Fluxus is a performance group that began with the John Cage class at the New School in 1958. Most Fluxus concepts originated there with the creation by George Brecht of the Event Score. These works were organized into a collective by George Maciunas who was living in NY and Germany at the time. Other sources were the visual and concrete poetry movements from United States and abroad. The group moved above ground with a Fluxus Performance Festival of New Music in Wiesbaden, Germany in 1962. The group is international and has presented objects for exhibition and events for performance in countries around the world.

Fluxus was thought to be anti establishment and anti art. Many objects and events however were not intended to be anti art at all, emphasizing the heretofore neglected sensibilities of smell, site, touch and task as a relevant base for art making and performance.

Meetings take place at the anniversary of the Wiesbaden festival: '72, '82, '92 and 2002. The works performed are based on ordinary activities from daily life expressed in simple, concrete terms. For example, Knowles' Make a Salad has most recently been performed 2003 at the Baltimore Museum, and 2004 at the Wexner Museum in the United States. In America, this form of the Fluxus event score instigated performance art in this country. Here is an example of a typical Fluxus concert:

Alison Knowles - Shuffle, Dick Higgins - Danger Music, Ben Patterson - Paper Piece, Mieko Shiomi - Smile, Takehisa Kosugi - Anima 7, Nam June Paik - One, Philip Corner - Piano Activities, Yasunao Tone - Smooth Event, Emmett Williams - Counting Song, and George Brecht - Exit.

Among the many books and catalogs on the subject of Fluxus, useful for both theory and activities:
- Happening & Fluxus: archive of Hans Sohm, Published by Koelnischer Kunstverein, 1970
- Fluxus Codex by Jon Hendricks, Published by Harry Abrams, 1988
- Two Addenda of the Gilbert and Lila Silverman Collection, 1981
- Fluxus Experience by Hannah Higgins, Published by Univ. of California Press, 2002
- Uncorrupted Joy by Kritine Stiles, "Out of Action" Museum of Contemporary Art, LA

For more information, please contact Alison Knowles at akijan@earthlink.net




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