Shared Projects

Shared Projects

Fluxus Festival and Fluxus Exhibition as Video Library

Curated by Dorothee Richter and Adrian Notz, assistance Siri Peyer

11 December 2008–26 April 2009
Cabaret Voltaire Zurich

Alison Knowles, Ben Pattersen, Larry Miller, Hannah Higgins, Ann Noel and Eric Andersen present own scores and scores of other Fluxus artists as Emmett Williams, Bob Watts, George Brecht, Bengt af Klintberg, Dick Higgins, George Maciunas et al.

There is something promising about Fluxus.

“Fluxus is one of the “revolutionary” neo-avant-garde movements of the 1960s. This category also includes the Viennese Actionists, the Situationists, the Affichistes, the Destruction Art Group, the Art Workers’ Coalition, the Guerilla Art Group, Nouveau Réalisme, the Lettrists, as well as Happenings und Gutai. Each of these movements developed within specific societal and historical contexts. [See HOFMANN, Justin: Destruktionskunst. Munich, 1995]

Fluxus stands paradigmatically for the reshaping of the conceptions of “art” and “life”. Fluxus intervened in the representation system of the visual arts and thus changed the societal circumstances of the time, directly as well as indirectly. Artistic expression left the canvas and became actions in space which could be carried out by anyone on the basis of scores, and thus be repeated at will.

A good example of the rejection of a pictorially oriented conception of art is Le Monte Young’s Fluxus event Composition 5: “The action is limited to allowing one or more butterflies to fly around in the performance room and to see to it that all of the butterflies are able to escape. [SCHILLING, Jürgen: Aktionskunst. Identität von Kunst und Leben? Eine Dokumentation. Lucerne, Frankfurt a.M., 1978, p. 81]