Dear Secret Fluxus,
> We do not see ourselves as a preservation ensemble or a reconstruction > ensemble in the way you seem to think we do. We believe that this work is > quite able to stand on its own in the present moment, and we are dedicated > to the work. > > The issues you raise concerning what it might mean to present a concert that > is 50% or more Fluxus does pose interesting questions. For us, the fact that > the older Fluxus works have remained in a constant living repertoire for > nearly half a century does not make them historical. It makes them > repositories of action and engagement. For us, the legacy of continual > engagement with these works makes them a good balance to the other work that > any concert might include. > I do share your point of view about the perpetuation and the reactivation of FLuxus pieces, and I did a lot in that way too, as many of us did on this list. However, I think that the problem , the aporetic, or paradoxical, situation, is that interpreting pieces as actual scores, like any contemporary music ensemble, as the Maulwerker chose to do, kills a large part of the event interest (please note that I haven't write"kills all the interest"). On the other hand, playing fluxus scores without fluxus artists today asks the hard dedication you've proved to have, when it was just something that was flooding in the hey-days of the Wiesbaden FLuxus Festpiele. In other words, Duchamp used to say that he did not like art that stinks sweat, and Fluxus, beyond the formalism, is one of the best heirs of this "lazy" vision of the art, which is so difficult to maintain when one is trying very hard to do it properly: doing things without effort asks for a lot of work-see for exemple people in circuses-, or for an absolute merge with what you're doing: you have to embody it to perform it without effort. This is the point where Fluxus revival can't get further. One solution is to work with/for FLuxus artists, which means that you receive the legitimation of your work in payment of your contribution to the existence of the specific interpretation of Fluxus by this very artist (making a concert with Ken Friedman, with Alison Knowles, with Ben Patterson, Eric Andersen or with Ben Vautier means a totally different things, engenders totally different approaches of the same scores, and this is what is interesting). But this means that you're a bit-even subtly, gently, and with much love-manipulated by the aims of the artist towards his envision of the history of FLuxus (and his place in this history too). Eventually, I even came to the idea that one should admit the revival aspect of the whole thing, and I imagined to bring together a set of sosies of the original group to perform FLuxus, but for obvious reasons, this never happened (but I'd like to do that with the artists on the fist row in the room....). Anyway, no solution is fully satisfying, but what one has to say, is how happy one feel when performing old and new scores and this worth any bad theories one can imagine to justify this pleasure and to keep it secret. I wish you a long way on the performing experience, Bests, Bertrand
