We find the Codex a source of enjoyment. You can learn about Duchamp, Cage, and Breton (etc.) by reading their work. If you want to learn about Fluxus and the Fluxus artists, you have to at their stuff. One of the reasions we started out group in the way that we did was our irritation with the way that people so often adapt Fluxus to their own needs and purposes while ignoring the historical Fluxus artists and their work. Adapting their work is great. Ignoring it is not.
It's an odd thing to look at a book so richly filled with illustrations of wonderful work while being bored. You might not like the approach, but the works are extraordinary and this is a huge compilation of the work of many of the central Fluxus artists. Boring "reading," perhaps, if reading alone is what you mean, but these works are not boring to look at or think about.
Prof. Hannah Higgins makes important points about teaching and learning in her book Fluxus experience, and many of the Fluxus artists did the same in their work and activities. Many Fluxus artist have been deeply involved in teaching and learning -- Nam June Paik, Alison Knowles, Don Boyd, Ken Friedman, Geoffrey Hendricks, Paul Sharits, Carolee Schneemann, Joseph Beuys, Robert Filliou. The entire UK
Fluxshoe grew out of a university research centre project at The American Arts Documentation Centre at University of Exeter.
I'm only this months' secretary, so I'm not speaking for all of us, but I think that Prof. Smith is doing something interesting.
Secret Fluxus (one but not all)
I like the idea that fluxus is fairly unteachable--Ive talked about it to
students but I always end up telling them to get online - I find the codex rather
boring reading and have found fluxus more interesting by learning about it
through artists such as Marccel Duchamp, John Cage, Andre Breton, etc. Isnt the
idea of Fluxus is that it can't be pinned down? Same as asking what is art...
Madawg
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