In Memoriam George Maciunas is a video recording of a Fluxus concert, Klavierduett, given in memory of George Maciunas in 1978, the year of his death. Organised by the René Block Gallery, it took place at the Düsseldorf Academy of Fine Arts. The event had been planned the previous year with the aim of providing material assistance to George Maciunas, who was suffering from cancer. The project brought together Nam June Paik and Joseph Beuys.

Fluxus was devised and launched by American artist George Maciunas. He and Nam June Paik met in 1961, in New York. Paik joined the movement and participated in Fluxus happenings. When George Maciunas went to Europe in the early 1960s, the Korean artist introduced him to the arts scene, allowing the Fluxus spirit to develop in Europe.

Two videotapes exist under this title. One of them shows a partial version of the concert; the other, which lasts 74 minutes, presents the entire show.

The Fluxus concerts are happenings that are presented outside of conventional venues. They reject the restrictive rules of a predefined language or ideology, refuse to follow a fixed programme, and incorporate chance and circumstance.

The tape's opening sequences contextualise the concert experience with the brief appearance of two artists playing the piano followed by a long sequence shot of a poster. The latter displays on the one hand, the black and white image of a masked male face whose hands are placed on either side of the head like ears, and on the other, the videotape title and George Maciunas' dates of birth and death. The image returns to Nam June Paik in a series of short, intimist sequences suggesting contemplation. He appears successively in close-up and solarised takes, holding a candle and playing the piano; then the image becomes blurred. The fade-out sets up the artist's visual disappearance, implying his retreat. Placed at the start of the tape, these sequences are a reworking of the concert's fiftieth minute, when the stage lights are momentarily extinguished to make way for this ritual. The concert is then presented through a black-and-white sequence shot, using a fixed camera that alternately records each of the artists, the show as a whole, or part of the audience. From the start of this reworked recording, the soundtrack plays a musical piece improvised by Joseph Beuys, which mingles with Nam June Paik's sound contributions.

The two artists play on two grand pianos that face each other. Each artist is deeply focused on his performance. Joseph Beuys displays excellent technique, while Nam June Paik moves about and tinkers with the instrument's insides. He places the microphone on a string that he repeatedly vibrates by pressing the piano key. He walks away from the prepared piano and returns with an alarm clock. He wraps it up in his jacket along with the mic, making the tick-tock sound audible. In a nod to symbolism and mythology, Joseph Beuys is wearing a bag and a felt-wrapped copper cane on his back. He briefly manipulates a second cane that is leaning against the piano. Silent and immobile, the audience listens to this anti-music concert.

Klavierduett lasts 74 minutes. This length corresponds to the inverted numbers of Maciunas' age when he died. The alarm clock rings the end of the concert (in A Tribute to John Cage, John Cage does the same in the 4'33'' performance).

The short version ends after 28 minutes and 30 seconds of concert, truncating the two artists' performance. Halfway through the concert, they apparently switched roles. The missing section purportedly showed Nam June Paik playing well-known tunes on the piano and Joseph Beuys creating incongruous sounds with a tape player, reiterating the anti-music practices long used by Paik in Fluxus meetings and festivals.

Unlike the tributene Paik in his video works, In Memoriam George Maciunas provides no information on the artist's oeuvre and includes no commercial sequence, nor transformation of the recorded images. However, as we have seen, the concert was edited for television broadcast. Nam June Paik and Joseph Beuys performed Fluxus concerts together from 1963 onwards, followed by satellite transmissions for exhibitions (Satellitensendung, documenta 6, en 1977) and for the television show Good Morning Mr. Orwell in 1984.

Thérèse Beyler
Translated by Anna Knight