artist's StaTemeNts

Visible Language, 2006 by Bowman, Alan

Abstract

Twelve artists, active in various media, reflect on their relationship to Fluxus. Their comments reveal essential aspects of Fluxus that inspire their own work. The offerings are celebratory, ironic and questioning.

Fluxus & the far end of the Freeform-freakout Organization

I CAN NEVER DECIDE JUST WHAT IT IS about the other F-word that has been such a major influence (and a major hindrance) to my work and its development. Having little practical talent I have always had difficulty in expressing my ideas clearly, despite experimenting in many different media. My body of work, for what it is to date, is mainly a collection of half-finished experiments that includes most media from pencil and paper to digital music production. My problem being that I never feel that I have much ability in any of these media, I experiment and play and just see what happens. My very nature seems to prevent me from becoming proficient in any one area, just as it seems I'm going to master something I tend to change tack or even abandon the project altogether.

For many years I made interventions, in my working environment, usually written pieces and usually in offices. For fifteen years I worked in office environments, my studio space was a desk, my materials store the stationary cupboard. I never looked at what I was doing as art-to stick a tiny "be careful" sign, which could only be read by standing on a chair on a desk, was a natural mode in which I was able to express my ideas. I always had trouble in accepting that I was perhaps more comfortable doing this than I was when trying to draw or paint out my ideas as I had focused on doing throughout my schooling. Fluxus, as I first perceived it, allowed me to accept the fact that what I was doing was actually ok.

Stumbling across Fluxus, and my initial perceptions of it, gave me the go ahead to continue what I had been doing. I felt better that there were others doing similar stuff with a similar humor-and that was it initially.

Further reading and particular fascination with the performance and instruction scores marked the biggest change in my work, or rather my level of confidence and conviction. The score format allowed me to share my take on the world without necessarily trying to force my view upon the reader. One of my earliest scores, "Change the Sound of the Sea," invites the reader to do just that, however it makes no suggestion regarding how to do so. Here was one of the first times that I realized that if I regularly visualized one concept in many different ways, then I should allow for an audience to do so too. The score format also allowed me to overcome a severe lack of confidence in myself by allowing me to produce a piece, but leaving its execution up to someone else!

So I suppose the score is the element of Fluxus that has most concretely influenced my work, it is also the most easily published-most of the other things I do never reach the public eye; I'd have to own up to them then! It is the humor, however, an element that I feel is often overlooked, which truly inspired me. Further explanation of this I fear will have to wait for another badly written 500 words.

Evolving Fluxus

BIBIANA PADILLA MALTOS

FROM MY INITIAL EXPERIENCES, COMES A FURTHER DEFINITION OF MY work, separated into three main camps: works which deal directly with language, based fundamentally on the visual poetry I've made; then comes works or activities that deal with the body, with games, with networks, with interaction, based mostly on my discovery and/or relationship to the Fluxus movement. Finally, there comes a series of works that try to coalesce these two, as a form of development or evolution of everything I've done so far, which could end with a life-long project that revolves around my own death.

One of the fascinating aspects of the Fluxus movements (I state it as a plural, for it is still, I believe, an ongoing and evolving experience, not constricted to a historical period) is its emphasis on community and interaction; the fact that anyone can be part of an aesthetic experience, informed by nature, by chance, by a previously set process of interaction with an everyday activity, leads us towards one of the aspects mentioned at the beginning: the setting up of the common, the domestic, the mundane, to a level that may not be necessarily "art" in the traditional sense, but that it may well be one of the most ecstatic experiences someone may have in his or her immediate future.

I started to do Fluxus performances for festivals, AVTEXTFESt, all pieces were done in the context of the festival, but pointing out that said festival, at least in the first case, was done in a public place that did not "expect" to "see a performance." Much to the surprise of the public, they unconsciously and then consciously, and then forthrightly, became part of the spectacle. This is the part of Fluxus that interested me the most, the fact that you could allow for a glimpse of what the distinction between art and life can do for the individual, even though that in the process, said individual may or may not be aware of this process.