friedman 99 events .pdf

8/17/2019 Friedman 99 Events .pdf

1/144

KEN FRIEDMAN


2/144


3/144

Ken Friedman99 Events

1956 – 2009


4/144

7 Ken Friedman: Event, Idea and InquiryCarolyn Barnes

Event Scores by Ken Friedman

18 Scrub Piece

19 The Light Bulb

20 Table Stack

21 Untitled Card Event

22 Card Trace

23 Green Street29 Fruit Sonata

30 The March of the Toy Soldiers

32 Pass This on to a Friend

33 Christmas Tree Event

34 Fast Food Event

36 The Judgment of Paris

38 Public Notice

39 Restaurant Event

40 White Bar

43 Anniversary

44 Cheers

45 Copernicus

46 Edison’s Lighthouse

47 First Time Around

48 Open and Shut Case

51 Sudden Harmony Dance Tune

52 Webster’s Dictionary53 Dark Mirror

54 Different Card Fluxdeck

55 Incognito, Ergo Sum

56 Light Table Variation

58 Execution Kit

59 Fluxpost Cancellation

60 Fluxus Instant Theater

61 Fluxus Invisible Theater62 Fluxus Television

63 Fruit in Three Acts

64 Hat

65 Imprint

66 Mandatory Happening

67 Melon Melody

68 Passport to the State of Flux

69 Radio Clock

70 Sonata for Melons and Gravity

71 Stage Reversal

72 Street Pieces

73 The Sympathetic Ear

74 Tavern

76 Thirty Feet

77 Zen for Record

80 Zen Vaudeville

81 White Objects

82 Art for the Household

83 City

TABLE OF CONTENTS


5/144

84 Do-It-Yourself Monument

85 Empaquetage pour Christo

86 Fluxmattress

87 Garden

88 Mailing

89 Orchestra90 Rock Placement

91 The Spirit of Geography

92 String Quartet, Opus 2, 1967

93 Telephone Clock

94 Unnished Symphony

95 Blockade96 Boxing Day

97 Broken Record

98 Contents

99 Paper Architecture

102 Salt Flat

103 Terminal Stairway

104 The Three Ages of Man

105 Vacant Lot

106 White Label, White Contents

107 Cloud Chamber

108 Shadow Box

109 Studio Pieces

110 Heat Transfer Event

111 Ordinary Objects

112 The Silent Night

113 The Artist Becomes the Art

114 Completions

115 Earth Work

116 Open Land117 Silent Shoes

118 Water Table

119 Flow System

120 Chess Shrine

121 Replication

122 Woolen Goods125 24 Hours

127 The Last Days of Pompeii

130 Rotterdam Exchange

131 Rational Music

132 Homage to Mahler

133 After Ad Reinhart

134 Fluxus Balance Piece

for Mieko Shiomi

135 Precinct

136 Renter’s Orchestra

137 Alchemical Theater

138 A Whispered History

140 Centre Piece


6/144

6


7/144

7

KEN FRIEDMAN: EVENT, IDEA AND INQUIRYCarolyn Barnes

Chance and opportunity led Ken Friedmanto become an artist. Though he hadno formal art training, he accepted thedesignation of “artist” as a young man in1966 when the Fluxus impresario GeorgeMaciunas suggested that the creativeactivities he had pursued since childhoodcould be categorized as art. Friedman’syouthful experiments with objects andsituations reected a key impulse intwentieth century vanguard art, the attemptto reduce art to ideas and gestures. Materialform often came into play here, but forradical artists such as those in Fluxus circles,the critical ideas driving an image, object,text, or activity were increasingly the mostimportant element of an ar twork.

Ideas inspired Friedman before he embracedart practice in any conscious way andoriginal, interdisciplinary thinking hasbeen the consistent thread in his activitiesand occupations ever since, their varietychallenging the sense of art as a xed and

singular vocation. He has regularly returnedto the simple, text-based form of the eventscore as an economical way to captureideas and send them out into the world ina form that others can enact without thisaffecting the underlying premise. Indeed,this exhibition at Stendhal Gallery continuesa series of exhibitions of his event scores

that began in 1973 with an exhibition atthe University of California at Davis. Thatexhibition built on the legacy of Fluxusbooks and multiples as an alternative means

of disseminating art ideas and providedFriedman with a model for a simple touringexhibit. Between 1973 and 1983, Friedmaninitiated around thirty exhibitions byphotocopying his event scores on standardsheets of letter paper and posting the setof scores to different venues for exhibition. 1

The Event Score

The ‘event score’ or ‘word piece’ emerged inNew York in the late 1950s as one of severalnew art practices developed to test the limitsof art and renegotiate the nature of audienceengagement. George Brecht conceived theterm ‘event’ in 1959 to refer to simple actsand situations realized in the world by artistsor others; a practice that other future Fluxusartists also explored in their work, notablyDick Higgins, Yoko Ono, Nam June Paik, LaMonte Young and Ben Vautier. The eventscore was a short, descriptive text outliningan action or situation. The new musicalnotation of composer John Cage inspiredthe idea of ‘scoring’ interventions in everydaylife, as did his classes in experimentalcomposition at the New School for SocialResearch in New York. Cage’s practicequestioned the parameters of music, musicalperformance, and audience reception byfocusing on the principles of sound and

silence. His works often drew attention tothe richness of ambient auditory sensation,creating a need for new approaches to


8/144

8

musical notation. In his composition classesat the New School between 1957 and 1959,he encouraged participants—most of whomwere artists—to conceive and take part indiverse performance activities.

Both the event score and Fluxus occupyan important place in the genealogy oftwentieth century art and anti-art, buildingon the efforts of the historical avant-gardeto contest modernist ideals of artisticindependence and purity. In mergingtext-based instructions with the deferredperformance of simple acts, the eventscore rejected established art values ofcraftsmanship, individual skill and talent,single authorship and self-expression. Fromthe early 1960s, a uid network of Fluxus

artists with backgrounds ranging acrossnew music, concrete poetry, and visual artto dance and experimental theatre involvedthemselves in scripting such activities.Some used the event score to escapethe institutional context of art to embedthe work of art in the ‘everydayness’ ofnon-art situations and locations. Some

aimed to produce a more democratic,participatory form of art. Some soughtto elevate immediate engagement withart over the aesthetic and commodityvalue of the enduring art object. Othersendeavored to eliminate the barriers betweenestablished art forms to arrive at innovative,interdisciplinary practices. Beyond the sharedproposition of some repeatable action orsituation and a deadpan prose style, the formof the event score freed artists to pursuealmost innite paths of investigation.

Despite the reductive form and structure oftheir scores, this scope is evident in the workof those who pioneered the form, GeorgeBrecht, Yoko Ono and La Monte Young:

Composition 1960 #10

To Bob Morris

Draw a straight line And follow it.

October 1960La Monte Young

WORD EVENT

• Exit

Spring 1961George Brecht

VOICE PIECE FOR SOPRANO

To Simone Morris

Scream.

1. against the wind

2. against the wall3. against the sky

y.o. 1961 autumnYoko Ono 2

These three works also demonstrate whatLiz Kotz describes as the categoricalambiguity of the event score. Individual‘event’ scores, she argues, can be variouslyattributed to the elds of music, visual art ,poetry, or performance. 3 Kotz contendsthat the ‘real’ art resides in the realizationof the action or situation, not in the textitself, although she accepts that Brechtand Ono, for example, were often moreinterested in the conceptual impact of thethings they proposed, achieved through


9/144

9

the process of reading rather than doing.Some event scores are certainly scripts forintervention in everyday life, prompting thereader to become an active producer. Otherscores encourage a psychological response,blurring the boundaries of inner and outer,something seen by comparing La MonteYoung’s text with Yoko Ono’s.

Ken Friedman and the Event Score

Since 1966, Friedman has produced manyshort, text-based propositions in addition toobject-based works, activities in organizingFluxus projects, and scholarly work in theelds of art history, sociology of art, design,and organization. Like Fluxus practices in

general, Friedman’s event scores disruptestablished ideas of artistic production andreception, seeking to extend the experientialdimension of art. Friedman’s scores are moretypically scripts for producing artifacts andsituations or for reecting on them than forperformances. Since Friedman was throwninto art practice before he had a developed

understanding of the cultural and socialframeworks of the art world, his event scoresbuild on his most formative intellectualexperiences.

The prodigious nature of Friedman’sinvolvement with Fluxus is central to thediscussion of his work. It is well known thatFriedman became part of Fluxus as a 16-year-old. 4 As a student at Shimer Collegein Mt Carroll, Illinois, he produced programsfor the college radio station. Searching forprogram material, Friedman followed up anadvertisement for Dick Higgins’s SomethingElse Press in the East Village Other, a NewYork underground newspaper foundedby breakaway writers from the alreadyindependent Village Voice . Friedman beganto correspond with Dick Higgins at the press,developing radio programs around press

publications by various artists working inthe Fluxus ambit, including Robert Filliou, AlHansen, Dick Higgins, Ray Johnson, AlisonKnowles, Nam June Paik, Daniel Spoerri, andEmmett Williams. Friedman used the booksas the basis for radio shows. He also begancorresponding with Higgins, beginning whatwould become a lifelong friendship. Higginsinvited Friedman to stay at his home whenFriedman visited New York in 1966. Duringhis stay, Friedman reproduced one of theobjects he had been making. 5 It was a boxwith the words ‘open me’ written on theoutside and ‘shut me quick’ inscribed inside,unconsciously inhabiting the territory of theDuchampian readymade with its emphasison the verbal/visual conundrum. Higginsarranged for Friedman to take the box to

George Maciunas, an artist, architect, andgraphic designer, who in 1962 gave the nameFluxus to a community of experimentalartists working in the United States, Europe,and Japan. From 1962 until his death in1978, Maciunas was the main coordinator,promoter, and supporter of Fluxus activities. 6 He organized exhibitions, performance

events, concerts, and festivals, designed, andpublished a diverse range of publications bythe group, arranging for the production ofsmall, multiple art objects by Fluxus ar tists.Maciunas’s response to talking with Friedmanabout the things he did was to inviteFriedman to join Fluxus. Maciunas also issuedthe box as a Fluxus multiple in autumn 1966under the title Open and Shut Case .7

Although Fluxus generated a signicantlevel of art activity, its network of visualartists, musicians, performers, and writersoperated to the side of the mainstreamcultural sphere, developing alternative worksfor independent distribution channels.Moreover, many members of the Fluxuscommunity were interested in the sphere ofthe everyday, frowning on the established artworld and its strict disciplinary boundaries.


10/144

10

They supported an open concept of artistry,making it plausible for Friedman to operateas an artist while he continued his studies,now at San Francisco State University.Nevertheless, receiving the designation‘artist’ from Higgins and Maciunas validatedhis relationship to the things he did.Maciunas proposed that Friedman notatehis ideas for objects and activities so thatothers could engage with them, explainingthe nature of the event score. 8 Friedmanbegan conceiving new scores, using a formthat presented itself as an ideal medium forexploring the vast expanse of possibility lyingbetween the human mind and the world. Healso scripted scores for the earlier actionshe had undertaken. Open and Shut Case ,for example, readily translated into a set

of simple written instructions for others tocarry out, retaining the conceptual impactof the actual object even though a measureof productive control was removed from theartist. Friedman’s project of knocking ondoors in his college dormitory to present theinstruction card that became the score towhat would become Mandatory Happening

(1966), a card bearing the words, ‘You willdecide to read this score or not to read it.When you have made your decision, thehappening is over.’

A work such as Mandatory Happening challenged the existing state of art byemerging from a temporary situation intime and space. The event scores developedfrom activities Friedman carried out beforemeeting Higgins and Maciunas reect theproductive tension in the Fluxus eventscore between critical engagement with theworld and the reduction of art to idea. Forexample, Fast Food Event (1964) transformsa mundane daily activity into an interventionthat reects on American cultural reality and

the routines of everyday experience in massindustrial society:

Fast Food Event

Go into a fast food restaurant.

Order one exampleof every item on the menu.

Line everything upin a row on the table.

Eat the items one at a time,starting at one end of the rowand moving systematicallyfrom each to the next.

Finish each item beforemoving on to the next.

Eat rapidly and methodicallyuntil all the food is nished.

Eat as fast as possiblewithout eating too fast.

Eat neatly.

Do not make a mess.

1964

Another early Friedman event score showsrecognition of fundamental problemsin art, addressing the issue of aestheticcompetence. The Judgment of Paris (1964)instructs the reader to pin up three imagesof choice, selected from popular sources orart sources, construct a shelf beneath themand place a golden apple under the preferredimage. This contemporary re-enactmentof a mythic story of the judgment of tastetackles the issue of aesthetic categoriesand hierarchies, while serving to erode

the division between amateur and experttaste in this respect. The Judgment of Paris thus indicates something of the order of


11/144

11

intellectual resources Friedman broughtto the proposition of scripting actionsand situations. By the age of sixteen, healready had a developed interest in politicaland religious processes and the scienticenlightenment as a result of his wide readingand life experiences, enabling him to make arapid transition into active art practice.

An Interdisciplinary Upbringing

Friedman was born in 1949 in New London,Connecticut, one of the rst towns settledin the British North American colonies. TheAmerican War of Independence was still animportant presence in Friedman’s childhoodtown, and Friedman passed by the mill of

Governor John Winthrop the Younger onan almost-daily basis. Friedman grew upclose to the schoolhouse where AmericanRevolutionary patriot Nathan Hale taught,and he felt a personal connection to thehistory of colonial America. New Londonwas also a whaling port, which exposedhim to the inuence of East Asian cultures.

For a period of his childhood, Friedmanmade weekly visits to the Yale UniversityArt Museum in New Haven, its collectionsof classical art, New England antiques,and some modern works consolidatinghis interest in the unfolding of history. Themuseum also hosted a temporary exhibitionof Leonardo Da Vinci’s engineering drawingsand modern reconstructions of Leonardo’sinventions. These inspired Friedman’sinterest in making experimental objectsand questioning how things worked.Before George Maciunas and Dick Higginsshowed Friedman the possibility of activeinvolvement in art, he had intended tobecome a Unitarian minister, a plan hekept until the early 1970s. Since childhood

he had read about the history of religiousreformation, inspired by accounts of groupsand individuals willing to undertake great

risks to seek a truth of their own, opposingestablished religion in the process. Thisextended to an interest in the customs ofAmerica’s various groups of ‘plain people’,who worshiped simply and adopted basicways of living counter to developments inthe modern world, while demonstrating acapacity for invention and what we nowdescribe as sustainability.

Some of Friedman’s early events addressinterests he held in common with JohnCage and the artists of the Fluxus network,notably Zen Buddhism, sound and silence.These references are consistent withFriedman’s existing interests in history,science, and spirituality, interests thatcontinued to drive his ideas for producing

objects and situations after he joined Fluxus.For example, Edison’s Lighthouse (1965)invites the reader to place candles betweentwo mirrors and note the effects producedby changing the number and location ofcandles. The score echoes Friedman’sexperiments with light and reection inhis room at Shimer College; activities

inspired by a scene in the popular lmYoung Thomas Edison (1940), which showsthe inventor using mirrors and lanterns toenable a surgeon to perform an emergencyoperation. Scrub Piece (1956) recalls thetime in 1956 when he went to the NathanHale Monument in New London to give it athorough cleaning. 9 Other early Friedmanevents have a clear connection to Friedman’sreligious interests. Light Table (1965) calls acommunity of readers to place white candleson a wooden table and light them. Friedmansees this score as merging his twin interestsin the scientic investigation of light and therole of light in architectural space in shapingreligious experience.


12/144

12

The Validation of an Art Context

In their collective activities, Fluxus artistssaw that the codes and disciplines ofestablished art closed artists and audiencesto possibility and to the world. They offeredartistic experimentation as an alternativepathway to new ideas and understanding,creating an intense, interdisciplinary settingfor the exploration of radical art practices.They were interested in ways of thinking thatthey perceived as challenging the modernWestern aspiration for an ordered, rational,and predictable world. These includedEastern wisdom traditions and criticalwritings in philosophy, psychology, and thesocial sciences. For Friedman, encounteringartists with diverse intellectual interests

and approaches to art that dismantledestablished cultural concepts both validatedand extended his interest in the historyof paradigms and knowledge systems.Friedman has written that when Dick Higginsand George Maciunas introduced him to theproposition of contemporary art practice,to the idea of the event score, and to the

value of working across and between media,it provided him not only with ‘a reasonableframe within which to conceive and carryout’ future projects, but also a basis forunderstanding the kinds of activities he haddone for most of his life. 10 Aside from reading,the majority of Friedman’s youthful activitiesfocused on conceiving, doing, and making.As an example, he describes his childhoodpractice of using sturdy, simple tables—fromthe school his parents ran on the rst oor ofthe family home—to make towers andmulti-level cities in the evenings and atweekends. 11 This activity is recorded in theevent score Table Stack (1956). Tables alsofeature in various other scores by Friedman,as do other useful objects such as bottles,

bowls, glasses, and hand tools. In fact, fromthe later 1960s, Friedman’s event scoresreveal an increasing interest in design-

like activities or they describe actions andsituations involving everyday manufacturedobjects, advancing a sense of design as itconstitutes the world.

On one level, such event scores dissolvethe productive divisions between artist andaudience, advancing what has been referredto since the 1960s as a ‘do-it-yourself’aesthetic. Yet they also highlight processesof inventing, making, and visualizing, whichare intrinsic to design. Two notable eventsscores in this respect are Paper Architecture(1968) and Precinct (1991):

Paper Architecture

Hang a large sheet or several large sheets of paper on the walls

of a room.

Inscribe the sheets with full-scalearchitectural features, such as doors,windows, or stairs, or with objectssuch as furniture, lamps, books, etc.

Use these drawings to imagine,create, or map an environment.

The drawings may create or map newfeatures in an existing environment.

They may mirror, double orreconstruct existing featuresin situ or elsewhere.

To create relatively permanentfeatures with the drawings,apply them directly to a wall.

1968


13/144

13

Precinct

Construct a rough slab, cube, or table of natural stone or wood.

Invite people to place hand-mademodels or objects made of woodor clay on the table.

25 August 1991

Minneapolis, Minnesota

Paper Architecture points to the relationshipbetween conception and visualizationin design, specically addressing the roleof drawing in the production of architecturalspace that Henri Lefebvre highlighted.

In The Production of Space , Lefebvre,having established the political natureof space, argues that the ‘reduction ofthree-dimensional realities to two’,through ‘any kind of graphic representationor projection’ is part of a distancingprocesses whereby the tangible qualitiesof actual space are rendered abstract and

homogenous, priming space for economicand political exploitation. 12 Although there isno direct link between Friedman’s two eventscores and Lefebvre’s text, following on fromPaper Architecture , Precinct appears tore-establish the importance of the tactilein the production and experience of things,echoing Lefebvre’s opposition to theemphasis on the visual in Western societyand its inuence in reducing things to image,thus making them ‘passive’, with no socialexistence outside their appearance. 13

A Life In and Outside Ar t

Friedman’s intellectual life since 1966

has taken a winding path between socialand cultural elds, reecting the idea ofdisciplinary hybridity modeled in Fluxus art.

Taking Dick Higgins’s early advice not toattempt to make a living from art, Friedmangained formal qualications in psychology,social science, and education. 14 Althoughnot averse to Higgins’s and Maciunas’sideas of social regeneration through culture,Friedman’s academic studies reveal a wishto be equipped to make a tangiblecontribution to society and to betterunderstand its workings. In 1976, Friedman

earned a doctorate in leadership andhuman behavior for a thesis on the NorthAmerican art world as a social entity,reecting vanguard artists’ concern for theinstitutional conditions that have framedart since Romanticism while exploring themfrom a sociological perspective. Friedman’ssociological interest in art expanded into

a curiosity about the economic structuresand organizational dynamics of post-warart worlds, leading to academic posts inorganization, leadership, and strategic designat the Norwegian School of Managementin Oslo, and the Danish Design School inCopenhagen. Design, of course, had a centralpart to play in the dissemination of Fluxus

production through the inuence of GeorgeMaciunas. Owen Smith explains that althoughindividual Fluxus artists supplied the ideas,‘it was Maciunas who designed and producedthe array of [Fluxus] objects, publications,and multiples.’ 15 Fluxus reliance on text asa medium saw various artists, includingFriedman, produce a range of printedmaterial that experimented with vernacularforms of graphic design, though often froma distinctly anti-design perspective.Friedman’s role as manager of SomethingElse Press (1971) and director of FluxusWest in California (1966-1975) likewisefocused his attention on the mediatingfunction of design.

Given the enduring nature of the idea ofartistry as an inner force dedicated toself-expression, the reorientation of


14/144

14

Friedman’s career towards organizationand design may seem curious. Yet there areimportant intellectual underpinnings for thetransition, and from the perspective of thepresent it appears a prescient shift. Certainly,Fluxus art, with its stress on programmaticexperimentalism and a strategic approachto the development and use of art works,had a signicant role to play in attackingmodernist mythologies of the artist. Today,

however, the contiguity of art and designis widely recognized. It is now understoodthat both works of art and design haveinherent socio-symbolic value, in addition tofunctional uses in the case of design. Humanbeings encode art works and design workswith meaning at the stages of productionand distribution and human beings decode

them at the point of reception and ongoinguse, often against the intended purposes ofthe artists and designers who create them.The text-based form of the event scoresuggests this process. 16 Friedman addressesthe contiguous condition of all human-madeobjects in the event score Flow System (1972), which invites ‘anyone’ to send ‘anobject or a work of any kind’ to an exhibition,where ‘everything received is displayed’and anyone attending ‘may take away anobject or work.’

For Friedman, design, especially in itsconnection to the corporate sphere, isconstitutive of the world. As such, it isan important site for positive, criticalintervention. Critical art practices suchas the event score reect a lineage ofoppositional art tracing back thenineteenth century, when radical artistsrst challenged the attributes of emergentmodern societies—capitalism, materialismand rationalism—in the aim of protectingvalues of independence and individuality.

Eve Chiapello argues that for nearly twohundred years artists’ aspirations forauthenticity and freedom of expression

forged an ‘intuitive opposition … betweenart worlds and business worlds, betweenprot imperatives and those of artisticcreation.’ 17 She notes, however, that sincethe 1980s, areas of business haveincreasingly looked to art for alternativesto Fordist models of management in thebelief that this will enhance the creativityof organizations, and make them betterable to offer products and services that are

singular and unique. The business world alsohas an increasing need for the skills of artistsand designers, especially their capacity forcreative autonomy, given the rising economicimportance of entertainment, fashion, andinformation industries, which constantlyupdate their offerings and require inventiveways to promote them. 18

Everywhere today, the heterogeneityexplored in the new art forms developedby twentieth century vanguard artistsis becoming a cultural and social norm,often as a result of economic inuences.Traditional distinctions between art, craft,and design, for example, are breaking downto be replaced by the nomenclature anddiscourse of the creative industries. 19 In amore positive sense, the psychologist MihalyiCsikszentmihalyi argues that ‘creativity isa process that can be observed only at theintersection where individuals, domains,and elds intersect’. 20 In many governmentand university circles, interdisciplinarity isseen as having better potential to tackle thecontemporary world’s increasingly complexproblems than knowledge and expertisedeveloped within single elds. 21 Encounteringthe intense, mixed art scene of Fluxus inthe 1960s gave Ken Friedman an insightinto the creative potential of integratingdivergent ideas and practices. His activitiessince the 1970s have not only ranged across

varied elds, many have been developedfrom divergent intellectual perspectives,combining seemingly unrelated ideas and


15/144

15

practices like art history and economics ororganizational theory and military history.Finding out about the event score affordedFriedman a pliant vehicle to explore theow of ideas that lls a human mind,unencumbered by the demand to conformto some transcendent purpose or rationale.Although his main involvement is now indesign and organization, he continues tovalue the event score as an alternative way

of exploring experiences and situations andfor its potential to forge intuitive connectionswith the mind of the reader.


16/144

16

1 Following the 1973 exhibition at the Universityof California, Davis, these included exhibitions

at the University of Colorado, Boulder, andGaleria Akumulatory, Poznan (1974), FiatalMuveszek Klubja, Budapest, Mercato del Sale,Milano, Alberta College of Art, Calgary, NewReform Gallery, Aalst, Gallery St Petri, Lund(1975), The Everson Museum, Syracuse (1978),P.S.1, New York (1980), Washington Projectfor the Arts, Washington, DC, MassachusettsCollege of Art, Boston (1982), MississippiMuseum of Art, Jackson (1983).

2 Cited in Liz Kotz, ‘Post-Cagean Aesthetics andthe “Event” Score’, October 95 , Winter 2001,pp. 55-56.

3 Liz Kotz, ‘Post-Cagean Aesthetics and the“Event” Score’, October 95 , Winter 2001, p. 57.

4 See Peter Frank, Ken Friedman: The Fluxus years , Helsinki, Oy Wärtsilä Ab Arabia, 1987,pp. 2-5.

5 Ken Friedman, ‘Looking Back’, in Peter Frank(ed.) Events , New York, Jaap Rietman, 1985,p. 230.

6 See Ken Friedman with James Lewes, ‘Fluxus:Global community, human dimensions’ in Visible

Language , vol. 26, no.1/2, 1993, pp. 154-179.

7 Ken Friedman, 52 Events , Show and TellEditions, Edinburgh, 2002, unpaginated.

8 Ibid.

9 Ibid., p 118.

10 Ibid., p. 111.

11 Ibid., p. 111.

12 Henri Lefebvre, The Production of Space(1974), trans. Donald Nicholson-Smith, Oxford,Blackwell Publishers, 1991, pp. 285-291.

13 Henri Lefebvre, The Production of Space

(1974), trans. Donald Nicholson-Smith, Oxford,Blackwell Publishers, 1991, p. 286.

14 Ken Friedman, 52 Events , Show and TellEditions, Edinburgh, 2002, p. 115.

15 Owen F. Smith, ‘Fluxus: A brief history andother ctions’, in Elizabeth Armstrong and JoanRothfuss, In the Spirit of Fluxus , Minneapolis,Walker Art Centre, 1993, p. 30.

16 See, for example, Donald Norman, The Designof Everyday Things , New York, Doubleday,1990; Mika Pantzar, ‘Consumption as Work,

Play, and Art: representation of the consumerin future scenarios’, Design Issues , vol. 16, no. 3,Autumn 2000, pp. 13 – 18; Virginia Postrel, TheSubstance of Style: how the rise of aestheticvalue is remarking commerce, culture, andconsciousness , New York, Harper Collins, 2003;Pieter Desmet and Paul Hekkert, ‘Frameworkof product experience’, International Journal ofDesign , vol. 1, no. 1, 2007, pp. 57-66.

17 See Eve Chiapello, ‘Evolution and Co-optation:The “Artist Critique” of Management andCapitalism’, Third Text , vol. 18, issue 6, 2004,p. 585.

18 See Eve Chiapello, ‘Evolution and Co-optation:The ‘Artist Critique’ of Management andCapitalism’, Third Text , vol. 18, issue 6, 2004,p. 592.

19 See Toby Miller, ‘From Creative to Culturalindustries’, Cultural Studies , vol. 23, no. 1, 2009,p. 94.

20 Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi, ‘Implications of aSystems Perspective for the Study of Creativity’,in Robert J. Sternberg (ed.), Handbook ofCreativity , Cambridge, Cambridge UniversityPress, 1999, p. 314.

21 Tom Horlick-Jones and Jonathan Sime,‘Living on the border: knowledge, riskand transdisciplinarity’, Futures 36 , 2004,pp. 441–456.


17/144

17

About the essay autho r

Dr Carolyn Barnes is a Senior ResearchFellow at the Faculty of Design, SwinburneUniversity of Technology, Melbourne, whereshe is involved in a range of research projectsinvestigating the role of art and design inpublic communication. Carolyn holds a PhDfrom the University of Melbourne. She is anassistant editor of the International Journal of

Design and book reviews editor for Artifact .Craftsman House published her monographon the Hong Kong Australian artist JohnYoung in 2005.


18/144

18

Scrub Piece

Go to a public monumenton the rst day of spring.

Clean it thoroughly.

No announcement is necessary.

1956

Realized at the Nathan Hale Monument inNew London, Connecticut on March 20, 1956,this was my rst event. I did not think of itas an artwork until I came into Fluxus: it was

simply something I did. It was an event in thestrictest sense of the word. While I engagedin these kinds of events throughout much ofmy life, it was not until I began working in thecontext of Fluxus that I thought of events inthe sense that I use the term today. I simplybuilt things, realized ideas, or made modelsof things that interested me. Many of themwere acts or works that I repeated, much asI did after meeting the other Fluxus people.When George Maciunas explained the eventtradition to me, it gave a theoretical structureto a practice that had been central to myexperience. I may have done these kinds ofthings earlier, but this is the rst event forwhich I was able to nd notes when Georgebrought me into Fluxus.


19/144

19

The Light Bulb

Create and perform animprovisational drama.

Present the dramaas a radio or television programin which there is a symbolicor physical relationshipbetween the sponsor andthe featured characters.

1956

This event was rst realized in 1956 inMystic and Stonington, Connecticut.Titled The Light Bulb Show , I presented itevery week in the form of an imaginaryradio program sponsored by General Electric.The star of the show was a light bulb.

In 1965 and 1966, I included versions of TheLight Bulb Show as segments in my programson Radio WRSB in Mt Carroll, Illinois.


20/144

20

Table Stack

Build a stack of tables.

Each table should standdirectly above and on topof the next table below.

1956

I was born in New London, Connecticut,in 1949. My family lived in a huge housewith three stories and a basement. A seacaptain built the house when he retired fromsailing. Much of the house was built in rarehardwoods such as mahogany. My mothertold me that the captain had used the woodas ballast on his return voyages from farplaces. My father and mother had a schoolon the rst oor. We lived on the secondoor. The house was so big that we didn’tuse the third oor.

My sister and I were free to play with theequipment and toys in the school in theevenings and on weekends. The school waswell equipped with blocks and toys. Thefurniture fascinated me. There were fourlarge, square, sturdy tables with thick,strong legs. It was possible to stack severalon top of one another to make a tower

three or four high or to build models ofmulti-level cities. I started building tablestacks then, and I’ve been doing it ever since.

In recent years, I’ve made the Table Stack several times. On some occasions, I’vebuilt it with different kinds of tables ratherthan stacking copies of the same table.Once or twice, I’ve built several stacksnext to each other.

When I rst did the kinds of things that arenow termed events or installations, I didn’tthink of them as art. These events were anactivity, events in the strictest sense of theword. They were simply something I did.I had no explanation for them and I didn’toffer one. It wasn’t until I began to work inthe context of Fluxus that I labeled theseprojects as events. When Dick Higgins andGeorge Maciunas introduced me to what isnow termed intermedia, I accepted art as areasonable frame within which to conceiveand carry out my projects.

I have been doing these kinds of eventsthroughout most of my life. I’ve been at itfor more than ve decades now, startingwith my rst events in 1956. I’ve continuedto undertake these projects in art,architecture, design, and music along withwhatever else I was doing.

It was when I began working in the contextof Fluxus that I rst thought of events in thesense that I use the term today. Until then, Isimply built things, realized ideas, or mademodels of things that interested me. Manyof them were acts or works that I repeated,much as I did after meeting the other Fluxuspeople. When George Maciunas explainedthe event tradition to me, it gave a kind oftheoretical organization to a practice that wasalready central to my experience.


21/144

21

Untitled Card Event

Send a postcard tosomeone every day.

Each card in the sequenceshould transmit one word or letter.

The series of cards shouldspell out a word or a message.

1957

The rst time I realized this event, my familywas taking a summer vacation trip betweenthe Catskill Mountains of New York and NewLondon, Connecticut. I purchased cards alongthe way and mailed them to myself.

To perform the event, one should gatherthe cards and read the message aloud.George Maciunas included this work in the

unpublished collection of my event scoresthat he announced and planned.

It recently occurred to me that this piece andthe George Brecht Spell Your Name Kit arerelated to Maciunas’s 1972 Spell Your Namewith Objects boxes and the Valoche kits.


22/144

22

Card Trace

Mail a series of cards during a journeyor sequence of activities.

The assembled set of cardsbecomes a map or chart of thepassage through time or space.

1958

The rst Card Trace sequence plannedas a map was realized during a trip myfamily made to California in the summer

of 1958. It became a map of the journeyfrom New London, Connecticut, toLong Beach, California.

I realized the rst time series in 1959 withpostcards from the Peabody Museum ofNatural History at Yale University in NewHaven, Connecticut. For this sequence,

I used post cards of dinosaurs.

Card Trace was planned for a Fluxusmultiple using sets of commerciallyprinted cards. Each set was to describea different ‘trace’ in 1968. It would havebeen a sequel in two-dimensional formto the three-dimensional Just For YouFluxkit. Card Trace was never produced.


23/144

23

Green Street

Acquire a Japanese folding scroll.

Keep it in a blank state.

After a minimum of ten years,or on the death of the performer,

inscribe the name of the performer,the date of acquisition and the dateat the time of inscription.

The performance continues untilthe scroll is lled with inscriptions.

1959

The scroll for this event came from a littleJapanese shop on Green Street in NewLondon, Connecticut, where I rst boughtsuch Japanese artifacts as ink, scrolls, and

brushes. I acquired the scroll in 1959. Theperformance using the original scroll is stillin progress in the sense that I have not yetwritten my name in the scroll.

Nevertheless, I never found anyone willingto take responsibility for accepting thescroll and carrying the piece forward. The

scroll itself is probably at the AlternativeTraditions in Contemporary Art collectionat University of Iowa.

In the 1960s and 1970s, I wondered whatwould happen if one gave away a book orscroll to pass from person to person in anongoing performance. I experimented withthe idea by circulating blank books with arequest that people contribute to themand pass them on.

Most iterations of the experiment involvedblank books, bound books with blank,white pages. On one or two occasions,I used scrolls. On others, I used old journals,

account books, or diaries that I managed toacquire at a discount.

Each book contained a request insidethe front cover asking the person whoreceives the book to execute an artworkor drawing in the book, then give it or mailit to another friend. I requested the person

who completed the book to return it to me.Between 1968 and 1974, I mailed or gaveaway over one hundred books. The collectionin Iowa contains examples of the blank booksI used for the drawing project or otherprojects. None of the books sent out forthe drawing project ever returned.


24/144

24

Over the years, I wondered why no completedbooks ever returned. Many issues probablycome into play. While time, duration, andcommitment are the key philosophicalnotions for a project such as this, choice andvoluntary participation in social networks maybe why no books returned.

Most of the blank books went to people in theFluxus network or the mail art network. The

book contained the invitation to participate.I did not ask whether people would agreeto take part. In effect, this approach testedthe possibility of communication andcommitment using open-ended, one-waycommunication in a social network. This is anobvious problem when commitment in socialnetworks requires voluntary assent along with

communication among participants.

In 1967, Stanley Milgram conducted a famousexperiment asking sixty people in Omaha,Nebraska to attempt to deliver packagesto people they did not know by sendingpackages to people who would be likely toknow someone who could move the packagecloser to its destination. This gave rise to thefamous notion of “six degrees of separation”,the idea that there are only six degrees ofseparation between anyone on the planet andanyone else. As important as the experimentwas, it has often been misunderstood. Only afew of the packages reached their destination,and replications of the experiment have hadpoor or inconclusive results.

Recently, Duncan Watts replicated theMilgram experiment by attempting toget email messages from volunteers toindividuals whom they did not know bysending messages through chains ofintermediaries. While requests to 61,168volunteers led to 24,000 started chains,

a scant 384 reached their target.

While I was studying psychology and socialscience at the time I mailed my rst books,I wasn’t attempting to replicate Milgram’swork. I was exploring something differentand more philosophical. If I were to describethe project in terms of network issues, AlbertO. Hirschman’s work would be more relevant.Hirschman had a knack for lookingat problems from unusual perspectives,bringing social insight and economic theory

to bear on a wide range of issues. His workmight yield insight into why no books evercame back to me.

Robust networks are stable, hardy institutions.Nevertheless, networks require a continualenergy inputs and development to remainrobust. The wealth and poverty of networks

means that the art networks I used for thisproject were far more fragile than I realized.The fact that these networks were neverrobust in any genuine sense should haveenabled me to predict the results. Thenetworks into which I sent the blank bookswere art world networks. They were a sub-setof the larger world of economic and socialactors rather than the kind of ideal communitythat we sometimes assume the art world tobe. Robert Filliou described the art worldas an “eternal network”, but he was wrong.The art world is not a network, but a socialecology. One dening feature of the socialecology is that the seeming connectionsthat appear to constitute a network do notform a genuine network because they offer

no reasonably predictable mechanisms forlinkage or the ow of energy.

This has given me much cause for thoughtover the years. When Norrie Neumark andAnnemarie Chandler invited me to write achapter for their 2005 book At A Distance:Precursors to Internet Art and Activism

art from MIT Press, I wrote a chapter on“The Wealth and Poverty of Networks”.Filliou’s notion of the eternal network was


25/144

25

something between a metaphor and adescription of what Filliou believed to be anemerging social reality. Filliou intended it asa genuine description, but the fact is thatthe eternal network functioned primarily ona metaphorical level. In one sense, this is nota problem. Filliou developed his concept of“the eternal network” in terms of the humancondition rather than art. Filliou held thatthe purpose of art was to make life more

important than art. That was the central ideaof the eternal network.

In a large, Taoist sense, Filliou was right. Weare all linked in some rich way by robust andindissoluble bonds. But the social ecology ofart operates in quite the opposite way, builton a market economy that requires the illusion

of scarcity: scarce attention, scarce resources,deliberately limited editions of art to createa sense of restricted supply and increaseddemand at ever higher prices. This is even thecase for kinds of art that ought to function inan economy of increasing returns. In theory,these kinds of art should not be subject tothe market economics of scarcity. Even so,they seem to work that way, if only becausetheir creators or those who represent theirart structure the art of increasing returns tofunction through the illusion of scarcity.

In the years after Filliou described theeternal network, the idea took on a life ofits own. It signied a global community ofpeople who believe in the ideas that Filliou

cherished. This community is uid, composedof people who may never meet one anotherin person and who do not always agree onconcepts of life and art. While these factsdo not diminish the reality of an ongoingcommunity, the community is diffuseand weak. Although this community hasexchanged ideas for over three decades,

the community has relatively few durableengagements other than artistic contact.

The metaphor is powerful. The reality is not.The eternal network is embedded in an artworld that makes it difcult to make life moreimportant than art.

Robert Filliou studied economics at theUniversity of California, Los Angeles beforeworking as an oil economist. At some point,he lost interest or hope in what he saw asstandard approaches to knowledge and

knowledge production in the technocraticsociety. In a 1966 pamphlet from SomethingElse Press, he published a manifesto titled,“A Proposition, a Problem, a Danger, and aHunch.” His manifesto offered an alternative.

Looking back over the developments of thepast half-century, I no longer believe that the

situation for society at large is as hopeless asRobert believed it to be. At the same time,I am far less optimistic about the potentialof art. Art is lodged in a market economythat embraces and dominates non-protinstitutions such as museums and educationalinstitutions such as universities. The art theseinstitutions display and study is embedded inthe market economy of dealers, commercialgalleries, and art magazines organized aroundadvertising revenue.

It may be that I am wrong about the hopefulprospects of the larger society. The historyof the past fty years gives evidence forpessimism as well as for hope. In contrast,I feel safe in arguing that the art world

justies my pessimistic view of art marketsand their dominant role in the productionand consumption of art. Consumption is therule as contrasted with co-creation.

Robert’s manifesto effectively declared socialscience, natural science, and the humanities tobe obsolete. Instead, he argued for knowledge

and knowledge production from an optimisticperspective anchored in art.


26/144

26

Robert wrote,

“A refusal to be colonized culturally by a self-styled race of specialists in painting, sculpture,poetry, music, etc..., this is what ‘la Révoltedes Médiocres’ is about. With wonderfulresults in modern art, so far. Tomorrow couldeverybody revolt? How? Investigate.

“A problem, the one and only, but

massive: money, which creating doesnot necessarily create.”

The difculty, of course, is that thespecialists took control of Robert Filliou’swork, colonizing it and adapting it to theart markets. These markets include theeconomy of buying and selling art, andthe attention economy for thinking aboutit. Robert’s proposition for a solutionmade little difference.

Robert proposed the metaphor ofa poetic economy:

“So that the memory of art (as freedom) isnot lost, its age-old intuitions can be put insimple, easily learned esoteric mathematicalformulae, of the type a/b = c/d (for instance,if a is taken as hand, b as foot, d as table,hand over head can equal foot on tablefor purposes of recognition and passiveresistance. Study the problem. Call the study:Theory and Practice of A/B .”

To be sure, no one else seems to have solvedthe problem. The idea of letting artists ratherthan technocrats make the effort was not abad idea. Nevertheless, this proposal involveda second difculty.

While Robert used the terms “art” and “artist”in a different way than the normative art

world does, he used the art world to mediatehis ideas. The art world seized on Robert’swork, rather than his ideas, mediating both in

a narrow channel rather than a larger worldof public discourse or open conversation.

A short note is no place to address thebroad range of issues embedded in RobertFilliou’s manifesto. What can be said is thatthese problems are difcult, and solvingthem is difcult as well. The difculties arenot Robert’s fault. Rather, they are embeddedin a series of challenges we are only coming

to understand.

Robert’s idea of a poetical economicsemerged during an era of contest, inquiry,and debate that affected all research eldsand most elds of professional practice.Robert Filliou understood this. He soughta way to link thought to productive action– or perhaps he sought to link thought toproductive inaction, as it was for John Cage.Attempting this through art suggested anew kind of research as well. Moreover, itsuggested “an art that clucks and lls ourguts” in the words of Dick Higgins’s (1966)Something Else Manifesto .

Robert Filliou was trained as an economist.It is interesting, therefore, to reect on thework of economists who considered theproblem in different ways. One stream of thiswork began in the 1940s when Australianeconomist Colin Clark laid the foundationfor work that Daniel Bell would explore in hisdiscussion of post-industrial society. Othersalso addressed these patterns, notably the

economist Harold Innis (Marshall McLuhan’spredecessor and mentor) and the economistFritz Machlup. Like Filliou, they did better inanalyzing problems than proposing solutions.However, their work had a different fate. Ithelped give birth to a slowly evolving publicconversation that is open to all because itgenerates political dialogue in the larger arena

of analysis, critique, and proposition.


27/144

27

Today, we also understand a great dealmore than we did through the work of

micro-sociologists such as ErvingGoffman or behavioral economists suchas Daniel Kahnemann.

The grand irony of Robert’s work is that hewas transformed from a public thinker intoan artist, with all the limitations this implies.As a thinker, Robert Filliou opposed the

notion of art as a new form of specialization,subject to the control of dealers, critics,collectors, and the highly specializedinstitutions that serve them. As a thinker,Filliou worked in the productive borderzone between art and public life.

Unfortunately, Robert Filliou became anartist, and the art world linked his ideas tomercantile interests. This was not Robert’sfault. Much like specialists and technocratsin any eld, the specialists who manageart world institutions also have a difculttime understanding and working with theproductive poetic economies that emerge inthe border zone.

The concept of the eternal networkleads a thoughtful observer to alternatebetween optimism and cheerful resignation.It is easy to be cheerful simply because thismetaphor of the global village has survivedfor as long as it has. In a healthy sense,the eternal network foreshadowed othernetworks that would become possible later

using such technologies as computer,telefax, electronic mail, and the World WideWeb. If it foreshadowed a coming technology,it also foreshadowed the failure to establishexistential commitment and social memoryas a foundation for durable change.Networks involve robust links and routingsystems. A human network requires

commitment and memory. Without them,links and routes are absent.

In a famous article on the strength ofweak ties between dense network clusters

of friends, sociologist Mark Granovetterdemonstrated the importance of weak linksthat enable information and connectivity tomove between individuals in close-knit groupsto individuals in other groups that might nototherwise interact. But networks require bothkinds of formations.

It is inevitable that human societies haveboth – and this is true of the art world.What seems to be missing, however, is arich series of robust clusters that one couldlabel an “eternal network”. Instead, the artworld constitutes a series of weak ties withoccasional market links or links shaped bythe boundaries of the business networks ofgalleries and dealers. They also include linksthrough the professional networks of curatorsor people working in universities or art anddesign schools.

If I were to attempt the blank bookproject today, I would structure it ina very different way.

The project did shape some interestingripples in the pond.

While none of the books came back tome, I did come across several traces of thebooks. Traveling across the United States andCanada in the 1970s, I met artists who hadreceived a book, worked on it, and passed it

on. They told me wonderful stories about theirinvolvement with the books. Even thoughthe books did not return, I had the sensethat something interesting and useful hadhappened for people who took the project forwhat it was meant to be.

On one occasion, I saw a book at the studio

of an artist who proudly brought the book outto show me. About a dozen and a half pageswere complete. These pages were wonderful,


28/144

28

many pages showing the traces of carefulwork over time. This took place a year or two

after I had sent the book out, and the bookwas far from complete.

The requests inside each front cover askedthe artist who completed the book to returnit to me at Fluxus West on Elmhurst Drive inSan Diego. I left that address in 1979, and ithas been years since mail sent to San Diego

reached me. Perhaps some books are stillmaking their way around the world. One ortwo may yet to attempt a return journey to aplace that no longer has any connection withFluxus or with me.

Then again, as Stanley Milgram and DuncanWatts learned, it is neither a small world, nora big world, but a somewhat lumpy world withdifferent networks linking separated parts ofthe world. Huge gaps and chasms separatethese islands of interaction.

The Green Street scroll raises anotherseries of issues beyond the question ofwhat might or might not have happenedif anyone had agreed to take the scroll fromme. This is the question of what it means towrite in such a book.

The books I sent out in the Milgram-Wattstradition reached each new artist unsolicited.They came as an opportunity and a request,but they entailed no prior commitment. TheGreen Street scroll entails commitment. To

accept the scroll required the recipient toacknowledge and take on a responsibility.

This made the scroll a book of life, or possiblyeven a book of death. To accept such a book

would be to accept responsibility and toacknowledge the possibility of mortality.This may be too much weight for a smallwork of art to carry.

It is probably for the best that no one everagreed to continue my Green Street scroll.


29/144

29

Fruit Sonata

Play baseball with fruit.

1963

Los Angeles, California.


30/144

30

The March of the Toy Soldiers

Mount domestic objects on poles.

Organize them in relation to one another.

Imagine a battle.

1963

Long before I joined Fluxus, I enjoyed playingwith objects. I often used ordinary objects assomething other than what they were. Whilethis sometimes involved little more than atransformation of thought or perspective, itsometimes involved physical modicationsor transforming the objects.

After I moved to California in 1961, I wasactive in the peace movement. I occasionallymade small armies or collections of ordinaryobjects for ironic war games. Later, I mountedthem on rods or poles so that they could becarried about.

The rst versions of this piece involved smallobjects on a table. There were no rods. Ilater made large magical objects on rods. Atsome point, I combined the idea for the largemagical pieces and the idea for the small toyarmy. Most of the large pieces with objectsbound to sticks or rods are related to the idea

of ritual or ceremonial magic. My friends andI carried these in processional events andparades that I organized. We also used largetoy soldiers made from ordinary objects werein ironic war games and parades, carryingthese about on poles.

From time to time, this took the scale and

nature of giant chess games – or giantversions of the Japanese board game, go .

In 1968, I began making table and boxobjects for installation and exhibition. Theseincluded such works such as Geography Box ,Light Box , and others. Some of the objectsinvolved placing objects on rods in sand orplaster to hold them in a steady position. Iconceived The March of the Toy Soldiers asa table object 1994, paralleling some of myearlier table objects.

The table object uses corks. To build it ,collect as many corks as you wish and getas many thin metal rods as there are corks.The rods should be 1 to 1.5 millimeters in

diameter. Cut them at different heightsbetween 19 and 30 centimeters.

Construct a wooden box on legs. Thebox can be any sturdy, plain wood. It shouldstand 30 centimeters off the ground fromthe oor or surface on which it stands tothe top of the box. The box should be 12

centimeters deep from the inside oor tothe lip. The outside dimensions of the tableshould be 30 centimeters by 30 centimeters.This will make an object whose outsidedimensions form a cube.

Fill the box with plaster of Paris. When theplaster sets sufciently to hold the rods

rmly as you sink them, place the rods in theplaster. Place the rods so that they form smallgroups and clusters. Imagine that they are


31/144

31

toy soldiers in a battle. Set them at slightlydifferent angles and in relationships that willgive them a dynamic feeling.

If you wish to make a free-standing object,built the box as described above but set thebox on long legs that stand 65 centimetersfrom the oor to the bottom of the box.The free-standing box needs heavier andmore solid carpentry


32/144

32

Pass This on to a Friend

Print a card or paperwith the text:

“Pass this on to a friend”.

1963

First realized in Pasadena, California.


33/144

33

Christmas Tree Event

Take a Christmas tree intoan all-night restaurant.

Place the tree in a seat next to you.

Order two cups of coffee,

placing one in front of the tree.Sit with the tree,drinking coffee and talking.

After a while,depart,leaving the tree in its seat.

As you leave,call out loudly to the tree,“So long, Herb.Give my love to the wife and kids.”

1964

First performed 10 p.m., December 31, 1964in Manhattan Beach, California.


34/144

34

Fast Food Event

Go into a fast food restaurant.

Order one exampleof every item on the menu.

Line everything up

in a row on the table.Eat the items one at a time,starting at one end of the rowand moving systematicallyfrom each to the next.

Finish each item beforemoving on to the next.

Eat rapidly and methodicallyuntil all the food is nished.

Eat as fast as possiblewithout eating too fast.

Eat neatly.

Do not make a mess.

1964


35/144

35

This piece was a response to the growth offast food restaurant chains. I rst realized it

in San Diego, California.

By the early 1960s, America had suchrestaurant chains as Howard Johnson andDenny’s. Franchised fast food, take-outchains typied by McDonalds, Burger King,and Subway were not yet common. The areaof San Diego where I lived had a regional

hamburger chain named Jack in the Box thatI have never seen outside Southern California.

There were a fair number of fast food andtake-out places. These were often one-manhamburger stands or tiny diners with foodavailable on a take-out basis. In the SanDiego area, there were also a number ofsmall, family-owned taco shops, and pizzarestaurants with a take-out menu.The family-owned taco shops often hadexcellent Mexican cuisine. The food washomemade on the premises, along withsuch side dishes as guacamole, frijolesrefritos, and rice.

In the late 1960s, Southern California got afast food Mexican restaurant chain namedTaco Bell. While it wasn’t as good as thefamily-owned restaurants, the food was tastyin those days and there were a number ofTaco Bell locations. The menu was small, andthat made it relatively easy to perform theFast Food Event .

I had forgotten about this piece until a visitto Nancy McElroy in August 1991. She, herchildren, and I went to a Taco Bell. While wewere eating, she told them about how I usedto perform this event in San Diego. I hadn’trecalled the event in years. I wrote this versionof the score from her account.


36/144

36

The Judgment of Paris

An installation presents three images.

Beneath each imageis a shelf or platform.

Each viewer may choose

the image he judges most beautiful.A golden apple is placedbeneath the chosen image.

1964

The rst versions of this work constructedbetween 1964 and 1968 consisted of formsor objects such as postage stamps, cansof food, books, architectural models, orfurniture. I realized examples and variationsin San Diego, Los Angeles, Pasadena, andVentura, California, as well as in Mt Carroll,

Illinois, and New York.

In 1989, I built the second version in Oslo,Norway. It consists of objects or imagesdepicting women. These included statues,pictures from magazines, photo panels,and other images.

The rst book I remember reading as a childwas an edition of Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’sTravels . It was a gift from my mother. FromSwift, I moved into the classics. I often readclassical authors and mythology in thereference section of the public library. One ofthe rst books I purchased for myself was acollection of classical myths, primarily Greekand Roman. I bought it at a bookshop inLaguna Beach on our rst visit to California.Greek mythology was an enormous interest

to me. The archetypal themes found in Greekmythology recur in literature, drama, and art.While much mythological material is clearand explicit, authors, playwrights, and artistsoften disguise borrowed themes, reworkingthem or transforming them in different ways.In The Thirty-Six Dramatic Situations , George

Polity states that the entire history of dramainvolves only thirty-six basic plots. Many ofthese appear in the myths.

This piece was a doubled reworking. First,I took ordinary material artifacts, exploringtheir nature as objects in a highly materialculture by endowing them with the virtueof actors. Then, I doubled the myth back onitself by dignifying them with the attributesof the original myth.

Many events create a theater of the object.Objects act or participate in the action. Therst version of this event is such a project.

The later version turns the myth back on itselfby using images of women. The meaningof the piece changes based on the choice


37/144

37

of image, the obvious or subtle nature ofthe source, the character of the model andthe pose. This, too, is a statement on thecharacter and effect of myth.

The piece may be realized with one applethat is moved by viewers as they make

different choices in a transformativedialogue among visitors and viewers,with each viewer changing or acceptingthe condition of the piece. It is also possibleto use a large basket of Golden Deliciousapples, allowing visitors to stack fruit infront of the chosen object as a form ofreferendum or poll on viewer preferences.


38/144

38

Public Notice

Print a sheet of paper ora poster with the text:

If you wish to see your name in print,sign here:

1964

First executed at de Benneville Pines in

Angelus Oaks, California in June of 1964,I have realized this piece as a card, a bulletin,a poster, and a magazine page.


39/144

39

Restaurant Event

Dress as badly as possible.

Wear surplus clothes,tattered shoes,and an old hat.

Go to an elegant restaurant.Behave with dignityand exquisite decorum.

Request a ne table.

Tip the maître d’hôte well,and take a seat.

Order a glass of water.

Tip the waiters,the busboy

and staff lavishly,then depart.

1964

In the summer of 1964, I spent many weeksas a guest of the Brooks family in the BeverlyHills area of Los Angeles. In the evenings, Iwashed the dinner dishes while listening toBob Dylan records. Then I would walk aboutenjoying the summer air. One night, I foundmyself near the Beverly Hilton Hotel. I wasthirsty, so I walked in to perform this event.


40/144

40

White Bar

A bar or tavernin a simple room.

The room is plain,light wood.

The bar is a wooden table.Only clear liquorsor spirits are served.

The bottles are lined upon one end of the barwith several rows of clean glasses.

There is a bowl of limes.

1964

White Bar was the score for severalperformances and events from 1964 on. Therst full realization of White Bar took placein 1968 for a party at the San FranciscoFluxhouse on Dolores Street. We built thebar without building the entire room. Weorganized a small party serving only clearliquors. The liquors were vodka, rum, and

tequila. We mixed the liquors with freshorange juice and fresh lime juice or servedthem neat. We had only two visitors, theItalian art critic Mario Diacono, then teachingliterature at the University of California atBerkeley, and Mario’s girlfriend.

White Bar was the basis of a collection

of clear liquors I assembled at ArvidJohannessen’s at in Norway when I livedwith him. From 1988 to 1992, I brought back

a bottle of local clear liquor every time Itraveled to a foreign country. We had lozarakuja from Yugoslavia, bailloni from Hungary,raki from Turkey and ouzo from Greece,kirschwasser and pumi from Switzerland,grappa from Italy, eiswetter and FurstBismarck from Germany, brandwijn from theNetherlands, and vodka from Finland. We

also had vodka from Iceland, Poland, Russia,Sweden, Norway, and Ireland – long withdozens of different clear fruit distillates fromall over Europe. Some of them were quitegood. Some were terrible.

One night we had a small party at the at.Oyvind Storm Bjerke, art historian and

chief curator of the Henie Onstad Museum,attended. Arvid proudly pointed to thecollection. Oyvind went over, looked over


41/144

41

the bottles, judiciously uncorked a few, andsniffed them. After a few minutes inspection,he nodded knowingly and said: “Dette maabli den denitiv samling av verdens dårligstebrennevinner”. – “This must be the denitivecollection of the world’s worst liquors”.

The collection disappeared before we could

organize a proper realization of the White Bar.A few weeks after Oyvind’s comment, we hadanother party. The lmmaker Jan Schmidtnished the entire collection in one night.

Thirty years after the original White Bar ,this score led to a project titled Grappafor the White Bar .

Grappa for the White Bar

Take an ordinary bottle of clear glass.On the front, sandblast the text:

GrappaKF1964-1994

On the back, sandblast the text:

Onlyclear liquorsare served

In June of 1994, Emily Harvey invited me tomake a multiple of a grappa bottle for EmilyHarvey Editions. Several other artists had


42/144

42

already done bottles in the series, some withdelightful plays on the idea of drinking or the

chemistry of grappa. Most of these involvedbeautiful, hand-blown glass bottles. I wantedto do a piece that was close to the originalcontext of grappa: humble, a local drink, soldin simple bottles. In September, she remindedme to nish my multiple. I decided to do apiece based on an idea I had for a bar in1964, White Bar , and to some variationson White Bar. I also wanted my multiple tobe much less expensive and more widelyavailable than the other multiples, a simpleedition instead of a rare object.

The multiple was to use commerciallyavailable bottles and a simple sandblastingtechnique. The short line length wouldhave made it possible to sandblast thetext without any trouble. For bottlesmanufactured in Italy, the typeface wasto be Bodoni Bold or Bodoni Extra Bold.

A while later, Emily wrote me to say thatthe sample bottle was ready. Due to strictalcohol control laws, we did not want toship it to Norway. I did not visit Venice

after Emily produced the bottle, and Inever completed the edition.


43/144

43

Anniversary

Someone sneezes.

A year later,send a postcard reading:

“Gesundheit!”

1965


44/144

44

Cheers

Conduct a large crowd of peopleto the house of a stranger.

Knock on the door.

When someone opens the door,

the crowd cheers and applauds vigorously.All depart silently.

1965


45/144

45

Copernicus

Build a model of the solar system.

Use different kinds of objects torepresent the sun and planets.

Make the model reasonably accurate

for relative size, scale, and distance.There may be six planets as in theCopernican universe, there may benine planets as in 1965, or eight planetsas determined by the International

Astronomical Association in 2006.1965 (Revised 2006)


46/144

46

Edison’s Lighthouse

Create a passagewith facing mirrors.

Place candlesin front of each mirror.

Vary the nature and intensityof light by variations in thenumber and placement of candles.

1965

In 1965, I was living in Mt Carroll, Illinois, as astudent at Shimer College. The entrance areato my room had two facing dressers. Aboveeach was a vertical mirror roughly two feetwide and three feet tall. Standing betweenthese mirrors, I would sometimes contemplatethe paradox of reection and multiple images.Light and reection occupied me intensely.

One evening, I set up a candle to observethe path of light between the two mirrors.For several weeks, I tried different arrays ofcandles standing in old bottles. At one point, Ialso made crude candelabras using Coca-Colabottles in cartons that held six bottles.

Light traveled between the two mirrors in anarrow band roughly ten feet long, two feetwide, and three feet tall. The light spilled outof the path to illuminate the room. Varyingthe number of candles and their placementcreated a great variety of subtle differencesin rich, dense light.

The title for this piece comes from a storyabout Thomas Edison. The story is thatEdison used mirrors and lanterns to create

enough light to allow a physician to performemergency surgery. A charming version ofthis story appears in the 1940 movie YoungTom Edison , starring Mickey Rooney, FayBainter, and George Bancroft. I have neverbeen able to learn whether the story is agenuine account from Edison’s life or anartifact of Hollywood biography.


47/144

47

First Time Around

An identication is made.

1965


48/144

48

Open and Shut Case

Make a box.

On the outside,print the word “Open”.

On the inside,

print the words “Shut quick”.1965

The rst version of this project wasconstructed in December 1965, while I wasat a meeting at the First Unitarian Church of

Chicago. I took a large matchbox that hadbeen lled with wooden kitchen matches. Icovered the outside with paper and printedthe words, “Open me” on the outside. On theinside, I printed the words “Shut me quick”.In 1966, it became my rst Fluxbox,The Open and Shut Case .

When I rst created the piece, it hadhermeneutic connotations involving adiscussion that was under way at the churchmeeting. I would not have used the termhermeneutic in those days, but I understoodthe concept of interpretation. I was attendinga meeting of the executive committee ofLiberal Religious Youth, Inc., to help planthe annual Continental Conference for 1966.The conference was to take place in Ithaca,New York, and I was to be editor of the dailyconference newspaper.

I was on my way to the conference in Augustof 1966, when Dick Higgins sent me to meetGeorge Maciunas for the rst time. Onemorning, I made one of the boxes for Dick. Hethought I ought to take it to George.

I had been corresponding with Dick to makeradio programs based on the SomethingElse Press books of Daniel Spoerri, Emmett

Williams, Alison Knowles, Ray Johnson,Robert Filliou, and others for my programs atRadio WRSB. This was a college-based radiostation in Mt Carroll, Illinois. Dick and Alisoninvited me to stay with them for a while attheir home in New York, a few blocks awayfrom the press. I was sixteen years old. I’d justnished the rst two years of college, and I

was in New York to look around.

George’s telephone directions brought meto his fth oor walk-up apartment on WestBroadway in a decaying industrial section ofNew York City that was then part of LittleItaly. Henry Flynt later took over George’sapartment, and the neighborhood becamethe Soho art district. Back then, it was justa tenement. I walked up the stairs to nd ablack door covered with violent, emphaticNO! SMOKING!!! signs. I knocked.

The door opened a crack, and a pair of eyesframed in round, wire-rimmed spectaclespeered out. That was George Maciunas.

George was a small, wiry man with a prim,owlish look. He was dressed in a short-sleeve


49/144

49

business shirt, open at the neck, no tie. Hewore dark slacks and black cloth slippers. Hispocket was cluttered with number of pens.

In current jargon, we’d call him a “nerd” ora “geek”. He typied the computer jocks,engineers, and architects at Carnegie MellonUniversity, his alma mater.

George ushered me into his kitchen. It wasa steamy, New York summer day, but theapartment was cool. It smelled like rice mats.

I recognized the smell. It reminded me ofa Japanese store I used to frequent as ayoungster in New London, Connecticut.

The apartment contained three rooms.To the right was a compact, well-designedofce and workroom. The oor was coveredwith rice mats. George said not to go inwearing shoes, so I looked in from the doorto see drafting tables, desks, shelves, andan astonishing clutter of papers, projects,notebook, and les. It was the most orderlyclutter I’ve ever seen, the opposite of myown chronological project layers.

The rst time I saw George’s workspace, itwas rigged out with a marvelous contraptionthat enabled him to reach up and tap a weightto summon items he wanted. By means of a

counterbalance and some strings and rods,whatever he wanted would oat into hisgrasp. At least, this is my memory. I am not

sure if I actually saw the working device, ora prototype, or if this is just a memory of aplanning diagram that George showed me.

To the left of the kitchen, George had whatlooked like a huge, walk-in closet or a smallstorage room. The room was lled withoor-to-ceiling shelves, like an industrial

warehouse. In fact, it was an industrialwarehouse, the comprehensive inventoryof Fluxus editions in unassembled form.The shelves were loaded with boxes storingthe contents of Fluxus multiple editions,suitcases, and year boxes. When an ordercame in for a Fluxbox, George would goto the back of the closet, select theappropriate plastic or wooden container,and march through the room plucking outthe proper cards and objects to emergewith a completed work. He’d select theproper label, glue it on, and have acompleted edition ready to mail.

The kitchen had a sink, windows, stove, table,and chairs. These were all quite ordinaryexcept for the refrigerator. George had abright orange refrigerator. When he opened it,

I ld h h d ll d i i h f B b M d di i f G


50/144

50

I could see he had lled it with oranges fromthe bottom clear to the top shelf. The top

shelf, on either side of the old-fashionedmeat chest and ice tray, held four huge jugsof fresh orange juice. He offered me a glassof orange juice.

Maciunas peppered me with questions.What did I do? What did I think? What wasI planning? At that time, I was planning tobecome a Unitarian minister. I did all sortsof things, things without names, things that

jumped over the boundaries between ideasand actions, between the manufacture ofobjects and books, between philosophy andliterature. Maciunas listened for a while andinvited me to join Fluxus. I said yes.

A short while later, George asked me what

kind of artist I was. Until that moment, I hadnever thought of myself as an artist. Georgethought about this for a minute, and said,“You’re a concept artist”.

It always pleased me that I became partof Fluxus before I became an artist.

The rst version of the text was a personalinjunction, commanding the reader to“Open me” and “Shut me quick.” Laterversions employ a simpler text reading,“Open” and “Shut quick”. My notes forGeorge read: “Make a box. On the outside,print the word, ‘Open’. On the inside, printedthe words ‘Shut quick’.” The title of the piecewas Open and Shut Case .

While the original idea had hermeneuticalimplications related to religious issues thatconcerned me, the term also has legalconnotations. It’s a common phrase in lmsor theater pieces about police or lawyers.George played with the legal implicationsof the phrase and prepared the label of theFluxbox as a subpoena.

Barbara Moore made a new edition of GeorgeMaciunas’s Fluxus version a few years. Peter

van Beveren reprinted it in a 1990s edition inRotterdam. The Rotterdam edition bears asimple label, much like the Chicago original.The label is a simple paper label and withlarge, black letters in a sans-serif typeface.

One variation on this piece was planned asan installation. For this version of the piece,the score reads:

“Paint a room in a single color. Paint the doorto the room the same color as the room.On the door, print the words, ‘Open’.”

“On the inside wall directly opposite thedoor, printed the words ‘Shut quick’.”

dd


51/144

51

Sudden Harmony Dance Tune

Perform a dance– a stomp, a clog,a tap danceor a soft shoe –while chanting words

with glottal stops.1965

W b t ’ Di ti


52/144

52

Webster’s Dictionary

Print a series of dictionary denitionson sidewalks and wallsin public places.

1965

First realized in October, 1965, with a stringof words and denitions inscribed in chalkaround the quadrangle of Shimer College,Mt Carroll, Illinois.

Dark Mirror


53/144

53

Dark Mirror

Create a dark, mirrored oorin a white, well-lit room.

Apply high-glossblack enamel paintto a wooden oor.

Sand the oor, buff it,and paint it again.

Repeat the action untilthe oor is a reective surface.

Subdue the lighting.

1966

Dark Mirror was realized at the Avenue CFluxus Room in New York in September

1966. The room was later used for mostof the projects and exhibitions, whichtook place there.

Different Card Fluxdeck


54/144

54

Different Card Fluxdeck

Make a deck of cards in which everycard in the deck is different fromevery other card in the deck.

The deck is can be made by takingcards from different decks.

It must be possible to assembleall the cards in the deck into thecomplete and proper sequenceof a full deck of cards.

Every card in the deck shouldhave a unique back and a frontthat is different in some way fromthe other cards in the deck,whether the difference is large or small.

1966

This is an idea that eventually becomes a deckof marked cards, each marked individuallyby its unique back. I see it now as part ofa trilogy of Fluxus card decks based oncommercially produced cards: Single CardFluxdeck by George Maciunas and MissingCard Fluxdeck by Ben Vautier.

Incognito Ergo Sum


55/144

55

Incognito, Ergo Sum

Print a page or object with the words:“Incognito, ergo sum”.

1966

Light Table Variation


56/144

56

Light Table Variation

Set a wooden table withmany candles of different kinds,large and small,colored and plain,ordinary and shaped,

normal and scented.Place the candles on the table.

Stand thin candles incandlesticks and candleholders.

Stand thick candles andsquare candles directly on the table.

Anyone who wishes to bringnew candles may place themon the table.

Light the candles.

1966

In 1964, I decided on a career in the Unitariani i I h I i i Lib l

science than his work on light, I remainedf i d b li h d i h


57/144

57

ministry. In those years, I was active in LiberalReligious Youth, a community in which Idedicated myself to creating and organizingworship services. The quality of light andthe use of space play an important role inworship. Candles are a tool for shaping lightand space, and a way to dene them in sodoing. The use of light to focus the mind andsenses are reasons for the ancient role ofcandles and light in worship and meditation.

In 1965 and 1966, I performed experimentswith light in Mt Carroll, Illinois. Worshipwas one source of my interest in light.Physics was another.

In the summer of 1965, I studied at CaliforniaWestern University in Point Loma. Discovering

my interest in the history of science, a physicsprofessor asked me to lecture on the lifeand work of Copernicus. Later, I lectured onKepler, and then on Newton.

In the autumn of 1965, I transferred to ShimerCollege. Shimer based its curriculum on theoriginal writings of scientists, philosophers,

and thinkers using the great books curriculumdeveloped by Robert Maynard Hutchins forthe University of Chicago. We studied naturalscience by working directly from historicaltexts to master the principles of inquiry andtheory building. Our rst text was Newton’s1704 classic, Optics . We worked our waythrough the text, performing Newton’s originalexperiments to debate his ndings.

Newton began his work on optics in the1660s, lecturing on the subject in the 1670s,and publishing his rst major papers onoptics in the Philosophical Transactions in1672. Controversies attending the publicationof his work led him to withhold the nalpublication of the book on Optics until mostof his opponents had died. While I was moreinterested in Newton’s ways of thinking about

fascinated by light, and spent many nightsalone in my room working with differentkinds of light. I kept my prism long afterI completed my replication of Newton’sexperiments. The prism is now in a box atthe University of Iowa.

The rst version of this score called for “manycandles of different kinds, large and small,colored and plain, ordinary and shaped,normal and scented”. Early on, I decided thatall candles in this piece should be ordinary,functional candles. There should be no noveltycandles or joke candles. Later, I came to prefereven simpler ways to perform the piece,concentrating on light rather than on coloror smell with white, unscented candles. Now,I use only plain, white candles of different

kinds, sizes, and shapes.

Execution Kit


58/144

58

Prepare a large box containinga plastic squirt gun,a blindfold,and cigarettes.

1966

Proposal for an unrealized Fluxkit basedon a conversation with Kurt Wahtera thattook place in September of 1966 inMarblehead, Massachusetts.

Fluxpost Cancellation


59/144

59

Produce a cancellation markwith this text:

The Inconsequential is Coming

1966

This text is the legend printed on my Fluxuscancellation stamp. It was made in September1966, in New York and it was later used in theFluxus Postal Kit . The actual phrase camefrom a grafto found inscribed on the wallof a post ofce in Bel Rios, California.

Fluxus Instant Theater


60/144

60

Rescore Fluxus events for performanceby the audience.

A conductor may guide the audience.

1966

This piece was rst realized at theUnitarian Church in Marblehead,Massachusetts. The conductor may guidethe audience-performers

friedman 99 events .pdf

Documents