Invisible Fluxus

Invisible Fluxus

I can't remember the first time I heard about Fluxus. Fluxus and I were born about the same time (1957). I was not old enough to have heard about their events, so I did not have the possibility of attending. Nam June Paik dragging a violin down Canal Street is an image I've xerolaged countless times.

I was delighted by the possibility that the everyday events happening around me had become the stuff of art, that no longer was the museum / gallery the epicenter of creativity. Tho I take issue with the manner Fluxus is being historicized, as part of a continuum of innovation beginning with Zaum & early Futurism, it has always been impossible for me to escape an overpowering impulse to experience the obvious, to render new meaning & content from pieces of found objects or texts. Because the influence of recontextualization is pervasive, the work of Fluxus is complete & it can safely disappear into the margins of art history.

There is perfect synaethesia of the image & the easily imagined sound. Intermedia was soiled bedsheets as far as I was concerned. The moment of play in the decontexualized environment is seductively repeatable. I've washed my hands of movements, they are ultimately historical constructs of ambiguous associations. Influence is mostly holographic, the connectivity both real and imaginary make traditions unavoidable.

Avant Garde is a typestyle, easy to read, a cloak of a complex array of characters. Lifestyle = Performance = Lifestyle. I'm sorry to inform you that Fluxus is not objects in a museum or collectible keepsakes. This in no way lessens the value of your investments, but merely paints a patina of abstraction around the true nature of the Fluxusic commodity. Innovation, stated another way, is the everyday interrupted by unexpected visitors. Assemble a jury of your peers. Ask them to forget that Fluxus ever existed. Now give them a paper, scissors & a yam & tell them to construct a nameless utopia.