Dear Mr. Bowman,
Thank you for your thoughts.
While we don't think there is a definitive answer to any of these questions, we do think some good work sheds light on the issues you raise.
Ric Allsopp, Ken Friedman, and Owen Smith edited an issue of Performance Research last year that explores these themes, and then there are such books as Dr. Smith's history of Fluxus, Hannah Higgins' book, and Mr. Friedman's Fluxus Reader. Looking further back, we have seen excellent catalogues by Estera Milman, Hnery Martin, and others. We don't see these as old arguments, but as an evolving discourse.
We feel that one can answer some of these questions by examining the multiple ideas and practives of the Fluxus group: even though Fluxus was never a 'movement', it was a group of people, and like any group, they left thoughts and tracess.
Despite the role George Maciunas once played, other members of the group actually exerted greater influence on the thinking of the participants -- George Brecht shaped the central medium of events, Dick Higgins was a primary philosophical voice, and others helped to develop different kinds of innovative strategies for performance, publishing, production, and reproduction.
We, too, would welcome Dr. Smith's thoughts on these issues, and the ideas of Dr. Clavez. Both are scholars whose work has been highly commended to us. We have read Dr. Smith, but because Dr. Clavez writes in French, we have not read as much as we would like.
Sincerely,
Secret Fluxus
"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.
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
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