I am in the beer garden of the Roath Park Pub wearing a suit that does not fit. The trousers will not button, and as I reach down to pick items out of a baby bath, the sleeves rise high up my arms. A pack of playing cards, a book, a box of matches, a toy train (including track), a pair of glasses, the most beautiful cracker and a cuddly toy are bobbing in the water. The cuddly toy, face down, looks like the victim of a hit from a Mafioso kingpin. I pull out the book, a copy of Moby Dick with pages torn out, and wring it like a sponge. It is one of the more surreal visual images that has remained with me, but in the context of the evening, it was par for the course.
A concert has just finished featuring art pieces written by a myriad of different people who come together under the banner of Fluxus. The event was organised Cardiff-based composer/artist Dan Wyn Jones and myself, with the aid of performers Rosey Brown, Ethan Davies, Lauren Heckler and Ingrid Lagouanelle. We are pleased by the fact that we managed to fill the back room of the pub (which had graciously allowed us to use the space for free) with people interested in the obscure and absurd performances that are characteristic of Fluxus artworks.
Fluxus is an international group of artists that originated in the early 1960s and had its main period of output from then until the late 70s. Students from John Cage's experimental music course in New York began to organise concerts or happenings where they performed event scores. These scores take the form of short texts that describe actions that a performer realises on stage, such as:
Cheers
Conduct a large crowd of people to the house of a stranger. Knock on the door. When someone opens the door, the crowd applauds and cheers vigorously. All depart silently.
Ken Friedman - 1965
Since its conception a multitude of scores have been created, ranging from those where you would be insane to realise, such as:
Music for a Revolution
Scoop out one of your eyes five years from now and do the same with the other eye five years later.
Takehisa Kosugi - date unknown
to simple meditative actions:
Lighting Piece
Light a match and watch it till it goes out.
Yoko Ono - 1962
When this is performed, the combination of stillness and tension as the flame gets closer to the performer's fingers is quite mesmerising. It shines a light on a simple action that has a subtle beauty to it. This is the heart of the intention of Fluxus; shining a spotlight on an aspect of the everyday that you would normally miss. The origins can be found in the artistic technique of framing utilised by their teacher, John Cage, who was inspired by Marcel Duchamp. Following the example of Marcel Duchamp's placement of a urinal in a gallery and framing it as art, John Cage framed the subtle noise of the concert hall in 4'33". In turn the Fluxus artists took everyday actions and framed them on stage as performances: the everyday and mundane became art.
George Manciunas is credited with naming the Fluxus movement. Manciunas saw Fluxus as an 'anti-art' movement reacting to the elitism of the art world, demonstrated in the Fluxus manifesto. The aims were to create art for everybody and that everybody could be included in the creation and performance. The underlying principles are illustrated in our poster:
1. Fluxus is an attitude. It is not a movement or a style.
2. Fluxus is intermedia. 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.
3. Fluxus works are simple. The art is small, the texts are short and the performances are brief.
4. Fluxus is fun. Humour has always been an important element in Fluxus.
Fluxus proved to be incredibly influential in the art world. The term 'conceptual art' was coined by Fluxus member Henry Flynt to describe his pieces. The focus of the idea over the aesthetic being an idea that has caused many a heated argument since its conception. Video art stemmed from work created by Naim June Paik which was relevant at the time of television, but has become increasingly so with the saturation of video in our everyday lives and the ease in which videos can be created. Examining the influence of even just these two examples reveals an incredibly rich vein of artistic expression through the art history of the last half-century.
For our recent concert, using the freely available Fluxus workbook, we organised a programme of works that included six new scores from each of the performers. With an eye to keeping the Fluxus tradition of the everyday, we decided to have no applause at the beginning of the concert and intentionally did not signal the end. The concert began with Ethan Davies' performance of Lee Heflin's First Performance.
First Performance
Performer enters, bows, then exits. This is executed once for every member of the audience.
Lee Heflin - date unknown
The performance began as soon as the audience entered the performance space. Once the audience had taken their seats, we collected Ethan and as an ensemble performed Shuffle by Alison Knowles.
Shuffle
The performer of performers shuffle into the performance area and away from it, above, behind, around or through the audience. They perform as a group or solo: but quietly.
Alison Knowles 1961
There were no formal entrances or applause. The next piece on the program served as a continuing thread throughout the concert
Variation #1 on Proposition
Make a soup.
Allison Knowles - 1964
This piece occasionally interrupted events as a new stage in the soup-making process was needed, culminating in the final piece:
Supper (Arr. for 4 performers)
The curtain is raised. A large table is set with food, drink, flowers and candles is displayed on stage. 10 well dressed performers carrying instruments enter, bow, and seat themselves behind the table. They lay down their instruments. 2 waiters begin to serve food and wine. Performers begin to eat, drink and talk. After a few minutes, the audience can also be offered food and drink.
Ben Vautier - 1965
As this was the last piece, we ignored the audience and sat down to soup and wine, the final performance blending with the rest of time outside the concert with no official end point. The everyday actions elided into the audience's usual day.
One of the most surprising and positive outcomes was the role of audience participation; two words that usually strike dread into attendees of performance art and a fear that I have personally felt throughout performances I have attended. Over time, I have grown to enjoy to the inclusion of audience participation; as that fear is a strong emotion that can create striking experiences. By attending a live event you put yourself physically in the same space as a number of different people and the performers on the stage. There is no longer the safety of a screen dividing you from the performers and their actions. Surely a strong emotional response and the frisson of live rather than fixed performance are factors in why we attend such events. In our concert, the unexpected outcome of audience participation provided something that made the evening more special. The audience was included in this particular concert with interspersed performances of Ken Friedman's event score, Fluxus Instant Theater, throughout the evening:
Fluxus Instant Theater
Rescore Fluxus events for performance by the audience. A conductor may conduct the audience-performers.
Ken Friedman - 1966
As Fluxus scores are generally practical to realise, we called audience members up to the stage, having taken their names and put them in a top hat as they entered, and then provided them with a card with a score upon it. After a hesitant start, with the first person refusing to come to the stage, we soon found willing participants who, after the disappointment of being chosen to leave the safety of the group, enthusiastically performed each of the scores. Interpretation is an element that is integral in the realisation of these pieces, so it was interesting to see how each person interpreted scores on the fly. The most striking result of audience interaction came from Daniel Wyn Jones' score:
Appreciating Literature
Remove a page from a great literary work. Read out one full sentence. Give page to an audience member. Repeat until every member of the audience has a page.
To be performed by several performers simultaneously.
Daniel Wyn Jones - 2018
The idea of this piece centres on the sound of overlapping voices as each audience member receives an artefact from the performance in the form of a page extract from a book. An audible gasp was heard in reaction to the first rip of the page. A line was read out and the page was handed to the first audience member. One after another, audience members started to unexpectedly join the recital. They cyclically read their page of Moby Dick while the performers continued to rip pages from the main copy, reciting a single line and providing another audience member with material. The overlapping sounds of speech slowly grew and grew until the entire audience held a page in their hands. A cacophonous roar of the words of Herman Melville filled the room, the lines clashing with each other. The performers' job was done, but the piece continued. The audience had taken control as we sat down and listened to a piece that was being performed by the audience to the performers -- a fantastic experience. The piece was only starting to die down when set up for the next began.
There is an obvious connection between Fluxus and the Scratch Orchestra, which I intend to explore later in a post connected to the recently formed: Cardiff New Music Collective. Fluxus works do not necessarily focus upon sound, but they could be applied to compositions in interesting ways. In our concert, we were surprised by the sonic result of Octet for Winds:
Octet for Winds (Arr. for Quartet)
Equal number of performers seat themselves opposite each other. A large pan of water is placed between the two groups and a toy sailboat is placed on the water. Performers blow their wind instruments at the sail of the boat pushing it to the opposing group. Both groups try to blow the boat away from themselves and toward the other group. If possible, all performers should play some popular tune while blowing on the sail. Piece ends when the boat reaches one end or the other of the pan.
George Brecht - 1964
Instead of woodwind instruments we arranged it for an ensemble of flute, clarinet, trumpet and french horn. The interesting aspect of this piece is that it creates a strange, organised free improvisation session, with structure and tension built into the performers' situation. The cacophonous roar of the ensemble's playing was more interesting to listen to than I predicted, the chaotic nature of the improvisation contrasting with the slow bobbing motion of the paper boat's journey. While playing in the piece, I became swept up in its competitive nature, even though the trumpet only minimally effected the movement of the boat. I did notice that when we were in the lead, I started to make that final push in order to ensure victory -- a ridiculous idea but very much in the spirit of Fluxus.
From the programming of the concert, to the expected and unexpected outcomes of the performances and the conversations with many people that I have had with many people regarding these pieces, this event was an incredibly enriching and thought provoking experience. In a world where most performance is experienced through a screen, embracing of the performative in a real space with real people doing unexpected and absurd things is a less usual and perhaps uncomfortable prospect, but also a rewarding one. Long may the Fluxus spirit continue.
* Photographs courtesy of Alastair Grey