FLUXUS FAMILIAS Jennie Klein Books Reviewed: Hannah Higgins, Fluxus Experience, Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002; Alison Knowles, Footnotes: Collage Journal 30 Years, New York: Granary Books, 2000; Alison Knowles, Spoken Text, Barrytown, NY: Left Hand Books, 1993; Dick Higgins/Paul Woodbine, Life Flowers, Kingston, NY: McPherson and Co., Publishers, 1996/2002; Dick Higgins/Paul Woodbine, Octette, Kingston, NY: McPherson and Co., Publishers, 1994. n 2002, while in upstate New York, the colors while holding aloft such things I was lucky enough to be present at as a red pepper, a green skein of cord, a I an evening of Fluxus performance brown metal fragment and a white Ti- and screening of Fluxfilms organized by betan scarf. Adding a new dimension of Gary Wilke at the Uptown Café in texture, experience and meaning to the Kingston. One of the highlights of the words, all of the objects (no longer balls evening for me (besides Yoko Ono’s of yarn as they were when seven year Number 4, a five minute film of the old Jessica Higgins initially “performed” buttocks of various performers walking the piece) replace the spoken words. As away from the camera) was Alison evidenced by this performance, Fluxus, Knowles’s Mantra for Jessie—Some help at least in the Higgins/Knowles house- in Sleeping (1971). The genesis of the hold was and continues to be a family piece was a moment when Knowles affair. I was charmed that night by the overheard her daughter Jessica, who at intergenerational performance, which the time was seven, learning to knit reminded me of my own experience with variegated yarn while naming the learning how to knit. Even at a tender colors out loud. Listening from the next age, Jessica Higgins, today a member of room, Knowles jotted down the names the second generation of Fluxus artists, of the colors. Performed with objects was participating in her parent’s per- the approximate colors of Jessica formances. Higgins’s variegated yarn, Mantra for Jessie is both conceptual and physical— Jessica’s twin sister Hannah Higgins, a performer (Jessica Higgins the evening although an art historian and critic of November 7) calls out the names of rather than an artist, has also immersed 128 ᭿ PAJ 78 (2004), pp. 128–135. © 2004 Jennie Klein Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/1520281041969110 by guest on 02 October 2021 herself in all things Fluxus, going so far argued and researched text. Higgins’s as to write a dissertation on Fluxus art. knowledge of contemporary art theory, Higgins’s Fluxus Experience grew out of particularly the theoretical discourse on that dissertation. The book is an at- the relationship between phenomenol- tempt to build upon the body of sec- ogy and epistemology is impressive (she ondary critical writings about the move- teaches a course on art and “experience” ment that begin in 1993 with the at University of Illinois–Chicago, where important exhibition and accompany- she is an associate professor). I particu- ing catalogue In The Spirit of Fluxus at larly enjoyed her reading of the mean- the Walker Art Center. Taking as her ing of the performing bodies and per- point of departure Kristine Stiles’s con- formance-oriented objects in Fluxus as tention that Fluxus performance and presenting depersonalized, primary in- objects can be read as a “mode” of formation that was not about activating action in a world that has the potential the subjectivity of the artist but about to enact radical epistemological shifts, bringing the viewer into visceral and Higgins revisits Fluxus objects, perform- visual contact with his or her own ances, and books as well as the critical experience of the piece. This reading is writing then in order to argue for the very different from the more traditional continuing relevance of Fluxus practice readings of performance art, which is to the art world today. The central generally seen to hinge on the body of thesis of Fluxus Experience, as implied the performer rather than the experi- by the title, is that the art made by ence of the viewer. artists associated with the Fluxus move- ment—fluxkits, events (performances), Crucial to Higgins’s argument is her books and charts, was meant to “form first-hand knowledge of Fluxus events, multiple pathways toward ‘ontological objects, and books. Growing up, she knowledge.’” Fluxus art functioned by was surrounded by the objects that her activating all of the senses—taste, smell, parents and their friends made. Her touch, hearing, and vision. Even this intimate familiarity with all things latter category, which has been the Fluxus permits her to craft a strong lynchpin upon which Western aesthetic argument based on the ontological truth theory has rested, is called into question of the objects. Most of us who are of by Fluxus objects and films. Rather Higgins’s generation have had to con- than reinforcing the concept of the tent ourselves with simply looking at disembodied eye, they reembody that Fluxus objects. Higgins, on the other eye by forcing the viewer to acknowl- hand, had the opportunity to touch edge its corporeal function. these objects, and that activity is central to her theorization of their meaning. Prior to reading Fluxus Experience, I Looking at these small, ephemeral ob- have to admit to having had some jects in museum vitrines (which is my reservations about the rigor of this par- own experience of Fluxus objects), it is ticular text given the extremely close fairly easy to think of them as simply relationship that Higgins has enjoyed another example of anti-object concep- with many of the major protagonists of tual work from the anti-establishment the Fluxus movement. I was pleasantly sixties. Higgins, on the other hand, sees surprised, therefore, to encounter a well- things to touch, wear, taste, and try out KLEIN / Fluxus Familias ᭿ 129 Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/1520281041969110 by guest on 02 October 2021 in various ways. One get the sense that Higgins invokes her father’s term she knows about what she speaks when “intermedia” and analyzes his Intermedia she writes that the taste of blood and Chart (1995) to demonstrate that Fluxus metal is terrible when wearing George was also a movement based on primary Maciunas’s Flux Smile Machine (1970– life experience of all manner of things, 72), a sprung metal “smiling” device. one that is “radically empiricist, based on the principle of direct sensory per- That said, Fluxus Experience doesn’t have ception of everyday life.” any surprises for those familiar with the work of Alison Knowles and her hus- As an art historian who teaches contem- band and fellow artist Dick Higgins. porary art history, I found most helpful Higgins’s reading of the meaning of Higgins’ recontextualization of Fluxus Fluxus events is understandably indebted as a movement with affinities to hap- to that of her parents, both of whom penings, conceptual art, and pop art. read and commented on Fluxus Experi- Most of the Fluxus artists in the Higgins/ ence several times. An unapologetic apo- Knowles group cited John Cage’s ex- logia for the Knowles/Higgins pere be- perimental music composition class as lief in Fluxus art as “intermedia” (a term central to their own understanding of coined by Dick Higgins to indicate a art making—just as his teaching and dynamic exchange between art and life), ideas are viewed as central to the move- a large portion of Fluxus Experience is ments cited above. Higgins’s desire to devoted to contradicting the claim made resituate Fluxus so that it becomes part by George Maciunas (one of the of the discursive structure of post-war founders of Fluxus) and others that avant-garde art is both laudable and Fluxus was anti-establishment anti-art. necessary. Long considered a separate The interpretation of Fluxus as an anti- branch on the performance tree or the art, neo-dada movement that challenged last gasp of a post-war avant-garde, bourgeois complacency has stuck, in Fluxus has been relegated to the back spite of the many pieces (some by room of exhibitions on performance Knowles and Dick Higgins) that con- and conceptual art and the back pages tradict that reading. To be sure, as (or footnotes) of surveys of modern art. Higgins herself admits, some of the What is more, as Higgins demonstrates, events and objects associated with the institutionalization of Fluxus, at Fluxus, such as the event/protests orga- least in America, has denied its experi- nized by Maciunas, were anti-art and ential dimension. This impression is anti-institution. Higgins argues that reinforced by the emphasis on the cen- many other objects and events associ- trality of Maciunas to Fluxus. Because ated with Fluxus were not intended to Maciunas is no longer alive, Fluxus has be anti-art at all. Even Maciunas, as been constructed as a historical move- Higgins points out, was never able to ment in several catalogues and recent permanently expel artists or prevent exhibitions, such as the catalogues and relationships between Fluxus artists and exhibitions associated with the Gilbert artists that he had deemed to be no and Lila Silverman Fluxus Collection in longer worthy of inclusion in the Fluxus Detroit. Having before her an actual canon. In order to prove her point, example of a second generation Fluxus 130 ᭿ PAJ 78 Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/1520281041969110 by guest on 02 October 2021 artist working today in the person of interdisciplinary exploration, self- her own twin sister, Higgins is at great directed study, collective work, and the pains to argue that Fluxus is still very nonhierarchical exchange of ideas” while much an active avant-garde movement.