FLUXLIST: Emmett's quote
Dear Alan, Emmett's quote: Fluxus is what Fluxus does but no one knows whodunnit. Ken
FLUXLIST: The Art of Collaboration
Dear Colleagues, This may interest some of you. Ken | Non-proportional font Message: 3 Date: Sat, 6 Sep 2003 10:38:22 +1000 From: "geert lovink" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: [spectre] forum on the art of collaboration To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Message-ID: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" For April 2004 we, Trebor Scholz and Geert Lovink, are organizing a conference at the State University of New York at Buffalo (upstate New York) about the art of collaboration, models of critical web-based art, and the role media technologies play in the making of social networks. If you are interested in these topics please send a short introduction to your interests and background to our listserv after subscribing to it at [EMAIL PROTECTED] Because of the nature of the topic we would like to invite those interested in the topic of (online) collaboration, free cooperation, models of critical web-based art, and the role media technologies play in the making of social networks to join us in an online forum/mailing list where we will discuss related issues. Please feel free to join us, even if you think you won't be able to make it to Buffalo next year. This event is very much about experimenting with different forms of presentation and debate. /\\/\//\//\//\//\\\/\/\/\/\/\/\\\//\ http://freecooperation.org -- -- +---+ [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.asquare.org/ http://www.bannerart.org/ http://www.zendco.com/
FLUXLIST: 46 States
Dear Friends, Back from my travels. Catching up on past notes. Thanks for more nice greetings. Don Boyd mentioned that it was my goal to complete projects in all 50 of the United States. At the time I set the goal -- 1966 or 1967 -- Fluxus West was an active forum for festivals, concerts, exhibitions, publications, projects, and other ways of sharing and distributing the Fluxus work. Making the work of the different artists active in Fluxus widely available seemed implicit in the work and in the Fluxus idea. This included work directly from the artists, and work published by Fluxus as well as by Something Else Press, Aktual, Zaj, and the other Fluxus presses or centers. Over the years, I managed to reach 46 of the 50 states. Got to 45 states in the 1960s and 1970s, added Minnesota in 1992 when the Walker Art Center invited a lot of us to the Spirit of Fluxus show. Never got to North Dakota, Wisconsin, Hawaii, or Alaska. Best regards, Ken
FLUXLIST: Fluxchart
Dear Friends, Alan Bowman writes, of scale within? there is the fluxus chart compiled by (filliou & williams?/ - i don't remember - Bertrand?) which charts presence at wiesbaden etc and forwm the beginnings of a fluxscale. but a new official fluxometer could be good. In the late 1970s, I proposed using the sociological technique of content analysis to give a broad view of Fluxus. In 1981 or so, Peter Frank and I did a simple checklist analysis of the names the artists presented in the exhibitions, catalogues and books on Fluxus up to that time. Frank organized it into a chart. In 1991, using my model, James Lewes, a graduate research assistant at Alternative Traditions in the Contemporary Arts of the University of Iowa, took the Peter Frank chart and brought it forward in time. To establish a consensus of expert opinions, the chart was based on a comprehensive survey of major Fluxus exhibitions, catalogues and books up to the exhibitions that were already on tour at the beginning of 1992. Lewes attempted to include every project intended as a survey of Fluxus. He also reviewed exhibitions in which a survey of Fluxus was presented as a special section, for example the 1990 Biennal of Venice or the Pop Art exhibition at the Royal Academy in London in 1991-92 that went on to Museum Ludwig in Cologne and the Reina Sofia in Madrid. In selecting projects, Lewes sought to represent the opinion of every expert scholar or curator who has presented an overview of Fluxus. No expert was used more than once. Some experts appear once as individuals and again in a group effort. For example, Jon Hendricks appears once as the curator and editor of the Gilbert and Lila Silverman Fluxus Collection and its publications. He appears again in a team as co-curator of the Fluxus exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art. Every artist listed or presented at least once in any of these exhibitions, catalogues or books was noted. Lewes prepared the chart in this manner: Running vertically down the left side of the chart, the names of all artists appearing in any of the selected presentations are listed in alphabetical order. Across the top of the chart, twenty-one exhibitions and projects from Maciunas's first lists in 1964 through the FluxAttitudes show at the New Museum in New York in 1992 are presented in chronological order. (Some of these projects were seen more than once, for example, the Fluxshoe in England, which was presented at many venues, or FluxAttitudes, which was presented first at HallWalls in Buffalo.) Under each presentation project, a mark was made beside the name of every artist included. The chart thus offers an overview of all the inclusions and entries in a series of 21 major projects, representing evolving and differing views of Fluxus over a 30-year period from 1962 to 1992. The completed chart offers a broad consensus of opinion by 30 experts who have given lengthy consideration to Fluxus. These include scholars, critics, curators, gallerists, art dealers, Fluxus artists and non-Fluxus artists interested in Fluxus. Altogether, some 351 artists were presented in 21 different projects representing a wide variety of venues, presentations and publications during the 30 years in which Fluxus has existed. The chart appears in: Friedman, Ken with James Lewes. 1992. "Fluxus: Global Community, Human Dimensions." (in) Fluxus: A Conceptual Country, Estera Milman, guest editor. [Visible Language, vol. 26, nos. 1/2.] Providence: Rhode Island School of Design, pp. 154-179. [Special issue devoted to Fluxus, also exhibition catalogue] It's probably time to update the exercise. I don't think there can be an official Fluxometer, but it is interesting to see the different shapes and views established by different criteria and sorting mechanisms. It gives a general view of Fluxus and it certainly shows how people see Fluxus. Best regards, Ken Friedman
FLUXLIST: Thanks.
Dear Allen, Ann, Alan, Bertrand, Jonah, & Cie., Thanks for the warm welcome. It's a balmy early summer night in Sweden, and my friend Jacob is calling to join him for a walk. Best regards, Ken
FLUXLIST: Response to Eric Andersen
Friends, Received two notes from Eric Andersen in the past two days, both requesting that this correspondence be sent to Fluxlist. I gather that he has also posted some kind of note or forwarded private correspondence to a large list of people. I don't know who is on this list. I'm leaving for a week in North America. Perhaps Eric will be content with this year's round of nonsense, or perhaps he will once again fabricate a series of falsehoods that can be readily demonstrated as lies. Since Eric writes me now that he is launching this debate in public, I feel obliged to respond. Ken Friedman Eric, Two letters from you in two days. My goodness. It is no secret that I don't like you. Saying as much in a private letter to Tamas St. Jauby doesn't seem strange. It's no indication of bad character to state that I don't like you. It's a public fact. And it is a public fact that you've broadcast a lot of nonsense about me. As it is, I didn't know that Tamas broadcasts private notes. In a note this morning, he explained that this is his view of how the Internet should be used. I disagree with his view. I will be careful of what I send Tamas. You seem to insist on involving me in a public debate. Your note today is reprinted below as a reminder. In today's mail, you state that you will forward both private notes to all our friends. You also propose the correspondence be posted on Fluxlist. Since you think it is shows bad character to send a private note even to one person, I'm sure you'll want to send me the list of people to whom you forwarded my letter so that I can also send them this note. Just send me the list of people to whom you wish copies sent. I will be glad to oblige. In the meantime, I post herewith answers concerning the four exercises you sent yesterday. At your request, I am sending a copy to Fluxlist. Eric Andersen writes: >Dear Ken, > >First of all I would like to inform you that Tamas St.Auby is a notorious >liar, he is not an artist., not even a non-art-artist., but a monomaniac, >boring bureaucrat, who thinks he is the only expert of Fluxus and all, >who is an uncurable solipsist. > >Secondly I think it would be healthy for you to do the following four >simple excersices: > >a) > >Gino di Maggio told me that when he first met you, you completely seriously >handed him over your businesscard. The card stated that you were Ken >Friedman (probably a lie) and President of Fluxus. >Why not reprint this wonderful document and send it to all your friends? > You must have heard Gino wrong. I met Gino in the early 1980s. In those days, I used a business card for a publishing and consulting company. I was president of the company. I never had a Fluxus business card and I never labeled myself as "president" of Fluxus. In the 1960s, George Maciunas made some Fluxus stationery. It had my name with the rubric of Fluxus. (Milan Knizak was listed as Fluxus East and Ben Vautier as Fluxus South.) There were no titles on the stationery, just names. I used that stationery in the 1960s. We used no cards. For a year or two in the early 1970s, I used a card for Fluxus West. Since the card you've asked for never existed, it can't be reprinted. Eric Andersen writes: >b) > >Unfortunately there have only been very few occassions where we joined the >same panel. I don't recall that you ever had the courage to disagree with >any of us in these fora. I do recall however: at one of these rare >occassion (in Vienna) we got so pissed off with your whole attitude that we >took you by your legs and arms and threw you into Geoff's rubber boat >filled with cold water. I am sure that you still keep your watered pans as >a relic. I will suggest that you put them up for an auction on the >Fluxlist. They will probably bring you a fortune. > We have appeared on panels and in festivals together. When I have an opinion different from you or anyone else, I say so. Most of what I say is documented. I have often stated my views in public, disagreements included. It's silly to suggest that I offer one set of views in print while failing to stand up for what I believe in public fora. We have disagreed on the Internet and in print. I put my views forward in clear terms. Documents are available for those who wish to read them. To say I lack the courage to state my views is nonsense. The published record states my views. It is true that I got a bath in Geoff's boat. Al Hansen arranged it as a friendly prank. You never knew why, but that is beside the point. You had nothing to do with it except to join in throwing me in once the action was under way. (And if you don't believe Al and I were on good terms, you can check the catalogue of his last show, the one where he had arranged notes and comments from his friends just before he
FLUXLIST: Droplift Project
The Droplift Project is fascinating. It raises complex conceptual issues in terms of sampling, and the tactic of producing your own records and placing them in record shops is brilliant. The claims that sampling is protected by (1) the First Amendement to the United States Constitution, and (2) the fair use provisions of copyright law are open to question. The Constitution applies to the United States. There are other nations. Copyright law, in contrast, involves nearly all nations where sampling is technically possible. In the United States, the First Amendment does not apply to sampling. The First Amendment covers freedom of speech and freedom of the press. This has been extended by the courts to cover art works and musical works with what can be construed as speech-like content that expresses specific ideas or opinions representing some kind of form or content beyond the work itself. An opera would probably be covered, and an opera using a scatological text would probably qualify for First Amendement protection. A piece of challenging abstract music without words would probably not be protected. The principle of the First Amendment is that it protects the right of the creator of speech to utter or publish speech. This does not imply the right of someone other than the creator to do what he or she wishes with the original speech of another person. When speech is uttered or published in a public context, in a political debate for example, it becomes subject to use by others relatively free of restriction. Speech that is published in restricted or copyrighted forms -- books, newspaper articles, magazine articles and the like -- do not fall into public domain no matter how widely published they are. The fair use provisions of the copyright act govern the selective use of copyrighted material for critical discussion or scholarly analysis. Its purpose is to permit the use of copyrighted material in other works that analyze or discuss the work itself, or the range of issues that the work involves. Fair use does not apply to the selective reproduction of original works of art within other original works. While artists have been making collages for many years, there is a distinct difference between a generalized collage (i.e., letters, fragment of packages, pieces of photographs) and a collage that incorporates recognizable elements from another work of art. There is also a different between a single collage incorporating recognizable elements from another work of art and a collage that is itself widely reproduced and sold. The issues of proportion and purpose are significant. A large fragment of an identifiable work used in a single collage would generally be permitted. A much smaller fragment used in a widely-reproduced postcard that earns a million dollars would not be permitted. The courts have held in many instances that the use of works of visual art in other works of art is impermissible, especially when those secondary works generate profit for the artists who create them without permission from or profit to the artists who created the work that has been used. While the issue of not-for-profit distribution to millions has only recently come up, the basic principle so far has been that wide distribution and accessibility creates some form of enterprise that exceeds single use by an individual artist in a single collage available in one copy only. If nothing else, the use of an image free generates profit in the form of billions of micro-charges embedded in the service charges and transmission fees of various telecom and service providers. The analogies to sampling are relatively clear, but the development of new technologies with potential distribution to millions of people has raised the stakes. The question of sampling raises significant critical and artistic issues. This program of creating and distributing CDs in a guerrilla action places the issue on the public agenda in a challenging way. Even so, this issue must ultimately be addressed as a significant issue in its own right. Sampling is not protected in the United States by the First Amendment, and it is nowhere protected under the fair use provisions of copyright law. Ken Friedman, Ph.D. Associate Professor of Leadership and Strategic Design Department of Knowledge Management Norwegian School of Management +47 22.98.51.07 Direct line +47 22.98.51.11 Telefax Home office: +46 (46) 53.245 Telephone +46 (46) 53.345 Telefax email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
FLUXLIST: Real solidarity calls for the care and effort of an individualletter.
Dear Tamas, My post did not state that the solidarity or effort was invalid. It said that Internet petitions do not work. Most organizations and government agencies refuse to accept or even to read Internet and fax petitions. Various mechanisms are generally put in place to avoid receiving them. Real solidarity calls for the care and effort of an individual letter. If you are able to penetrate the bureacratic veil surrounding the incident at Sao Paulo, you will probably discover that much of the work to bring about a new position had to do with personal efforts and direct contact. Best regards, Ken --
FLUXLIST: Internet petitions do not work
The Internet petition circulated here several times has no value Internet petitions do not work. If you care enough to make a difference, you must write a personal letter. Sending an internet petition has two effects. It makes the person who signs it feel as if he or she has done something of value for a cause he or she supports without doing anything for the cause at all. It takes up time and fills up space, in this case Fluxlist. To make petitions meaningful requires an understanding of petition protocol. The issue is not the validity of the idea, but the validity of the petition. To show that thousands of people or millions of people support a petition, it is necessary to document their participation. Since there is no way to document or to assure the validity of Internet signatures at this time, Internet petitions are not valid. Further, since Internet petitions spread through different lists and move through different chains, the same names appear dozens or even hundreds of times. There is no way to establish whether a final petition has the signatures of many different individuals or far fewer individuals whose names occur repeatedly. If a petition arrives with 12,863,436 signatures, there is no way to know whether this is 12,863,436 separate individuals or 189,932 individuals whose signatures have crossed and multiplied through different chains. To find out which is the case requires expensive staff time that no agency can afford, and there is still no valid documentation of the signatures. A legally valid petition in most cases requires 1) a signature, 2) a printed name, 3) an address or location. While some public opinion petitions neglect the third, all three are required for a petition have the kind of legal standing required to place a political party on the rolls or to invoke a plebiscite. One may argue that this is merely fastidious rhetoric. It is not. This principle goes to the core of democratic participation in government decisions. Governments must know that citizens are actually speaking before acting on civic will spoken through the collective voice of a petition. International petitions must reasonably represent a large, global constituency to be impressive, and this means a record of valid signatures. The format of the Internet petition offers merely a list of names. There is no assurance that any named individual actually signed it. Paper petitions are routinely refused or invalidated for lack of valid documentation. Some believe that that the purpose of Internet petitions is simply to draw attention to issues. This is only partly true. Internet petitions draw attention to issues, but they are not a particularly useful way to do so. Debate and informed conversation draws attention to issues. Invalid petitions merely waste time. In this case, bombarding a government ministry with the same petition along multiple routes is a guaranteed way to annoy the appropriate ministers rather than educating them. By now, all these ministers have shifted their email accounts for current business or set filters to sweep these petitions into the garbage unopened. Rather than circulate Internet petitions, it is far more effective to ask those who would sign such a petition to write a proper letter and email it directly with their own signature bock including a return address. While validation is still an issue, the fact of a properly signed letter with name and return address in the signature block can be checked. To make it easy to write such a letter, those who propose the petition can write a sample letter than can be pasted into the body of a new email document and signed. In this case, filters and fax blockage probably mean the only effective way to deliver such a letter now is by old-fashioned paper post. A cause that deserves support requires that you take the time to write a letter and send it personally. If you care enough about the Johannesburg Biennial to do something, write a letter or send a personalized email. Ken Friedman --
FLUXLIST: Time pieces ...
Rich history time pieces available. Am leaving for France, so can't gather mine to post. If still interested, can do so on return. Time Travel Piece #1 is essentially a piece that Alan Sonfist did in New York. It was created in the early 1960s and was up for several decades. Don't know if it still exists. It was a plot of land (larger than 10 x 10) that was returned to the state of natural vegetation on the site that existed before the Dutch settled the area. -- Ken Friedman -- Time Travel Piece #1 by Adam Villani, 2000 Designate a 10' by 10' square plot of urbanized land and return it to the state it was in before humans settled the area. The time travel area should extend down from the surface into bedrock, and up into the sky. Any changes in elevation should be corrected. --
FLUXLIST: /:bark /:bark
{ beagle boy }
/:bark /:bark
--
FLUXLIST: Leonardo's backwards writing
Leonardo was ambidextrous. He wrote and drew equally well with either hand. His writing was mirror writing. This is not necessarily a symptom of dyslexia. All letters and words were correct and in proper order. Leonardo's notebooks and research papers were written backwards to encode and protect the infirmation. His correspondence and public material was written forwards, easily readable by anyone. -- Ken Friedman --
FLUXLIST: Seven Telephone Events
Seven telephone events ... four from the 1960s, two from the 1970s, one from the 1990s. Ken Friedman -- Telephone Car Event Hide a normal desk telephone and a bell in your car or in any car. At an unexpected moment, ring the bell. Answer the phone and start talking. This piece may be varied by using a suitcase, on a street corner, in a restaurant, under a table, etc. 1967 First performed in San Francisco, California with Steve Abrams. This piece was originally titled Telecar. -- Telephone Clock Telephone someone. Announce the time. 1967 First realized in San Francisco, California in February, 1967. -- Telephone Event Take a standard desk telephone to someone's door. Ring the bell. When someone comes to the door, hand the phone to them, saying, "It's for you." 1967 First realized in San Francisco, California in February, 1967. -- Telephone for You Take a standard desk telephone with you in a car. Drive up to people, handing the phone out through the window, saying, "It's for you." This piece may also be performed using a suitcase or briefcase in unexpected situations, in an elevator, on a street corner, in a restaurant, etc. 1967 First performed during the Aktual/Keeping Together Manifestation, March 1967. Originally titled Telephone for Steve Abrams. -- In One Year and Out the Other On New Year's Eve, make a telephone call from one time zone to another so that you are conducting a conversation between people located in two years. 1975 I first performed this event on New Year's Eve 1975-1976, calling from Springfield, Ohio forward to Dick Higgins, Christo, and Nam June Paik in New York, then back to Tom Garver and Natasha Nicholson in California. I have celebrated this work annually since then, frequently calling Tom Garver, Peter Frank, Newton and Helen Harrison, Abraham Friedman and Dick Higgins. For New Year's of 1992-1993 I used telefax for the first time in performing this work. I sent telefax messages with the score to Christo and Jeanne-Claude Christo, Peter Frank, Abraham and Shirley Friedman, Dick Higgins, Hong Hee Kim-Cheon, Choong-Sup and Yeong Lim, Karen and David Moss. -- Three Texts for Jim Pallas Evidence. Piety. Perseverance. 1979 First performed in 1979 during preparations for the Phone Event during the month of January, 1989, organized by Jim Pallas in Detroit, Michigan. -- Bird Call Make a telephone call to a bird. If you do not know a bird who has a telephone, make a telephone call in which you make bird noises. 1992 First realized with a telephone call to Jack Ox's parakeet, Dwight, then living in Cologne. -- These events are copyright (c) Fluxus 1967, 1975, and copyright (c) Ken Friedman 1967, 1975, 1979, 1992, 2000. All rights reserved. Permission is granted to reproduce or perform these events provided that credit is given and copyright is acknowledged. --
FLUXLIST: Obscene phone calls ....
Men do occasionally receive obscene phone calls. It is rare, but it happens. When I lived in New York, I got an obscene phone call late one night. I experienced the same anxiety and discomfort my woman friends reported on experiencing an unknown stranger muttering half-audible obscenities in my ear. For me, the sense of violation came more from the surprise and the sense that an unknown stranger was entering my private world than from the specific words. -- Ken --
FLUXLIST: Dead horse beaten
C'mon, guys. There is a list here, and by definition, the owners and subscribers of this list constitute a community of some kind. The exact nature of that community is arguably vague, but it's sophistry to suggest that the listowners ought to start a private mailing-list. The listowners started THIS list and the folks who claim they don't like the list nevertheless got here when came along and subscribed. The is open to those who wish to take part. No one has been required to join this list. No one is required to remain a subscriber. To suggest that the listowners take Fluxlist somewhere else is ridiculous: there is only one Internet. The list is public in the sense that anyone is free to join or leave. The list is ALREADY private in that anyone who wishes to join does so understanding how it works and agrees by subscribing to accept the standards set forth in the welcome statement. Whether or not this list is a travesty of some kind is a matter of opinion. As Davidson noted, there is no real basis for an etrial -- and there is no question of it. Owen intended to make a point supporting Sol. Just as there is no need for an etrial, there are no questions of procedure. Sol invoked an accepted procedure. It was established when the list was refounded. Here's a suggestion for those who think this list is a travesty: Go start a list of your own. I promise not to bother you. -- Ken Friedman --
FLUXLIST: Which "we" did Sol Nte represent as list administrator?
to be a serious, thoughtful and trustworthy listowner. Anyone is free to question Sol's decision. What is not open to question is the legitimacy of Sol's decision. The standards were established and announced. The listowners even invited questions, disagreement or debate before setting the standards on a permanent basis. There were no questions and there was no debate. The standards exist, and they are a condition of taking part in the list. This is all a matter of record. It's visible and open to all. There are no closed doors, and there is no strange or mysterious cabal making decisions. The net is a free and open space. Anyone who wishes to do so is free to establish any kind of online community they wish to create. The "we" who currently own Fluxlist have built this community this way. If someone thinks there is a better way, well, there's a wide open frontier out there. In this community, there are a set of standards all who subscribe have agreed to accept as a condition of participation. I say "thank you" to Sol for prompt, effective action, and I thank every list administrator who does the work it takes to keep this list up and running for those of us who take part. Ken Friedman --
FLUXLIST: Six sides, six numbers
Dear Alan, The die should have had six numbers, one for each side. If there was only one number, well ... I'm tempted to say that your die was "unfixed." Ken --
FLUXLIST: Dick Higgins "His shoots shall spread out; his beauty shall belike the olive tree ..."
It's a bit hard for me to swallow the gratuitious and mean-spirited note recently posted here against the late Dick Higgins. One must wonder what causes a man to see nothing in others but that which is small, crabbed or monstrous. When I observe this kind of behavior, I suspect that what he sees is little more than the projected reflection of his own character. I feel as George Free feels. It's nearly 35 years since I first wrote to Dick Higgins, and I, too, was thrilled when Dick engaged me in correspondence. No one was ever less characterized by the notion of an "unquestionable, overarching, prescribed agenda." Dick was deep, thorough, systematic. He thought things through. He changed his mind. He thought again. He welcomed others and he welcomed debate. Like all of us who travel about in a human body, Dick also got irritated from time to time, and he could be peevish or quirky. He was never mean-spirited or narrow. Few people known to me have lived their life in such profound spiritual or material generosity. He staked his fortune on what he believed in. He lost much of it, and he never complained that he was no longer rich. He was only sad that it was hard to find a regular, paying job in the arts along with the many art teachers and techno-geeks who do so well. I number one specific geek in that company. (It does still surprise me that not one of the several hundred universities with intermedia departments, intermedia program and intermedia degrees had a place for the man who theorized the concept of intermedia, coined the word and introduced it to the world.) Dick Higgins spent much of his life building platforms and forums for the work of other people, shaping networks, making introductions, publishing books, directing the attention of critics and curators to those whose work he admired. This is a sharp contrast to someone whose primary complaint seems be that the world fails to recognize his genius -- and whose primary career goal seems to be building ever more sites and projects to crank out his own work. My guess is that Saul Ostrow takes it as a great compliment to be compared with Dick Higgins. There are many lists where our distinguished colleague posts from time to time. Many of these are characterized by a back-channel network of those who send notes to each other with astonishment, irritation and a resolute determination neither to engage him nor to respond. Usually, I'd let this kind of thing go, but I still miss Dick and I am not in the mood to let such stupidity go unchallenged. David Ross speaks for many of us when he writes, > Yeah Brad, well when I grow up and become a real, true radical artist > like you, then maybe I can aspire to your level of accomplishment and > contribution, and brutal, uplifting honesty. Gosh, you're terrific. > > Oh, I checked your on-line work...pretty spiffy. And so profound! Anyone care to guess who among these will be remembered, and how? "His shoots shall spread out; his beauty shall be like the olive tree, and his fragrance like that of Lebanon. They shall again live beneath my shadow, they shall flourish as a garden; they shall blossom like the vine, their fragrance shall be like the wine of Lebanon." -- Hosea 14: 6-7 -- Ken Friedman --
FLUXLIST: Seed project
Fluxus Seed Project Flucorsage. Prototype 1966. Editions 1967 and 1968. Illustrated on pages 253-4 of Jon Hendricks's Fluxus Codex. -- Ken Friedman --
FLUXLIST: Hats off to Lord Hasenpfeffer.
Dear Myke, Thank you for your clarification. I may have missed some of the debate. My hat is off to you. Best regards, -- Ken --
FLUXLIST: Has anyone thought to ask Charlie Burch ?
Come on, people. Charlton Burch has just now spent five years developing a special issue of his magazine. Lightworks is a unique publication, demanding, time consuming and expensive to produce. Posting the contents of the magazine to the web and making them available free is hardly "free advertising" if it competes with the magazine rather than helping create demand for copies. As I see it, posting the complete contents of the magazine and the audio is competition. Perhaps Charlie Burch sees it another way, and if he does, then get his permission to post. Until you get permission to post, Lightworks and the contents of the issue are protected by copyright. Lightworks and Charlton Burch are well known. In some circles, he is a legend. He has always done an astonishing project with meticulous care for the artistic content. He's not a major publisher -- he is an artist who invests passion and soul in Lightworks. There have been some lively debates on this list about moral right -- the right of an artist to decide how his or her work will be used and displayed -- as well as about copyright. One reason Burch invests so much time and money in Lightworks is the care with which he develops each issue for a specific effect, published the way he wants it to be done. Perhaps he'd publish more often if enough subscriptions or sales made it possible, but they don't. In the meantime, he's an independent publisher and an artist like many people on this list. His moral right as an artist deserves respect as a human being. His copyright as an artist and an independent publisher demands respect under the law. The suggestion that Lightworks be scanned and posted to the web involves moral right and copyright. Scanning and posting the entire contents of a publication is not advertising. It is republishing. It is inappropriate to republish Charlton Burch's magazine until he gives permission. If you intend to benefit Charlton Burch and Lightworks, contact him and ask permission to scan and post. -- Ken Friedman Date: Wed, 24 May 2000 19:46:23 -0400 (EDT) From: Lord Hasenpfeffer <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: FLUXLIST: lightworks > lightworks is a great magazine with muchflux stuff in it. and charlton burch > is a very nice guy. buy back issues. send him lots of money. How about if somebody scans the pages and rips the audio from their copies and then puts them on the web for everybody to enjoy? This would be very beneficial because people who'd never know about Mr. Burch and his mag otherwise would suddenly be enlightened to them! Myke --
FLUXLIST: Thanks for the invitation to takes part in ARTS. I'm going todecline for five reasons.
Dear Scott, Thanks for the invitation to takes part in ARTS. I'm going to decline for five reasons. 1) Doing this requires more research and more time than you imagine. Generally, when an idea seems to have been done before, one feels that one vaguely remembers something from a time earlier than the present. To be sure, it's necessary to track it down. That takes research. Those with large memories and a wealth of knowledge on which to draw are sometimes constrained even further. Someone who has observed the art scene and undertaken research for several decades has developed a wealth of intuitions, memories, and recollections. Few of these are so clear that he or she can recall the specifics right off, "Oh, yes. Ian Breakwell did that in 1973." If you genuinely wish to know whether something has been done before or whether something of the same name exists or has existed in the past, you have to do the research. If you don't, you're just as likely to think it doesn't or hasn't and find that it has. 2) There are deep conceptual challenges to overcome in a project such as this. Things of the same tile are not necessarily redundant. The case of different works appearing under the same title is far more common than the same work replicated under the same title. Seeing the same work or a rough analogue of the same work repeated under new titles or with modestly adjusted contents is extremely common. Transposed or translated work is far more common still. To develop this idea conceptually, you have to clarify what you mean by the related yet distinct concepts embodied in the idea. Moreover, you must clarify and separate between and among such issues as redundancy, plagiarism, borrowing, citation, reference, quotation, as well as the possible legal issues of copyright, trademark, and the rest. 3) You have to define and clarify the goal of the project. This means defining such concepts as "original," "residual," or "derivative," and making them operational. 4) Many artists would prefer not to know that problems such as these arise in their work. I posted a note on the subject of obscured influences a few months back. 5) Finally, time is limited. My engagement in the art world has been limited for some time now. I think my work through carefully -- perhaps too carefully. I don't have time to think about work for anyone else. You asked the question, "Has something like this been done before?" I think something like this has been done once or twice before, under different names, and with slightly different concepts. If you can locate those projects, you can find out the challenges they faced, see how they attempted to meet them and discover why they no longer exist. Originality, invention, and innovation are not merely located in the development of a new idea. They also involve the issue of taking an idea that didn't work and making it work. You might find audiences for this project among other groups than artists. Art critics, editors, publishers, gallerists, collectors curators and others might like to have this kind of service for the art they are examining, writing about, selling, buying or exhibiting. There may be hope for this project. You'll have to do some research to find out whether there is. Best regards, Ken Ken Friedman, Ph.D. Associate Professor of Leadership and Strategic Design Department of Knowledge Management Norwegian School of Management +47 22.98.51.07 Direct line +47 22.98.51.11 Telefax Home office: +46 (46) 53.245 Telephone +46 (46) 53.345 Telefax email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
FLUXLIST: French Fluxus? C'est la vie.
Dear Friends, No point even considering action against the French media moguls using the name Fluxus. Here's why: Several essential issues have to do with any legal case. One issue is "cause." You have to show cause for the suit, and this cause must be an act that is a defined and accepted cause of action under relevant law. So far, no one has shown cause with regard to these people in France. We all have opinions. I'm asking for anyone with a clear case -- or an idea of what a clear case might be -- to state it. To be clear about this, I'm *not* gonna state my opinion. I simply doubt that there is legal cause. A second issue is "standing." The plaintiff must demonstrate that he or she has standing under law to bring action. If there is cause, you can't bring a case if you have no basis under law to do so. If the head of Fluxus.net meet at Emily Harvey Gallery in New York where the mogul punches Ben Vautier in the nose, Ben has cause under law and standing to bring action in New York. The New York police department may have cause and standing to bring action for disturbing the peace, providing they don't just shoot him to dispense with trial. Emily Harvey may have cause and standing related to any problems this creates for the gallery. I'd be angry if someone punched Ben, but my irritation would not give rise to cause or standing. Neither Heiko nor anyone else who might be offended by this at a distance would have cause or standing for a case at law. In the matter of anything related to Fluxus, Eva Beuys has neither cause nor standing. While the question of standing might be an interesting case for some of us, there is no possibility that Eva would have standing. The Estate of Joseph Beuys has standing with relation to Joseph's work and Joseph's work alone, not Fluxus. Whatever relation Joseph may have had with Fluxus, those relations died with him at the time of his death. They are not the property of his estate. As to the issue of standing, I doubt that anyone has standing on the possible cause of trademark infringement. There was no trademark. Several famous cases have covered this issue, and on names used in business far more widely and far longer than Fluxus. One example is Merriam-Webster's unsuccessful attempt to defend the common law trademark on Webster's Dictionary. Despite continuous publication since 1831, Merriam-Webster failed to trademark the name. They could have done so at any time up to the point that another publisher decided to use the unprotected name Webster's Dictionary. Since they never acted to protect the name, the courts held that there was no trademark and they lost their case. An unbroken record of publishing under a single, clear title by one single company shows greater standing and greater cause than either issue in relation to Fluxus. Maciunas authorized several people to share with him supervision of Fluxus copyright and to handle rights and royalties. I doubt that even those would have standing in relation to the issue of trademark. It could be shown that there is a history of copyright. Since there is no trademark, it would be far harder to show standing, and I would guess that should anyone claim standing, someone else equally significant to Fluxus would deny that standing. As it happens, Milan Knizak, Ben Vautier, and I are among those who might have standing in a copyright case. This would probably not be so in a trademark case. A letter from us to the French media moguls would make no difference without force of law. There is yet another issue here. That is the fact that this is not the first company to use the Fluxus name. Many of us know about the others and have long known about them. Some of us have even joked about this in public speeches and in print. This establishes precedent that we have not challenged the use of the name Fluxus regardless any individual's opinion about the idea or about the company or individual that uses the name. We have not challenged use to date. On what basis are we to challenge now? How are we to overturn the precedent we have permitted? What distinguishes the French commercial use of the name Fluxus from the earlier German or Italian or American commercial use of the name? There is only one relevant issue here. That is that the same conditions that permit them to use the name permit others to do so. If they were to attempt to forbid anyone else to use the name, I would be concerned. If they attempt to challenge Allen Bukoff's use of the name Fluxus on Fluxus.Org, I will join in his defense. The same goes for Sol Nte and Owen Sith with regard to the box. And so on. If, on the other hand, Fluxus.net tries to take legal action against the German advertising firm or the Belgian accordion band, they'll have to fight it out among themselves. For the rest . . . well, as they say in France, "c'est la vie." -- Ken
FLUXLIST: The New French Fluxus -- It isn't Ben Vautier, Jean Dupuy, orXian Xatrec. Alas.
Been getting many offlist queries about this new French company named Fluxus. Been working and writing the last few days. Hadn't noticed anything until letters came from some friends on the list. Was asked about protection of the name Fluxus and legal situation. Also queries comparing to etoy case and Leonardo case. This involves four or five different sets of legal issues. My understanding on the several matters is this. (1) Copyright Copyright protection can't cover a name or a title, only contents in specific form. While the contents of the Fluxus publications were initially protected by copyright, this protection never extended to the titles of the works or to the name "Fluxus" itself. (2) Trademark A name can be covered by trademark protection. To my knowledge, no trademark was every registered for the name Fluxus. (3) Common law protections The name Fluxus used by artists affiliated with or interested in the use of the name Fluxus is probably protected under common law by virtue of established usage. This cannot be forbidden to them. (4) Freedom to use a name not trademarked At the same time, it is probably impossible to forbid others to use the same name. At this time, the French Internet people are neither the only - nor the first - to use the name Fluxus. In my introduction to The Fluxus Reader, I noted, among others, an advertising agency, a design firm and three or four more. There are record companies, bookstores, restaurants, bars all using the name Fluxus. You name it and one or two of it are using the name Fluxus. (5) Legal challenge To challenge this or any of this would be terribly expensive. Whoever wishes to do so would be obliged to hire a law firm. God save us! And pay them. God save us! And go to court. God save us all! (6) Fluxus compared to Leonardo and etoy The cases surrounding Leonardo and etoy didn't involve the right to use the name in normal common usage, but questions surrounding the right to continue to use the name on the Web or to restrict the use of the name on the Web. The issues here are tricky. They are different than the other issues noted above. They involve yet undefined areas of cyberlaw. Lawyers will eventually sort it out at great cost to all concerned. If one of the several firms using the name Fluxus on the Web tried to prohibit us - and remember, several came BEFORE these new guys - then there might be a case. (7) What is to be done . . . A few people asked me what, if anything, I thought we ought to do. Gads. Who can tell? In a perfect world, I'd probably have an answer. In a perfect world, maybe it wouldn't be a problem. -- Ken Friedman --
FLUXLIST: Here's another vote for greater care with the reply function
Friends, Here's another vote with Judy Hoffberg and Tamas S:t Auby for greater care with reply function. This past week has seen an increase in the use of reply function to answer brief questions and post short comments. At one point, one of those lengthy Buroughs passages was resent in its entirety simply to post a one-sentence response. On recent occasions, long passages and complete prior posts have been going by the second and third time simply to add a single line. In the days before electronic communication, it was possible to recall something by referring to it in a quick summary sentence before offering our own comment. Thanks. Ken --
FLUXLIST: Thin Pop, Thick Pop, Thoughtful Pop
reality of everyday life and took up dense, philosophical issues with a playful, Zen-inflected touch. Both forms of international Pop had a tough time on the market. Happenings were hard to sell. The street-smart, market-wise artists like Oldenburg and Dine soon left happenings behind for painting. Artist-philosophers like Kaprow and Hansen took other paths, Kaprow as a teacher and Hansen as the traveling Bodhisattva of contemporary art. Fluxus had its problems, too. One of greatest Fluxus virtues was also its worst problem: a rigorous, almost scientific program of inventing ways to approach art. These explorations were part of a broad intellectual project on which many contemporary art movements and manifestations could borrow. Given the problems associated with Fluxus, others borrowed Fluxus innovations and projects, adapting them to many purposes while failing to acknowledge Fluxus as the source. Fluxus artists had a second problem. In terms of the art market, it is one of the worst problems for which an artist can be known. Fluxus artists tended to be so philosophically complex that they rarely made the most marketable use of their own work. Other artists made use of their innovations, adopting the intellectual and artistic contributions one at a time. The artists associated with Fluxus were rarely able to benefit from the use of their own innovations. Much of the time, other artists had already borrowed their idea far more visibly than they themselves had managed to do. In the art market, first past the post for visible public credit isn't half the battle. It's nearly the whole. But beyond the struggle for public credit on what they had invented, Fluxus people also walked away from much of the credit that might have been theirs. The experimental sensibility of Fluxus people was so strong that these artists often lost interest in their own, earlier ideas and moved on. One often hears of artists whose work has arrived before its time. This is true enough in the art market. There is a worse problem yet. Nothing is less forgivable to the powers that move the art market than artists who fail to repeat their work to feed a market that demands art work after its time has come. Like German Pop, Fluxus and happenings often led to abstract and somewhat confusing messages. These ambiguities made it hard to remember what was being said. Overall, this art offered a rich vein of dialectical investigations, as socially conscious as the German work, and often as politically aware. The Fluxus artists also tended to cross the boundary between art and life that so many artists talked about. The more radical artists involved in Fluxus crossed these boundaries in especially radical ways, among them artists such as Joseph Beuys, Milan Knizak, Nam June Paik and Ben Vautier. Oddly enough, these are the Fluxus artists who have had the most profound impact on the art world, but even the more conservative, art-minded Fluxus artists crossed the boundaries of art forms, moving with ease between tactile, musical, theatrical, visual and literary forms. Way back when, Bob Watts and George Brecht were even exhibited by Leo Castelli, the high priest of American Pop. Other Fluxus people contributed to the Pop ethos, or at least its more interesting sides. Fluxus influenced Andy Warhol himself. His first major film was an adaptation of a Jackson Mac Low film score in which Warhol simply substituted a skyscraper for the tree that appears in Mac Low's score. Ken Friedman, Ph.D. Associate Professor of Leadership and Strategic Design Department of Knowledge Management Norwegian School of Management +47 22.98.51.07 Direct line +47 22.98.51.11 Telefax Home office: +46 (46) 53.245 Telephone +46 (46) 53.345 Telefax email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
FLUXLIST: Support for NPR/PBS/NEA
Dear Scott, The purpose of the petition sent to me is serious and important. Even so, Internet petitions do no good. The reasons are explained below, along with a note on how to achieve the same goals in a more effective way. To have any hope of success, a petition must be sent to an appropriate agency. To make petitions meaningful requires an understanding of petition protocol. The issue is not the validity of the idea, but the validity of the petition. To show that thousands of people or millions of people support a petition, it is necessary to document their participation. Since there is no way to document or to assure the validity of Internet signatures at this time, Internet petitions are not valid. Further, since Internet petitions spread through different lists and move through different chains, the same names appear dozens or even hundreds of times. There is no way to establish whether a final petition has the signatures of many different individuals or far fewer individuals whose names occur repeatedly. If a petition arrives with 12,863,436 signatures, there is no way to know whether this is 12,863,436 separate individuals or 189,932 individuals whose signatures have crossed and multiplied through different chains. To find out which is the case requires expensive staff time that no agency can afford, and there is still no valid documentation of the signatures. A legally valid petition in most cases requires 1) a signature, 2) a printed name, 3) an address or location. While some public opinion petitions neglect the third, all three are required for a petition have the kind of legal standing required to place a political party on the rolls or to invoke a plebiscite. One may argue that this is merely fastidious rhetoric. It is not. This principle goes to the core of democratic participation in government decisions. Governments must know that citizens are actually speaking before acting on civic will spoken through the collective voice of a petition. International petitions must reasonably represent a large, global constituency to be impressive, and this means a record of valid signatures. The format of the Internet petition offers merely a list of names. There is no assurance that any named individual actually signed it. Paper petitions are routinely refused or invalidated for lack of valid documentation. Some believe that that the purpose of Internet petitions is simply to draw attention to issues. This is only partly true. Internet petitions draw attention to issues, but they are not a particularly useful way to do so. Debate and informed conversation draws attention to issues. Invalid petitions merely waste time. Rather than circulate Internet petitions, it is far more effective to ask those who would sign such a petition to write a proper letter and email it directly with their own signature bock including a return address. While validation is still an issue, the fact of a properly signed letter with name and return address in the signature block can be checked. To make it easy to write such a letter, those who propose the petition can write a sample letter than can be pasted into the body of a new email document and signed. I understand why people are concerned about the issues expressed in this petition. I share those concerns. Those who are truly concerned should get the name of their congressional representative and senators and write them direct. Senators and members of congress do pay attention to direct, personal email contact, and a personal email post with signature block is as credible as a letter on paper. Rather than ask people to circulate a petition that will be ignored, ask them to contact their representatives and senators - and show them how. A cause that deserves support requires that you take the time to write a letter and send it personally. Best regards, Ken -- Ken Friedman, Ph.D. Associate Professor of Leadership and Strategic Design Department of Knowledge Management Norwegian School of Management +47 22.98.51.07 Direct line +47 22.98.51.11 Telefax Home office: +46 (46) 53.245 Telephone +46 (46) 53.345 Telefax email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
FLUXLIST: No long posts filled HTML and geek code, please
Is there some reason why posts are filled with long blocks of HTML and geek code ? Can't we just get plain vanilla text messages in ascii ? Pleaaase ... be careful with drfault settings and with forwards from the web. This stuff is a pain in the eye, and it clutters up the list. Ken --
FLUXLIST: Why George Maciunas opposed the Avant-Garde Festivals
Reed Altemus writes, "I'm thinking perhaps Maciunas had little reason to see Charlotte's Festivals as competitive with his Fluxus program, in which case I conclude that he was just generally threatened by women who were doing things cf. Carolee Schneeman (later). He certainly seemed to get along fine with Yoko Ono at the time." George's opposition to the festival was not sexist. It was an issue of programmatic positions in his aesthetic-political system. George saw the Avant-Garde Festival as a large, eclectic stew of projects -- in essence, this raised the problem of the "neo-Baroque" position to which he opposed the "neo-haiku" Fluxus position. George's problem with Carolee was based on the same argument. She was doing happenings and messy, sexy, meaty multimedia performance that stood at the other end of a spectrum from George's demand for a clean, clear, simplified art. This, incidentally, was also George's argument against happenings in general, and this is part of the difficulty with Al Hansen's work. George was a purist but never a sexist. At a time when there was little room for women in the art world, George welcomed and worked with Alison Knowles, Mieko Shiomi, Shigeko Kubota, Yoko Ono, Alice Hutchins, Carla Liss and others. It seemed to many others that there was room for a great deal of overlap, fuzziness and ambiguity in the Fluxus position. The fact that George rejected the Avant Garde festivals did not bother the many Fluxus artists who took part in them. But it should be stated that George was a person who made decisions -- including silly decisions -- on principle, not on the basis of personality, gender, sexual preference, race, religion, etc. To the degree that George was occasionally "cranky," he was an equal-opportunity crank. Ken Friedman --
FLUXLIST: 1) C'mon, Heiko. 2) Footnote to Davidson G.
a retrospective tip of the hat for the foundations they laid decades before to make the new work possible. It's true that there were other, unheralded phenomena during the time. Some were active in the arts as Living Theater was. Others were more general counterculture phenomena such as Pacifica Radio or the Underground Press Syndicate. But most of the counterculture art explosion came later. Much of it was made possible by government art funding, especially generous during the middle 70s to the early 80s. And most of it vanished when the generous government programs dried up. It's one thing to be committed to programs such as this when government arts officers are strolling around with grant application forms. It is another to do it when you've got to round up the money yourself, or earn it in another field and put it to the service of the arts. In this, George Maciunas and Charlotte Moorman were both pioneers, colleagues and heroes. And if George was occasionally cranky, look at it this way: if you worked full time much of your life to support the vast range of publications, festivals, etc., that George supported with the earnings from his day job ands free-lance work, you'd occasionally be cranky, too. Ken Friedman -- Ken Friedman, Ph.D. Associate Professor of Leadership and Strategic Design Department of Knowledge Management Norwegian School of Management +47 22.98.51.07 Direct Line +47 22.98.51.11 Telefax <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> email Home office: +46 46 53245 Telephone +46 46 53345 Telefax <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> email
FLUXLIST: Satie and Sol Nte
Appreciated Sol's note in response to my post on "Fluxus as an obscure(d) influence." Satie, Musicality, etc. Most of us knew Satie's work. I'm not sure there is a link between his ideas and many of the issues we pursued, though -- of course -- the notion of time and boredom can in part be traced to his work. Dick Higgins was a talented performer of his music and (I believe) once made a recording of Satie's piano works. Satie's work had no special influence on the concept for which I coined the term "musicality." The concept of musicality involves applying the idea of a notational form to art that can then be rendered by any artist as the performer or realizer of the work. That is the essence of music notation. It isn't peculiar to Satie. All composers from Monteverdi and Mozart to Bach and Berlioz used notation. Acknolwedgement Many influences do percolate. The distinction is that in the old era of anonymous craft and artisan-based creation, visual products were a transmission of well understood and widely common ideas. In the modern era, the era of signed work and originality, one is somehow obliged to acknolwedge one's sources as best possible. It's odd to borrow on the wide, common culture while claiming the status of an originator and signatory. The fact that one can never acknowledge all sources doesn't excuse the failure to acknowlede those sources of which one is aware. Artists don't merely borrow on advertisements and ideas gleaned from the unsigned street. They read art magazines, art history books, visit galleries and museums. Prior artists found in these places are sources of influence who are known to the artists who draw on them, or at least they should be known. Something Else Press The books of Something Else Press are far more accessible in the US. Press runs were generally between 1,000 and 3,000 copies, and most exist in several hundred libraries. Even in the UK, however, there are enough copies that all SEP titles are available via interlibrary loan. Fluxshoe and More The importance of Fluxshoe and the history of Fluxus in the UK is increasingly known. Ever since Simon Anderson's doctoral dissertation at the Royal College of Art, this body of work and activity has become better known along with an underdtanding of its importance to a wider Fluxus circle outside the UK. As for In the Spirit of Fluxus, it missed a lot. There was much good material, but it was curtailed and limited, and the exhibition and catalogue failed to account for vital issues. But, then, what can one say of a Fluxus exhibition in which such key artists as Dick Higgins were not represented by a single work. Others were represented only by one or two Maciunas-produced boxes, as I was, a slice of Fluxus that suggested we had never done anything else of interest. If you question that view of Fluxus, you're not the only one. On the other hand, it's tough to represent something as big and ambiguous as Fluxus with so many people working over such long periods of time. A lot of people stick to a connect-the-dots version of Fluxus because it's an easy way to narrate a complex series of occurances. The Fluxus Reader, for example, was an attenpt to overcome narrow readings of the past while providing a documentary data base for future work. -- Ken Friedman -- Ken Friedman, Ph.D. Associate Professor of Leadership and Strategic Design Department of Knowledge Management Norwegian School of Management +47 22.98.51.07 Direct phone +47 22.98.51.11 Fax Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Home office: +46 (46) 53.245 Telephone +46 (46) 53.345 Telefax Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
FLUXLIST: Modernism since Postmodernism. Essays on Intermedia.
Dick Higgins's Modernism since Postmodernism develops his theories of intermedia. It is subtitled Essays on Intermedia. The book doesn't include the seminal intermedia essay first published in the Something Else Newsletter, but it is a rich elaboration of Higgins's work. This was Dick Higgins's last book of essays, and well worth owning. Higgins, Dick. 1997. Modernism since Postmodernism. Essays on Intermedia. San Diego: San Diego State University Press. -- Ken Friedman --
FLUXLIST: Fluxus as an obscure(d) influence
ality as an excuse for neglect is that the work should be given its due, without regard to the difficult nature or personality of the artist. This, of course, is a naïve position, and while I believe it, the world does not. The Fluxus people have generally been misfits. Most of us were ill suited to effective - and businesslike -- social interaction in the world of art. The art world was equally uncomfortable with us, and the results are predictable. As to Bruce Nauman, I don't know whether he knew anything about our work or not. In saying that he had no known relationship with Fluxus, I don't say he had any knowledge of us. I simply don't know. The issue of acknowledgement is another matter. If whatever it is we do is to have durable philosophical meaning, then it is vital to build rich, lively discourse. The recognition and acknowledgement of sources is part of the discourse. It enables one to traces lines of action, to locate sources for further development and to create new projects. Natural scientists, social scientists, and humanists do not merely acknowledge as a matter of propriety. They do so to strengthen the development foundations of their own work, and to enrich the knowledge creation cycle. This is why acknowledgement matters. This is also one reason why art, bound to the market cycle and the cult of the personality, is so often imitative and so rarely contributes to the deep sources of human development. In a traditional craft culture in which no artist had a name, an ecological kind of growth took place in which the entire society and culture had a share. That world is gone now. In today's world, most artists claim the status of articulate discourse participants through a form of art that is signed, named, and acknowledged. To claim the status of discourse while failing to pay the price of discourse introduces distortions into the art market and the context of art alike. In this context, it is no wonder that Fluxus has so often been obscured. Tracing the details of the Fluxus influence and its frequent obscurity is a complex study involving art history, the economics, and sociology of art. Doing so reveals as much about the art market and the art world as it reveals about Fluxus. -- Ken Friedman (1) Friedman, Kenneth Scott. Sociology of Art: An Aspect of the Social Reality of the Art World. Ph.D. Dissertation. Graduate School of Human Behavior,United States International University, San Diego, California, 1976. (Published by University Microfilms, Ann Arbor, Michigan, 1977. Abstract, Dissertation Abstracts International, vol. 38, no. 3, 1977) (2) Articles on the sociology and economics of art. Friedman, Kenneth S. 1981. "The Art Market in a Troubled Economy." The Art Economist, vol.1, no. 3 (Dec): 1-4. Friedman, Kenneth S. 1981. "The House that Schnabel Built." Art Economist, vol. 1, no. 1 (Nov): 1-2. Friedman, Kenneth S. 1981. "Willi Bongaard." The Art Economist, vol. 1, no. 2 (November): 1-2. Friedman, Kenneth S. 1982. "Art as Investment: a Candid Look." The Art Economist, vol. 2, no. 4 (January): 1-3. Friedman, Ken. 1982. "The Art Economist." Journal: A Contemporary Art Magazine, vol. 4, no. 34 (Fall): 44-45. Friedman, Kenneth S. 1982. "The Art Market Today." The Art Economist, vol. 2, no. 11 (July): 2-3. Friedman, Kenneth S. 1982. "The Artist as Money Maker." The Art Economist, vol. 2, no. 6 (February): 1-2. Friedman, Kenneth S. and Peter Frank. 1982. "Building a Contemporary Collection." Diversion, vol. 10, no. 5 (May): 208-220. Friedman, Kenneth S. 1982. "The Fall of the House of Schnabel." The Art Economist, vol. 2, no. 15 (November): 2, 4-5. Friedman, Kenneth S. 1982. "Lists." The Art Economist, vol. 2, no. 8 (April): 2-4. Friedman, Kenneth S. 1982. "1982-1983: The Year Ahead." The Art Economist, vol. 2, no. 13 (September): 1-7. Friedman, Kenneth S. 1982. "Public Art and Summer Reading." The Art Economist, vol. 2, no. 9 (May): 2-3. Friedman, Kenneth S. 1983. "April Fools, April Showers." The Art Economist, vol. 3, no. 17 (Apr): 1, 7-8. Friedman, Kenneth S. and Jesse Schulman. 1983. "A Change of the Guard at Sotheby Parke Bernet?" The Art Economist, vol. 3, no. 18 (May): 2-5. Friedman, Kenneth S. "The State of the Arts 1983." The Art Economist, vol. 3, no. 18 (May): 2, 6-8. Friedman, Kenneth S. "When the Art Economist Talks." The Art Economist, vol. 3, no. 19 (June): 7-8. Friedman, Kenneth S. 1984. "Musings at Mid-Season." The Art Economist, vol. 4, no. 21 (Feb): 1-4. (3) Historical and critical articles with some considerations on the sociology and economics of art in relation to Fluxus. Friedman, Kenneth S. 1976. James Edwards . El Cajon, California: Grossmont College Art Gallery; La Mamelle Art Center (San Francisco); and the Everson Museum (Syracuse, New York
FLUXLIST: Grotius on cyberspace
Heiko asks about parallels between the writings of Hugo Grotius (1583-1645) and writings on cyberspace. There is a large and growing body of discourse on the culture of cyberspace. This includes considering issues of ethics and law. Because cyberspace is an international space, the issues reflected in Grotius's writings are particularly relevant. It's likely that someone has applied Grotius's ideas to cyberspace, but I'm not sure who or in what context. I was a bit uncertain what the question was. If Heiko will state it more clearly, I may be able to give a better answer. --Ken Friedman --
FLUXLIST: Higgins on Intermedia
Higgins on Intermedia Dick Higgins's Intermedia essay was reprinted twice, first in foew&ombwhnw, second in A Dialectic of Centuries. Higgins, Dick. 1969. foew&ombwhnw. New York: Something Else Press, pp. 11-29. Higgins, Dick. 1978. A Dialectic of Centuries. New York: Printed Editions, pp. 12-17. While the essay doesn't appear online, these books will be found in thousands of libraries across the United States and Canada. If a library does not have a copy, it is always available via interlibrary loan. -- Ken Friedman --
FLUXLIST: Literary connections, scatology, irony, Naumann
There is a rich web of connections between literary issues and the work of various Fluxus artists. Since the inquiry mentions Nietzsche, this web of connections will obviously include philosophical literature. These issues have been discussed at length in numerous essays and books. I'd start with the work of Ina Blom, Nicholas Zurbrugg, Owen Smith, Simon Anderson, and Craig Saper. There is also important doctoral research on these issues. One was the first doctoral dissertation on Fluxus, Ravicz, Marilyn Ekdahl. 1974. Aesthetic Anthropology: Theory and Analysis of Pop and Conceptual Art in America. Los Angeles: Department of Anthropology, University of California. Another is Higgins, Hannah. 1994. Enversioning Fluxus: A Venture into Whose Fluxus, Where and When. Chicago: University of Chicago, Department of Art History. This is a broad field. Many Fluxus people have created works, events, installations, books and other kinds of projects that embody "self-mockery, self-directed laughter, the carnivalesque/ grotesque" as well as projects with "an emphasis on lower-body humor, concerning shit, etc." To locate these, start with Jon Hendricks's Fluxus Codex for multiples published by George Maciunas, the catalogues of Vice Versand, Editions Hundertmark, and Editions Conz. Then check the many catalogues of the Fluxus exhibitions, and so on. A search of this literature will turn up a vast body of work. Check also the Fluxus Performance Workbook. Nearly everyone active in Fluxus has created works that embody "self-mockery, self-directed laughter, the carnivalesque/ grotesque." In addition, many - Nam June Paik, Milan Knizak, Jean Dupuy, Ben Vautier, and myself - have created works involving "lower-body humor, concerning shit, etc." Bruce Naumann had little or no known contact with Fluxus. Fluxus may indeed have influenced his work. Fluxus work demonstrably influenced many of the conceptual, performance, and video artists of the 1960s and 1970s. For many complex reasons, those influences were rarely acknowledged. At any rate, Naumann was not "a Fluxus member," not even "unofficially." His name never appeared on any of the lists of Fluxartists or Fluxfriends to whom George Maciunas circulated the Fluxnewsletter, and those of us who lived in California - as he did - had no contact with him nor he with us. -- Ken Friedman -- Ken Friedman, Ph.D. Associate Professor of Leadership and Strategic Design Department of Knowledge Management Norwegian School of Management +47 22.98.51.07 Direct line +47 22.98.51.11 Telefax Home office: +46 (46) 53.245 Telephone +46 (46) 53.345 Telefax email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
FLUXLIST: Care with reply function, please
Request care with reply function. A recent dialogue has been repeating prior posted material at far too great a length to sustain the short additions of new material. Some items in the last sig (the sig!) have now been repeated and reposted five or six times. The second or third time you read it, you've learned as much as you're going to learn -- especially where it comes to the rerun of a sig block, and a seventh repeat in HTML. C'mon guys. Ken Friedman
FLUXLIST: No long blocks of code, please
I request that people post plain messages in ascii (plain text) instead of huge blocks of html code. A few well chosen words communicate far better than the long blocks of code that have been appearing in recent posts. It could be a problem in the default settings of some email programs -- I gather Microsoft Outlook has some bad habits if you don't control them. This also happens in several programs when you copy and paste html pages direct from the web to an emailer. Eventually, cluttered communication on a list reduces the willingness and interest of people in taking part. In contrast, good communication and well written messages enhance the quality of a list and increase participation. Ken Friedman -- Ken Friedman, Ph.D. Associate Professor of Leadership and Strategic Design Department of Knowledge Management Norwegian School of Management +47 22.98.51.07 Direct phone +47 22.98.51.11 Fax Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Home office: +46 (46) 53.245 Telephone +46 (46) 53.345 Telefax Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
FLUXLIST: Distinguished Avian Passes Away
Dwight Bird, the distinguished German-born avian, passed away suddenly on February 24. Mr. Bird was the companion of intermedia artist and painter, Jack Ox. Dwight Bird was a friend and colleague of many Fluxus artists. During his years in Cologne, he was known for his close friendship with Al Hansen. Hansen frequently came to the Bird-Ox household for evenings of conversation and the musical entertainments that Bird undertook for his intimate friends. It was in Cologne that Bird first met such Fluxus artists as Dick Higgins and Alison Knowles. When Ox relocated her studio to New York, Bird moved to New York with her. In recent years, he became increasingly reclusive, perferring to study New York's street life from her studio window while he whistled the classics in a "vogelsang" style remiscent of Jean Dupuy. "From the top of the tall cedar tree, from the highest branch I shall take a shoot and plant it myself on a tall and lofty mountain. I shall plant it on the highest mountain in Israel, It will put out branches and bear fruit and grow into a noble cedar tree. Every kind of bird will live beneath it, every kind of winged creature will rest in the shade of its branches." Ezekiel 17:22-23 As a friend and colleague, as a philosopher and art critic, Dwight was unlike anyone else in the Fluxus circle. He will be missed. -- Ken Friedman --
FLUXLIST: 1) Eat art, 2) edible art, 3) food works, 4) fashion
1) Eat Art Gabriel Swossil asks if I know anything about Daniel Spoerri's restaurant, "Eat Art." Sorry to say I don't recall too much. Dick Higgins published a number of Spoerri books at Something Else Press that shed some light on this, notably _ An Anecdoted Topography of Chance _, and another book of recipes and food thoughts the title of which I can't recall. 2) Edible art, food projects and recipes There is a rich history of food projects, food pieces, edible works, and food events in Fluxus. You'll find discussion of some of these scattered through the literature. Off-hand, I recall projects and scores involving food by: Ay-O, Jean Dupuy, Robert Filliou, Ken Friedman, Dick Higgins, Alison Knowles, George Maciunas, Ben Patterson, Ben Vautier, and others. Some of these projects and scores are documented in Fluxus Codex. Others are described at various points in different histories and documents, and in reprints of such documents as George Maciunas's newsletters. Still others exist as independent works, for example, the little book of Fluxus recipe works titled Cookpot that Barbara Moore compiled in the mid80s. This would be a find subject for a small compilation by someone with the time and energy to work through the documents and literature to collect and organize them. 3) Food works and multiples There is also a rich history of artifacts, multiples, objects and food by many Fluxus artists. As mentioned, there is Joseph Beuys's piece with Hundertmark on the fried fish bones. Offhand, I recall only a few. Dieter Roth made a lot of food-based sculptures and multiples including the well-known cheese suitcases and chocolate sculptures. George Maciunas published Ben Vautier's canned Flux Mystery Food. The tabletop versions of my Do-It-Yourself Monument are built of sugar cubes. I made several minimalist sculptures of licorice and I once planned a huge political monument of cheese titled "Ostblok." I had only modeled a small version of it when the Berlin Wall fell, rendering the sculpture obsolete. 4) Fashion There is also a rich history of clothing works and fashion works. The difficulty with tracing all these is that Fluxus Codex is a superb record of all the Fluxus multiples published by George Maciunas, but it documents none of the Fluxus works or projects by other publishers or even those by Fluxus artists when George wasn't involved. There are works of Fluxclothing in the collections at Alternative Traditions in Contemporary Art at Iowa, the Hood Museum of Art at Dartmouth and the Henie Onstad Art Center near Oslo. Milan Knizak was particularly inventive with clothing artifacts and clothing events. Others of us also created clothing works and projects on different occasions. Except for myself and some of the artists active around Fluxus West in the 1960s and 1970s, I can't recall any specific projects. I very much liked Diane Berendt's "Rainbow Blanket" and "Airplane Bra," both at the Hood, and Nancy McElroy's zippered case - a small case constructed entirely of zippers so that there were many, many ways to open it. In the 1970s, I was once asked to design a T-shirt. I bought a load of plain, white cotton T-shirts. I brewed up several gallons of dark, strong tea, and soaked the T-shirts in the brew to make a work titled "Tea Shirt" in which food and fashion merged. -- Ken Friedman -- Ken Friedman, Ph.D. Associate Professor of Leadership and Strategic Design Department of Knowledge Management Norwegian School of Management +47 22.98.51.07 Direct line +47 22.98.51.11 Telefax Home office: +46 (46) 53.245 Telephone +46 (46) 53.345 Telefax email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
FLUXLIST: Archiving -- Rod's questions
Quick answers to Rod's questions: The issue is not whether scolars are interested now. The issue is whether you orgnize an archive with the intention that it (eventually) will be a rich, well structured archive of documents giving broad and deep insight. Many historically significant archives go unused at first. Some remain unused long after they move into a museum or university. The point is that they are orgnized so that scholars (and others) are able to use them when the interest arise. It isn't the current interest of users that determines an archive. It inolves something like the three criteria I suggested and the degree to which the archive meets those criteria. The reason -- in a sense of your personal motive -- is irrelevant, as long as it meets the criteria. The issue of funding is also irrelevant. The question you ask on organizing principles is a matter that archivists and librarians often debate. The only consensus is that all documents be preserved, and that if they are reorgnized, records preserve the original structure to permit earlier states to be reconstructed. Regarding your question on Jean Brown, an archivist collector is not a collector of archives. It is a collector who is also an archivist. Ken Friedman --
FLUXLIST: 1) Canada, 2) Geoffrey Hendricks, 3) Archives, 4) Artist andCritics
1) Canada, 2) Geoffrey Hendricks, 3) Archives, 4) Artist and Critics Never seem to catch up with my email. Been working on a book. Fitful, sluggish, terrible process. Samuel Johnson once said, "No one but a blockhead ever wrote, except for money." I believe it to be true, and I have concluded that I am a blockhead, since the kinds of things I write deal with ideas and rarely make money. Several questions and notes recently posted call for answers. Here are four short answers: 1) I was in Canada in 1972. Spent three or four months altogether. First, six weeks in Vancouver with the Image Bank people before Western Front existed. Did an exhibition at Vancouver Art Gallery titled Ken Friedman and Friends in Process. Spent six weeks at University of Saskatchewan at Regina as visiting artist in the post of something titled "Special Substitute Sessional Lecturer." Finished the manuscript of my first book, The Aesthetics, later published in a more elegant edition by Beau Geste Press. While at Saskatchewan, also completed the first global edition of the Fluxus and Friends mailing list and directory. The list began in 1966, when Fluxus West began publishing lists of the people with whom we had contact. By 1972, it included over a thousand names and addresses around the world, published in an edition entitled An International Contact List of the Arts. During the 1970s, that list was the starting point of projects such as Giancarlo Politi's Art Diary and it was used for the first editions of FILE Magazine. We also provided information to reference books and research projects. Among the well-known reference books that drew on our research were Who's Who in America, Who's Who in American Art, Contemporary Artists and several others. By 1978, the list contained over 5,000 individuals in many fields of art but it no longer focused on Fluxus and intermedia. By the early 1980s, so many people were publishing lists and creating information services that I saw no need to continue. During that time, I introduced many the people in Canada to other people in the Fluxus network. They knew some already, of course, at least by mail. The people at Western Front fell in love with Robert Filliou. His easygoing style and charming, intelligent work suited them beautifully. An entirely different group of Canadian artists in Quebec has been working with Dick Higgins, Eric Andersen, Alison Knowles, and others in a regular series of festivals, performances, exhibitions and so on. I'm not well acquainted with them, though I'd often hear from Dick that he was going to or coming from Quebec. Dick died while attending one of those festivals. He was very fond of Quebec and his Canadian friends. 2) Terrence Kosick probably means Geoffrey Hendricks. 3) According to Webster's an archive is "a place where public records or historical documents are preserved." The Greek root of the word emphasizes its public and official nature, descended from the Greek word archeion meaning "government house" and related to the Greek word "arche" for rule or government. The archon was the chief magistrate of ancient Athens or a presiding officer. An archive was a repository of documents and rulings. In the early days of mail art, many artists became aware of Hanns Sohm's fabulous Archiv Sohm, and they liked the idea of an archive. It became the custom among mail art practitioners to label their personal collection of correspondence an archive. Most artists do not understand the distinction between a collection and an archive, or between their personal papers and an archive. This distinction lies in three issues. First, an archive generally involves a rather massive collection developed over time. Second, an archive is generally collected or organized according to some principle. Third, an archive is generally organized with the intention of permitting research or historical scholarship of some kind. Some artists have collected and organized archives, not merely of their own work, but of groups of artists with whom they interact. The papers of Something Else Press and later Dick Higgins's papers constituted such an archive. It should be noted that Dick welcomed scholars and gave free access to this material to scholars who visited him to work with or copy these papers. Fluxus West had an extensive archive. While not as well organized as Dick's, our holdings were massive. These are now distributed to several museum and university archive collections, primarily to the Alternative Traditions in Contemporary Art at University of Iowa. For various reasons, we also made substantial gifts of books to the Whitney Museum of American Art, Portland College of Art, several foreign universities. We also gave collections of books and papers to the Tate Gallery Archives, Franklin Furnace Archive (now housed at the Museum of Modern Art), and to Archiv Sohm (now housed at S
FLUXLIST: Ken Friedman Snow Event
It's snowing. The dog likes it. I don't. Ken Friedman Torna Hallestad 22 February 2000 --
FLUXLIST: Another good reason not to use code
Dear All, The reason I find HTML code objectionable is that there is no purpose to reading twice in HTML what we've read once in ascii (plain text). As for code, I don't use it and will not. Entering code is one way to get a virus. It's silly to bother with virus protection if one simply picks up and uses loose codee people pass back and forth on the net. There is no way to know who subscribes to any list, nor even to know whether they are who they claim to be. It's my rule never to open attachments to enter code from anything other than a trusted source, and that only when working on a project that requires me to do so. Ken -- Ken Friedman, Ph.D. Associate Professor of Leadership and Strategic Design Department of Knowledge Management Norwegian School of Management +47 22.98.51.07 Direct phone +47 22.98.51.11 Fax Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Home office: +46 (46) 53.245 Telephone +46 (46) 53.345 Telefax Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
FLUXLIST: Request avoid long blocks code
Friends, Also request avoid long blocks code. Simple is best. Ken --
FLUXLIST: Please do NOT post blocks of HTML Code to Fluxlist
Dear All, Please do NOT post blocks of HTML Code to Fluxlist. WASTE of time, space, and paper for those of us who archive. Ken --
FLUXLIST: Robin Page and Pete Townshend
Pete Townshend was at one point a student of Robin Page. Robin is a huge, manic, raging, Rabelaisian figure who puts himself forward in a persona he now calls "Bluebeard." He did a piece many years before The Who in which he dragged a guitar around a block until it disintegrated. Robin showed up at the Fluxus exhibition at the Biennal of Venice, the only one he had come to in ages. He exhibited his Bluebeard paintings. These were magnificent spoofs of movie posters and political posters in which Bluebeard ranted against the foibles and prejudices of the art world. The facial expressions of the painted Bluebeards were marvelous. They were filled anger, rage, wrath, greed, indignation. The painted Bluebeard offered a visual Jeremiad on the art world though facial expressions in a catalogue of harsh emotion. One could read every one of Shakespeare's sometimes-harsh heroes or nasty villains in those faces -- Prospero, Lear, Mac Beth, Shylock, with a little John Falstaff thrown in and a dash of Pistol and Nym. As strange and towering as the paintings were, Robin himself drove a lot of the other artists crazy. Robin has also dyed his own beard blue, and he acts out in word and deed many of the emotions in his paintings. Whats seems a majestic rant on stage or canvas is far less appealing ranted in your face for five or six days in close personal contact. Some didn't like the representational aspect of his art. Others found it grating that he seemed to identify many among the rest of us with the art world, and he vented his spleen in roaring streams and torrents of invective. At first, people were delighted that he had come to Venice. Those who had never met him before were especially interested to met him. Some of us really enjoyed the work. I have a fondness for movie posters and political campaign posters, and the paintings really bowled me over. But, then, I've always thought that anything can fit the Fluxus context, and once in a while, anything can even stretch to include representational painting. Ben Vautier -- who met Robin first at the Festival of Misfits in London in 1962 -- also seemed delighted he had come. Ben is known for wide ranging intellectual curiosity and tolerance. He criticizes everything, including himself. He views life as a grand panorama. He loves many of those whom he criticizes even as he sees their flaws. Other people began to conflate Robin's destructive persona with his art. Before long, the endless rant, echoed by a small coterie of young artists he had brought with him. This was a cadre of seemingly post-punk, pre-Millennial, semi-Nomad types, pierced and tattooed, wearing fright wigs and Kingfisher cuts. No one knew what they did as artists. As presences in Venice, they served as Chorus to Robin's Ranting Hero, echoing the rant and rage without embodying his accomplishments or virtues as an artist. After a while, the commotion and anger began to wear people out. They just didn't want to be around him. When I last spoke to him, he felt he had been snubbed and blackballed by the other Fluxus artists without understanding why people found it stressful to be around him. So it goes. Even so, I gather he was a talented teacher. I note that those students of his whom I seen or known personally adopted many of his splenetic qualities. These qualities include a tendency to produce extraodinary and often interesting destructive works. They also include a tendency toward harsh personal behavior, cynicism that is not always warranted, and vitriolic language. Ken Friedman --
FLUXLIST: Athena Tacha
Dear Megan McDonough, Athena Tacha was one of the important figures in the development of site-specific installations that crossed the boundaries of architecture, landscape, sculpture and conceptual art. If you want to learn more about her work, I'd suggest checking the art history indexes such as ArtsBibliography Modern or visiting the online library services at the Museum of Modern Art or the Getty. There is a large body of publications and catalogues available. We were both visiting artists at Wright State University in Dayton, Ohio, and we both did exhibitions there in 1978. I found her a lucid, articulate, well informed conversationalist. Meeting her was a rewarding experience. Don't know much about her involvement with mail art, but her other activities were significant and influential. Ken Friedman --
FLUXLIST: Sources of news on the Austria situation
Dear Friends, Sources of news on the Austria situation. I appreciated Robert Fleck's feelings and his appeal, but I am not sure that boycotting all Austrian cultural events is an appropriate response to this situation. It's one thing for EU governments to respond at the governmental level to the inclusion of Haider and his party in government. This seems to me an appropriate response at an official level for an official problem. It is another to boycott every Austrian art organization, museum and gallery for a situation over which they have no control -- a situation which those whom I know in the Austrian art world must surely abhor. I do not say that I oppose Robert Fleck's call, but I can't say I agree with it, either. This is a matter that deserves careful consideration. In the meantime, those who seek news from multiple reliable sources will find it at the Web sites below, compiled by University of Wisconsin Scout Project. Best regards, Ken Friedman To Europe's Chagrin, Austrian Freedom Party Enters Government Austria and the Haider factor: Special Report -- BBC News http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/europe/newsid_628000/628521.stm "Haider's Party Sworn Into New Austrian Government" -- _New York Times_ [RealPlayer] http://www.nytimes.com/yr/mo/day/late/04austria.html Austria vs. Europe -- PBS Online NewsHour http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/europe/jan-june00/austria_2-3.html "A conundrum for Austria-and for Europe" -- _The Economist_ http://www.economist.com/editorial/freeforall/5-2-00/index_eu0484.html Austrian Freedom Party http://194.96.203.5/englisch/welcome.html Austrian People's Party http://www.oevp.or.at/ Republic of Austria http://www.austria.gv.at/e/ Radio Austria International [RealPlayer] http://www.orf.at/roi/english/welcome.html Austria -- NPR's _All Things Considered_ [RealPlayer] http://www.npr.org/ramfiles/atc/2203.atc.09.ram After several weeks of political wrangling and in the teeth of widespread international opposition, Austrian President Thomas Klestil has approved a new government that includes the conservative People's Party and the rightist Freedom Party. The inclusion of the Freedom Party horrifies a large number of observers in Austria and abroad, partly because of positive comments regarding Nazi employment policies and members of the Waffen SS made in the past by the Freedom Party's leader, Joerg Haider. Haider has consistently distanced himself from these remarks over the past few years, and before approving the coalition government, President Klestil had Haider and the leader of the People's Party, Wolfgang Schuessel, sign a statement renouncing Austria's Nazi past and promising to respect European values in their new government. However, and probably even more to the point as far as the European Community is concerned, the Freedom Party is a strong opponent of EU expansion into the east and rose to power on a staunch anti-immigrant platform. While Haider himself will not hold a Cabinet post, his party will take the ministries of finance, social affairs, defense, infrastructure, and justice, as well as the Deputy Chancellor post. Almost immediately after Austria's swearing in of the new government, the European Union has moved to impose unprecedented harsh sanctions. Finland, France, Germany, Britain, and Portugal, which currently holds the EU presidency, have already confirmed that they will suspend political (but not economic) ties with Austria. Israel has also withdrawn its ambassador, as it did between 1986 and 1992, when Kurt Waldheim served as President despite his Nazi past. While the worst-case scenario would be the suspension of Austria from the EU (it joined in 1995), the day-to-day operations of the EU will most probably not be affected. Users can begin with the always-reliable BBC, which offers breaking news, analysis, archived articles, and related links. The _New York Times_ (free registration required) also provides a host of articles on the subject, as well as related documents, video, a map, and a discussion forum. Last night's NewsHour on PBS featured a background report on the new government and an excellent discussion between the Austrian and Portuguese Ambassadors to the US. Users can listen to the program in RealPlayer format or read the transcripts at the site. _The Economist_ has weighed in with an exploration of the implications of the Freedom Party's rise to power for both Austria and Europe. Users interested in commentary on these developments direct from the parties involved should consult the Websites of the Freedom and People's parties (the latter is only available in German) and the official site for the Republic of Austria. Finally, audio reports on the new government are available from Radio Austria International and National Public Radio's _All Things Considered_. [MD]
FLUXLIST: Random Person
Josh Ronsen proposed: "Please consider mailing at least one of the envelopes to a random person (whom you don't know) picked out from your local phone book." In the 1960s, Milan Knizak and members of the Aktual Group in Prague organized a project in which they prepare packages and envelopes filled with art that they distributed to mailboxes in a neighborhood in Prague. -- Ken Friedman -- Ken Friedman, Ph.D. Associate Professor of Leadership and Strategic Design Department of Knowledge Management Norwegian School of Management +47 22.98.51.07 Direct phone +47 22.98.51.11 Fax Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Home office: +46 (46) 53.245 Telephone +46 (46) 53.345 Telefax Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
FLUXLIST: The Wergo Ursonate is the first *complete* recording ofSchwitters himself
The Wergo recording is the first *complete* recording of Schwitters himself performing his own Ursonate. Partial recordnings of Schwitters performing one movement existed prior to this. Recordings of other artists interpreting the Ursonate were also available. Jack Ox discovered the complete Schwitters recording in her research on Schwitters for a project. It was hidden away in an archive, unreleased. First, she authenticated the recording as Schwitters's own voice through Schwitters's now-late son, Ernst. Then she arrange permission for publication with the Schwitters estate. She brought it to the attention of Wergo and it was duly published. It is the only extant version of Schwitters himself performing the complete Ursonate. One of the important issues in this recording is the way in which it makes Schwitters's own ideas about interpreting the score clear. You will find many differences between Schwitters's own view of the work and the renditions of the Ursonate developed by others. There have long been controversies about the way the work ought to be performed. Until this work was released, all arguments on the intention of the artist-composer himself were purely speculative. Needless to say, any work may be interpreted in different ways. Perhaps an interpretation by someone other than the artist-composer is even better in some regard. What is now established, however, is that there is (and was) a specific intention in Schwitters's own mind -- at least at the time he recorded the work. Jack Ox, herself a distinguished intermedia artist, did a great service in locating this work, and making it available to the rest of us. People had looked for this tape for years without success. Finally, some historians concluded it had either been destroyed or that it had never existed. There was no prior available issue of the complete work by Schwitter himself before this release. Best regards, Ken Friedman -- Ken Friedman, Ph.D. Associate Professor of Leadership and Strategic Design Department of Knowledge Management Norwegian School of Management +47 22.98.51.07 Direct line +47 22.98.51.11 Telefax Home office: +46 (46) 53.245 Telephone +46 (46) 53.345 Telefax email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
FLUXLIST: Dada and Fluxus
Good discourse between Sol and Reed. Many fine points. Multiple intersections between art ideas of Dada and Fluxus. At same time, Dada intention quite different. Maciunas was at one point of the opinion that Fluxus was a kind of neo-Dada. One of the important early festivals included neo-Dada in the title. Robert Filliou felt Fluxus and Dada quite different. Wrote eloquent, concise letter on the point. Don't have letter at hand, but quoted in in full in my 1972 book The Aesthetics. Dick Higgins touched on relations between Fluxus and Dada -- and more deeply between Fluxus and Surrealism -- in his essay "Fluxus Theory and Reception." Essay published in Lund Art Press Fluxus Research issue, again in slightly modified version in Fluxus Reader, and in a last version in Dick's last book, Modernism after Postmodernism. Nicholas Zurbrugg also discussed in excellent essay "Fluxus and Dada at Two Speeds" in Brisbane cataogue of Francesco Conz collection, also reprinted in Fluxus Reader. -- Ken Friedman --
FLUXLIST: Whitney concerts. . .
Would appreciate articles or at least reference to articles about Whitney program. Thanks. Ken
FLUXLIST: Tom Wolfe vs. Maya Lin and the Veterans of Viet Nam
Tom Wolfe serves a useful function in pointing out the foibles and pretensions of those whose balloon he wishes to burst, but Mr. Wolfe is no daisy himself. He's a dandy and as much a poseur as the social x-rays he charted decades ago. His agenda is part of the neo-conservative support system. It's not the intelligent and occasionally robust neo-conservatism of those who think things through and argue a case on the issues. Rather, he's one of those point-counterpoint for-and-against opinionators whom Dan Akron and Jane Curten used to parody so beautifully on Saturday Night Live back in the 70s. What Wolfe never says here is just how much the Viet Nam memorial has come to mean to the veterans who served and to their families. I was against the war, and I spent much of the 60s and early 70s arguing with the government over my status as a conscientious objector. The group of men with whom I sympathized most was the draftees who chose to serve. None of those whom I knew liked the war any better than I did, but they felt it their duty to serve as I felt it mine to resist. These veterans paid the price of their nation's engagement in a disastrous war when they served, and they paid the price when they came home to a nation that has yet to come to terms with what happened and what we did. The memorial in its simplicity and its stark account of names was an important step toward a truthful reckoning. This is precisely why it is so meaningful to the veterans who served. Hart was not recognized by the New York art world. Neither was Dick Higgins, or George Maciunas, or a host of others. On the other hand, Hart had a good run. He was well rewarded by the niche market to which he sold very well indeed. Much like Harry Jackson and the special breed of Western artists, or the hyperrealist painters who sell to movie-star and corporate bigwig collectors, he has his own niche and his niche has served him well. There is something to be said for these people. (I've written sympathetically about some of them, and so has Peter Frank.) However, Tom Wolfe isn't singing their song. More to the point, there is nothing wrong with skill, even though skill is not the only issue in art. When it comes to the Viet Nam memorial, however, the real skill comes in hearing the voice of those who served. This monument sings their praise as eloquently as the catalogue of ships in Homer's Iliad. It says to the modern world what the epitaph at Thermoplyae said to the ancients: "Go, tell the Spartans, that here -- obedient to their command -- we lie." Tom Wolfe misses that point. The shame is his. Hart may have gotten a raw deal in the New York art world, but he got rich. Maya Lin's sober, meaningful monument speaks for those who got a worse break and didn't live to collect their pension, either. -- Ken Friedman --
