Robert Filliou | Fluxdust

Robert Filliou

Fluxdust

New York City, USA: Fluxus, [circa] 1967

12 × 10 × 1.7 cm.

Edition size unknown

A plastic box with a label designed by George Maciunas [see above, bottom] containing collected dust. In 1984, the artist stated to Jon Hendricks that mentioned having a collection of hair and dust to Maciunas over a beer in London during the Festival of Misfits.  “By the time it was published, I had totally forgotten the idea.”

The works were later realized by Maciunas as a stand alone multiple for $3.00, and as part of the collective Fluxkit [see below]. 

A companion piece, Fluxhair, was produced at the same time with a near identical label. Despite Filliou's importance to Fluxus (and his interest in boxed editions), these two barely indistinguishable works appear to be the only multiples by him published by Fluxus. Some others reached the prototype stage - and there is a label design for something called The Obvious Deck - but none of them were produced or distributed via Fluxus. 

A later, better dust work (though without Maciunas’ design savvy) was published in 1977, under the title  Poussière de Poussière [see next post]. 

George Maciunas | Fluxpost (Aging Men)

George Maciunas

Fluxpost (Aging Men)

New York City, USA: Fluxus, 1975

27.8 x 21.5 cm.

Edition size unknown

Less well known than his later set of postage stamps titled Smiles (1975), this offset work on perforated gummed paper consists of a forty-two portraits of men. The image originates in a flea market photograph depicting more than a hundred members of the Eastern Synod, attending their 159th annual meeting at St. John’s Reformed Church, Williamsport, Pennsylvania, October 24th, 1905 [below].

Maciunas discarded half of the portraits and arranged the remaining in order of their imagined age (which seems to be based entirely on the amount of facial hair each sports). 

The stamps were produced by Fluxus and also appeared in Fluxpack 3 [above, centre]. The work is included in numerous collections, including the Whitney and MoMA. 

Fluxus Codex

Jon Hendricks

Fluxus Codex

New York City, USA: Harry N. Abrams, 1998

616 pp., 24 x 29 x 5.5 cm., hardcover

Edition size unknown

This catalogue raisonné represents an extraordinary amount of research, listing every artwork ever mentioned in a Fluxus newspaper, newsletter or correspondence with George Maciunas. If my library was on fire, I would run here first. 

"To understand Fluxus as an art movement, it is helpful to consider the contextuality of the phenomenon. Its primary concerns fall outside those of most other art movements, challenging preconceived notions about art, the function of art, and the role of the artist in society. Unquestionably, there were precedents for Fluxus earlier in the twentieth century. These precursors, in broad terms, were Futurism, Dada, and Russian Constructivism. Though elements of each had become generally accepted, the essence of each remained taboo in the late 1950s and early 1960s, when several experimental movements were struggling against the high tide of academic abstraction. It was a time of very rapid change, a time to try things out, a time when artists were unhooking the corsets of art and pushing ideas to whatever limits imagination and resources could make them go.

Fluxus begins before it begins and ends, one hopes after it ends. The 1950s were a time of political conservatism. A period in art of abstraction, individualism, and nationalism. By the late 1950s, Abstract Expressionism had run its course. Senator Joseph McCarthy had finally been discredited and isolationism was temporarily dissolving in the mist of a new internationalism, the world was preparing for the 1960s, which, in retrospect, appear as one of the most tumultuous, creative, and vibrant periods that Western culture has ever seen, certainly rivaling the first decades of the twentieth century in Europe. Fluxus was in the center of this maelstrom.”

- Jon Hendricks, introduction

Fluxshoe

[Various artists]

Fluxshoe

Devon, UK: Beau Geste Press, 1972

144 pp., 29 x 21 cm., softcover

Edition size unknown

Edited by David Mayor and Felipe and Martha Ehrenberg, the title is an exhibition catalogue for the travelling show of the same name, organized by Mayor, Felipe Ehrenberg, and Terry Wright. 

Alongside contributions by key Fluxus members like Eric Andersen, Ay-O,  Joseph Beuys, George Brecht, Giuseppe Chiari, Ken Friedman, Dick Higgins, Joe Jones,  Robert Filliou, Milan Knizak, Yoko Ono, George Maciunas, Takako Saito, Mieko Shiomi, Ben Vautier, and Wolf Vostell, are “fluxlike” artists from the disciplines of sound poetry (Henri Chopin), performance art (Carolee Schneemann, a pre-Throbbing Gristle Genesis P. Orridge), art activism (Guerilla Art Action Group), conceptual art (Endre Tot, Jochen Gerz, Tom Marioni), etc. etc. 

Lesser known artists such as Ian Breakwell, Marc Chaimowicz, Robin Crozier, Mario Diacono,  Klaus Groh, Dora Maurer, Opal L Nations, Janos Urban and others suggest an agenda to try to expand the parameters of Fluxus, and pave the way for a second generation in take up the mantle. 

"I performed a George Brecht piece entitled 'Durations Red & Green'.  This involved eating a green salad and drinking a bottle of red wine while a red and green spot light revolved on me. The performance ended when the salad was eaten and the wine drunk!!

In fact Brecht's score provides no further instruction than the words "red" and "green." It is up to the performer to interpret those instructions. In 1972, Takehisa Kosugi performed "Two Durations" by eating a green salad and drinking red wine. The spirit of Fluxus commands that "anyone can and probably should perform events at will and often" and so Takehisa passed the piece to me to perform.”

- Stuart Reid 

Takako Saito

 

There are unconfirmed reports that Takako Saito has died. RIP. 

Fluxus and Friends

Estera Milman

Fluxus and Friends

Iowa City, USA: The University of Iowa Museum of Art, 1988

8 pp., 18 x 27 cm., staplebound

Edition size unknown

A slim oblong brochure for the exhibition Fluxus and Friends: Selections from the Alternative Traditions in the Contemporary Arts Collection, which took place between January and March of 1988 at the The University of Iowa Museum of Art.

The publication includes a text by curator Estera Milman (who also curated Fluxus: A Conceptual Country and guest-edited the Visible Language issue of the same name), an exhibition checklist and illustrations of work by Geoffrey Hendricks, George Maciunas, and Ben Vautier.

"In her Sunday, June 16, 1968, article for the New York Times, critic Grace Glueck reviewed the Flux Year Box 2, a wooden multiple containing samplings of miniature works by many Fluxus participants of that period. After describing its contents and listing its contributors, she wrote: "Flux Year Box 2 is produced by Fluxus, a loose knit collective of Happeners, Eventists, and way out musicians organized -no disorganized - in 1961 by George Maciunas. Though Fluxus's membership fluxuates [sic], it goes on dauntlessly producing fluxfests, fluxfilms, fluxgags and fluxbooks." Since this definition was offered, Fluxus has been described as a kind of alchemy, an international tendency, fusion or crossover, a transformation of life into art, a living collage, and a way of life. That the phenomenon appears to resist definition is based, in part, on the fact that Fluxus changed its public face to suit its intentions, its specific context, and the purposes of its many diverse practitioners.”

- Estera Milman

Dust Out Of Brain

Henning Christiansen / Ben Patterson / David Moss

Dust Out Of Brain

Frankfurt, Germany: Museum Für Moderne Kunst, 1993

Audio CD, 60'57’'

Edition size unknown

A single track CD ( 60'57’’, recorded in Hamburg in 1993) housed in a plastic wallet tied with a wool. 

The regular edition uses green thread and Christiansen's "Save the Nature - use Fluxus” is rubber-stamped on the back. The signed edition uses white thread, and features a collaged addition (rubber-stamped and signed "Henning Christiansen 95") on the front, and handwritten number and notes on back. 

Henning Christiansen and Ben Patterson were both members of Fluxus. David Moss is an American percussionist, born in New York City in 1949.

The title reportedly refers to cannabis use. 

Geoffrey Hendricks | All American Flux Safety Matches

Geoffrey Hendricks

All American Flux Safety Matches

New York City, USA: Self-published, 1973

6 x 3.8 x 1.7 cm. (matchbox), 7.5 x 6 x 2.2 cm. (plastic box)

Edition size unknown

A found box of matches, with the matches burnt, to which the artist has added the word “Flux” on the front and his name and “1973” on the verso, both in white dry transfer text. 

Using the same Canal Street surplus store plastic boxes that Maciunas used for Fluxus publications, but without a title graphic. 

The edition size is unknown, but two copies appear in the The Gilbert and Lila Silverman Fluxus Collection now housed at MoMA, and both the Jean Brown and Fransceco Conz archives include the work. Additionally, a copy was sold at auction four years ago.