Supersweet

Fluxus

The Seminal 60s Anti-Art Group

Joseph Beuys, Sibirische Symphonie, 1963, taken by Manfred Leve

*See image credits on the left

SUPERSWEET’s Holly Pester discovers how the contemporary art world could benefit from a little Flux with the international network of artists including Yoko Ono, John Cage and Joseph Beuys.

The Fluxus Manifesto (1963) offers various dictionary definitions of ‘flux’ or ‘fluxus’, describing liquid flows, continuous streams of chance encounters and even a dysentery flush of the bowels. Its group of pioneering radicals wanted an art that stuck its fingers up to the establishment and resisted being a single object that could be bought, sold and grow dusty in pompous art museums.

Such a playful and rebellious attitude was flaunted by Fluxus artists to free art from the shackles of the elitist, money-hungry art market. The godfather of flux, John Cage, paved the way with his ‘Happenings’ of the late 50s and 60s, where classical music recitals would often revert to live hair-washing or other absurd theatrical events. Cage’s experimental approach to composition used all his classical training to break down ideas of music and how musical instruments should be “played” (or not at all as in 4’ 33’’ of Silence).

Like 1920s Dadaism, Fluxists used everyday objects in minimal performances and works. They rarely dated or signed their works, making historical accounts a little tricky. George Maciunas was typical for this behaviour, although we know he was responsible for inviting cinema audiences to a screening of a film featuring names such as Warhol and Yoko Ono, only to show a reel of printed names.

Their live performances were often short, and involved key gestures from everyday life, like Alison Knowles’ Make a Salad or Emmett Williams’ Counting Song. These performances were devised as classical scores for anyone to perform at any time or place – as indeed they still are at Fluxus festivals worldwide. In the name of anti-art and art for all, artists affiliated to Fluxus insist that it wasn’t a movement but an approach – or state of mind.

This mindset has been adopted by artists ever since, with thriving online communities active in cyberspace such as Fluxlist. Whether they proclaim it or not, works that display this experimental drive always seem to have a fluxus heart beating at its centre. For example, Bruce Nauman’s 1999 piece Setting a Good Corner (a looping video of the artist setting a corner fencepost) has the short and sweet humour of Fluxus with the ‘everyday’ taking to extra-ordinary extremes.

Musical experimentation continues to preach the word of Cage. A wonderful example is conceptual digital artist Golan Levin’s Dialtones: a Telesymphony, a 26-minute piece performed on 200 mobile phones. The premise for the piece was as follows: In 2001 200 people in an auditorium with mobile phones registered at a computer kiosk and new ringtones—specially composed for the event—were downloaded to their phones.

They were each assigned seats in a concert hall in a 20-by-10 arrangement, becoming a mobile phone "orchestra." From onstage, Levin called each member of the "orchestra", knowing every seat’s corresponding ringtone. The audience participation and beautifying of everyday objects makes this a key Fluxus-esque event that is sadly rare in contemporary art.

Venues such as London’s own ICA were once hotspots for happenings and avant-garde events, but now seem to favour the ‘exhibitable’ and valuable over the ephemeral. The idea of auctioning off your own work for the price of a small island (naming no names) is the absolute antithesis of Maciunas’ manifesto and our unfortunate state of play. But where there is art there is hope, and where there is digital, sound and mixed-media there is Fluxus.

So this is the key word - ‘intermedia’. It’s a word, and an approach to creativity that has structured art practice and teaching since Dick Higgins coined it in 1966. The idea of art as an anti-materialistic ‘fluid’ process of concepts and actions has remained as fundamental as paintbrushes.

For more Fluxus information visit this site. It’ll get your cells working.

*From top to bottom: Charlotte Moorman, "24-hour Happening", 1965, Courtesy: Staatsgalerie Stuttgart, Archiv Sohm; Fluxus Mannifesto by George Maciunas, 1963; Photograph of Ben Vautier wrapped in string from Takehisa Kosgui's Anima 1,1964.

Words: Holly Pester