Fluxus and after

This exhibition reminds us of the relevancy of the Fluxus ethos in an era which is too often dictated by apocalyptic anxieties, edgy cynicism and the cult of the individual. Born at a point of shifting world views, the history of Fluxus is well known. The term was coined in 1962 to unite members of a disparate avant-garde in Europe X3L%TnV3SL4:3oX301UC:OrmWX4C and the United States who were working in parallel art forms. The group which was spearheaded by a Lithuanian- born architect and designer named George Maciunas had no stylistic identity, but its activities were in many respects a revival of the spirit of Dada, though not nihilistic. Anti-art in the conventional sense, figures connected with the Fluxus movement emphasised the paradoxical, humorous and ephemeral in their practice. They represented a collective struggle against bourgeois aesthetics. To Fluxus we owe the term 'intermedia'. It pioneered the fields of concept art, events, scores, 'happenings', performance art and published multiple forms (print portfolios, artists' books, artists' records( that we take for granted today. Some saw it as the most radical and experimental art movement of the 1960s. In that it proposed ways of thinking about art and life from which other ideas and approaches could grow, it was not limited to a specific historical moment but rather was fluid and open-ended. Nowadays, we see Fluxus as an attitude rather than an art movement, and the term 'fluxism' has evolved to emphasise the ongoing philosophy associated with it. The obvious immediate ancestors of Fluxus are Marcel Duchamp and John Cage. As Ben Vautier observed: 'Without Cage, Marcel Duchamp and Dada, Fluxus would not exist... Fluxus exists and creates from the knowledge of this post-Duchamp (the ready-made( and post-Cage (the depersonalisation of the artist( situation'.' Fluxus artists were part of a laboratory of ideas, of experimenting with ways to integrate art into life and reaching out on a global scale to enter into dialogue with like-minded individuals. Amongst the criteria which are central to this phenomenon are those listed by Dick Higgins, a founding member of Fluxus, and updated by Ken Friedman in 1990: Clobalism Unity of art and life Intermedia Experimentalism, research orientation Chance Playfulness Simplicity, parsimony Implicativeness Exemplativism Specificity Presence in time Musicality2 Most of these notions are implicit in the diverse range of material on show, whether it be the product of artists central to Fluxus, or of those whose life and work intimately connects with the values it promoted. Denying territorial parochialism, Fluxus crossed international boundaries and encouraged networking and collaboration between people from opposite sides of the FLUX U S - ART- NO N ART - AMUSEMENT FOREGOES globe. At the beginning of the 1970s, Peter Kennedy, for example, built up connections with DISTINCTIONS BETWEEN ART AND NONART, FOREGOES George Maciunas, Al Hansen, Larry Miller and Robert Watts as part of the Inhibodress program ARTIST'S INDI SPENSABI L I TY , E X ti L S I V E N E 8 8 in Sydney. Peter Tyndall developed an active dialogue with Henning Christiansen, Chris Mann I N P I V I D U A L I T Y, AMBITION, F 0 R E G 0 E S A L L with John Cage and Emmett Williams. Nicholas Zurbrugg has built up a strong rapport with PRETENSIONS TOWARDS S I GN I F I t ANE . . . IT IS A Henri Chopin and many other visual poets and exponents of the treated text. F U S 10 N 0 F S P I K E JONESP G AG S , G A M E S , VA U D E V I L L E With everyday life as a model for creative expression, the most mundane experiences become C A G E A N D D U CHAMP relevant and a spirit of freedom, openness and humour is engendered. The Propositions (GeorgeMa u n a ' F l u x u s M a n i f e s t o ' , 966 3E:0.0k 47w 30 M