And then, one day, I had a tutor mentioning me to have a look at FLUXUS… and my world just opened up and new ideas came rushing in and flew out, running after each other, and dancing in the rain in the middle of a street in a cacophony of music and sounds and deafening silence: I found a way which justified and validated my Self. I didn’t feel poor man’s Matilde anymore, misunderstood and mocked for her ideas, but I felt invested and complete.
My first thoughts were to find three artistic expressions to study, re. peace and activism and war. I was thinking maybe painting, or sculpture, poetry, manifestos, or performance pieces. I was thinking about Kafka, ee cummings, Ezra Pound, James Joyce, Harold Pinter; I was going in that direction. I wanted to find three artists I could study and relate to, but when Fluxus came my way it was the whole movement which blew me away.
here). Fluxus artists stood against museums and galleries, against dealers and retrospectives. Art, for them, has to be mass-produced, cheap, and subversive.
Now, I don’t believe in all of the above, at all. BUT… I understand being rebellious (I mean, I published a book titled Rebeltherapy!), I like the playfulness, I am attracted to subversiveness. I still believe in museums and galleries and let’s not forget that many of those artists have become pretty famous and made quite a lot of money by being against “the establishment”.
I am not going to write here an essay about Fluxus, its founder George Maciunas, the experimental music of John Cage, or the urinal of Duchamp: there is plenty around online. I am a rebel and in full Fluxus-mode I am not even going to leave you the links.
I am just going to say that now that I have discovered it, I know what kind of “stuff” I am going to make for my peace project. And I feel very happy about it. And it’s going to be about futility and hypocrisy, and irony. Basically, as a homily on ignorant delusions.
E VONDE.