fluxus

The Fluxus artistic philosophy can be expressed as a synthesis of four key factors that define the majority of Fluxus work:

Fluxus is an attitude. It is not a movement or a style.[4]

Fluxus is intermedia.[5] Fluxus creators like to see what happens when different media intersect. They use found and everyday
objects, sounds, images, and texts to create new combinations of objects, sounds, images, and texts.

Fluxus works are simple. The art is small, the texts are short, and the performances are brief.

Fluxus is fun. Humour has always been an important element in Fluxus.

Carey Young

carey young

A small stall was set up in a marketplace, close to other market stalls and in sight of the facades of multinational businesses. At the stall, the services of a local professional ‘arbitrator’ was made available, without charge, to the public for the period of one day. Arbitration is the process in which disputes are settled by the use of a professional mediator. Arbitrators are primarily used in commercial situations in which conventional discussion processes have broken down, but in which peace must be created. The process may be familiar to anyone who recalls the clashes between trade unions and their often-corporate employers in the days before the globalised erosion of union power.

The arbitration service was on offer for the period of one day for two (or more) people who had a dispute – any dispute - to resolve. The arbitrator was situated at an office-style table, with two office-style chairs for members of the public to sit down. Prior to launch, the service was advertised in the local media and signs were also placed next to the stall.

The piece also made reference to larger questions of conflict. Arbitration is inherently concerned with the attempt to create peace. Thus this tiny site, almost as small as a picnic table, alluded to notions of a peaceful Utopia, whilst it nevertheless seemed vulnerable, dwarfed by the size and architecture of the surrounding environment. The site offered a tiny and temporary peace zone that was gone all too soon.

jiri kovanda

jiri kovanda

kissing through the glass
www.flashartonline.com/

extract from frieze interview

JM I’m very interested in the transition that occurred between the performance of your actions and their translation into documentary photographs. There are no audiences present at some of your actions. The only people who know they’re art are you and the photographer. But the resulting photograph isn’t the art work, it’s the action, isn’t it?
JK  The question is when communication takes place. I think it’s at the moment when the thing is referred to as art. That means that if an action has an audience, it happens straight away. If no spectators have been invited, however, I think it doesn’t take place until afterwards, in the artistic space – in other words, either at an exhibition, or in print, it doesn’t matter. In short, when it’s presented as art.
JM In retrospect, then?
JK  Yes in retrospect, although you can’t draw a clear dividing line. Without the action, it wouldn’t exist. The action has to take place.
JM In this respect time has quite a particular status. In the act of documentation, you’re calling attention to something that happened earlier: the action without an audience.
JK  But the action has to be there. An idea isn’t enough, it has to really take place.(*) I’ve had many ideas and scripts for different actions that I haven’t carried out, but I’ve never published the ones that didn’t happen.

*why does it have to take place, can art exist in an iddea only?

but if you tell your idea the tellig of it is the art and not the idea? so you couldnt present an idea only as art?