[EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
>I am interested in the piece.
Sorry the piece did not come throught the last time - here it is for anyone who is
interested.
Also Suse tell me more about this show, it sounds very interesting even if it did not
happen this time.
Owen
As evidenced by the existence of this publication Fluxus is increasingly
becoming the object of scholarly consideration. In the last ten years there have been
an ever-increasing number of exhibitions, journal publications and even books on
Fluxus.
In light of this growing recognition and attention I would suggest that we should ask
ourselves, "What is the nature of the information that we are gaining and at what
expense is this knowledge being accrued?" It may seem peculiar to suggest that
the acquisition of knowledge about Fluxus and the construction of a history of Fluxus
is somehow detrimental, but I believe that this is often the case and I would
therefore argue that we must consider not only the particulars through which a
history of Fluxus might be developed but also what such a process does to our
awareness/understanding of Fluxus or even to Fluxus itself.
There are two principal concerns which should be addressed: the first is that
many of the traditional accepted practices of history, art history, and cultural
institutions such as museums, are directly in conflict with some of the basic attitudes
that I feel lie behind many of the specific Fluxus works, events and productions.
Second, I am inclined to argue that it is of greater value (in the loosest of terms)
to gain a participatory knowing of Fluxus as a means to understanding its
potentials than to discern, decipher and determine a fixed concrete knowledge of
Fluxus through its history. This essay is not, however, intended to offer some
countervailing truth to current or traditional practices, but rather it is a
presentation
of some of the concerns that are increasingly effecting my own ideas and emphasizes
related to historical and philosophical considerations of Fluxus. Based on the belief
that it is more enlightening (in the broadest of senses) to pursue an
understanding of Fluxus, which requires a participation in it, than a knowledge of
Fluxus, which traditionally assumes a critical or analytic distance from the object of
knowledge, the basic tack that I am taking in this presentation is one of
advocacy about the value of Fluxus (or what we have to learn from it). In general this
advocacy is that of urging a shift from the search for knowledge as an objective
pursuit of historical truth, to the active subjective search for interactive
understanding.
A principal aspect of the conflict between Fluxus and most historical
methodologies is that the worldview associated with Fluxus is fundamentally connected
to a rejection of the western tradition of the metaphysics of presence. This tradition
consists of two interrelated biases: the privileging of the object (presence) over the
act (absence) and the desire to explore and elaborate a pure, self-authenticating
knowledge. As part of this logocentric bias art history is, at the present time,
principally governed by the unwritten precept to trace the object under consideration
back to its original context of production. The operational aspects of such a paradigm
are principally structured around a view that the object in question is
positioned in a evolutionary chain of events which the historian must trace back in
order to read the intentions and conditions of the artist as the total and originary
source of meaning or signification. The underlying essentialist rationale of
this position further seeks to elaborate a coherent history of originality. To locate
and determine internally consistent aspects of the object of consideration based on a
general view of the nature of the world as comprised of conceptually and
chronologically separable entities. But if one applies only these kinds of approaches
and rationales to Fluxus the results are questionable because the Fluxus "project"
exists in a direct, fundamental opposition to such assumptions.
As I have argued elsewhere Fluxus is by nature anti-reductivist, for it does
not seek the illumination of some end or fact but celebrates a participation in a
non-hierarchal density of experience. In this way Fluxus does not refer to a style or
even a procedure as such but to the presence of a total of social activities. The
attempt to place Fluxus in history falls into the positivist (in the sense that human
knowledge derives from systematic study) as well as historical trap of defining
the presence of something by divining the presence of a core, whether it is of ideas,
people or activities. To define Fluxus by traditional methods (to assign limits to
nature of what is considered and consequently delimit its master codes) is to
negate the value of such a definition. At issue then are the applicability of the
means used to describe, elaborate and determine historically and conceptually the
nature of Fluxus.
What is particularly disturbing to me is the rather insidious way in which the
system has stepped in to promote Fluxus and as a result a number of the primary
motivating concerns of the Fluxus project have become perverted through this very act
of
promotion. Fluxus was part and parcel of a general discomfort about the
commercialization of the art object, particularly as this "function" came to dominate
the cultural system in the 1950s and 1960s. Fluxus rejected the assumptions on which
this
commodification of aesthetics is based. That the artist is someone special, a genius;
that the art work, as an object, was intrinsically valuable and that this status gave
it a value beyond the value of other objects. Fluxus works and activities
stressed non-hierarchical ways of making and knowing, specifically emphasizing the
equation of art with life. Fluxus stressed the significance of process rather than
product through the use of new media, multimedia, intermedia and even non-media.
Replacing the culturally valorized exegesis of the accepted creative processes of
making, Fluxus initiated what might be called a, to use a Cageian term, purposeless
play. Through the historicizing process (which I would argue often become an
unwitting or otherwise extension of the commercial system, as a kind of research and
development branch) the Fluxus search for and development of alternative systems or
processes is being dissipated and tranquilized. Through the current exploration
of Fluxus' history, products (art works) and the artists associated with it, the
Fluxus project is becoming objectified and commercialized in ways that are
antithetical to what I feel were the aims of Fluxus.
In the process of the commodification of aesthetics it is always the generally
accepted use-value [didactic value or conceptual value], which is discarded as an
obstacle to valorization. With the subordination and control of certain use-values by
institutions and individuals (museums, collectors, dealers and scholars), the value of
the object receives not only a qualitatively new exchange based meaning, but it also
detaches itself from the of signification process to be replaced by static
attributes evident in the physicality of the sign. The decisive factor in this process
is the concentration into a limited set of historical and physical characteristics of
all the communicative possibilities of Fluxus. What we are now being given
as principal to Fluxus is not the potentials of the Fluxus world view, but the
"Original" Egg kit by Bob Watts, or "actual" Fluxus works such as one of the "famous"
and "rare" Fluxkits made by Maciunas, or a piece of the "real" violin used by Paik
in a performance of his One for Violin Solo. The Fluxus project is converted into a
monopolistic situation through the aura of originality and the elevation of Fluxus to
the status of another brand name of the history of art, with all the prestige
that such a place carries with it. The generic, expansive and open-ended nature of
Fluxus is no longer available unless we are willing to pay the price, for once Fluxus
becomes sited in an original form and historical location it correspondingly
becomes removed from us. Why is it that Maciunas is seen by some as central to
determining what is and is not Fluxus? Yes, he played a key role in Fluxus, but more
importantly in this context it is the fact that he is dead and thus Fluxus as
dependant upon Maciunas is permanently fixed, controlled and determined, for he will
certainly never make another work. Such a limitation then becomes equivalent to a
historical copyright, which is in the hands of the collectors, dealers, scholars
and museums.
What does one learn from seeing a Fluxus object in a case in a museum or
reproduced in a book? What does one gain from knowing the exact history of any given
Fluxus project? Ultimately you do have more information and more knowledge but where
does
this get you? Is it defendable to use means of recording and transmitting information
about Fluxus that are antithetical or at least antagonistic to the Fluxus worldview?
What is the validity of determining and communicating information and facts as
a basis of knowledge (on or about Fluxus) if such processes interfere with a
fundamental understanding of the significance and relevance of such information? The
referential nature of Fluxus works and performances reflects a recognition of meaning
as a construct of the particular framework, or situation in which it is placed or
occurs. Fluxus works can never claim to be completely original or distinct entities,
even though Maciunas often sought to stress this as an aspect of Fluxus, because
their meaning and significance change in relation to the context in which they are
experienced. In this way Fluxus seeks to counter the prevailing notions of the
significance of materiality in relationship to the praxis of creation and the aura of
originality. More specifically Fluxus questions the historically dependent
institutionalized processes that have come to stress a kind of aura that is
specifically dependent on originality. The concern of such traditional emphases is to
separate the
original meaning from subsequent interpretations in order to privilege the then of
history over the now of experience. In Fluxus, though, there is no strong dependency
on an determinable past or invocation of an anticipated future. A preference is
instead given to immediacy, to the intensity of experience found in the flow of the
constantly changing present as a nexus between a multiplicity of potential pasts and
futures.
According to the field of cognitive science, one of the principal aspects of a
concept is relational definition. Any concept always enters into relation with other
concepts and thus a concept is partly defined by its physical attributes and partly
by its relations to other concepts or the data structure in which it exists or is
placed. If this is a given of cognition the issue becomes on which part of this schema
do we place emphasis? Traditionally a priority is given in the visual arts to
the physical attributes as reflective of, or physical evidence for (as in sign system)
the primary communicative nature of the object of consideration. What I feel is
necessary is a reverse prioritizing of this schema in which a greater emphasis is
placed on the significance of the concept in relation to other concepts and
specifically the operational nature of such relationships as they develop and alter
our ideas, perceptions and ultimately world view. Through such an approach what become
important is a process of expansive interaction, rather than a product-centric notion
of knowledge.
So what are we left with and how are we to consider Fluxus? Should we abandon
all perceptual, social, semiotic and other kinds of systematic approaches to Fluxus
and celebrate an anarchy of interpretation? The simple answer is no, we should not
reject them altogether, but we should aim to open avenues of consideration between a
field of information, in this case Fluxus, and the multiple possibilities of this
material as an interactive aspect of our environment. In consort with more
traditional approaches we must initiate other means of learning from and responding to
the Fluxus project, or worldview, particularly as related to those aspects of Fluxus,
which are not a resolution, but a continuance of play.
