Fluxus and after

A it something in the street and give it away set the tone. They fit perfectly with Maciunas's values: E OR &RR performances created by Alison Knowles in the early 1960s such as Make a salad and Find A 11 14 0.t LLIAR no cost, no waste, and lots of surprises. Over a decade later, with vantage points in both New York and Brisbane, Robert MacPherson with his 'Secular red' collages, and the 'Relics of boredom sculpture' series arrived at works of great elegance and parsimony from the most mundane, usually discarded, materials. Ale If boundaries are collapsed between art and life, it follows that distinctions between media became problematic and the growth of new hybrids is possible. The large and heroic may b e J 1 im~ avoided in favour of statements which are intimate, ephemeral and highly poetic. Dick Higgins - I developed the term 'intermedia' to explain these shifting sites of artistic exploration, to cover r k , works that might fall between the visual, musical and literary. His publishing enterprise 1-. I Something Else Press became one of the most important disseminators of experimental activity ,4_r of the 1960s and 1970s, serving happenings, poetry, events, art theory, music and literature. Vft The range of material using the printed word and the printed multiple as a means of conveying the Fluxus credo is enormous and bewildering. The numerous event scores and instructions for which Maciunas was responsible, his Yearboxes, Flux-kits and anthologies have given way to Alison Knowles, to fabricated postage stamps by Robert Watts which gently subvert the concepts, Ben Vautier's self-reflexive irony rubs shoulders with the minimalist 'concrete' 4 compilations of screenprints recording the transitory activities of particular individuals such as t ' ' .LZ Lr*J bureaucratic system and combat the pretensions of high art. In exploring language and verbal C4 UJ Cq compositions of German typographer Hansjorg Mayer, later joined by the activities of Richard Tipping in Australia with his well-aimed slogans. Fluxists go where the interesting problems are, and in breaking down traditional disciplines often join forces with other experimenters. The early Flux-festivals of the 1960s engendered projects between artists who welcomed the integration of separate talents, and for whom'LU cm chance procedures and the serious business of play were paramount. Fluxus scores couldCD potentially be realised by anyone, and many claims have been made to place music as a c e n t r a l C D 1Z I focus for this form of social radicalism. In their collaborative work, Chris Mann and Warren Burt have built upon Cage's practice of problematising music and sound. Furthermore, the emphasis on text makes their events 'language happenings' as much as they can be described as 'sound works'. They are carefully orchestrated confusions between performance and music and text. NINE Fluxus-inspired work is characterised by both humour and high seriousness. There are jokes and gags but the concept of playfulness extends more importantly to the play of ideas, to unfettered experimentation and free association, and to the play of paradigm shifting. Having passed the age of thirty, Fluxus has long survived the demise of Maciunas, and has taken on a life of its own. It involves not only continuing participation of key figures from theVMS early years but has expanded to reach an incalculable number of artists situated as far afield as Nice, Brisbane, New York, Hamburg, Copenhagen, Berlin, Paris, Los Angeles, Wangi Wangi and Melbourne. In a much broader sense, it may also bring people to a kind of aesthetic receptivity - . - in their everyday lives which is not only refreshingly removed from set dogma, but unequivocably optimistic and open-ended. Anne Kirker Curator of Prints, Drawings and Photographs Queensland Art Gallery 54 Pr LU / NOTES FURTHER READING .co 1 Quoted in In the Spirit of Fluxus [exhibition catalogue], Fluxus: Selections from the Gilbert and Lila Silverman - j Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, 1992, p.30. Collection [exhibition catalogue], Museum of Modern Art, cc New York, 1988.CD 2 Ken Friedman, 'Fluxus and Company', in Ubi Fluxus, Ibi Motus [exhibition catalogue[, Venice Biennale, 1990, p.329. FluxAttitudes ]exhibit/on catalogue], Imochoot Uingeverx, 'i11 Gent, 1991. 'Fluxus: A conceptual country, Visible Language, vol. 261/2, CD Providence, 1992. 3Fw AL 4M 310 43 3EM AL C7r 310 W