Ben Vautier update

Ben Vautier used to share candid accounts of his life and work (including frank assessments of other artists) several times yearly, through his mailing list, various newspapers (such as The Real Bullshit) and later via email and his website. Lately these have been much less frequent, and mostly in French, but this morning this arrived over email:

Hello every body
I do not write often
I am loosing my memory
My health is so so
I have given up writing in English
And journying
So if some ask themselves
What about the Fluxus Blois project
It is advancing
I have received a very impressive model of the museum
They seem serious
It looks as if It is really going to exist
Sometimes I wonder
Why are people so interested in Fluxus?
What is there in Fluxus?
I am supposed to meet Philip Corner and Ben Patterson
in a few days in Blois
News from Fluxus never stops coming in
Chiasso
Genova
Wiesbaden
New york
Sometimes I feel like saying stop
it was only a joke
What?
a joke saying life is art ?
a joke
Everything is music ?
A joke all these books on fluxus
a joke ?
Hello everybody
I don't know what to say
a friend said Fluxus is becoming important
Because it contains less collective ego
Nonsense
Fluxus contains
as much ego as abstract expressionism
ego in Wiesbaden
ego in Beuys etc…
ego ego every where
ego in ben Vautier
I remember Eric Andersen telling me
We should not speak to Ken Friedman
I remember George Maciunas telling me :
don't mention me
Yoko Ono' name
I remember George Maciunas telling me:
Ben Patterson is one of the best but he left us to do social art work
I remember Dick Higgins telling me
Fluxus is not important
Only «something else press« is important
I remember Vostell jealous of Beuys
I could continue trying to remember
but i am only repeating myself
maybe Fluxus in itself is not ego
But made of twenty, thirty, individuals egos
In fact i am losing my memory
Fluxus is complicated
Who is ?who is not
What is what is not Fluxus ?
And even so my ego
is getting on my nerves,
on my nose
Taking too much of my time and mind
Difficult to sleep at night
Lots write on and about Fluxus today
i cant read them any more
The texts are too long
Annie says a Fluxus concert
is magic
Fluxus in BLOIS is complicated
too big a project for me
There will be a Fluxus Shop selling Fluxus goods.
There will be a Fluxus Bus to bring people to the museum.
Sometimes i wonder
Fluxus was supposed to be a failure
and is turning into radical art
Sometimes I wonder
Ego must be very ego
Tu survive among other egos
Nonsense is art
Turn nonsense into art
Fluxus adapts itself
I should say mutates
Everybody is performing
What ami doing here
I should stop writing
Annie says
Fluxus opened a window
to let the wind in
I am loosing my Memory
But I remember Henry Flynt
He said he lectured in Baltimore
Audience was polite
But only two or three understood what it was all about
Discussion with Henry Flynt
Around Newton Hawkins Einstein
And foundation 3 by Asimov
Henry is persadred that just like in foundation
there is on earth a secret society
Pulling the strings
i lent his book to lvy
he never brought it back
This letter was to give you information
about a Fluxus Museum in Blois
Here is my last letter nothing has changed
it is supposed to open in November




For more information about the Fluxus museum in France, click here.