Editing Fluxus (section)

==Fluxus art==
Fluxus encouraged a "[[do-it-yourself]]" aesthetic, and valued simplicity over complexity. Like [[Dada]] before it, Fluxus included a strong current of anti-commercialism and an [[anti-art]] sensibility, disparaging the conventional market-driven art world in favor of an artist-centered creative practice. As Fluxus artist [[Robert Filliou]] wrote, however, Fluxus differed from Dada in its richer set of aspirations, and the positive social and communitarian aspirations of Fluxus far outweighed the anti-art tendency that also marked the group.<ref>[http://artsbirthday.blogspot.com/2007/12/who-was-robert-filliou.html Robert Filliou on Fluxus and art] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110919125827/http://artsbirthday.blogspot.com/2007/12/who-was-robert-filliou.html |date=19 September 2011 }} Retrieved 5 September 2010</ref>

Among its early associates were [[Joseph Beuys]], [[Dick Higgins]], [[Davi Det Hompson]], [[Nam June Paik]], [[Wolf Vostell]], [[La Monte Young]], [[Joseph Byrd]], [[Al Hansen]] and [[Yoko Ono]] who explored media ranging from performance art to poetry to experimental music to film. Taking the stance of opposition to the ideas of tradition and professionalism in the arts of their time, the Fluxus group shifted the emphasis from what an artist makes to the artist's personality, actions, and opinions. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s (their most active period) they staged "action" events, engaged in politics and public speaking, and produced sculptural works featuring unconventional materials. Their radically untraditional works included, for example, the [[video art]] of Nam June Paik and [[Charlotte Moorman]] and the performance art of Joseph Beuys and Wolf Vostell. During the early years of Fluxus, the often playful style of the Fluxus artists resulted in them being considered by some to be little more than a group of [[prank]]sters. Fluxus has also been compared to [[Dada]] and aspects of [[Pop Art]] and is seen as the starting point of [[mail art]] and [[no wave]] artists. Artists from succeeding generations such as [[Mark Bloch (artist)|Mark Bloch]] do not try to characterize themselves as Fluxus but create spinoffs such as Fluxpan or Jung Fluxus as a way of continuing some of the Fluxus ideas in a 21st-century, post-[[mail art]] context.

In terms of an artistic approach, Fluxus artists preferred to work with whatever materials were at hand, and either created their own work or collaborated in the creation process with their colleagues. Outsourcing part of the creative process to commercial fabricators was not usually part of Fluxus practice. Maciunas personally hand-assembled many of the Fluxus multiples and editions.<ref>[http://www.artnotart.com/fluxus/kfriedman-fourtyyears.html Ken Friedman, ''40 Years of Fluxus''] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100211142656/http://www.artnotart.com/fluxus/kfriedman-fourtyyears.html |date=11 February 2010 }} Retrieved 5 September 2010</ref> While Maciunas assembled many objects by hand, he designed and intended them for mass production.<ref name="MOMA" /><ref name="Maciunas on Fluxus">[http://www.artnotart.com/fluxus/gmaciunas--.html Maciunas on Fluxus] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100210185828/http://www.artnotart.com/fluxus/gmaciunas--.html |date=10 February 2010 }} Retrieved 5 September 2010</ref> Where multiple publishers produced signed, numbered objects in limited editions intended for sale at high prices, Maciunas produced open editions at low prices.<ref name="MOMA" /><ref name="Maciunas on Fluxus"/> Several other Fluxus publishers produced different kinds of Fluxus editions. The best known of these was the [[Something Else Press]], established by Dick Higgins, probably the largest and most extensive Fluxus publisher, producing books in editions that ran from 1,500 copies to as many as 5,000 copies, all available at standard bookstore prices.<ref>[http://members.chello.nl/j.seegers1/flux_files/something-else-press.html Fluxus and Happening, the Something Else Press] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110203222607/http://members.chello.nl/j.seegers1/flux_files/something-else-press.html |date=3 February 2011 }} Retrieved 5 September 2010</ref><ref>[http://www.ubu.com/historical/gb/ UBUWeb] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100914214705/http://www.ubu.com/historical/gb/ |date=14 September 2010 }} Retrieved 5 September 2010</ref> Higgins created the term "[[intermedia]]" in a 1966 essay.<ref>{{Cite news|url=https://whitehotmagazine.com/articles/selected-writings-by-dick-higgins/4157|title=Intermedia, Fluxus And The Something Else Press: Selected Writings By Dick Higgins|work=[[Whitehot Magazine]]|last=Bloch|first=Mark|author-link=Mark Bloch (artist)|date=February 2019|access-date=8 September 2023}}</ref>

The art forms most closely associated with Fluxus are event scores and Fluxus boxes. Fluxus boxes (sometimes called Fluxkits or Fluxboxes) originated with George Maciunas who would gather collections of printed cards, games, and ideas, organizing them in small plastic or wooden boxes.{{sfn|Kellein|Hendricks|1995|p=11}}

===Event score===
An event score, such as [[George Brecht]]'s "Drip Music", is essentially a [[performance art]] script that is usually only a few lines long and consists of descriptions of actions to be performed rather than dialogue.<ref>{{cite journal|last=Kotz|first=Liz|author-link=Liz Kotz|date=Spring 2001|title=Post-Cagean aesthetics and the 'event' score|journal=[[October (journal)|October]]|volume=95|issue=95|pages=55–89|jstor=779200}}</ref><ref>{{cite journal |last=Dezeuze |first=Anna |date=January 2002 |title=Origins of the Fluxus score: from indeterminacy to the 'do-it-yourself' artwork |journal=[[Performance Research]] |volume=7 |issue=3 |pages=78–94 |doi=10.1080/13528165.2002.10871876|s2cid=191234739 }}</ref><ref>{{cite journal |last=Robinson |first=Julia |date=Winter 2009 |title=Abstraction to model: George Brecht's events and the conceptual turn in art of the 1960s |journal=[[October (journal)|October]] |volume=127 |pages=77–108 |doi=10.1162/octo.2009.127.1.77 |jstor=40368554|s2cid=57562781 }}</ref> Fluxus artists differentiate event scores from "[[happening]]s". Whereas happenings were sometimes complicated, lengthy performances meant to blur the lines between performer and audience, performance and reality, event performances were usually brief and simple. The event performances sought to elevate the banal, to be mindful of the mundane, and to frustrate the [[high culture]] of academic and market-driven music and art.

The idea of the event began in [[Henry Cowell]]'s philosophy of music.{{citation needed|date=September 2016}} Cowell, a teacher to John Cage and later to Dick Higgins, coined the term that Higgins and others later applied to short, terse descriptions of performable work. The term "score" is used in exactly the sense that one uses the term to describe a music score: a series of notes that allow anyone to perform the work, an idea linked both to what [[Nam June Paik]] labeled the "do it yourself" approach and to what [[Ken Friedman]] termed "musicality." While much is made of the do it yourself approach to art, it is vital to recognize that this idea emerges in music, and such important Fluxus artists as Paik, Higgins, or Corner began as composers, bringing to art the idea that each person can create the work by "doing it." This is what Friedman meant by musicality, extending the idea more radically to conclude that anyone can create work of any kind from a score, acknowledging the composer as the originator of the work while realizing the work freely and even interpreting it in far different ways from those the original composer might have done.

Other creative forms that have been adopted by Fluxus practitioners include [[collage]], [[sound art]], music, video, and poetry—especially [[visual poetry]] and [[concrete poetry]].<ref>{{Cite news|url=https://whitehotmagazine.com/articles/reader-edited-by-dick-higgins/5683|title=Book Review: A Something Else Reader, Edited by Dick Higgins|work=[[Whitehot Magazine]]|last=Bloch|first=Mark|author-link=Mark Bloch (artist)|date=February 2023|access-date=8 September 2023}}</ref>

===Use of shock===
[[Nam June Paik]] and his peers in the Fluxus art movement thoroughly understood the impact and importance of shock on the viewer. Fluxus artists believed that shock not only makes the viewer question their own reasoning, but is a means to awaken the viewer, "...from a perceptive lethargy furthered by habit."<ref name=Brill131>{{Cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=64_MywUrftoC&q=.from%20a%20perceptive%20lethargy%20furthered%20by%20habit%22&pg=PA131|title=Shock and the Senseless in Dada and Fluxus|last=Brill|first=Dorothée|date=2010|publisher=University Press of New England|isbn=9781584659174|page=131|access-date=25 October 2020|archive-date=23 April 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210423080439/https://books.google.com/books?id=64_MywUrftoC&q=.from+a+perceptive+lethargy+furthered+by+habit%22&pg=PA131|url-status=live}}</ref> Paik himself described the shock factor in his Fluxus work: "People who come to my concerts or see my objects need to be transferred into another state of consciousness. They have to be high. And in order to put them into this state of highness, a little shock is required... Anyone who came to my exhibition saw the head and was high."<ref>{{Cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=xv7XCwAAQBAJ&q=People%20who%20come%20to%20my%20concerts%20or%20see%20my%20objects%20paik&pg=PA294|title=Into the Maelstrom: Music, Improvisation and the Dream of Freedom: Before 1970|last=Toop|first=David|author-link=David Toop|date=2016-05-05|publisher=Bloomsbury Publishing USA|isbn=9781441102775|pages=294|access-date=25 October 2020|archive-date=23 April 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210423080414/https://books.google.com/books?id=xv7XCwAAQBAJ&q=People+who+come+to+my+concerts+or+see+my+objects+paik&pg=PA294|url-status=live}}</ref> Paik's "head" was that of a real cow displayed at the entrance to his exhibition, Exposition of Music—Electronic Television, located in the Galerie Parnass, Wuppertal, Germany in 1963.<ref name=Brill131 />