Fluxus—a name taken from a Latin word meaning "to flow"—is an international network of artists, composers and designers noted for blending different artistic media and disciplines in the 1960s. They have been active in Neo-Dada noise music and visual art as well as literature, urban planning, architecture, and design. Fluxus is often described as intermedia, a term coined by Fluxus artist Dick Higgins in a famous 1966 essay.
While Fluxus was named and organized by Maciunas, the Fluxus community began in a small but global network of artists and composers who were already at work when Maciunas met them through minimalist composer La Monte Young and poet Jackson Mac Low in the early 1960s. John Cage's 1957 to 1959 Experimental Composition classes at the New School for Social Research in New York City were attended by Jackson Mac Low, Al Hansen, George Brecht and Dick Higgins, many of whom were working in other media with little or no background in music. Another cluster of artists was connected to each other through Rutgers University. Many other artists were invited by Cage to attend his classes unofficially at the New School. Marcel Duchamp and Allan Kaprow (who is credited as the creator of the first "happenings") were also influential to Fluxus. In its early days Fluxus artists were active in Europe (especially in Germany), and Japan as well as in the United States.
La Monte Young had been asked to guest-edit an issue of a literary journal "Beatitude East" and that effort led to the proto-Fluxus publication called An Anthology of Chance Operations. Maciunas supplied the paper, design, and some money for publishing of the anthology, which contained a more or less arbitrary association of New York avant garde artists at that time. By the end of 1961 before An Anthology of Chance Operations was completed (it was finally published in 1963 by Jackson Mac Low and La Monte Young), Maciunas had moved to Germany to escape his creditors. From there, he continued his contact with the New York artists and sent out announcements about a series of "yearbooks" of artists works under the title of Fluxus.
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.[citation needed] While Maciunas assembled many objects by hand, he designed and intended them for mass production.[citation needed] Where many multiple publishers produced signed, numbered objects in limited editions intended for sale at high prices, Maciunas produced open editions at low prices.[citation needed] Several other Fluxus publishers produced different kinds of Fluxus editions. The best known of these was Something Else Press, a book publishing company established by Fluxus artist Dick Higgins. Something Else Press was 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.
Arts & Culture
