Editing Fluxus (section)

==Fluxus since 1978==
===Death of George Maciunas===
Maciunas moved to the Berkshire Mountains in Western Massachusetts in the late 1970s. Two decades earlier, after collecting paintings, the Boston art collector Jean Brown, and her late husband Leonard Brown, began to shift their focus to Dadaist and Surrealist art, manifestoes and periodicals. In 1971, after Mr. Brown's death, Mrs. Brown moved to [[Tyringham, Massachusetts|Tyringham]], and expanded into areas adjacent to Fluxus, including artists' books, concrete poetry, happenings, mail art and performance art. Maciunas helped turn her home, originally a Shaker seed house, into an important center for both Fluxus artists and scholars, with Mrs. Brown alternately cooking meals and showing guests her collection. Activities centered on a large archive room on the second floor built by Maciunas, who settled in nearby [[Great Barrington, Massachusetts|Great Barrington]], where it was discovered in 1977 that Maciunas developed cancer of the pancreas and liver.

Three months before his death, he married his friend and companion, the poet Billie Hutching. After a legal wedding in Lee, Massachusetts, the couple performed a "Fluxwedding" in a friend's loft in SoHo, 25 February 1978. A videotape of the Maciunas' wedding was produced by [[Dimitri Devyatkin]].<ref>{{Cite web |url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AVDB1oy1O8s |title=Marriage of George and Billy Maciunas |website=[[YouTube]] |date=18 June 2011 |access-date=9 September 2014 |archive-date=7 March 2016 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160307134518/https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AVDB1oy1O8s |url-status=live }}</ref> The bride and groom traded clothing.<ref>According to Hutching, quoted in {{harvnb|Maciunas|Ay-O|1998|p=280}}, Maciunas was a transvestite and masochist.</ref> Maciunas died on 9 May 1978 in a hospital in Boston.

His funeral was held in typical Fluxus style where they dubbed the funeral "Fluxfeast and Wake", ate foods that were only black, white, or purple.<ref>{{Cite web|url = http://www.theartstory.org/movement-fluxus.htm|title = Fluxus Movement, Artists and Major Works|date = 2015|website = The Art Story|last = DiTolla|first = Racy|access-date = 6 October 2015|archive-date = 19 October 2015|archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20151019105630/http://www.theartstory.org/movement-fluxus.htm|url-status = live}}</ref> Maciunas left behind his thoughts on Fluxus in a series of important video conversations called ''Interview With George Maciunas'' with Fluxus artist [[Larry Miller (artist)|Larry Miller]], which has been screened internationally and translated into numerous languages.<ref>Interview with [[Larry Miller (artist)|Larry Miller]], 1978, referenced in {{harvnb|Maciunas|Ay-O|1998|page=114}}</ref> Over a 30 year period, Miller shot and collected Fluxus related materials including tapes on Joe Jones, Carolee Schneemann, Ben Vautier, Dick Higgins, and Alison Knowles, in addition to the 1978 Maciunas interview.

===Post-Maciunas developments===
After the death of Maciunas a rift opened in Fluxus between a few collectors and curators who placed Fluxus as an art movement in a specific time frame (1962 to 1978), and the artists themselves, many of whom continued to see Fluxus as a living entity held together by its core values and world view.<ref>{{cite book|first=Dorothée|last=Brill|year=2010|location=Hanover (New Hampshire)|title=Shock and the senseless in Dada and Fluxus|publisher=Dartmouth College Press|quote=Thus Fluxus had been under way for several years before its supposed 1962 starting date. Even more difficult to determine, however, is the end of Fluxus. Although some mark it by the death of Maciunas in April 1979, the other artists were "still as much of a group as we ever were,” as Dick Higgins stated in 1982, and continued doing Fluxus artworks, although not necessarily exclusively.}}</ref> Different theorists and historians adopted each of these views. Fluxus is therefore referred to variously in the past or the present tense. The definition of Fluxus was always a subject of controversy, complicated by the death of the original artists who were still living when Maciunas died.<ref>{{Cite news |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/24/arts/design/fluxus-and-the-essential-questions-of-life-review.html|title=Liberating Viewers, and the World, With Silliness|type=exhibition review|newspaper=[[The New York Times]]|date=23 September 2011 |access-date=17 May 2022|archive-date=17 April 2017 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170417092417/http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/24/arts/design/fluxus-and-the-essential-questions-of-life-review.html |url-status=live |last=Johnson|first=Ken|author-link=Ken Johnson (art critic)}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |url=http://www.nyu.edu/greyart/exhibits/fluxus/FluxNYU.html |title=''Fluxus at NYU'' |access-date=15 December 2011 |archive-date=23 December 2011 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20111223000424/http://www.nyu.edu/greyart/exhibits/fluxus/FluxNYU.html |url-status=live }}</ref>

Some have argued that the unique control that curator [[Jon Hendricks (artist)|Jon Hendricks]] holds over major historical Fluxus collection the Gilbert and Lila Silverman collection has enabled him to influence, through the numerous books and catalogues subsidized by the collection, the view that Fluxus died with Maciunas. Hendricks argues that Fluxus was a historical movement that occurred at a particular time, asserting that such central Fluxus artists as Dick Higgins and Nam June Paik could no longer label themselves as active Fluxus artists after 1978, and that contemporary artists influenced by Fluxus cannot lay claim to be Fluxus artists.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Phillpot |first1=Clive |url=https://www.moma.org/calendar/exhibitions/2141 |title=Fluxus : selections from the Gilbert and Lila Silverman Collection |last2=Hendricks |first2=Jon |publisher=[[Museum of Modern Art]] |year=1988 |isbn=0870703110 |pages=15 |author1-link=Clive Phillpot}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |url=http://sdrc.lib.uiowa.edu/atca/subjugated/one_2.htm |title=Robert Pincus-Witten on Fluxus, and Jon Hendricks's ''Codex''|access-date=15 December 2011 |archive-date=16 April 2012 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120416192810/http://sdrc.lib.uiowa.edu/atca/subjugated/one_2.htm |url-status=live }}</ref> The [[Museum of Modern Art]] makes the same claim dating the movement to the 1960s and 1970s.<ref name="MOMA" /><ref>[http://www.moma.org/visit/calendar/exhibitions/1033 MoMA exhibitions, October 2009 – August 2010] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100914025056/http://www.moma.org/visit/calendar/exhibitions/1033 |date=14 September 2010 }} Retrieved 5 September 2010</ref> Many of the original Fluxus artists still working enjoy homages by younger Fluxus-influenced artists who stage events to commemorate Fluxus, but discourage the use of the "Fluxus" label by younger artists.<ref>{{Cite web |url=http://whitehotmagazine.com/articles/boat-book-alison-knowles/3113 |title=Bloch, Mark. "The Boat Book: Alison Knowles" |access-date=7 July 2015 |archive-date=3 July 2017 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170703041408/https://whitehotmagazine.com/articles/boat-book-alison-knowles/3113 |url-status=live }}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |url=http://artsonline.monash.edu.au/colloquy/download/colloquy_issue_twenty-two/drinkall.pdf |title=Drinkall, Jacquelene. "Human Telepathic Collaborations from Fluxus to Now" |access-date=7 July 2015 |archive-date=9 July 2015 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150709123142/http://artsonline.monash.edu.au/colloquy/download/colloquy_issue_twenty-two/drinkall.pdf |url-status=live }}</ref> Others, including historian of art [[Hannah Higgins]], daughter of Fluxus artists [[Alison Knowles]] and [[Dick Higgins]], assert that although Maciunas was a key participant, there were many more, including Fluxus co-founder Higgins, who continued to work within Fluxus after the death of Maciunas.<ref>{{Cite web |url=http://mouthtomouthmag.com/higgins.html |title=Interview with Hannah Higgins |access-date=16 December 2011 |archive-date=5 February 2012 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120205235147/http://www.mouthtomouthmag.com/higgins.html |url-status=live }}</ref> 

The rise of the internet in the 1990s enabled a vibrant post-Fluxus community to emerge online. Some of the original Fluxus artists from the 1960s and 1970s, including Higgins, created online communities such as the Fluxlist; following their departure, younger artists, writers, musicians, and performers have attempted to continue their work in [[cyberspace]]. The influence of Fluxus continued also in [[multi-media]] [[digital art]] performances, such as that presented by [[Other Minds (organization)|Other Minds]] in the SOMArts building in San Francisco to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Fluxus in September 2011.<ref>[https://www.sfcv.org/reviews/other-minds/always-in-flux-mostly-in-fun "Always in Flux, Mostly in Fun"] by David Bratman, sfcv.org {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140810200229/https://www.sfcv.org/reviews/other-minds/always-in-flux-mostly-in-fun |date=10 August 2014 }} Retrieved 1 August 2014</ref><ref>{{Cite web|url=https://archives.otherminds.org/index.php/Detail/occurrences/234|title=Something Else: A Fluxus Semicentenary|website=Other Minds Archives|access-date=February 15, 2024}}</ref> The performance was curated by [[Adam Fong]] who was also one of the performers along with [[Yoshi Wada]], [[Alison Knowles]], [[Hannah Higgins]], [[Luciano Chessa]] and Adam Overton. In 2018 the [[Los Angeles Philharmonic]] in its ''Fluxus Festival'' presented a fluxus performance incorporating [[John Cage|John Cage's]] "Europeras 1 and 2" directed by [[Yuval Sharon]].<ref>{{cite news |title=What Happens When Fluxus Enters the Concert Hall? |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/11/arts/music/la-philharmonic-fluxus-festival.html|newspaper=[[The New York Times]]|access-date=17 November 2018 |date=11 November 2018 |last1=Barone |first1=Joshua |archive-date=17 November 2018 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20181117233633/https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/11/arts/music/la-philharmonic-fluxus-festival.html |url-status=live }}</ref> Fluxus artists continue to perform today on a smaller scale.