TAG: FLUXUS

From left: Cory Arcangel in his Brooklyn studio; Cory Arcangel. Sailing (detail). 2010. Website. Image courtesy of Cory Arcangel. ©  2012 Cory Arcangel

This past January computer programmer, web designer, and sculptor Cory Arcangel participated in the exhibition “Thing/Thought: Fluxus Editions, 1962–78,” by creating his own arrangement of a Fluxkit, the signature compilation of objects created by many Fluxus artists held in a black suitcase. Read more

A postage stamp is a small, government-issued square of paper adhered to mail in order to enable its circulation. An artist’s stamp, in the simplest of terms, is an object that is related to a postage stamp in either its form or content, but which does not necessarily help deliver a letter. Read more

Last month, artist William Pope.L spent a day at MoMA, exploring the collections of artists’ multiples on view in Thing/Thought: Fluxus Editions, 1962–1978. While he was here, he produced the above performance video, which incorporates the Fluxkit to incredibly humorous effect. Read more

There was a hint of prank and play in the air at The Museum of Modern Art on November 1. Had you been walking in the Museum’s Marron Atrium that day, you may have gotten caught in a flurry of white cards descending from above. Read more

Fluxkit. 1965. Fluxus Edition announced 1964. The Museum of Modern Art. The Gilbert and Lila Silverman Fluxus Collection Gift

The opening of Thing/Thought: Fluxus Editions, 1962-1978 did not end on the evening of September 21, 2011. As part of the exhibition (on display in The Paul J Sachs Prints and Illustrated Books Galleries through January 16, 2012), six artists have been invited to participate in the exhibition’s organization by “unpacking” and arranging two Fluxkits—the signature compilation of objects by many Fluxus artists stored in black suitcases assembled by George Maciunas, a central organizer and participant. At different points throughout the run of the show, new artists will pull from the kits’ bounty—from posters to lentil beans—and have a hand in the making of this ever-evolving exhibition.

Of the line-up, which includes Alison Knowles, Dora Maurer, Anna Ostoya, Cory Arcangel, and William Pope.L, the first to put the kit to task is one who knows its form well: Mieko Shiomi. The Japanese-born composer and visual artist spent the early years of her career challenging her training as a classical musician. Exploring new possibilities of sound and composition, Shiomi famously made music with instruments’ unused parts. After rubbing shoulders with Tokyo-based artists who had spent time abroad in the early 1960s, including Nam June Paik, Yoko Ono, and Toshi Ichiyanagi, Shiomi left her native Japan, and joined the growing contingent of Fluxus artists in New York. Of the works that Shiomi created while working with Maciunas in New York, three (Endless Box, Events and Games, and Water Music) are components of the kits on display.

Although Shiomi’s stay with the Fluxus community in New York was short-lived, she has always overcome the limitations of her locality by embracing the mail service as a means for collaboration and artistic production. True to her ways, Shiomi sent the plans for her current arrangement for the Fluxkit to us from her home in Osaka via the U.S. postal service. Upon unfolding the long, scroll-like plan, my colleagues and I stood in admiration at the painstaking effort she put into the placement of each work. Shiomi’s masterful arrangement fills the cases entirely, and is ordered according to a system of grid-lines that distinguish each artist’s work from the next, while embedding them in a myriad of constellatory relations. While Shiomi certainly did not empty the Fluxkit suitcase entirely (and thus did prioritize certain works over others), the lyrical arrangement of the kit’s contents appears non-hierarchical—making one wonder what, in particular, Shiomi’s discerning hand adds to our understanding of the works before us.

Mieko Shiomi's plan for her arrangement of Fluxkit. © 2011 Mieko Shiomi

If meaning does not pop out blatantly before our eyes we may need to linger, look, and listen a little differently. We may even need to follow the artist’s lead. The instruction card shown on the right—from Shiomi’s Events and Games, which is on display in the kit—may shed some light on her approach to arranging the kit.

If nothing else, perhaps what we may glean from Shiomi’s display is the particular rhythm of its form—the way she peered upon the “puddle” of papers, cans, and cards. Like the event itself, Shiomi’s process concerns looking both intently and with multiple perspectives.

This is the first post in the new series Off the Shelf, which explores unique MoMA publications from the Museum Archives.

From left: Front Cover: Yoko Ono. Montage incorporating photographic images of Rolf Jährling, Iain Macmillan, Nancy Mee, and Nori Sato. 1988. © 1988 by Yoko Ono. Back Cover: Milan Knizak. Drawing for catalogue cover. 1988. © 1988 by Milan Knizak.

Endpapers: Ben Vautier. Assholes Wallpaper. c. 1974.

During our intern walkthrough of the exhibition Staging Action: Performance in Photography since 1960, we learned about Yoko Ono and George Maciunas‘s Fluxus Wallpaper, which is displayed along the third-floor hallway at the entrance to Staging Action and Pictures by Women: A History of Modern Photography. Read more

Like my uncles, my father, and many other fathers, Fluxus is a stroller, meaning all are peripatetic, funny, unreliable, enigmatic, and angry.

My father strolled, my uncles strolled, and so does Fluxus. The word “stroller” is not my own. I heard it at my uncle’s funeral. A strange woman said it. I did not know her. I suppose my uncle did. He knew a lot of people. When it came time for folks to say a few words about the deceased, the woman stood up and said, “He was a stroller.” Everyone laughed. At first I thought she was calling him a baby carriage but I knew what she meant. Read more

George Maciunas. One Year. 1973–74. Various empty containers and packaging. Above: Alison Knowles. Selections from The Identical Lunch. 1969. Screenprints on canvas. Installation view of both works at MoMA. The Museum of Modern Art. The Gilbert and Lila Silverman Fluxus Collection. Photo: Jason Mandella

This week MoMA launches Instruction Lab in the mezzanine of the Lewis B. and Dorothy Cullman Education and Research Building, inspired by the Fluxus works included in the current Contemporary Art from the Collection exhibition. Read more

Confetti from George Maciunas’s New Flux Year. c. 1967. The Museum of Modern Art. The Gilbert and Lila Silverman Fluxus Collection Gift, 2008

Upon opening an orange faux-reptile-skin box marked only with the typed words “top” and “pull,” we received quite a surprise: out jumped a coiled toy snake and a shower of confetti printed with the words “New Flux Year.” Rattled, we soon found that the joke was on us, as we were left returning every last scrap of paper, along with the spring-loaded snake, back into the box before shutting it carefully. Read more

Note signed by James Riddle (American, born 1933). The Gilbert and Lila Silverman Fluxus Collection Gift, 2008

We found this note attached to an object shrouded in tissue and quarantined within three Ziploc bags. Read more