Fluxus Games and Contemporary Folklore: on the Non-Individual Character of Fluxus Art
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Modernism 1 Modernism
Modernism 1 Modernism Modernism, in its broadest definition, is modern thought, character, or practice. More specifically, the term describes the modernist movement, its set of cultural tendencies and array of associated cultural movements, originally arising from wide-scale and far-reaching changes to Western society in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Modernism was a revolt against the conservative values of realism.[2] [3] [4] Arguably the most paradigmatic motive of modernism is the rejection of tradition and its reprise, incorporation, rewriting, recapitulation, revision and parody in new forms.[5] [6] [7] Modernism rejected the lingering certainty of Enlightenment thinking and also rejected the existence of a compassionate, all-powerful Creator God.[8] [9] In general, the term modernism encompasses the activities and output of those who felt the "traditional" forms of art, architecture, literature, religious faith, social organization and daily life were becoming outdated in the new economic, social, and political conditions of an Hans Hofmann, "The Gate", 1959–1960, emerging fully industrialized world. The poet Ezra Pound's 1934 collection: Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. injunction to "Make it new!" was paradigmatic of the movement's Hofmann was renowned not only as an artist but approach towards the obsolete. Another paradigmatic exhortation was also as a teacher of art, and a modernist theorist articulated by philosopher and composer Theodor Adorno, who, in the both in his native Germany and later in the U.S. During the 1930s in New York and California he 1940s, challenged conventional surface coherence and appearance of introduced modernism and modernist theories to [10] harmony typical of the rationality of Enlightenment thinking. -
Dick Higgins Papers, 1960-1994 (Bulk 1972-1993)
http://oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/tf1d5n981n No online items Finding aid for the Dick Higgins papers, 1960-1994 (bulk 1972-1993) Finding aid prepared by Lynda Bunting. Finding aid for the Dick Higgins 870613 1 papers, 1960-1994 (bulk 1972-1993) ... Descriptive Summary Title: Dick Higgins papers Date (inclusive): 1960-1994 (bulk 1972-1993) Number: 870613 Creator/Collector: Higgins, Dick, 1938-1998 Physical Description: 108.0 linear feet(81 boxes) Repository: The Getty Research Institute Special Collections 1200 Getty Center Drive, Suite 1100 Los Angeles, California, 90049-1688 (310) 440-7390 Abstract: American artist, poet, writer, publisher, composer, and educator. The archive contains papers collected or generated by Higgins, documenting his involvement with Fluxus and happenings, pattern and concrete poetry, new music, and small press publishing from 1972 to 1994, with some letters dated as early as 1960. Request Materials: Request access to the physical materials described in this inventory through the catalog record for this collection. Click here for the access policy . Language: Collection material is in English Biographical/Historical Note Dick Higgins is known for his extensive literary, artistic and theoretical activities. Along with his writings in poetry, theory and scholarship, Higgins published the well-known Something Else Press and was a cooperative member of Unpublished/Printed Editions; co-founded Fluxus and Happenings; wrote performance and graphic notations for theatre, music, and non-plays; and produced and created paintings, sculpture, films and the large graphics series 7.7.73. Higgins received numerous grants and prizes in support of his many endeavors. Born Richard Carter Higgins in Cambridge, England, March 15, 1938, Higgins studied at Columbia University, New York (where he received a bachelors degree in English, 1960), the Manhattan School of Printing, New York, and the New School of Social Research, 1958-59, with John Cage and Henry Cowell. -
PDF (Fluxus Reader 3A Chapter 6 Saper)
EDITED BY KEN E D M A N #.». ACADEMY EDIT I THE FLUXUS READER Edited by KEN FRIEDMAN AI ACADEMY EDITIONS First published in Great Britain in 1998 by ACADEMY EDITIONS a division of John Wiley & Sons, Baffins Lane, Chichester, West Sussex P019 1UD Copyright © 1998 Ken Friedman. All Rights Reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning or otherwise, except under the terms of the Copyright. Designs and Patents Act 1988 or under the terms of a licence issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, 90 Tottenham Court Road, London, UK, W1P 9HE, without the permission in writing of the publisher and the copyright holders. Other Wiley Editorial Offices New York • Weinheim • Brisbane • Singapore • Toronto ISBN 0-471-97858-2 Typeset by BookEns Ltd, Royston, Herts. Printed and bound in the UK by Bookcraft (Bath) Ltd, Midsomer Norton Cover design by Hybert Design CONTENTS Acknowledgemen ts iv Ken Friedman, Introduction: A Transformative Vision of Fluxus viii Part I THREE HISTORIES O)ven Smith, Developing a Fluxable Forum: Early Performance and Publishing 3 Simon Anderson, Pluxus, Fluxion, Flushoe: The 1970s 22 Hannah Higgins, Fluxus Fortuna 31 Part II THEORIES OF FLUXUS Ina Blom. Boredom and Oblivion 63 David T Doris, Zen Vaudeville: A Medi(t)ation in the Margins of Pluxus 91 Craig Saper, Fluxus as a Laboratory 136 Part III CRITICAL AND HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVES Estera Milman, Fluxus History and Trans-History: Competing -
Two-Sides-Of-A-Coin-Fluxus-And-The
After briefly outlining the process by which the Fluxus community coalesced, the author pro ceeds to recount the birthing of Something Else Press, Inc., and the transformation of aspects of the Press' objectives into Printed Editions. In the process, the essay discusses many of the paral lel concerns shared by both Something Else Press and Fluxus publication activities as well as their divergent agendas and strategies. Two Sides of a Coin Fluxus and the Something Else Press Dick Hieeins Dick Higgins, pp . 143-153 Visible Language, 26 :1/2 © Visible Language, 1992 Rhode Island School of Design Providence, Rl 02903 144 Visible Language Volume 26 number 1/2 When happenings and events began to be performed in New York and elsewhere in the late 1950s, there was some consensus that the works which visual artists performed in spaces of their own devising (usually constructed in or sponsored by art galleries) constituted "Happenings." There was, however, no name for works which were made by people who were not primarily visual artists. These were spoken of simply as "events," a convenient term used by myself and my fellow students in John Cage's class in "Experimental Composition," at the New School for Social Research. 1 At first the individuals who were doing them had no agreed-upon name for what they were doing, but performances of this kind of work at Yoko Ono's loft on Chambers Street in New York (1960-61) and at George Maciunas' AG Gallery on Madison Avenue (1961 ), made it obvious that a name was needed. Maciunas gave up his art gallery in 1961 and undertook the design and production of La Monte Young and Jackson Mac Low's An Anthology. -
The Fluxus Performance Workbook, Opus 25 15 Published in 1990
the FluxusP erformanceW orkbook edited by Ken Friedman, Owen Smith and Lauren Sawchyn a P erformance Research e-publication 2002 the FluxusP erformanceWorkbook introduction to the fortieth anniversary edition The first examples of what were to become Fluxus event scores date back to John Cage's famous class at The New School, where artists such as George Brecht, Al Hansen, Allan Kaprow, and Alison Knowles began to create art works and performances in musical form. One of these forms was the event. Events tend to be scored in brief verbal notations. These notes are known as event scores. In a general sense, they are proposals, propositions, and instructions. Thus, they are sometimes known as proposal pieces, propositions, or instructions. Publications, 2002 - The first collections of Fluxus event scores were the working sheets for Fluxconcerts. They were generally used only by the artist-performers who were presenting the work. With the birth of Fluxus publishing, however, collections of event scores soon came to take three forms. The first form was the boxed collection. These were individual scores written or printed on cards. The , Performance Research e classic example of this boxed collection is George Brecht's Water Yam. A second format was the book or Sawchyn pamphlet collection of scores, often representing work by a single artist. Yoko Ono's Grapefruit is probably the best known of these collections. Now forgotten, but even more influential during the 1960s, were the small collections that Dick Higgins published in the Something Else Press pamphlet series under the Great Bear imprint. These small chapbooks contained work by Bengt af Klintberg, Alison Knowles, Nam June Paik, and many other artists working in the then-young Fluxus and intermedia traditions. -
Getting Into Events by Ken Friedman Over the Years Since 1962, Many
Getting into Events by Ken Friedman Over the years since 1962, many event scores have been published under the aegis of Fluxus. The scores have appeared in boxes and multiple editions, on cards, in books and catalogues, and in several other forms. Several of us have presented our scores as exhibitions, on paper as drawings, calligraphy or prints, and on canvas as silk‐screens or paintings. The event scores of the artists associated with Fluxus have never been available in the single, encyclopedic compilation that George Maciunas envisioned. George announced on any number of occasions grand plans to publish 'the complete works' or 'the collected works' of Fluxus artists, La Monte Young, Emmett Williams and Jackson Mac Low among them. His failure to do so ‐‐ or their unwillingness to permit George sole authority over their work under the Fluxus aegis, led to some of the fractures within Fluxus. Other plans to publish major selections of work never came to fruition. This led in Dick Higgins' case to the publication of Postface/Jefferson's Birthday, and to the establishment of the legendary Something Else Press (and yet another schism in Fluxus). In my case, it led to a series of carbon‐ copy, xerox and mimeograph editions of my events and scores during the 60s, while waiting for George, and by the end of the 60s, to exhibitions and publications of the scores in the many different forms and contexts in which they have been seen since. )I was always careful to copyright them to Fluxus while waiting for George to finish the boxed Fluxus edition, which, as with so many of George's wonderful plans, remained unfinished.) George did realize boxed editions of many important suites of event scores.The Magna Carta of boxed event structures was surely George Brecht's WaterYam, a quintessential Fluxus edition. -
Fluxus Performance Workbook, Opus 25 15 Published in 1990
the FluxusP erformanceW orkbook edited by Ken Friedman, Owen Smith and Lauren Sawchyn a P erformance Research e-publication 2002 the FluxusP erformanceWorkbook introduction to the fortieth anniversary edition The first examples of what were to become Fluxus event scores date back to John Cage's famous class at The New School, where artists such as George Brecht, Al Hansen, Allan Kaprow, and Alison Knowles began to create art works and performances in musical form. One of these forms was the event. Events tend to be scored in brief verbal notations. These notes are known as event scores. In a general sense, they are proposals, propositions, and instructions. Thus, they are sometimes known as proposal pieces, propositions, or instructions. Publications, 2002 - The first collections of Fluxus event scores were the working sheets for Fluxconcerts. They were generally used only by the artist-performers who were presenting the work. With the birth of Fluxus publishing, however, collections of event scores soon came to take three forms. The first form was the boxed collection. These were individual scores written or printed on cards. The , Performance Research e classic example of this boxed collection is George Brecht's Water Yam. A second format was the book or Sawchyn pamphlet collection of scores, often representing work by a single artist. Yoko Ono's Grapefruit is probably the best known of these collections. Now forgotten, but even more influential during the 1960s, were the small collections that Dick Higgins published in the Something Else Press pamphlet series under the Great Bear imprint. These small chapbooks contained work by Bengt af Klintberg, Alison Knowles, Nam June Paik, and many other artists working in the then-young Fluxus and intermedia traditions. -
Something Else Press As Publisher
City University of New York (CUNY) CUNY Academic Works School of Arts & Sciences Theses Hunter College Fall 1-3-2020 Something Else Press as Publisher Rachel High CUNY Hunter College How does access to this work benefit ou?y Let us know! More information about this work at: https://academicworks.cuny.edu/hc_sas_etds/550 Discover additional works at: https://academicworks.cuny.edu This work is made publicly available by the City University of New York (CUNY). Contact: [email protected] Something Else Press as Publisher by Rachel High Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts Art History, Hunter College The City University of New York 2019 January 3, 2020 Howard Singerman Date Thesis Sponsor January 3, 2020 Lynda Klich Date Second Reader Table of Contents List of Illustrations ii Introduction and Literature Review 1 Chapter 1. Production and Design 14 Chapter 2. Funding and Distribution 39 Chapter 3. Advertising and Press 53 Chapter 4. Education 64 Conclusion 72 Bibliography 74 Illustrations 82 i List of Illustrations Figure 1: Dick Higgins, Danger Music Number Seventeen, Mimeograph and ballpoint pen on cardstock, 1962. Figure 2: Willem de Ridder, European Mail-order Warehouse/Fluxshop, Winter 1964-65. Photo: Wim van der Linden/MAI. Figure 3: Peter Moore, Photograph of Alison Knowles’s Big Book. Photograph from original installation in the Something Else Gallery, New York, New York, 1966. Figure 4: George Maciunas, Fluxus Manifesto, Offset Lithography, 1963. Figure 5 a-c: Cover and interior pages of Ray Johnson, The Paper Snake, New York: Something Else Press: 1965. -
Intermedia Higgins, Dick, 1938-1998
Intermedia Higgins, Dick, 1938-1998. Higgins, Hannah, 1964- Leonardo, Volume 34, Number 1, February 2001, pp. 49-54 (Article) Published by The MIT Press For additional information about this article http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/len/summary/v034/34.1higgins.html Access Provided by your local institution at 03/01/11 6:10AM GMT S A Y N N D E S I Intermedia T N H T E E S R 8 S I E A N S Dick Higgins E with an Appendix by Hannah Higgins S 1965 an institution, however. It is absolutely natural to (and inevi- Much of the best work being produced today seems to fall be- table in) the concept of the pure medium, the painting or tween media. This is no accident. The concept of the separa- precious object of any kind. That is the way such objects are tion between media arose in the Renaissance. The idea that a marketed since that is the world to which they belong and to painting is made of paint on canvas or that a sculpture should which they relate. The sense of “I am the state,” however, will not be painted seems characteristic of the kind of social shortly be replaced by “After me the deluge,” and, in fact, if thought—categorizing and dividing society into nobility with the High Art world were better informed, it would realize that its various subdivisions, untitled gentry, artisans, serfs and land- the deluge has already begun. less workers—which we call the feudal conception of the Great Who knows when it began? There is no reason for us to go Chain of Being. -
Community Building and Social Restructuring in Fluxus Margaret Sherer Washington University in St
Washington University in St. Louis Washington University Open Scholarship Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations Arts & Sciences Spring 5-2016 A Network of Experience: Community Building and Social Restructuring in Fluxus Margaret Sherer Washington University in St. Louis Follow this and additional works at: https://openscholarship.wustl.edu/art_sci_etds Part of the American Art and Architecture Commons, and the Contemporary Art Commons Recommended Citation Sherer, Margaret, "A Network of Experience: Community Building and Social Restructuring in Fluxus" (2016). Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations. 716. https://openscholarship.wustl.edu/art_sci_etds/716 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Arts & Sciences at Washington University Open Scholarship. It has been accepted for inclusion in Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of Washington University Open Scholarship. For more information, please contact [email protected]. WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY IN ST. LOUIS Department of Art History and Archaeology A Network of Experience: Community Building and Social Restructuring in Fluxus by Margaret Sherer A thesis presented to the Graduate School of Arts & Sciences of Washington University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Masters of Arts May 2016 St. Louis, Missouri Table of Contents List of Figures…………………………………………………………………………………….iii Acknowledgments………………………………………………………………………………..iv Introduction………………………………………………………………………………………..1 -
Yoko Ono's Cut Piece
YOKO ONO’S CUT PIECE From Text to Performance and Back Again Kevin Concannon Art is inexorably bound up in the situation where it is produced and where it is experienced. You can emphasize this, or you can emphasize where it is produced or experienced: you can even equate them, and emphasize the equation. The relationship exists in any case, and, either as artist or as audience, we are in a situation analogous to a swimmer who may fight the surf, dive through it and struggle against it until he gets out beyond where the surf is noticeable: or else this swimmer can roll with the waves. Dick Higgins, Postface (1964)1 he seemingly sudden and recent popularity of reprise performances of live artworks of the 1960s and 1970s has been greeted with an equally abundant supply of critical analysis, much of which frames these events as “reenact- Tments.” Such is the case with Yoko Ono’s 2003 performance of her 1964 Cut Piece. It was performed by Ono on at least six occasions and by others many times more. The first two performances took place in Kyoto and Tokyo in July and August 1964. The third performance was presented at Carnegie Recital Hall in New York City in March 1965. And the fourth and fifth performances were offered as part of the Destruction in Art Symposium presentation of Two Evenings with Yoko Ono at the Africa Centre in London in September 1966. While Ono “directed” later performances of the work, these were—until September 2003—the only confirmed occasions on which she herself publicly performed it. -
Fluxus-Reference-Or-P-Paradigm-For
FLUXUS AND A___& __ s__ t_r_a__ c _t_ ___________ : It is often said that Fluxus exerts profound influence on contem- porary artists. This essay argues that Fluxus has done much more than this. This article argues that Fluxus has, in fact, established the general frame of contemporary art. Fluxus did this by reshaping the paradigm within which art is made in Thomas Kuhn's sense of the term paradigm. Rather than exerting a visible influence on artists, Fluxus forms the invisible background to much contemporary art. As a result, young artists are generally unaware ofF!uxus and its achievements even though they create works that are strongly inspired by it. This article points to similarities and differences be tween the era in which Fluxus was born and the current moment. It examines the relationship of art and artist to audience, the mingling of art and life, cultural institutions and economic structures as key concepts in Fluxus work. University of Lyon II Visible Language 39 ·3 Clavez,236-247 ©Visible Language, 2005 Rhode Island School of Design UAGE 39 · 3 V Providence, Rhode Island 02903 BERTRAND CLAVEZ "Being, acting and making are much more useful concepts. Art is a process. At the limit, everything is art ... I imagine that the art of the future will always be moving, never arrived, the art of being lost without losing oneself." ROBERT FILLIOU "The entire subject ofmodes of meeting and the invention of relationships represents esthetic objects that deserve being studied as such." NICOLAS BOURRIAUD Reference or paradigm for IN HIS BOOK ESTHETIQ..UE RELATION 1 Nicolas Bourriaud, 1998.