Activating Fluxus
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Anna Schäffler: The Art of Preservation
Wednesday, December 21, 2022, 17:00-18:30 CEST. SNSF Activating Fluxus, in collaboration with SNSF Performance: Conservation, Materiality, Knowledge, is thrilled to announce a lecture by Dr Anna Schäffler. This lecture features a presentation of Schäffler’s recent book, Die Kunst der Erhaltung. Anna Oppermanns Ensembles, zeitgenössische Restaurierung und Nachlasspraxis im Wandel (München: edition metzel, 2021, in German).
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Natilee Harren: Fluxus Forms of Activation
In a presentation that expands on arguments presented in her award-winning book Fluxus Forms: Scores, Multiples, and the Eternal Network, Natilee Harren considers the multitude of ways Fluxus artists and the inheritors of their legacy have activated and remade one another’s works, both in the moment of the collective’s emergence in the 1960s and in…
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Ecart as Fluxus: Get Inspired and Inspire
In Geneva, Fluxus found fertile ground and gave rise to what is known today as Ecart Group. Founded by John M. Armleder, Claude Rychner, and Patrick Lucchini during an Ecart Happening Festival in 1969 and active until the begging of the 1980s, the group became known predominantly as organizers of events including performance recitals and…
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 