secret fluxus thank you for an interesting and eloquent response.
re: "Discussions of history, criticism, or theory occupy a tiny fraction of list volume - significantly less than 5%. List members seem to consider the suggestion that we discuss these kinds of issues from time to time a bad idea. We gather that this has been the case on Fluxlist in the past." I don't think that this is viewed as a bad idea, however problems have arisen due to the sheer nature of fluxus. a major problem, i feel, is that due to an inherent need for classification fluxus has become something that it never actually was. this is a point that i have made before. in my opinion fluxus can not be viewed as a single entity, a group, a movement etc. i have no real idea myself as to how it should be considered, (i find this hard to put into words - i have tried but i just end up confusing myself!). at times we have a tendency to treat fluxus as as this nice comfortable 'idea' that we all like, when i reality it involves/ed a network of very different artists, working in very different fields, often having very little, if anything in common at all. it could be true to say that in the beginning there was a sharing if ideas and sensibilities, especially under maciunas' 'control'. this however did not last as the individual artists developed their own work and moved further form maciunas' ideals. what unites these artists under the fluxus banner? what gives one the right to use fluxus to describe their work and another not? why is their such a scrabble to claim ownership of this word? these are questions that intrigue me. perhaps the reason that many fluxlisters are reluctant to get into discussions of history, criticism etc is that often all we hear is the same thing, repeated over and over again. i admit, i have not come up with anything new myself and am more than willing to listen. also, many of the participants of the fluxlist are artists in their own right, working in a very wide range of disciplines. they create, perhaps their energies are focused elsewhere, i know mine certainly are. many of us have read widely around fluxus, others are concerned with certain areas or artists, many listmembers have been involved in recurring fluxus discussions - perhaps it's just that many of us are waiting for something new to pop up. i personally dont see the point of rehashing old arguments, we can refer to the archives for that. the influence of 'fluxus ideals' on contemporary practise is more interesting to me as it brings up the 'what is fluxus?' question, which i've already stated - i haven't seen an answer which satisfies me as yet (hopefully, owen, bertrand et al can join in here) alan
