Activating Fluxus
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2024 with Fluxus: exhibitions and events
In this post, you will discover a comprehensive compilation of present, and upcoming exhibitions highlighting Fluxus and Fluxus artists held in 2024. We will diligently update this list throughout the year to ensure its accuracy. Should you happen to come across an exhibition that we have omitted, kindly reach out to us via email at
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Archival Explorations: Fluxus at the Getty Research Institute’s Special Collections
The Getty Research Institute (GRI) houses an extensive collection of Fluxus materials, offering valuable research opportunities for Fluxus scholars and enthusiasts. This blog post offers observations and guidance on navigating the complexity of GRI collections.
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Infrastructures of Display: A Model of Schaumagazin for Museum Abteiberg’s Fluxus Collection—A Conversation with Felicia Rappe and Melanie Seidler
This conversation, which took place in person and over email between June 2023 and January 2024, unfolds between representatives of Museum Abteiberg and members of the Activating Fluxus project. By presenting divergent perspectives on the concept of “activation” in the context of museum practices, the dialogue offers an opportunity to deepen the discourse around activation…
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 