Activating Fluxus
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Performance Conservation: Artists Speak
Can performance art be conserved – and if so, how? The research project Performance: Conservation, Materiality, Knowledge, funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation, is hosting its third annual colloquium Performance Conservation: Artists Speak. Artists engaged with performance will discuss the afterlives and legacies of their work, and even consider performance’s potential to serve as a…
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Activating Fluxus: In and Out of the Archive
Friday, May 5, 2023, 10:00-18:30 CEST, online Fondazione Bonotto in collaboration with the research project Activating Fluxus (sponsored by the Swiss National Science Foundation and located at Bern Academy of the Arts, Switzerland), are pleased to announce the public online event: “Activating Fluxus: In and Out of the Archive.” This event brings together eminent speakers…
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Stefanie Manthey: ‘The common arts of Fluxus’
Stefanie Manthey, one of our associated researchers in the Activating Fluxus network, has contributed an article to the first HKB newspaper of 2023. Stefanie’s article, ‘The common arts of Fluxus’, highlights the playful agency of Fluxus objects, performances, and events created in the 1960s-70s, and additionally considers the methodological potential of Fluxus play for contemporary…
ABOUT OUR PROJECT, IN BRIEF
This research project, which has been funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation at Bern University of the Arts, investigates the objects, events, scores, and ephemera that emerged in the spirit of Fluxus in the 1960s–70s in Switzerland, Europe, the UK, and the USA. Inherently fluctuating by definition, Fluxus rejects any stable, material form. Considering the transitory aspects of Fluxus forms not destined for preservation, and looking through a multidisciplinary lens of conservation, art history, performance studies, heritage studies and museology, our project will advance novel strategies for activating Fluxus through the reconstruction, adaptation and artistic reinterpretation of Fluxus forms.
AIMS AND MEANS
The project has three principal aims : (I) Using examples of collections and individual artworks held in Switzerland and abroad, the project reviews, catalogues, evaluates and systematises the current strategies for exhibiting, conserving and documenting Fluxus. (II) By means of a theoretical investigation of the notions of authenticity, changeability and intentionality and the role they play in the continuing life of Fluxus intermedia, (III) the project advances new strategies for activating Fluxus works through (a) the reconstruction, (b) the adaptation and (c) the artistic reinterpretation of Fluxus forms.
IN DETAIL
Activating Fluxus centers on the lives and afterlives of Fluxus objects, events, and ephemera created in the 1960s–70s in Switzerland, Europe, the UK, and the US. Fluxus transformed creative practice for good, not least by questioning the dominant preconception of the artwork as something that endures unchanged. Inherently fluctuating by definition, the creative outputs of Fluxus reject any stable, material form. While many histories of the post-war avant-garde focus on the implications of nascent conceptualism and performativity for other artistic genres, the proposed project considers the fundamentally transitory aspects of Fluxus forms not destined for preservation. By seeking new ways to engage with the legacy of Fluxus through the lens of conservation, art history, performance studies, heritage studies and museology, this project examines the possibility of activating Fluxus, challenged as it is by its paradoxical coexistence of ephemerality and materiality, with implications for how we conceive of changeable artworks that emerged after the 1960s.
Activating Fluxus 