FLUXLIST: fluxus research or fluxus parody?
At last week's reception for Daniel Spoerri at Emily Harvey Gallery I conducted some research. I distributed a survey to attempt to assess Eric Andersen's alleged assertion that "All the authentic Fluxus artists consider the Fluxlist to be a truly absurd parody." This activity was also presented as being a performance. You can view a description of this activity (with photo documentation) at http://www.fluxus.org/FluxusMidwest/Research/fluxlist.html . I am unable to report the survey results. however, because I have placed the sealed ballot box containing the completed surveys for auction on eBay at http://cgi.ebay.com/aw-cgi/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItemitem=348343143" . So if you really want to know the results and/or want a fine artifact of modern art, head over to the auction. Bidding starts at 1.00 (will be surprised if it goes much higher). Auction ends in ten days.
Re: FLUXLIST: fluxus research or fluxus parody?
[EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: http://www.fluxus.org/FluxusMidwest/Research/fluxlist.html Allen - great project and great concept very well done! I particularly like the sealed box for sale on ebay as an extension of the performance. I also have a question (to you and any and all other fluxlisters) - do you think that people were not able to see the performative nature of this event because of the power of the category (survey), the context, or what? It is interesting to think that the power of a life event (the survey) might have been able to mitigate the attempt to create art. . . . . . As a side question do you think that if Alison had done the same event do you think that it would have been seen differently or would the reactions still have been the same? (and if so what might this tell us of the nature and perception of performance art. . . . ?) Owen
FLUXLIST: recent projects
Allen's posting of his online documentation got me thinking that I should share will all the fluxlisters the online documentation of a project that I did last year (and have spent a good deal of time creating the documentation for this year) titled proof of existence. you can find it at: http://www.altarts.org/ofsproof/index.html I have not publicly launched it yet (still in the process of checking for any mechanical problems/issues) but I thought that I would let all of you know so if you are interested you can take a look. Any and all feedback would be much appreciated. Owen
Re: FLUXLIST: fluxus research and Ray Johnson
Firstly, I really wish Allen that you'd looked at the results but then again I see the point of not looking. Owen asked: As a side question do you think that if Alison had done the same event do you think that it would have been seen differently or would the reactions still have been the same? (and if so what might this tell us of the nature and perception of performance art. . . . ?) I think this is a very interesting question that you have posed. Last night I was listening to the CD of RayBeingRay that came with that Lightworks issue. It's lots of snippets of Ray talking about work, life etc. but there's one recording of Ray trying to get someone to join the New York Correspondence School at a Gallery...clearly from the recording the woman Ray is trying to persuade thinks he's some kind of nutter until Ray mentions that they have his book in the bookshop. So basically there was this need to justify himself as an artist otherwise the woman wouldn't have taken him seriously: I think that in a room filled with so many people who are making their living from Fluxus art Allen is not going to be perceived as a performer in the same way as Alison is. So when Allen hands out questionnaires people will not view it as a performance unless told that it is such. Next time Allen why not distribute "a survey to assess the assertion that "All the authentic Fluxlist artists consider Eric Andersen to be a truly absurd parody." " ;-) cheers, Sol
Re: FLUXLIST: 6 things about Fluxlist
Yes, I'd love to talk about this. First of all, what is "the new mentality"? Is there only one? "The" is such a strong, exclusive word, though it's in such common useage, we barely notice it's propriatariness. Oh. Perhaps "the" now refers to 6 instead of one? Barg In a message dated 06/02/2000 10:21:32 AM Eastern Daylight Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: 4)Fluxlist is intended as a place to talk about and create what Dick Higgins termed "the arts of the new mentality". Whatever it means, lets talk about this. And btw, I hate this list being labeled to muc
Re: FLUXLIST: 6 things about Fluxlist
[EMAIL PROTECTED],.Internet writes: Well "the arts of the new mentality" is just a euphemism for the intermedia approach I think that Sol is correct that it does relate to Dick's ideas about Intermedia, but it is also more than this - I think that it is more closely related to the mindset that Dick suggested as being part of living/acting/working in an intermedial space - or what he has called (in a great article that was published in the Art Papers out of Atlanta Georgia in the late 80s - I am not sure of the date) postcognativism which was a term that Dick used to refer to some of the similar ideas that are referenced under the more widely used term postmodernism. Owen
Re: FLUXLIST: 6 things about Fluxlist
Owen wrote: I think that Sol is correct that it does relate to Dick's ideas about Intermedia, but it is also more than this - I think that it is more closely related to the mindset that Dick suggested as being part of living/acting/working in an intermedial space I think for that generation of experimental artists who began working in the late fifties such work was about a new way of seeing the world and thus a new mentality..their work still seems truly different today. That's part of the link to CageCage was trying to hear differently, hence his interest in silence as an integral component of music/sound. Silence is to music what zero is to the set of natural numbers, in other words it is a bedrock on which other structures are built. Not so much about one single new mentality but about the mentality that breaks down old pre-conceptions, opening the mind to different forms of thought. getting the cobwebs out from between your ears and the ears of your friends. ;-) Thanks Owen for adding the bit about living it, after all it's all about no difference between art and everyday life..that's the new mentality also. Your receipts are part of that. No longer just a bit of paper but an artifact of the exchange which it documents and thus you extended the idea and considered what else that signified in the hope of proving your own existence. Now if you could just formulate that mathematically... I remember when I first saw the proof of "2+2=4".5 pages!..perhaps not the new mentality but feeling new mentally..incidents of mental novelty. cheers, Sol.
FLUXLIST: Cactus Arts
Hi, Cactus Arts is setting up a new UK venue in Liverpool. We would be very interested in developing a Fluxus theme and international contacts. If anyone has any ideas or suggestions (particularly web resources), please mail us at the following address: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Thanks! Richard. Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com
Re: FLUXLIST: fluxus research or fluxus parody?
"All the authentic Fluxus artists consider the Fluxlist to be a truly absurd parody." But isn't it true that all the authentic Fluxus artists consider FLUXUS to be a truly absurd parody?
FLUXLIST: Dick Higgins His shoots shall spread out; his beauty shall belike the olive tree ...
It's a bit hard for me to swallow the gratuitious and mean-spirited note recently posted here against the late Dick Higgins. One must wonder what causes a man to see nothing in others but that which is small, crabbed or monstrous. When I observe this kind of behavior, I suspect that what he sees is little more than the projected reflection of his own character. I feel as George Free feels. It's nearly 35 years since I first wrote to Dick Higgins, and I, too, was thrilled when Dick engaged me in correspondence. No one was ever less characterized by the notion of an "unquestionable, overarching, prescribed agenda." Dick was deep, thorough, systematic. He thought things through. He changed his mind. He thought again. He welcomed others and he welcomed debate. Like all of us who travel about in a human body, Dick also got irritated from time to time, and he could be peevish or quirky. He was never mean-spirited or narrow. Few people known to me have lived their life in such profound spiritual or material generosity. He staked his fortune on what he believed in. He lost much of it, and he never complained that he was no longer rich. He was only sad that it was hard to find a regular, paying job in the arts along with the many art teachers and techno-geeks who do so well. I number one specific geek in that company. (It does still surprise me that not one of the several hundred universities with intermedia departments, intermedia program and intermedia degrees had a place for the man who theorized the concept of intermedia, coined the word and introduced it to the world.) Dick Higgins spent much of his life building platforms and forums for the work of other people, shaping networks, making introductions, publishing books, directing the attention of critics and curators to those whose work he admired. This is a sharp contrast to someone whose primary complaint seems be that the world fails to recognize his genius -- and whose primary career goal seems to be building ever more sites and projects to crank out his own work. My guess is that Saul Ostrow takes it as a great compliment to be compared with Dick Higgins. There are many lists where our distinguished colleague posts from time to time. Many of these are characterized by a back-channel network of those who send notes to each other with astonishment, irritation and a resolute determination neither to engage him nor to respond. Usually, I'd let this kind of thing go, but I still miss Dick and I am not in the mood to let such stupidity go unchallenged. David Ross speaks for many of us when he writes, Yeah Brad, well when I grow up and become a real, true radical artist like you, then maybe I can aspire to your level of accomplishment and contribution, and brutal, uplifting honesty. Gosh, you're terrific. Oh, I checked your on-line work...pretty spiffy. And so profound! Anyone care to guess who among these will be remembered, and how? "His shoots shall spread out; his beauty shall be like the olive tree, and his fragrance like that of Lebanon. They shall again live beneath my shadow, they shall flourish as a garden; they shall blossom like the vine, their fragrance shall be like the wine of Lebanon." -- Hosea 14: 6-7 -- Ken Friedman --
FLUXLIST: 12 Fluxus Ideas
12 Fluxus Ideas Interpreted and otherwise screwed up by Don Boyd 1.Globalism (First major art movement to be so) 2.Unity of Art and Life 3. Intermedia (Dick's term borrowed from Blake) 4. Experimentalism 5. Chance (From Cage's focus on that) 6. Playfulness (Maciunas) 7. Simplicity (More with less) 8. Implicativeness (Much is implied, little given) 9. Exemplativism (Live your beliefs) 10. Specificity 11. Prescence in time 12 Musicality (Also from Cage) (61)
FLUXLIST: free art games 2
All Creation is an Act Of Destruction: Guerilla Gardening and Grafilthy. 1. Graffilthy * Graffitti's natural progression: Super Soakers, filled with paint, creating a Jackson Pollack Landscape. The differential between art and reality meets an all time union. * The new Militant left declares a war and fights it with the combination of childish things (vandalism, waterguns) and artistic tools (paint, guerilla art.) Inherently it is a satire of the Militant Right. * Graffilthy has merged with performance art on several occasions. Wearing goggles, bicycle helmets and kneepads, on a bicycle with a water gun, an unidentified Graffilthy Perpetrator runs through town ringing his bell and spraying paint. * Even authorities are disinterested, going so far as to refuse to call it "vandalism." Teachers, College Professors, Doctors and Dentists have all remarked on its prettiness. The landmark bridge was coated with pastel paints, which remain today. * As with any underground art movement, there are rumors abound: that the graffilthy movement is sponsored by the city as part of the desire to modernize Boston. That news reports have identified it, with its proper name. http://beaconhilltimes.com/times_feature4.mv?2425 http://one38.org/graffilthy/ 2. Guerilla Gardening: The Response to Graffilthy * Balance is an essential piece of any artistic endeavor. As a result, there is a new flipped version of graffilthy: Guerilla Gardening. * Groups of youths with Ski Masks and pick up trucks jump from the truck into traffic circles, parking lots, sidewalks, with green watering cans seeds. Rakes if neccessary. The seeds are planted and the location is placed on a Map. * The groups care for these seeds on a daily basis in the same manner, though often for the sake of convienience the spectacle is reduced, and shifts are rotated. * Soon, the city is overrun by broad, colorful splashes of paint at eye level, and legions of self-perpetuating flowers on the ground. Its Relation To The Internet: Through the internet, both movements have been able to become inexplicably intertwined with the street cultures of various cities that it would perhaps never reach otherwise. Streetwise is slowly coming to mean net.savvy, and previously local scenes for Graffitti artists are getting smaller- increasing the desire to top a larger collective pool. This means an essentially immense increase in the collective quality of graffitti artists. When one gets up in Utah, one can also be seen by the artists in London. Essentially, net.savvy has led to a desire to literally have a style war with everyone in the world. As a result of this networking, which has occured for several years, though now, with cable and computer access more popular than ever before, it has reached an all time high. The product of this has been the formation of the Graffitti Avant Garde. Graffilthy is aware of the internet, sharing the same ideologies that Graffitti and the net share: the desire to be seen, to put forward art and ideas instead of merely recieving them from established sources. Just as early electronic music and Graffitti were tied together, the internet and Graffitti will enjoy in the 21st century a symbiotic relationship which could change the realm of internet art to involve a more direct sense of action and real-time, non virtual results.
FLUXLIST: Expositor In Absentia
What lively profundities are happenin' today on Fluxlist!! A sad day for me to be offline. I have been without my computer for 10 hours and won't get it back 'til tomorrow as it is in the computer hospital for a triple RAM bypass and CD burner. I'm having severe withdrawals and my eyes are twitching. Carry on, Well done! PK
Re: FLUXLIST: 6 things about Fluxlist
we're list liberals ;-) Hey Sol! This is the one thing that has always bugged me about me. The people who are most prone to appreciate my art detest my faith. The people who are most prone to appreciate my faith detest my art. So few people on either side of my fence are truly tolerant of me and/or each other. Myke
Re: FLUXLIST: 6 things about Fluxlist
First of all, what is "the new mentality"? Anything that opposes mine. (Not that the old mentality agreed with me either, but...) Myke
Re: FLUXLIST: fluxus research or fluxus parody?
My personal definition of Fluxus, which, I have learned, is but one in the multicolored rainbow of Fluxus- is simply: Fluxus As Haiku. "Art which connects or generates a moment of direct insight into nature or psychology." This is based on my fluxus as haiku theories of yesteryear, and by no means is it a complete definition, its been enough to keep me happy. There are smaller aspects that I have enjoyed however: Fluxus as Imploding Anarchy. = Fluxus as a response to sociological constructs of order by creating its own order: Ie; inventing new games and limitations in order to supersede, compliment, or ridicule the rules of our established social order and fabric. Fluxus as Outsider == To create with the flux umbrella gives one the right to explore ones personal creative motivations as opposed to the continuation of the art worlds academic discourse. Unfortunately, this has not held very purely among the remaining fluxus artists, who have now created a fluxus discourse on its own. Leading us to: Fluxus as Anti-Fluxus To be truly Fluxus in the post-Maciunas world means shunning any desire to be accepted by the remaining group, it means an ignorance of discourse (not an ignorance of the work, mind you, but a deliberate ignorance for academic discussion of the work) and it means playing with fluxus in the way that fluxus played with the art world: knock it down, respect it, mock it, destroy it, contribute to it, add to it, delete from it. (Is this discourse? Maybe- but for the love of god, never concern yourself with "discourse.")
Re: FLUXLIST: fluxus research and Ray Johnson
"a survey to assess the assertion that "All the authentic Fluxlist artists Whatever a "fluxlist" artist is, I dont think I am one, I have subscribed to this list, so what, there is a nice sticker in the "fluxlist" box, who did this ? Ray Johnson, letter to Higgins. Maybe one of the most convincing Pop artists. The chinese jade piece, Malgosia ? Nicenst two brown pieces with prints of keys etc. Great. K. Fohrers piece is nice too. CanTVs matchstick box jumps into the eye etc. Shure, they arent "fluxlist" artists eather, or ? ;-) H.
Re: FLUXLIST: Dick Higgins His shoots shall spread out; his beauty shall belike the olive tree ...
I didn't catch the mean message to Dick Higgins either. Like him, I have certain people whose posts I never both with. I wrote to Higgins about five years ago and never received anything but warmth, encouragement, intelligence and generosity. We later kept up an email correspondance almost weekly until he died. To hear that there were slanderous remarks posted here only re-inforces my growing suspicion that this list is less about Fluxus than it is about lonely egomaniacs looking for a place to feel self-important. dd -Original Message- From: Ken Friedman [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Fluxlist [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: June 2, 2000 1:00 PM Subject: FLUXLIST: Dick Higgins "His shoots shall spread out; his beauty shall belike the olive tree ..." It's a bit hard for me to swallow the gratuitious and mean-spirited note recently posted here against the late Dick Higgins. One must wonder what causes a man to see nothing in others but that which is small, crabbed or monstrous. When I observe this kind of behavior, I suspect that what he sees is little more than the projected reflection of his own character. I feel as George Free feels. It's nearly 35 years since I first wrote to Dick Higgins, and I, too, was thrilled when Dick engaged me in correspondence. No one was ever less characterized by the notion of an "unquestionable, overarching, prescribed agenda." Dick was deep, thorough, systematic. He thought things through. He changed his mind. He thought again. He welcomed others and he welcomed debate. Like all of us who travel about in a human body, Dick also got irritated from time to time, and he could be peevish or quirky. He was never mean-spirited or narrow. Few people known to me have lived their life in such profound spiritual or material generosity. He staked his fortune on what he believed in. He lost much of it, and he never complained that he was no longer rich. He was only sad that it was hard to find a regular, paying job in the arts along with the many art teachers and techno-geeks who do so well. I number one specific geek in that company. (It does still surprise me that not one of the several hundred universities with intermedia departments, intermedia program and intermedia degrees had a place for the man who theorized the concept of intermedia, coined the word and introduced it to the world.) Dick Higgins spent much of his life building platforms and forums for the work of other people, shaping networks, making introductions, publishing books, directing the attention of critics and curators to those whose work he admired. This is a sharp contrast to someone whose primary complaint seems be that the world fails to recognize his genius -- and whose primary career goal seems to be building ever more sites and projects to crank out his own work. My guess is that Saul Ostrow takes it as a great compliment to be compared with Dick Higgins. There are many lists where our distinguished colleague posts from time to time. Many of these are characterized by a back-channel network of those who send notes to each other with astonishment, irritation and a resolute determination neither to engage him nor to respond. Usually, I'd let this kind of thing go, but I still miss Dick and I am not in the mood to let such stupidity go unchallenged. David Ross speaks for many of us when he writes, Yeah Brad, well when I grow up and become a real, true radical artist like you, then maybe I can aspire to your level of accomplishment and contribution, and brutal, uplifting honesty. Gosh, you're terrific. Oh, I checked your on-line work...pretty spiffy. And so profound! Anyone care to guess who among these will be remembered, and how? "His shoots shall spread out; his beauty shall be like the olive tree, and his fragrance like that of Lebanon. They shall again live beneath my shadow, they shall flourish as a garden; they shall blossom like the vine, their fragrance shall be like the wine of Lebanon." -- Hosea 14: 6-7 -- Ken Friedman --
Re: FLUXLIST: Dick HigginsHis shoots shall spread out; his beauty shall belike the olive tree ...
is this a rare moment of humour? if so, hats off h. dd To hear that there were slanderous remarks posted here only re-inforces my growing suspicion that this list is less about Fluxus than it is about lonely egomaniacs looking for a place to feel self-important. I didn't say anything bad about the guy. Myke
Re: FLUXLIST: DickHigginsHis shoots shall spread out; his beauty shall belike the olive tree...
is this a rare moment of humour? if so, hats off h. ROFLMAO!! Indeed it is! :) Glad you enjoyed it! Myke
Re: FLUXLIST: Dick Higgins His shoots shall spread out; his beautyshall be like the olive tree ...
several hundred universities with intermedia departments, "Multimedia" ?
