FLUXLIST: Emmett's quote
Dear Alan, Emmett's quote: Fluxus is what Fluxus does but no one knows whodunnit. Ken
FLUXLIST: The Art of Collaboration
Dear Colleagues, This may interest some of you. Ken | Non-proportional font Message: 3 Date: Sat, 6 Sep 2003 10:38:22 +1000 From: geert lovink [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [spectre] forum on the art of collaboration To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Message-ID: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 For April 2004 we, Trebor Scholz and Geert Lovink, are organizing a conference at the State University of New York at Buffalo (upstate New York) about the art of collaboration, models of critical web-based art, and the role media technologies play in the making of social networks. If you are interested in these topics please send a short introduction to your interests and background to our listserv after subscribing to it at [EMAIL PROTECTED] Because of the nature of the topic we would like to invite those interested in the topic of (online) collaboration, free cooperation, models of critical web-based art, and the role media technologies play in the making of social networks to join us in an online forum/mailing list where we will discuss related issues. Please feel free to join us, even if you think you won't be able to make it to Buffalo next year. This event is very much about experimenting with different forms of presentation and debate. /\\/\//\//\//\//\\\/\/\/\/\/\/\\\//\ http://freecooperation.org -- -- +---+ [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.asquare.org/ http://www.bannerart.org/ http://www.zendco.com/
FLUXLIST: 46 States
Dear Friends, Back from my travels. Catching up on past notes. Thanks for more nice greetings. Don Boyd mentioned that it was my goal to complete projects in all 50 of the United States. At the time I set the goal -- 1966 or 1967 -- Fluxus West was an active forum for festivals, concerts, exhibitions, publications, projects, and other ways of sharing and distributing the Fluxus work. Making the work of the different artists active in Fluxus widely available seemed implicit in the work and in the Fluxus idea. This included work directly from the artists, and work published by Fluxus as well as by Something Else Press, Aktual, Zaj, and the other Fluxus presses or centers. Over the years, I managed to reach 46 of the 50 states. Got to 45 states in the 1960s and 1970s, added Minnesota in 1992 when the Walker Art Center invited a lot of us to the Spirit of Fluxus show. Never got to North Dakota, Wisconsin, Hawaii, or Alaska. Best regards, Ken
FLUXLIST: Thanks.
Dear Allen, Ann, Alan, Bertrand, Jonah, Cie., Thanks for the warm welcome. It's a balmy early summer night in Sweden, and my friend Jacob is calling to join him for a walk. Best regards, Ken
FLUXLIST: Fluxchart
Dear Friends, Alan Bowman writes, of scale within? there is the fluxus chart compiled by (filliou williams?/ - i don't remember - Bertrand?) which charts presence at wiesbaden etc and forwm the beginnings of a fluxscale. but a new official fluxometer could be good. In the late 1970s, I proposed using the sociological technique of content analysis to give a broad view of Fluxus. In 1981 or so, Peter Frank and I did a simple checklist analysis of the names the artists presented in the exhibitions, catalogues and books on Fluxus up to that time. Frank organized it into a chart. In 1991, using my model, James Lewes, a graduate research assistant at Alternative Traditions in the Contemporary Arts of the University of Iowa, took the Peter Frank chart and brought it forward in time. To establish a consensus of expert opinions, the chart was based on a comprehensive survey of major Fluxus exhibitions, catalogues and books up to the exhibitions that were already on tour at the beginning of 1992. Lewes attempted to include every project intended as a survey of Fluxus. He also reviewed exhibitions in which a survey of Fluxus was presented as a special section, for example the 1990 Biennal of Venice or the Pop Art exhibition at the Royal Academy in London in 1991-92 that went on to Museum Ludwig in Cologne and the Reina Sofia in Madrid. In selecting projects, Lewes sought to represent the opinion of every expert scholar or curator who has presented an overview of Fluxus. No expert was used more than once. Some experts appear once as individuals and again in a group effort. For example, Jon Hendricks appears once as the curator and editor of the Gilbert and Lila Silverman Fluxus Collection and its publications. He appears again in a team as co-curator of the Fluxus exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art. Every artist listed or presented at least once in any of these exhibitions, catalogues or books was noted. Lewes prepared the chart in this manner: Running vertically down the left side of the chart, the names of all artists appearing in any of the selected presentations are listed in alphabetical order. Across the top of the chart, twenty-one exhibitions and projects from Maciunas's first lists in 1964 through the FluxAttitudes show at the New Museum in New York in 1992 are presented in chronological order. (Some of these projects were seen more than once, for example, the Fluxshoe in England, which was presented at many venues, or FluxAttitudes, which was presented first at HallWalls in Buffalo.) Under each presentation project, a mark was made beside the name of every artist included. The chart thus offers an overview of all the inclusions and entries in a series of 21 major projects, representing evolving and differing views of Fluxus over a 30-year period from 1962 to 1992. The completed chart offers a broad consensus of opinion by 30 experts who have given lengthy consideration to Fluxus. These include scholars, critics, curators, gallerists, art dealers, Fluxus artists and non-Fluxus artists interested in Fluxus. Altogether, some 351 artists were presented in 21 different projects representing a wide variety of venues, presentations and publications during the 30 years in which Fluxus has existed. The chart appears in: Friedman, Ken with James Lewes. 1992. Fluxus: Global Community, Human Dimensions. (in) Fluxus: A Conceptual Country, Estera Milman, guest editor. [Visible Language, vol. 26, nos. 1/2.] Providence: Rhode Island School of Design, pp. 154-179. [Special issue devoted to Fluxus, also exhibition catalogue] It's probably time to update the exercise. I don't think there can be an official Fluxometer, but it is interesting to see the different shapes and views established by different criteria and sorting mechanisms. It gives a general view of Fluxus and it certainly shows how people see Fluxus. Best regards, Ken Friedman
FLUXLIST: Internet petitions do not work
The Internet petition circulated here several times has no value Internet petitions do not work. If you care enough to make a difference, you must write a personal letter. Sending an internet petition has two effects. It makes the person who signs it feel as if he or she has done something of value for a cause he or she supports without doing anything for the cause at all. It takes up time and fills up space, in this case Fluxlist. To make petitions meaningful requires an understanding of petition protocol. The issue is not the validity of the idea, but the validity of the petition. To show that thousands of people or millions of people support a petition, it is necessary to document their participation. Since there is no way to document or to assure the validity of Internet signatures at this time, Internet petitions are not valid. Further, since Internet petitions spread through different lists and move through different chains, the same names appear dozens or even hundreds of times. There is no way to establish whether a final petition has the signatures of many different individuals or far fewer individuals whose names occur repeatedly. If a petition arrives with 12,863,436 signatures, there is no way to know whether this is 12,863,436 separate individuals or 189,932 individuals whose signatures have crossed and multiplied through different chains. To find out which is the case requires expensive staff time that no agency can afford, and there is still no valid documentation of the signatures. A legally valid petition in most cases requires 1) a signature, 2) a printed name, 3) an address or location. While some public opinion petitions neglect the third, all three are required for a petition have the kind of legal standing required to place a political party on the rolls or to invoke a plebiscite. One may argue that this is merely fastidious rhetoric. It is not. This principle goes to the core of democratic participation in government decisions. Governments must know that citizens are actually speaking before acting on civic will spoken through the collective voice of a petition. International petitions must reasonably represent a large, global constituency to be impressive, and this means a record of valid signatures. The format of the Internet petition offers merely a list of names. There is no assurance that any named individual actually signed it. Paper petitions are routinely refused or invalidated for lack of valid documentation. Some believe that that the purpose of Internet petitions is simply to draw attention to issues. This is only partly true. Internet petitions draw attention to issues, but they are not a particularly useful way to do so. Debate and informed conversation draws attention to issues. Invalid petitions merely waste time. In this case, bombarding a government ministry with the same petition along multiple routes is a guaranteed way to annoy the appropriate ministers rather than educating them. By now, all these ministers have shifted their email accounts for current business or set filters to sweep these petitions into the garbage unopened. Rather than circulate Internet petitions, it is far more effective to ask those who would sign such a petition to write a proper letter and email it directly with their own signature bock including a return address. While validation is still an issue, the fact of a properly signed letter with name and return address in the signature block can be checked. To make it easy to write such a letter, those who propose the petition can write a sample letter than can be pasted into the body of a new email document and signed. In this case, filters and fax blockage probably mean the only effective way to deliver such a letter now is by old-fashioned paper post. A cause that deserves support requires that you take the time to write a letter and send it personally. If you care enough about the Johannesburg Biennial to do something, write a letter or send a personalized email. Ken Friedman --
FLUXLIST: Time pieces ...
Rich history time pieces available. Am leaving for France, so can't gather mine to post. If still interested, can do so on return. Time Travel Piece #1 is essentially a piece that Alan Sonfist did in New York. It was created in the early 1960s and was up for several decades. Don't know if it still exists. It was a plot of land (larger than 10 x 10) that was returned to the state of natural vegetation on the site that existed before the Dutch settled the area. -- Ken Friedman -- Time Travel Piece #1 by Adam Villani, 2000 Designate a 10' by 10' square plot of urbanized land and return it to the state it was in before humans settled the area. The time travel area should extend down from the surface into bedrock, and up into the sky. Any changes in elevation should be corrected. --
FLUXLIST: Seven Telephone Events
Seven telephone events ... four from the 1960s, two from the 1970s, one from the 1990s. Ken Friedman -- Telephone Car Event Hide a normal desk telephone and a bell in your car or in any car. At an unexpected moment, ring the bell. Answer the phone and start talking. This piece may be varied by using a suitcase, on a street corner, in a restaurant, under a table, etc. 1967 First performed in San Francisco, California with Steve Abrams. This piece was originally titled Telecar. -- Telephone Clock Telephone someone. Announce the time. 1967 First realized in San Francisco, California in February, 1967. -- Telephone Event Take a standard desk telephone to someone's door. Ring the bell. When someone comes to the door, hand the phone to them, saying, "It's for you." 1967 First realized in San Francisco, California in February, 1967. -- Telephone for You Take a standard desk telephone with you in a car. Drive up to people, handing the phone out through the window, saying, "It's for you." This piece may also be performed using a suitcase or briefcase in unexpected situations, in an elevator, on a street corner, in a restaurant, etc. 1967 First performed during the Aktual/Keeping Together Manifestation, March 1967. Originally titled Telephone for Steve Abrams. -- In One Year and Out the Other On New Year's Eve, make a telephone call from one time zone to another so that you are conducting a conversation between people located in two years. 1975 I first performed this event on New Year's Eve 1975-1976, calling from Springfield, Ohio forward to Dick Higgins, Christo, and Nam June Paik in New York, then back to Tom Garver and Natasha Nicholson in California. I have celebrated this work annually since then, frequently calling Tom Garver, Peter Frank, Newton and Helen Harrison, Abraham Friedman and Dick Higgins. For New Year's of 1992-1993 I used telefax for the first time in performing this work. I sent telefax messages with the score to Christo and Jeanne-Claude Christo, Peter Frank, Abraham and Shirley Friedman, Dick Higgins, Hong Hee Kim-Cheon, Choong-Sup and Yeong Lim, Karen and David Moss. -- Three Texts for Jim Pallas Evidence. Piety. Perseverance. 1979 First performed in 1979 during preparations for the Phone Event during the month of January, 1989, organized by Jim Pallas in Detroit, Michigan. -- Bird Call Make a telephone call to a bird. If you do not know a bird who has a telephone, make a telephone call in which you make bird noises. 1992 First realized with a telephone call to Jack Ox's parakeet, Dwight, then living in Cologne. -- These events are copyright (c) Fluxus 1967, 1975, and copyright (c) Ken Friedman 1967, 1975, 1979, 1992, 2000. All rights reserved. Permission is granted to reproduce or perform these events provided that credit is given and copyright is acknowledged. --
FLUXLIST: Obscene phone calls ....
Men do occasionally receive obscene phone calls. It is rare, but it happens. When I lived in New York, I got an obscene phone call late one night. I experienced the same anxiety and discomfort my woman friends reported on experiencing an unknown stranger muttering half-audible obscenities in my ear. For me, the sense of violation came more from the surprise and the sense that an unknown stranger was entering my private world than from the specific words. -- Ken --
FLUXLIST: Dead horse beaten
C'mon, guys. There is a list here, and by definition, the owners and subscribers of this list constitute a community of some kind. The exact nature of that community is arguably vague, but it's sophistry to suggest that the listowners ought to start a private mailing-list. The listowners started THIS list and the folks who claim they don't like the list nevertheless got here when came along and subscribed. The is open to those who wish to take part. No one has been required to join this list. No one is required to remain a subscriber. To suggest that the listowners take Fluxlist somewhere else is ridiculous: there is only one Internet. The list is public in the sense that anyone is free to join or leave. The list is ALREADY private in that anyone who wishes to join does so understanding how it works and agrees by subscribing to accept the standards set forth in the welcome statement. Whether or not this list is a travesty of some kind is a matter of opinion. As Davidson noted, there is no real basis for an etrial -- and there is no question of it. Owen intended to make a point supporting Sol. Just as there is no need for an etrial, there are no questions of procedure. Sol invoked an accepted procedure. It was established when the list was refounded. Here's a suggestion for those who think this list is a travesty: Go start a list of your own. I promise not to bother you. -- Ken Friedman --
FLUXLIST: Six sides, six numbers
Dear Alan, The die should have had six numbers, one for each side. If there was only one number, well ... I'm tempted to say that your die was "unfixed." Ken --
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: Has anyone thought to ask Charlie Burch ?
Come on, people. Charlton Burch has just now spent five years developing a special issue of his magazine. Lightworks is a unique publication, demanding, time consuming and expensive to produce. Posting the contents of the magazine to the web and making them available free is hardly "free advertising" if it competes with the magazine rather than helping create demand for copies. As I see it, posting the complete contents of the magazine and the audio is competition. Perhaps Charlie Burch sees it another way, and if he does, then get his permission to post. Until you get permission to post, Lightworks and the contents of the issue are protected by copyright. Lightworks and Charlton Burch are well known. In some circles, he is a legend. He has always done an astonishing project with meticulous care for the artistic content. He's not a major publisher -- he is an artist who invests passion and soul in Lightworks. There have been some lively debates on this list about moral right -- the right of an artist to decide how his or her work will be used and displayed -- as well as about copyright. One reason Burch invests so much time and money in Lightworks is the care with which he develops each issue for a specific effect, published the way he wants it to be done. Perhaps he'd publish more often if enough subscriptions or sales made it possible, but they don't. In the meantime, he's an independent publisher and an artist like many people on this list. His moral right as an artist deserves respect as a human being. His copyright as an artist and an independent publisher demands respect under the law. The suggestion that Lightworks be scanned and posted to the web involves moral right and copyright. Scanning and posting the entire contents of a publication is not advertising. It is republishing. It is inappropriate to republish Charlton Burch's magazine until he gives permission. If you intend to benefit Charlton Burch and Lightworks, contact him and ask permission to scan and post. -- Ken Friedman Date: Wed, 24 May 2000 19:46:23 -0400 (EDT) From: Lord Hasenpfeffer [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: FLUXLIST: lightworks lightworks is a great magazine with muchflux stuff in it. and charlton burch is a very nice guy. buy back issues. send him lots of money. How about if somebody scans the pages and rips the audio from their copies and then puts them on the web for everybody to enjoy? This would be very beneficial because people who'd never know about Mr. Burch and his mag otherwise would suddenly be enlightened to them! Myke --
FLUXLIST: Hats off to Lord Hasenpfeffer.
Dear Myke, Thank you for your clarification. I may have missed some of the debate. My hat is off to you. Best regards, -- Ken --
FLUXLIST: Thanks for the invitation to takes part in ARTS. I'm going todecline for five reasons.
Dear Scott, Thanks for the invitation to takes part in ARTS. I'm going to decline for five reasons. 1) Doing this requires more research and more time than you imagine. Generally, when an idea seems to have been done before, one feels that one vaguely remembers something from a time earlier than the present. To be sure, it's necessary to track it down. That takes research. Those with large memories and a wealth of knowledge on which to draw are sometimes constrained even further. Someone who has observed the art scene and undertaken research for several decades has developed a wealth of intuitions, memories, and recollections. Few of these are so clear that he or she can recall the specifics right off, "Oh, yes. Ian Breakwell did that in 1973." If you genuinely wish to know whether something has been done before or whether something of the same name exists or has existed in the past, you have to do the research. If you don't, you're just as likely to think it doesn't or hasn't and find that it has. 2) There are deep conceptual challenges to overcome in a project such as this. Things of the same tile are not necessarily redundant. The case of different works appearing under the same title is far more common than the same work replicated under the same title. Seeing the same work or a rough analogue of the same work repeated under new titles or with modestly adjusted contents is extremely common. Transposed or translated work is far more common still. To develop this idea conceptually, you have to clarify what you mean by the related yet distinct concepts embodied in the idea. Moreover, you must clarify and separate between and among such issues as redundancy, plagiarism, borrowing, citation, reference, quotation, as well as the possible legal issues of copyright, trademark, and the rest. 3) You have to define and clarify the goal of the project. This means defining such concepts as "original," "residual," or "derivative," and making them operational. 4) Many artists would prefer not to know that problems such as these arise in their work. I posted a note on the subject of obscured influences a few months back. 5) Finally, time is limited. My engagement in the art world has been limited for some time now. I think my work through carefully -- perhaps too carefully. I don't have time to think about work for anyone else. You asked the question, "Has something like this been done before?" I think something like this has been done once or twice before, under different names, and with slightly different concepts. If you can locate those projects, you can find out the challenges they faced, see how they attempted to meet them and discover why they no longer exist. Originality, invention, and innovation are not merely located in the development of a new idea. They also involve the issue of taking an idea that didn't work and making it work. You might find audiences for this project among other groups than artists. Art critics, editors, publishers, gallerists, collectors curators and others might like to have this kind of service for the art they are examining, writing about, selling, buying or exhibiting. There may be hope for this project. You'll have to do some research to find out whether there is. Best regards, Ken Ken Friedman, Ph.D. Associate Professor of Leadership and Strategic Design Department of Knowledge Management Norwegian School of Management +47 22.98.51.07 Direct line +47 22.98.51.11 Telefax Home office: +46 (46) 53.245 Telephone +46 (46) 53.345 Telefax email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
FLUXLIST: The New French Fluxus -- It isn't Ben Vautier, Jean Dupuy, orXian Xatrec. Alas.
Been getting many offlist queries about this new French company named Fluxus. Been working and writing the last few days. Hadn't noticed anything until letters came from some friends on the list. Was asked about protection of the name Fluxus and legal situation. Also queries comparing to etoy case and Leonardo case. This involves four or five different sets of legal issues. My understanding on the several matters is this. (1) Copyright Copyright protection can't cover a name or a title, only contents in specific form. While the contents of the Fluxus publications were initially protected by copyright, this protection never extended to the titles of the works or to the name "Fluxus" itself. (2) Trademark A name can be covered by trademark protection. To my knowledge, no trademark was every registered for the name Fluxus. (3) Common law protections The name Fluxus used by artists affiliated with or interested in the use of the name Fluxus is probably protected under common law by virtue of established usage. This cannot be forbidden to them. (4) Freedom to use a name not trademarked At the same time, it is probably impossible to forbid others to use the same name. At this time, the French Internet people are neither the only - nor the first - to use the name Fluxus. In my introduction to The Fluxus Reader, I noted, among others, an advertising agency, a design firm and three or four more. There are record companies, bookstores, restaurants, bars all using the name Fluxus. You name it and one or two of it are using the name Fluxus. (5) Legal challenge To challenge this or any of this would be terribly expensive. Whoever wishes to do so would be obliged to hire a law firm. God save us! And pay them. God save us! And go to court. God save us all! (6) Fluxus compared to Leonardo and etoy The cases surrounding Leonardo and etoy didn't involve the right to use the name in normal common usage, but questions surrounding the right to continue to use the name on the Web or to restrict the use of the name on the Web. The issues here are tricky. They are different than the other issues noted above. They involve yet undefined areas of cyberlaw. Lawyers will eventually sort it out at great cost to all concerned. If one of the several firms using the name Fluxus on the Web tried to prohibit us - and remember, several came BEFORE these new guys - then there might be a case. (7) What is to be done . . . A few people asked me what, if anything, I thought we ought to do. Gads. Who can tell? In a perfect world, I'd probably have an answer. In a perfect world, maybe it wouldn't be a problem. -- Ken Friedman --
FLUXLIST: Here's another vote for greater care with the reply function
Friends, Here's another vote with Judy Hoffberg and Tamas S:t Auby for greater care with reply function. This past week has seen an increase in the use of reply function to answer brief questions and post short comments. At one point, one of those lengthy Buroughs passages was resent in its entirety simply to post a one-sentence response. On recent occasions, long passages and complete prior posts have been going by the second and third time simply to add a single line. In the days before electronic communication, it was possible to recall something by referring to it in a quick summary sentence before offering our own comment. Thanks. Ken --
FLUXLIST: Thin Pop, Thick Pop, Thoughtful Pop
of everyday life and took up dense, philosophical issues with a playful, Zen-inflected touch. Both forms of international Pop had a tough time on the market. Happenings were hard to sell. The street-smart, market-wise artists like Oldenburg and Dine soon left happenings behind for painting. Artist-philosophers like Kaprow and Hansen took other paths, Kaprow as a teacher and Hansen as the traveling Bodhisattva of contemporary art. Fluxus had its problems, too. One of greatest Fluxus virtues was also its worst problem: a rigorous, almost scientific program of inventing ways to approach art. These explorations were part of a broad intellectual project on which many contemporary art movements and manifestations could borrow. Given the problems associated with Fluxus, others borrowed Fluxus innovations and projects, adapting them to many purposes while failing to acknowledge Fluxus as the source. Fluxus artists had a second problem. In terms of the art market, it is one of the worst problems for which an artist can be known. Fluxus artists tended to be so philosophically complex that they rarely made the most marketable use of their own work. Other artists made use of their innovations, adopting the intellectual and artistic contributions one at a time. The artists associated with Fluxus were rarely able to benefit from the use of their own innovations. Much of the time, other artists had already borrowed their idea far more visibly than they themselves had managed to do. In the art market, first past the post for visible public credit isn't half the battle. It's nearly the whole. But beyond the struggle for public credit on what they had invented, Fluxus people also walked away from much of the credit that might have been theirs. The experimental sensibility of Fluxus people was so strong that these artists often lost interest in their own, earlier ideas and moved on. One often hears of artists whose work has arrived before its time. This is true enough in the art market. There is a worse problem yet. Nothing is less forgivable to the powers that move the art market than artists who fail to repeat their work to feed a market that demands art work after its time has come. Like German Pop, Fluxus and happenings often led to abstract and somewhat confusing messages. These ambiguities made it hard to remember what was being said. Overall, this art offered a rich vein of dialectical investigations, as socially conscious as the German work, and often as politically aware. The Fluxus artists also tended to cross the boundary between art and life that so many artists talked about. The more radical artists involved in Fluxus crossed these boundaries in especially radical ways, among them artists such as Joseph Beuys, Milan Knizak, Nam June Paik and Ben Vautier. Oddly enough, these are the Fluxus artists who have had the most profound impact on the art world, but even the more conservative, art-minded Fluxus artists crossed the boundaries of art forms, moving with ease between tactile, musical, theatrical, visual and literary forms. Way back when, Bob Watts and George Brecht were even exhibited by Leo Castelli, the high priest of American Pop. Other Fluxus people contributed to the Pop ethos, or at least its more interesting sides. Fluxus influenced Andy Warhol himself. His first major film was an adaptation of a Jackson Mac Low film score in which Warhol simply substituted a skyscraper for the tree that appears in Mac Low's score. Ken Friedman, Ph.D. Associate Professor of Leadership and Strategic Design Department of Knowledge Management Norwegian School of Management +47 22.98.51.07 Direct line +47 22.98.51.11 Telefax Home office: +46 (46) 53.245 Telephone +46 (46) 53.345 Telefax email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
FLUXLIST: No long posts filled HTML and geek code, please
Is there some reason why posts are filled with long blocks of HTML and geek code ? Can't we just get plain vanilla text messages in ascii ? Pleaaase ... be careful with drfault settings and with forwards from the web. This stuff is a pain in the eye, and it clutters up the list. Ken --
FLUXLIST: Why George Maciunas opposed the Avant-Garde Festivals
Reed Altemus writes, "I'm thinking perhaps Maciunas had little reason to see Charlotte's Festivals as competitive with his Fluxus program, in which case I conclude that he was just generally threatened by women who were doing things cf. Carolee Schneeman (later). He certainly seemed to get along fine with Yoko Ono at the time." George's opposition to the festival was not sexist. It was an issue of programmatic positions in his aesthetic-political system. George saw the Avant-Garde Festival as a large, eclectic stew of projects -- in essence, this raised the problem of the "neo-Baroque" position to which he opposed the "neo-haiku" Fluxus position. George's problem with Carolee was based on the same argument. She was doing happenings and messy, sexy, meaty multimedia performance that stood at the other end of a spectrum from George's demand for a clean, clear, simplified art. This, incidentally, was also George's argument against happenings in general, and this is part of the difficulty with Al Hansen's work. George was a purist but never a sexist. At a time when there was little room for women in the art world, George welcomed and worked with Alison Knowles, Mieko Shiomi, Shigeko Kubota, Yoko Ono, Alice Hutchins, Carla Liss and others. It seemed to many others that there was room for a great deal of overlap, fuzziness and ambiguity in the Fluxus position. The fact that George rejected the Avant Garde festivals did not bother the many Fluxus artists who took part in them. But it should be stated that George was a person who made decisions -- including silly decisions -- on principle, not on the basis of personality, gender, sexual preference, race, religion, etc. To the degree that George was occasionally "cranky," he was an equal-opportunity crank. Ken Friedman --
FLUXLIST: 1) C'mon, Heiko. 2) Footnote to Davidson G.
d decades before to make the new work possible. It's true that there were other, unheralded phenomena during the time. Some were active in the arts as Living Theater was. Others were more general counterculture phenomena such as Pacifica Radio or the Underground Press Syndicate. But most of the counterculture art explosion came later. Much of it was made possible by government art funding, especially generous during the middle 70s to the early 80s. And most of it vanished when the generous government programs dried up. It's one thing to be committed to programs such as this when government arts officers are strolling around with grant application forms. It is another to do it when you've got to round up the money yourself, or earn it in another field and put it to the service of the arts. In this, George Maciunas and Charlotte Moorman were both pioneers, colleagues and heroes. And if George was occasionally cranky, look at it this way: if you worked full time much of your life to support the vast range of publications, festivals, etc., that George supported with the earnings from his day job ands free-lance work, you'd occasionally be cranky, too. Ken Friedman -- Ken Friedman, Ph.D. Associate Professor of Leadership and Strategic Design Department of Knowledge Management Norwegian School of Management +47 22.98.51.07 Direct Line +47 22.98.51.11 Telefax [EMAIL PROTECTED] email Home office: +46 46 53245 Telephone +46 46 53345 Telefax [EMAIL PROTECTED] email
FLUXLIST: Higgins on Intermedia
Higgins on Intermedia Dick Higgins's Intermedia essay was reprinted twice, first in foewombwhnw, second in A Dialectic of Centuries. Higgins, Dick. 1969. foewombwhnw. New York: Something Else Press, pp. 11-29. Higgins, Dick. 1978. A Dialectic of Centuries. New York: Printed Editions, pp. 12-17. While the essay doesn't appear online, these books will be found in thousands of libraries across the United States and Canada. If a library does not have a copy, it is always available via interlibrary loan. -- Ken Friedman --
FLUXLIST: Grotius on cyberspace
Heiko asks about parallels between the writings of Hugo Grotius (1583-1645) and writings on cyberspace. There is a large and growing body of discourse on the culture of cyberspace. This includes considering issues of ethics and law. Because cyberspace is an international space, the issues reflected in Grotius's writings are particularly relevant. It's likely that someone has applied Grotius's ideas to cyberspace, but I'm not sure who or in what context. I was a bit uncertain what the question was. If Heiko will state it more clearly, I may be able to give a better answer. --Ken Friedman --
FLUXLIST: Care with reply function, please
Request care with reply function. A recent dialogue has been repeating prior posted material at far too great a length to sustain the short additions of new material. Some items in the last sig (the sig!) have now been repeated and reposted five or six times. The second or third time you read it, you've learned as much as you're going to learn -- especially where it comes to the rerun of a sig block, and a seventh repeat in HTML. C'mon guys. Ken Friedman
FLUXLIST: Archiving -- Rod's questions
Quick answers to Rod's questions: The issue is not whether scolars are interested now. The issue is whether you orgnize an archive with the intention that it (eventually) will be a rich, well structured archive of documents giving broad and deep insight. Many historically significant archives go unused at first. Some remain unused long after they move into a museum or university. The point is that they are orgnized so that scholars (and others) are able to use them when the interest arise. It isn't the current interest of users that determines an archive. It inolves something like the three criteria I suggested and the degree to which the archive meets those criteria. The reason -- in a sense of your personal motive -- is irrelevant, as long as it meets the criteria. The issue of funding is also irrelevant. The question you ask on organizing principles is a matter that archivists and librarians often debate. The only consensus is that all documents be preserved, and that if they are reorgnized, records preserve the original structure to permit earlier states to be reconstructed. Regarding your question on Jean Brown, an archivist collector is not a collector of archives. It is a collector who is also an archivist. Ken Friedman --
FLUXLIST: 1) Canada, 2) Geoffrey Hendricks, 3) Archives, 4) Artist andCritics
1) Canada, 2) Geoffrey Hendricks, 3) Archives, 4) Artist and Critics Never seem to catch up with my email. Been working on a book. Fitful, sluggish, terrible process. Samuel Johnson once said, "No one but a blockhead ever wrote, except for money." I believe it to be true, and I have concluded that I am a blockhead, since the kinds of things I write deal with ideas and rarely make money. Several questions and notes recently posted call for answers. Here are four short answers: 1) I was in Canada in 1972. Spent three or four months altogether. First, six weeks in Vancouver with the Image Bank people before Western Front existed. Did an exhibition at Vancouver Art Gallery titled Ken Friedman and Friends in Process. Spent six weeks at University of Saskatchewan at Regina as visiting artist in the post of something titled "Special Substitute Sessional Lecturer." Finished the manuscript of my first book, The Aesthetics, later published in a more elegant edition by Beau Geste Press. While at Saskatchewan, also completed the first global edition of the Fluxus and Friends mailing list and directory. The list began in 1966, when Fluxus West began publishing lists of the people with whom we had contact. By 1972, it included over a thousand names and addresses around the world, published in an edition entitled An International Contact List of the Arts. During the 1970s, that list was the starting point of projects such as Giancarlo Politi's Art Diary and it was used for the first editions of FILE Magazine. We also provided information to reference books and research projects. Among the well-known reference books that drew on our research were Who's Who in America, Who's Who in American Art, Contemporary Artists and several others. By 1978, the list contained over 5,000 individuals in many fields of art but it no longer focused on Fluxus and intermedia. By the early 1980s, so many people were publishing lists and creating information services that I saw no need to continue. During that time, I introduced many the people in Canada to other people in the Fluxus network. They knew some already, of course, at least by mail. The people at Western Front fell in love with Robert Filliou. His easygoing style and charming, intelligent work suited them beautifully. An entirely different group of Canadian artists in Quebec has been working with Dick Higgins, Eric Andersen, Alison Knowles, and others in a regular series of festivals, performances, exhibitions and so on. I'm not well acquainted with them, though I'd often hear from Dick that he was going to or coming from Quebec. Dick died while attending one of those festivals. He was very fond of Quebec and his Canadian friends. 2) Terrence Kosick probably means Geoffrey Hendricks. 3) According to Webster's an archive is "a place where public records or historical documents are preserved." The Greek root of the word emphasizes its public and official nature, descended from the Greek word archeion meaning "government house" and related to the Greek word "arche" for rule or government. The archon was the chief magistrate of ancient Athens or a presiding officer. An archive was a repository of documents and rulings. In the early days of mail art, many artists became aware of Hanns Sohm's fabulous Archiv Sohm, and they liked the idea of an archive. It became the custom among mail art practitioners to label their personal collection of correspondence an archive. Most artists do not understand the distinction between a collection and an archive, or between their personal papers and an archive. This distinction lies in three issues. First, an archive generally involves a rather massive collection developed over time. Second, an archive is generally collected or organized according to some principle. Third, an archive is generally organized with the intention of permitting research or historical scholarship of some kind. Some artists have collected and organized archives, not merely of their own work, but of groups of artists with whom they interact. The papers of Something Else Press and later Dick Higgins's papers constituted such an archive. It should be noted that Dick welcomed scholars and gave free access to this material to scholars who visited him to work with or copy these papers. Fluxus West had an extensive archive. While not as well organized as Dick's, our holdings were massive. These are now distributed to several museum and university archive collections, primarily to the Alternative Traditions in Contemporary Art at University of Iowa. For various reasons, we also made substantial gifts of books to the Whitney Museum of American Art, Portland College of Art, several foreign universities. We also gave collections of books and papers to the Tate Gallery Archives, Franklin Furnace Archive (now housed at the Museum of Modern Art), and to Archiv Sohm (now housed at Stadtsgalerie Stuttgart) and to the Archives o
FLUXLIST: Robin Page and Pete Townshend
Pete Townshend was at one point a student of Robin Page. Robin is a huge, manic, raging, Rabelaisian figure who puts himself forward in a persona he now calls "Bluebeard." He did a piece many years before The Who in which he dragged a guitar around a block until it disintegrated. Robin showed up at the Fluxus exhibition at the Biennal of Venice, the only one he had come to in ages. He exhibited his Bluebeard paintings. These were magnificent spoofs of movie posters and political posters in which Bluebeard ranted against the foibles and prejudices of the art world. The facial expressions of the painted Bluebeards were marvelous. They were filled anger, rage, wrath, greed, indignation. The painted Bluebeard offered a visual Jeremiad on the art world though facial expressions in a catalogue of harsh emotion. One could read every one of Shakespeare's sometimes-harsh heroes or nasty villains in those faces -- Prospero, Lear, Mac Beth, Shylock, with a little John Falstaff thrown in and a dash of Pistol and Nym. As strange and towering as the paintings were, Robin himself drove a lot of the other artists crazy. Robin has also dyed his own beard blue, and he acts out in word and deed many of the emotions in his paintings. Whats seems a majestic rant on stage or canvas is far less appealing ranted in your face for five or six days in close personal contact. Some didn't like the representational aspect of his art. Others found it grating that he seemed to identify many among the rest of us with the art world, and he vented his spleen in roaring streams and torrents of invective. At first, people were delighted that he had come to Venice. Those who had never met him before were especially interested to met him. Some of us really enjoyed the work. I have a fondness for movie posters and political campaign posters, and the paintings really bowled me over. But, then, I've always thought that anything can fit the Fluxus context, and once in a while, anything can even stretch to include representational painting. Ben Vautier -- who met Robin first at the Festival of Misfits in London in 1962 -- also seemed delighted he had come. Ben is known for wide ranging intellectual curiosity and tolerance. He criticizes everything, including himself. He views life as a grand panorama. He loves many of those whom he criticizes even as he sees their flaws. Other people began to conflate Robin's destructive persona with his art. Before long, the endless rant, echoed by a small coterie of young artists he had brought with him. This was a cadre of seemingly post-punk, pre-Millennial, semi-Nomad types, pierced and tattooed, wearing fright wigs and Kingfisher cuts. No one knew what they did as artists. As presences in Venice, they served as Chorus to Robin's Ranting Hero, echoing the rant and rage without embodying his accomplishments or virtues as an artist. After a while, the commotion and anger began to wear people out. They just didn't want to be around him. When I last spoke to him, he felt he had been snubbed and blackballed by the other Fluxus artists without understanding why people found it stressful to be around him. So it goes. Even so, I gather he was a talented teacher. I note that those students of his whom I seen or known personally adopted many of his splenetic qualities. These qualities include a tendency to produce extraodinary and often interesting destructive works. They also include a tendency toward harsh personal behavior, cynicism that is not always warranted, and vitriolic language. Ken Friedman --
FLUXLIST: Athena Tacha
Dear Megan McDonough, Athena Tacha was one of the important figures in the development of site-specific installations that crossed the boundaries of architecture, landscape, sculpture and conceptual art. If you want to learn more about her work, I'd suggest checking the art history indexes such as ArtsBibliography Modern or visiting the online library services at the Museum of Modern Art or the Getty. There is a large body of publications and catalogues available. We were both visiting artists at Wright State University in Dayton, Ohio, and we both did exhibitions there in 1978. I found her a lucid, articulate, well informed conversationalist. Meeting her was a rewarding experience. Don't know much about her involvement with mail art, but her other activities were significant and influential. Ken Friedman --
