The Fluxus movement came about in the early 1960ies and the talk will discuss its strenghts, dead-ends and promises for the creation of works and community in our digital environment. International, transdisciplinary, non-institutional, anti-art and playful. After several years of research and new art productions, Leo Findeisen and Markus Zimmermann will present their findings.
Historical points of interest will deal with Erik Satie, Marcel Duchamp and John Cage and their pioneering works of easy listening, the new instrumentalisation of taste and boredom as well as the enhancement of the notion of art via the application of musical scores to daily actions. These lines are followed up in classical Fluxus works and the audience will get to see pieces by Nam Jun Paik, Alison Knowles, Robert Filliou, Ay O, Something Else Press a.o. Later influences in Germany are presented in anecdotes of Wau Holland & Joseph Beuys, foebud or thing.net. The vital Fluxus scenes of the 1970ies behind the Iron Curtain are hardly known and will also be presented using recent books. Contemporary candidates include Mediengruppe Bitnik!, speed-shows of Aram Bartholl, the Balcony manifesto by Constant Dullaart a.o., the "Internet Black-Out" by LaQuadrature.net; some "Scores" (Handlungsanleitungen) will be tried out live and their function "The 12 Ideas of Fluxus" (2002) will be discussed. In applying methods of cultural anthropology and Actor-Network-Theory, we will also compare Fluxus ideas and Fluxus ideals with the tools, methods and goals of online-Communities and the OpenSource-approach in general. The poster attached (2011) has been our research manifesto, it features visuals of and explanations about the Icelandic Modern Media Initiative, XKCD, Yoko Ono, Joseph Beuys, the Google Custom Placemark, Nam Jun Paiks "TV-Chello" and who is playing it as well as George Maciunas, the "impressario" of Fluxus. "Fluxus cannot save the world."
Speakers: leomagnet Markus Zimmermann