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03-19-10

Fluxus with Tools

Last night Riva and I made our way into Detroit to see FLUXUS founding member, Alison Knowles, and her scholar daughter, Hannah Higgins, give a lecture/performance entitled “Fluxus with Tools.”  I didn’t know quite what to expect, but hoped there would be food involved and I was not disappointed.

Knowles’ classic FLUXUS score “#2 Proposition (1962)” acted as the structure for the piece, which she performed while Higgins interrupted with interjections alternating between reflexive commentary and FLUXUS score interpretation.  As a viewer/participant I felt my position alternating between engrossed and removed, challenged to look closer at the mundane actions performed on stage and challenged yet again to analyze them .  I was in between surrendering my ego and enjoying the performance and pondering.  As Higgins and Knowles cycled through various “hits” from the FLUXUS back catalog I couldn’t help but think that this event was both the perfect primer to FLUXUS and a refreshing reminder to any who many regard the FLUXUS artists as their kinfolk.

My seminar professor, Danielle Abrams, was invited on stage to help distribute bowls of salad and I was later treated to a spaghetti sandwich by Higgins.  Riva and I were also able to salvage the chewed up piece of paper ejected from Knowles’ mouth following a particular performance. The event last night was a wonderful experience and it has inspired the idea for a new weekly series I will be posting to my blog.  Each week I will be pulling some score, video, or other digital ephemera from the FLUXUS archives and posting it here.  I hope that those reading will treat it as a message to carry along with them, like a feather in their cap.

More pictures after the jump…

Danielle Abrams receiving salad from Hannah Higgins

Me, eating a spaghetti sandwich