In Latin and other languages, Fluxus literally means flow and change Essay

In Latin and some other languages, Fluxus liter exclusivelyy sozzleds lead and change. Similarly, the related English word flux is single- abide byd functiond variously to mean a state of continuous change,a fusion. Fluxus ideas were prevalent soundly before the 1960s, growing with the idea of intermedia, only if first summarised, exemplified and presented in a fete jointly organised by the German, Joseph Beuys, and Lithuanian-born architect and de attributeer, George Maciunas.It was Maciunas desire to study the engagement of a specific conference of people, sharing the aforementioned(prenominal) thoughts on imposture at the sequence and it was he who coined the name Fluxus. The Fluxus writ of execution festival held at the Dsseldorf Art Academy on 2-3 February 1962 was a profound historical marker in the early development of the Fluxus group. Numerous Fluxus and Fluxus-type festivals and activities activate to be presented in Europe throughout the 1960s after which t he commission shifted to New York. Fluxus has been described as the about radical and experimental machinationwork movement of the sixties.Fluxus differs from roughly artistic creation in creation purely conceptual. Characterized by a self-colouredly Dadaist attitude, Fluxus promoted artistic experimentation mixed with social and governmental activism, an often celebrated anarchistic change. Although Germany was its principal location, Fluxus was an international avant-garde movement, progressive in major Dutch, English, French, Swedish, and American cities. Its participants were a divergent group of individualists whose most common theme was their delight in spontaneity and humour. Fluxus members avoided any curb art theories, and spurned pure aesthetic objectives, producing much(prenominal) mixed-media plant as poems, mail art, silent orchestras, and collages of such readily available materials such as scavenged posters, newspapers, and other ephemera.Their activitie s resulted in many flushts or situations, often called Actions or as kn aver in the USA, Happenings, which were full treatment challenging definitions of art as think on objects. Street theatre was very popular as were other per gradances such as concerts of electronic music. An account given by the American Fluxartist Dick Higgins described the sort of happening you would expect at one(a) of his Fluxconcerts. This particular description is from the concert at Dsseldorf and it had become a kind of set found for these festival performances. Higgins described his arrangement, Constellation No 4 as followsEach performer chooses a sound to be produced on any instrument available to him, including the voice. The sound is to have a clearly defined percussive attack and a delay which is no longer than a second. Words, crackling and rustling sounds, argon excluded because they have six-fold attacks and disintegrationsEach performer produces his sound as efficiently as possible, appr oximately simultaneously with the other performers sounds. As soon as the last decay has died a dash, the piece is over.A mortal, who attends a Fluxconcert, after the first shock, typically gets caught up in the spirit of it and begins to delight in it, without consciously knowing why. What the recipient sees is sloping by his or her perception of it and instinctively he or she is twinned horizons, comparing expectations, participating in the process the more(prenominal) than actively he or she does so, the more likely they will be able to enjoy the experience.In 1981 Dick Higgins Wrote a list of nine criteria that he suggested primaeval to Fluxus1. internationalism2. experimentalism and iconoclasm3. intermedia (a term employed by Dick Higgins to describe an art form appropriate to people who say on that point are no boundaries between art and tone)4. minimalism or concentration5. an attempted closure of the art/ intent dichotomy6. implicativeness (an ideal Fluxus work tha t implies many more works)7. play or gags8. epehmerality9. specificity (work to be specific, self-contained and to embody all its hold parts)Clearly not every work is likely to reflect all nine of these characteristics or criteria, but the more of them a work reflects, the more typically and characteristically Fluxus it is. Similarly not every work by a Fluxartist is a Fluxwork typically Fluxartists do other sorts of work as well. The group pioneered these ideas at a age when their thoughts and practices in the world close to them were distinct from the art world and different from the world of other disciplines in which Fluxus, would come to play a role.Like Duchamp, many Fluxus pieces (most notably the performance ones), are often characterised by their taking of a very run-of-the-mill event from daily life, and their being framed as art by being presented on stage as a performance situation. A collection of Fluxus works will inevitably include some pieces which are untransfor med from life. Their significance is their ability to transform viewers horizons.According to Joseph Beuys, Fluxus intended to throw off the world of bourgeois sickness . . . of dead art, to promote a revolutionary flood and tide in art, anti-art, promote non art reality . . . and to immingle the cadres of cultural, social, and governmental revolutionaries into a united front and action.I was particularly concerned in the work of Joseph Beuys on view at the Tate Modern. He was a shaman, showman, teacher and tireless debater. He use the detritus of daily life in his work materials representing energy such as fat, felt, wax, honey, and copper, iron, bronze and batteries. His use of felt and fat in particular relates back to his near demolition experience in World War II when he used the two materials to keep him warm.*Show Pictures*Most of his pieces have changed through time, relying as they do on materials that decay, ferment, dry up, or change colour. Since life is in a const ant state of flux, he reasoned, art, in order to charter itself closer to life, must be similarly ephemeral. It was thus, in change, that Beuys sought to engender about the ultimate unity between art and life.Many of the Fluxartists were unequal and could not afford to work with fine and costly materials. The sense that if Fluxus were to unified some element of ongoing change flux -that the individual works should change. Many objects therefore were made of ephemeral materials, so that as time went by the work would either disappear or would physically emasculate itself. A work such as this made a strong statement rather than a work that would last throughout the ages in some treasure vault. Many of the Fluxartists work, such as Robert Fillouss works have disappeared into thin air. A good example of this is the work we looked at in the lecture last week entitled The artists breath by Yves Klein.George Maciunas planned to create a Fluxus Board of Directors which he would head f rom the plate in New York. Maciunas wrote a letter to Thomas Schmit, in the form of a Fluxus manifesto, as which it is often referred. He stated that* Fluxus objectives are social and not aesthetic* The gradual elimination of fine arts (music, theatre, poetry, fiction, painting, sculpture, and so forth) was motivated by the desire to stop the waste of material and human resources and take away it to socially constructive ends such as Industrial design, journalism, architecture, engineering, graphic-typographic arts, printing etc.* The movement was against the art-object as non-functional commodity to be sold and to make a livelihood for an artist.* It could have the function of breeding people the needlessness of art. Therefore teaching that a work should not be permanent* Fluxus is therefore anti-professional* Against art as a medium or vehicle promoting artists ego.* Applied art should express the objective problem to be solved not by the artists personality or ego.* Fluxus ar t should tend towards the incorporated spirit, anonymity and anti-individualism* Fluxus concerts and publications are at best transitional and temporary until such time that artists find other employment. Maciunas states that it is of utmost importance that the artist finds a profession from which he can make a donjon.* He says that there is no such thing as a professional revolutionary. vicissitude is for participation of all and that a revolutionary should not practice something he is trying to overthrow or even worse, qualification a living from it, and that the best revolutionaries practice what they preach.* Fluxartists should not make a living from their Fluxus activities but find a profession (like applied arts) by which he would do best Fluxus activity.* The best Fluxus composition is a most non-personal, ready-made one.* Fluxus way of life is 9am to 5pm working socially constructive and useful work earning your own living, 5pm to 10pm spending time on propagandizing yo ur way of life among other raving mad artists and collectors and fighting them, 12pm to 8am sleeping (8 hours is enough)* You cannot live off your family because then you are being just as parasitic as artists living off the society, without lend anything constructive.Maciunas also calls the need for copyright arrangements.* Authorship of pieces would eventually be breaked, making them totally anonymous thus eliminating the artists ego. The author would be Fluxus. Maciunas says We cant depend on each artist to destroy his ego. The copyright arrangement will eventually force him to it if he is reluctant.whitethorn I also add at this point, Robert. C .Morgan, art critic, writer, artist and poet says that By creating the absence of authorship, Fluxus has revived itself as a significant endeavor in recent art.However, no one really compulsioned to sign the manifesto set out by Maciunas. Dick Higgins says that We did not want to confine tomorrows possibilities by what we today. That manifesto is Maciunas manifesto, not a manifesto of Fluxus.George Brecht notes that Fluxus encompasses opposites. Consider opposing it, supporting it, ignoring it, changing your mind.Clearly, with Fluxus, normal a priori positions do not apply. They are not intended to do the same things as say a Jackson Pollock painting. It does not mimicker nature in any narrative way. It does not attempt to move the listener, viewer or reader emotionally or intellectually. The Fluxartist does not even begin to reveal him-or herself through the work.The reception of Fluxus, its popularity, influence and in general, its acceptance, varies considerably. A Fluxperformance or an exhibition of Fluxus works attended by a person uneducated about the Fluxus field is apt to having an interesting and pleasurable experience. For most avant-guard art, one needs to know quite a considerable add up of art history in order to get ones bearings enough to be able to fuse ones bearings and horizons and experien ce pleasure. There is a progressive intellectualism of the audience, thus more ideas of what will, or should happen. The spectators of a Fluxwork have to take aim that these ideas are not under attack and that they are simply tangential to the work at hand.There are two bodies of people whose ill will towards Fluxus is profound. These are1. Groups of art professionals who work in art institutions and galleries. Fluxworks do not lend themselves easily to becoming precious objects which are sold or beautiful fetishes to immortalize the donor. It has more the quality of a souvenir or a sacred relic than or an exquisitely wrought result of fine craftsmanship.2. Secondly, it is the artists who are good in whatever it is that they do, but who are not good enough to be really secure in it.Such artists feel threatened by Fluxus.Victor Cousins style of 1816 says of art It is done for the love of it -for its own sake.The Fluxus Collective believed that if value came to be attached to the work then great But the work must be un-commercial in its very nature.-Conclusion-Fluxus is more important as an idea and a potential for social change than as a specific group of people or collection of objects, action and life activity. Fluxus tried to eclectically organise itself around the advantages of existing strategies at the same time that it attempted to avoid their abuses. Fluxus was committed to social purpose but unlike the authoritarian means by which it was historically achieved. Today, it is clear that the radical division Fluxus made to art was to suggest that there is no boundary to be erased between art and life.The Fluxus movement does not present correct political or social views all the elements behave democratically. Not one piece dominates another. The movement sees a world inhabited by individuals of equal outlay and value. By chance, this movement entered the scene, and changed the worldwide view previously held. For a group of artists who sought the r eunification of art & life, the current institutionalization of Fluxus is paradoxical, yet the subversive nature of their project the challenge to hierarchy and authoritarianism, still persists today