Feedback
In an electronic system, the return of output to the
input source.Vilém
Flusser (Prague, 1920-1991)
Writer and communications analyst Vilém Flusser
emigrated to Brazil at the age of twenty and taught the
philosophy of communications at the University of São
Paolo. After moving to France in 1973, he taught in
Aix-en-Provence and Arles and was a visiting professor in
many European and American universities. While the new
communications technologies were his main focus of
research, he wrote on a wide range of philosophical and
political issues, as well as on his own Jewish identity.
Bibliography: Five volumes of Flusser's
writings have been published in German as Schriften
(Bensheim: Bollmann, 1993-1996). Two works have been
translated into French: Pour une philosophie de la
photographie (Paris: Circé, 1996) and Choses et
non-choses, esquisses phénoménologiques (Nîmes:
Jacqueline Chambon, 1996). World/fall: An
Approximation (Monchengladboch: Vertrieb, 1991) is a
bilingual English-German publication. During the 1980s
and until the time of his accidental death, Flusser also
contributed a regular column on communications to the New
York magazine Artforum.
Fluxus
The origins of Fluxus can be traced to the experimental
composition courses that John Cage gave at the New School
for Social Research in New York at the end of the 1950s.
The term "fluxus" first appeared in 1961 in New
York, where Georges Maciunas organized evenings at his
A/G Gallery on the significance of realist, concrete
music and the fusion of forms. Among the artists
gathering there were George Brecht and Dick Higgins, two
of Cage's student from the New School, as well as La
Monte Young, Yoko Ono, Hal Hansen, Jackson MacLow, the
Living Theatre, Henri Flynt, and Walter De Maria.
Maciunas founded the magazine Fluxus and offered
his support to Young for the publication of An
Anthology (1961), which brought together experimental
music and recollections by various European artists and
Cage's former "students." In 1962 a Fluxus
Festival was held at the Städtische Museum in Wiesbaden,
Germany. Five violin virtuosos from Vienna were dismissed
and replaced by artists who had never touched a violin
and offered instead "anti-music." Among those
who distinguished themselves during these fourteen
concerts were Emmett Williams, Maciunas, Higgins,
Benjamin Patterson, Wolf Vostell, and Nam June Paik.
Fluxus was in fact a state of mind rather than a
movement, and as such, it brought together artists as
diverse as Eric Anderson, Geoffrey Hendricks, Ben
Vautier, Vostell, Higgins, Joe Jones, Milan Knizak,
Charlotte Moorman, Brecht, Flynt, Paik, Patterson,
Williams, Young, Ono, and Robin Page. A form of neo-Dada,
Fluxus defined itself by an unlimited exchange among
different artistic practices. From the United States, its
activities quickly spread to West Germany, Holland,
France, and Japan. The historical development basically
fell into three periods: 1961-1964, the pre-Fluxus years;
1964-1970, the years of objects and publications, and
1970-1978, the performance years. Fluxus art consisted
above all of attitudes, where happenings became all
important but continued to coexist with such varied forms
as George Brecht's "boxes" and events, Nam June
Paik's televisions, Ray Johnson's postal art, and La
Monte Young's experiments. In Maciunas's words, Fluxus
sought to "promote the reality of non-art so that it
can be grasped by everyone." The work thus became a
global attitude between life and art.
Bibliography: Jon Hendricks, Fluxus
Codex (Detroit, Michigan: Gilbert and Lila Silverman
Fluxus Collection/Harry N. Abrams, 1988). Janet Jenkins
(ed.), In the Spirit of Fluxus (Minneapolis:
Walker Art Center, 1993). Thomas Kellein, Fluxus (London:
Thames and Hudson, 1992). Achille Bonito Oliva (ed.), Ubi
Fluxus ibi motus 1990-1962 (Milan: Mazzota, 1990).
Emmett Williams, My Life in Flux--and Vice Versa
(London: Thames and Hudson, 1992).
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