Geoffrey Hendricks | Taschengewitter (Pocket Storm)

Geoffrey Hendricks

Taschengewitter (Pocket Storm)

Eschenau, Austria: the eschenau summer press & temporary travelling press publications, 1991 

[4] pp., 21 × 14.8 cm., string-bound

Edition 150 numbered copies

Similar to Willem de Ridder's Paper Constellations and Martin Creed’s crumpled balls of paper, this book consists of a single sheet of wrinkled and folded paper. Given Hendrick’s lifelong interest in painting the sky [see below] - and the title - one can assume the paper is intended to represent a cloud. 

The work is published by herman de vries, who has been publishing artist’s publications with his eschenau summer press & temporary travelling press publications for over fifty years. There are 78 titles so far in the series, many by de vries himself. Other artists include Melanie Bonajo, Marinus Boezem, James Lee Byars, Eugen Gomringer, Maurizio Nannucci, Paul Panhuysen, Dieter Roth, Wolfgang 

These artists are given carte blanche, which results in striking experiments in form and content. More than 75 editions have now appeared in the series, ranging from a radio play with sound recordings of bumblebees to a glass slide that allows the sun to be viewed. All editions are shown in full in herman de vries - publisher and clarified by RKD curators Lynne van Rhijn and Ton Geerts.

Bici Hendricks | Punctuation Poems

Bici Hendricks

Punctuation Poems

New York City, USA: Black Thumb Press, 1966

14 x 8.5 cm.

Edition size unknown

Nye Ffarrabas (formerly Bici Forbes and Bici Forbes Hendricks) founded The Black Thumb Press in June of 1965, "to publish experimental work of high merit which, for various reasons - unconventional form, small size, or unpretentious nature - would necessarily be bypassed by the established publishers.”

This Kraft envelope with a white label contains twenty printed cards featuring typographic compositions each consisting of a single typewriter character.

"Many of her poems are also lozenges. You will find they feel good on your tongue, and can soothe an inflammation. In “Punctuation Poems” her words simply deliquesce, and melt away like ice (or identity), until all we are left with are the pauses, the stops and starts, joining and breaking the silence of the page.  Nye’s “Black Thumb Press” was not an artwork or a poem at all, but rather a laboratory for tinkering and experimentation with the elements of style and meaning, beauty and communication. Exalting the greasy thumbprint of the mechanic who repairs the press, and the technician who inks the plate, equally alongside the author who crafted the verse. The literal press that birthed the poem, remembered on the page, fingerprints pressed indelibly into the volume. Creator, fabricator, distributor, and reader all joined in conversation.”

- Bracken Hendricks

"Nye is a wordsmith, an alchemist with words. For a decade we traveled through life together. Two children. Three grandchildren. Shared memories. A lot bonds us. In 1964 we started the Black Thumb Press and sent out small mailings. Nye planned meals of single colors, turning meals into art. By the mid 60’s we were part of Fluxus, and also active participants in Charlotte Moorman’s Avant Garde Festivals. In 1967 at the New York Mycological Society Banquet1 Nye sat next to Marcel Duchamp. In 1970 we went to Cologne together for the “Happening and Fluxus” exhibition at the Kunstverein, where she had Dinner Service with hubcap plates on an American flag, and her powerful piece Neo/N [Über alleS] flashing on the wall behind. By the late ‘60’s, our passion for social engagement had us taking our children on our shoulders to Gay Rights marches and Anti-War demonstrations. In 1971 to celebrate our 10th wedding anniversary we had a Flux Divorce. George Maciunas helped with ideas and John Lennon and Yoko Ono were guests, a special celebratory event."

- Geoff Hendricks

Yoko Ono signed recordings

Happy Birthday to Yoko Ono, who turns 93 today. 

Geoffrey Hendricks | Flux Divorce Box

Geoffrey Hendricks

Flux Divorce Box

New York City, USA: Fluxus, 1973

11 × 51 × 37 cm.

Edition size unknown

Ten years into their marriage, Geoff and Bici Hendricks mutually revealed to each other that they were gay, and separated. They remained close friends, and Bici Forbes Hendricks changed their name to Nye Ffarrabas. 

Flux Divorce Box documents the couple’s joyous divorce.  All of their shared belongings were ceremouneously sliced in two. Items from their decade-long marriage - including documents, clothing, a love seat, and their marital bed - were cut in half with scissors, a paper cutter, an ax, and a power saw.

Housed in a box crafted by a woodworking graduate student, Flux Divorce Box includes "Our Flux Divorce" which resembles a wedding album bisected horizontally. Fragments of coats, barbed wire, plastic, correspondence cut in half, and half of a wedding announcement are also included. 

The documentation of the performative event is by Fluxus photographer Peter Moore. The work was distributed through Fluxus newsletters and price lists (initially offered for $300), and George Maciunas assisted with the design. His invitation to the couple’s divorce features a graphic that had previously been used on Ken Friedman’s Flux Corsage, from 1968. It too is sliced in half. 

When Maciunas married in 1978, Hendricks officiated (in a clerical robe) and the event can almost be viewed as the inversion of his divorce. Hendricks told Lars Movin "Early in 1978 while George Maciunas was battling terminal cancer, he said to me "Geoff, we had your "Flux Divorce", we should also have a "Flux Wedding". He wanted to have a Flux Wedding with Billie Hutching, who he was with, and he wanted me to be 'minister’."

I visited Hendricks’ home in the nineties and he showed me this extraordinary work. I asked how many were produced and he replied “ Not a lot. They were all hand done. There's one in the Silverman collection, there's one in the Jean Brown collection that's now in the Getty. Francesco Conz has one, Barbara Moore. Not many more than that.”

I recall him showing me images of the Maciunas wedding, including one of a chair that had been sliced in half and then tied back together again, reinforcing the idea of marriage as an inverse to a divorce. 

The above copy of Flux Divorce Box is from the Conz collection, and differs in size slightly from the one that MoMA acquired (the dimensions of which are listed as 39.7 x 50.6 x 10.5 cm., see below). 

From an Oral history interview with Geoffrey Hendricks, 2016 August 17-18:

GEOFFREY HENDRICKS: With our 10th wedding anniversary coming along, it was like, How do we celebrate it? Because we were both, you know, queer and involved with others, and I just sort of tossed out the idea, what about a Flux-divorce? And it sort of resonated, and I said, "Let me talk to George Maciunas." And so I talked to George. He was absolutely thrilled and so he did a lot of the orchestrating of it, and figuring out how to divide up the house with a wall of cardboard boxes to separate one half of the room. For another, barbed wire between the living room and the kitchen island in the middle of the—before the dining room.

[...]

And then upstairs in the bedroom, we had a division of property and with a paper cutter, we cut our wedding document in half, the wedding invitation, some correspondence that was sort of symbolic. And then with, I guess, a utility knife, cut the mattress in half with scissors and ripped the sheets in half. And then I had this circular saw and cut the wooden platform of the bed in half. And there was a wicker loveseat that I chopped in half. So this was the division of property and we tore our wedding garments in half.

LINDA YABLONSKY: Was this documented?

GEOFFREY HENDRICKS: There's some documentation of it.

LINDA YABLONSKY: Photographs or video?

GEOFFREY HENDRICKS: Yeah, Peter Moore took photographs. And there are maybe some others. I don't know that there's video, but then I made a Flux–Divorce Box so that I have this as an object. And there are copies of it in, I guess, in MoMA and the Getty and the Sohm [Archive] collection in Stuttgart, and sort of, you know, there may be half a dozen key Fluxus collection series.

LINDA YABLONSKY: It sounds like it sets quite a precedent for Gordon Matta-Clark.

GEOFFREY HENDRICKS: [Laughs.] Yeah, right, well—

LINDA YABLONSKY: Remember he split the house—

GEOFFREY HENDRICKS: Oh, yeah, no, I know.

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.