The Book: Natural Born Fluxus is now ready. 30 artists, 60 images, 140 unique fluxus scores

Spread the word!
The Book: Natural Born Fluxus is now ready. 30 artists from several countries contributed more than 60 images and nearly 140 unique fluxus scores published here for the first time!
This is quite likely the most important Fluxus document ever published. The book is being presented in two versions: A full color hardback collector edition and a back and white soft cover version for the general public. The soft cover will have an isbn number and available in about two months to the wholesale market. In the meantime both versions are available via lulu.com. Get your special collector copy while you can! http://fluxmuseum.org/natural-born-fluxus.html
Make somebody buy you a copy for Christmas!

Note: the LULU.com website seems to be a little bit screwed up at the moment and does not show the preview of the book properly but rest assured, the printed product is lovely.

Thanks to everybody who helped to make this a really cool project! An endearing book of enduring value!

Cecil Touchon
Ontological Museum Publications
http://lulu.com/ontological

Why do we keep hearing that Fluxus is dead?

If your a historian or collector then you want fluxus to be dead as soon as possible.
If you are a fluxus artist you want it to live for ever.
There it is in a nutshell.

The whole idea of it comes from the Catholic church traditions of canonizing saints.
They have to be dead before you can glorify them.
But that does not mean that you should kill the saint in order to rever them.
But if you have built a church to that saint that you hope to profit from and it cannot be opened until after their death, then the saint beware!

What can we do about keeping Fluxus from being canonized as a collective?

The canonization of the individual artists who participated in Fluxus is one thing - fine and dandy, may it happen to us all! But Fluxus itself is impervious to canonization. We need to seperate these two things from one another.

I think one idea is to dismiss the idea that fluxus is a historical entity and that the very idea of it is antithetical to fluxus and preposterous and that anyone supporting such an idea knows nothing about fluxus and has nothing to do with fluxus.

This needs to be done collectively by developing appropriate propaganda that is ubiquitous among us. We have to create a united facade through cooperative endeavors. We need to publish books - which several of us are now doing - of new work not history books about old work; leave that to the outsiders.

We need to get articles in magazines. We need to establish a viable collector market for current work according to our own design. We need to validate ourselves through our own institutions. Thus the Fluxshop, Fluxmuseum, Fluxnexus, Fluxus Laboratories, Fluxlist, fluxlist Europe, Open Fluxus and so on.

Then we need to gather as a group not to promote old but current and emerging Fluxus. Thus the Fluxus Brainstorm Gatherings.

We need our own collective performance workbooks in order for us to promote each other's work as developing at fluxcase.com.

We need to provide universities with materials so that upcoming students accept us as fluxus and join our ranks.

We need to demostrate that we are Fluxus and Fluxus is ours.

There are 6 needed components

1) establish lines of communication,
2) develop infrastructure.
3) qualify yourself through practice,
4) produce product
5) establish a market
6) develop endurance and sustainability.

Theory and whatnot grow out of practice.

I think of us as dervishes as in the sufi tradition. If you ever ask a dervish if he is a sufi master he always says no and promotes all the other dervishes that he knows as the masters. We should do the same: each one adulate the others, each one promote the others, each one honor and respect the others.

This is how Fluxus will survive and deserve to survive: by our mutual good will toward our group and each other. We then are, through the codes we adhere to among ourselves, practicing sustainable peace and properity.

Make it a good day,
Cecil

Beyond Ken Friedman's Twelve Fluxus Ideas - 24 more ideas proposed by Fluxus Laboratories.

Contemporaneousness - many works are intended to be present in the present rather than left for history or for the future.

Interactivity - many Fluxus works intend to be directly interactive rather than viewsed from a distance

Equivocalness - many Fluxus works are designed to be ambiguous and open to multiple interpretations

Inclusivity - a Fluxus idea is to include rather than exclude whether it be other members/non-members of the group or spectators/audience

Poetical - many works have a poetic quality to them

Portability - many Fluxus works are designed to be easily stored and moved about through shipping or mail services, often reduced to scores to be realized on location rather than created in a studio and then moved about at great expense.

Productionalist - many Fluxus works are intended to become manufactured multiple products rather than unique works of art.

Programatic - many Fluxus projects happen according to a plan or program, many works are serial in nature and are developed along a certain plan or according to certain rules.

Communal - many Fluxus works are held in common among a group of artists for general use by all of them.

Didactic - many Fluxus works are intentionally instructional

Progressive - works that take previous ideas in a new direction

Self Empowered - many Fluxus works exhibit an indifference to accepted norms

Mimetic - many Fluxus works mimic common products and designs, scientific procedures, government activities, etc.

Nostalgic - From the beginning many Fluxus artists often refer to past works in current works.

Tentativeness - Fluxus works are often the product of uncertainty - works are often created without a certain intention in mind allowing the artist to explore alternate possibilities as he goes along

Quirkiness - works often exhibit a certain strangeness or unusualness about the thought processes used in their creation

Obsessiveness - many works imply an obsessive nature in their creators

Uselessness - works often, as part of their quality, render useful objects or performance materials useless or apparently useful activities are accomplished to achieve uselessness.

Materialistic - many Fluxus works exhibit a love of the materials that they are made from and exhibit attention to those materials. Many Fluxus works do not suggest a dialog beyond their own scope.

Multidimensional - many works can exist in a variety of forms or are designed to have a multitude of possible meanings or permutations or media

Adaptive - many Fluxus works are intended to adapt to new situations and are not locked into a specific place, time or style.

Porousness - Fluxus has no rigid boundaries and allows anyone to take up Fluxus activity. Anyone can join in with other Fluxus artists and be accepted as a part of the group.

Revolutionary - many Fluxus works suggest a program of revolution against one thing or another and especially against the 'establishment' or status quo.

Impervious - Fluxus as an idea is impervious to historification.