A Laboratory Ideas

More documents

Recommendations

Info

20 For more on transcendentalism, see J oel Myerson, Tir e Tmrrsce/1- deura/isrs: A R evier// of R esearch 1111d Criticis 111 (New Yo rk : Modern Language Association of America, 1984), and Myerson, ed., Trarr scerrdcutalislll: A Reader (N ew York : Oxford University Press, 2000). 21 R alph Waldo Emerson, Essays aud Lectures (New York: The Library of America , 1983 [1 837J), 68-69. Thanks to Dine Fri edman for directing me to these passages. 22 The "Something Else Man ifesto" was published in 1964 in Mauifestoes (N ew York: Something Else Press), 21 (digital reprint avai l able from UbuWeb at http:// www.ubu.com / h istorica 1/ gb/ index.html). "A Child's History ofFiuxus" was published in 1979 in C harlton Burch's Liglrrworks magazine and reprinted in Dick Higgins, Horizous: Tir e Poetics aud Theory of tire lrrtenuedia (Carbondale: Southern lllinois Universi ty Press, 1984). 23 That is to ay, not alvinist dogma but rather Jonathan Edwards's mystica l "divine and supernarurallight" imparted to the soul from God. 24 See George Herbert Mead, Mi11d, Se[f, aud Society fro ru tire f(/1/dpoiur of a Social Belraviorisr, ed. and intro. Charles Morris (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1967 [1 934]) , and Herbert Blumer, Sy111bolic luteracriouis111: Perspecti11e aud Met/rod (Berkeley: University ofCalifornia Press, 1986) , esp. 1-60 on methodology and 61-77 on M ea d 's thought. 1 discovered Mead 's work in 1965 and Blumer's in th e early 1970s and have relied heavily on both in the decades ince. The fir t doctoral dissertation to examine Flu xus was by anthropologist Marilyn Ekdahl Ravicz, who developed her perspective based on Dewey's pragm atism. Titled "Aesthetic Anthropology: Theory and Analysis of Pop and Concepwal Art in America," she completed it in 1974 for the Department of Anthropology of the University of California at Los Angeles. 25 One of the genuine puzzles l contend with in considering Fluxus and o ther art (or "anarr") communities that acknowledge Buddhism a a o urce has been the general lack of interest in ethics. lt is difficult to conceive of Buddhism , either Zen or the other schools, without th e foundational ethics of the Eightfold Path . 26 For an exceLlent di sc ussion of George Maciunas's experiment in urban development and th e Fluxhouses, see C harl es R . Simpson, "The Achievement of Territorial Community," in SoHo: Tire Artisr i11 rlre Ciry (Chicago: The University of C hicago Press, 1981), 153-88. In 2008, Stendhal Gallery in New York organized an exhibition titl ed C eor:ge Machuras: Prifabricated Buildiug Sysrern that examined Maciunas's architectllral ideas . The Simpson chapter is available on the gallery's website, along with excellent essays by Julia R obinson, Carolina Carrasco, M ari Dumett, and others. The ga llery URL is http://stendhalgallery.com, and the essays are ava ilable at http:// stendhalga ll ery.com / ?page_ id=852 (accessed Au gust 19, 2010). 27 A sensitive portrait of George's last community appears in a book by his widow: Billie Maciunas, Tir e Eve of Flux us: A F/u x /1/ e/ll oir, w ith a preface by Kri stine Stiles, an introduction by Geoffrey Hendricks, and an afterword by Larry Mi ller (Orlando, Florida: Arbiter Press, 2010). The J ea n Brown Archi ve is now part of the Getty Center for the Arts and Humanities in Los Angeles, alifornia. Its UR.L is http:// www.getty.edu / research/. The online catalogue and findings aids describe the collection. 28 I spent the summer of 1972 in Tyringham working with Jea n Brown and helped arrange the firSt meeting between Jea n and George M aciunas. I knew th ey would hit it off but never imagined how rich their relationship would become. It delighted me th at Jea n's archi ve was located in an old Shaker seed hou e in the Berkshires of Massachusetts. Every evening when we ate dinner together, J ea n would quote the old Shaker proverb, " Hands to work and hea rts to God." It is fitting th at Ameri ca's first great Flu x us collection was established in a Shaker seed ho use, while George's last Fluxus cooperative housi ng project was based nea rby in the wooded hea rtland of tra nscendenta I ism. 29 Information on th e Enfield Shaker Museum is available at http:// www.shakermuseum.org/ index. html. 30 See Edward Deming Andrews, Tir e People Ca lled Shakers (Oxford : Oxford University Press, 1953), 94- 135. 31 Ibid ., 253-89. 32 Dick Higgins, "A Something Else Manifesto," in Man ifestoes, 21. Digital reprint ava ilable from UbuWeb at http://www.ubu. com/ h isrorica 1/ gb/ index. html. 33 This includes even people like me, w ho were not artists before we became in volved w ith the artists and composers in Flu x us. For the story of how a would-be minister became an artist-or, in M arcel Duchamp's terms, an F!Jxus. A <strong>Laboratory</strong> of <strong>Ideas</strong> 43
"anartist"- see Ken Friednun, "Events and the Exquisite Corpse," in Tl1 e Exq11isire Corpse: Cha11ce and Collaborarion in S11rrealis111's Parlor Ga111e, ed. Kanta Kochhar-Lindgren, Davis Schneiderman, and Tom Denlinger (Lincoln: University of N ebraska Press, 2009), 73-74, fn. 6, as well as Peter Frank, "Ken Friedman : A Life in Fluxus," in Artistic Berljellows: Hisrories, Theories and Conversations in Collaborative Art Practices, ed. Holly C rawford (Lanham: University Press of America, 2008), 145-86. 34 Curatorial analysis in general has tended to dismiss Flux us's engagem ent with the larger world by portray ing its experiments and failures as ineffective. For example, in Thomas Kellein's 2007 book George Mach111as and th e Dream of Fhi XIIS (London: Thames and Hudson), George is depicted as a brilliant but failed dreamer. It is certainly true that we often influenced social change without influencin g the formal qualities or conceptual fo cus of the trends and iss ues that we helped to create. Fluxus W es t, for example, was one of th e six or seven founding publishers of the Underground Press Syndicate in 1967, but we never gained any traction on the way th e papers were designed or what they dealt with. Even though we ca n be found in the first lists of founding papers, along w ith the Easr Village Other, the Berkeley Barb, and th e Los Angeles Free Press, we vanish from history soon after because our focus was so vastly different. Did we exert a role in developing the concept of an alternate press' Yes. Did we have any real part in the way the press developed? Perhaps we did, at least in a small way. Did we succeed in directing serious attention to cultural issues beyond the standard underground press fo ca l points of rock music, drugs, sex, and new left politics? Not hardly. 44 Fluxus ,\lld thl' Es'L'Iltl.ti Qul'\tioth ofltlt:
Page 1 and 2: ... ,.. I __}
Page 3 and 4: , ~ ~~~~c- ~- ~:#.. -- ~:::: ___- W
Page 5 and 6: J ~cq u e l y nn B~~ s is director
Page 7 and 8: • • • • f • • • •
Page 9 and 10: this burgeoning international ava n
Page 11 and 12: of the sublime, which was a distinc
Page 13 and 14: here: Vox Claman.tis in Deserto, ta
Page 15: 13 For more o n th e concept of the

A Laboratory Ideas

Create successful ePaper yourself

Delete template?

Save as template?