Fluxus Feminus
FluxusFeminus KathyO'Dell There's no denyingit: Fluxus was an inclusiveoperation. The 1993 retro- spectiveexhibition "In the Spiritof Fluxus,"brilliantly organized by Elizabeth Armstrongand JoanRothfuss of the WalkerArt Center, confirmed that there were probablymore women and artistsof color associatedwith Fluxus than with any otherprevious grouping of artistsin Westernart history. This is no insignificantfact, given the originsof Fluxusin the earlyI960s in the wake of the seeminglymonolithic, white, male-dominatedphenomenon of Abstract Expressionism.Charlotte Moorman, Nam June Paik, Alison Knowles, Ben- jamin Patterson,Carolee Schneemann,Kate Millett, Shigeko Kubota, and Yako Ono are onlya few of the artistswho at one timeor anotherwere asso- ciatedwith Fluxus and were representedin the exhibition. Inclusivityis a relativeterm, however, and when it comesto figuringFluxus into the discourseon, say, genderissues, the titleof thisexhibition should be takenvery seriously. For it was, indeed, "in the spiritof Fluxus" thatits prac- tices be inclusive.But the historicalreality was somewhatdifferent-a history impossibleto documentin exhibitionformat due to the amorphousnature of its underpinnings.It is thishistory I wish to explorehere, in an effortto ex- pose those underpinningsand the affectthey had on work by women associ- ated withthe artisticactivities that came to be knownas "Fluxus."' As is well-documentedin numeroustexts, one of the mostrecent being the substantivecatalog that accompanied the exhibition (see Armstrongand Rothfuss 1993), it was Lithuanian architectand graphic designer George Maciunas who in 1962 bestowed the name "Fluxus" on an arrayof interna- tionalartists who shareda particularsensibility from which theywould work for many years, up to and including the present moment. For the same amount of time,this shared sensibility has defiedfirm definition-a predict- able and no doubt intentionaloutcome of Maciunas's neologizinga name for the groupfrom a rootword signifyingconstant change and transition.
[Show full text]