of performance to have it signed by any of the people they had seen on the stage, even me, and even stuff that was not to be given away. I remember for instance a young girl, working in an art gallery, who wanted to have a wonderful leftover from "one for violin" performed by Ben Vautier(you know, not the kind of little piece of wood, but a very nicely crashed violin, quite esthetic, as a matter of fact), signed by him, harrassing him for ten minutes, while he was signing small parts of anything for everyone, exhausted after two hours of a very tiring concert. Bertrand
