Fluxus

Begun in the early 1960s when composer-cum-entrepreneur George Maciunas up and left New York for West Germany, Fluxus was entirely unlike any earlier art collective. Truly international and interdisciplinary in scope, its members hailed from all over Europe, the Far East, and the Americas, and included John Cage, Carolee Schneemann, Joseph Beuys, Nam June Paik, and Yoko Ono. Fluxus members were brought together with the intention of creating both collaborative and individual performance-oriented Concept art -- usually anti-rational, one-time sound/theatrical performances that ended with some material remainder such as recordings, photographs, and aesthetic objects. Taking cues from Duchamp, Dadaist experiments, and the post-war artistic scene at Black Mountain College, Fluxus pieces invited chance occurrence (in part through audience participation), the performers often being unsure of the final results of their activities on stage. Indeed, it was a kind of Fluxus philosophy to say that the performer, rather than being an ultimate source of expression, was instead the very element that destabilized the work and could potentially render it indecipherable. Their work was, well, in flux.

(Click the Fluxus title)