Activating Fluxus
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EVENT SWIRL: Eventscoring with Peter Frank, Magdalena Holdar and Aga Wielocha
July 4, 2025 / 19:00 CEST // Weronika Trojańska, artist and researcher behind the Event Swirl application, invites you to the second meeting in her ongoing series exploring this innovative project. Joining Trojańska for this session will be Magdalena Holdar, Peter Frank and Aga Wielocha. Together, they will examine the concept of performing and preserving…
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Fluxus konservieren und aktivieren: Ein Interview mit Lisa Schiller und Josephine Ellis von Nicole Grothe
Last April I spoke with Lisa Schiller and Nicole Grothe, conservator and head of collections respectively at the Museum Ostwall in Dortmund, about some of the challenges Fluxus (and related) artworks pose to conservation practices and the museum more broadly. The interview was published in an edition of the MO_Magazin accompanying the Museum’s opening of…
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The Matter of Activity: Flux Mystery Food by Ben Vautier
An enigma surrounds Flux Mystery Food, which first appeared as canned food presented by the French artist Ben Vautier at the Fluxus Festival in Nice in 1963. A black-and-white documentary photograph captures Vautier consuming the contents of an unlabelled can— a unique and somewhat forgotten event, allegedly followed by him brushing his teeth [Image 1].…
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 