Activating Fluxus, Expanding Conservation

Fluxus of the 1960s and 70s defied conventional notions of art and creativity by emphasizing artistic practice’s transient, playful and participatory aspects. However, the multidimensionality of Fluxus has been flattened out in the rush to exhibit, historicize, and theorize its objects. This session explores the potential of Fluxus events, objects, and ephemera as active material embodiments that challenge established hierarchies in museums and collecting institutions. With contributions by Magdalena Holdar, Danielle Johnson, Kate Lewis, Hannah Mandel, Peter Oleksik, and Inbal Strauss. Session chairs: Hanna B. Hölling, Aga Wielocha, Josephine Ellis

Abstracts in order of appearance:

Processing Fluxus and Media Art Histories: A Case Study of the John G. Hanhardt Archives at the Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College

Hannah Mandel, Center of Curatorial Studies, Bard College

This presentation is a case study of a decade-long archival processing project by the Archives at the Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College. The John G. Hanhardt Archives document the fifty-plus year career of John Hanhardt, curator of Film and Video at the Whitney Museum (1974-1996); Guggenheim Museum (1996-2006); and Smithsonian (2006-2013). Several hundred boxes of archival material represent the development of film, video and media arts as a medium of equal standing in museum and exhibition contexts to previously established genres. The collection is a rich repository of Fluxus material. The bulk of the archive dates from 1974-2001, which places it in the unique position of presenting an early Fluxus historiography—insight into how key figures perceived the legacy of their contributions in the years immediately following the movement. The archive includes Fluxus multiples, performance ephemera, and media, as well as extensive correspondence and documentation of Hanhardt’s involvement in the development of Intermedia pedagogy at universities. Notably, the archive documents Hanhardt’s close relationship with Nam June Paik, for whom Hanhardt served as an ambassador. Hans Breder, Ken Friedman, Jon Hendricks, Shigeko Kubota, Jonas Mekas, Yoko Ono are also heavily represented. The multifaceted nature— conceptually, and physically— of the Hanhardt Papers raises unique questions about the role of the Archivist in describing curatorial records. This presentation provides an account of the decisions made, and offers a model for future archival description of Fluxus material that activates the far-reaching implications of the movement, and incorporates the self-described legacies of its participants.

Fluxus Bit by Bit: Dick Higgins and the Great Bear Pamphlet Series

Dr Magdalena Holdar, Stockholm University

Researching Fluxus means engaging with words. Compositions are text based, instructions are written and events described on printed posters. We tend to think of Fluxus art as ephemeral and built around everyday objects and activities, but language is often what binds them all together. Is the published text in fact a key component of Fluxus’s reinvention and renewed relevance? If so, how does the constancy of printed matter align with Fluxus art’s ability to continuously transform?

This paper addresses agency and activation of Fluxus art through the medium of publications. The Great Bear Pamphlet series, published by Dick Higgins between 1965 and 1967, serves as a clarifying case. A diligent writer, theorist, and publisher, Higgins was instrumental in communicating the theoretical foundation of Fluxus. His series of inexpensive and distribution-friendly pamphlets has circulated widely, reaching new readers and practitioners since they were first published.

My presentation explores ways in which Fluxus publications destabilize the notion of printed texts as steady entities, arguing that they instead actively produce new meaning thanks to their medium. Texts, maybe more than artworks, enable re-performance and reactivation of Fluxus works by new generations of artists. Publishing could consequently be seen as another tool in the Fluxus toolbox.

“… Treating with a Flux.”: Case Studies from The Silverman Fluxus Collection, at The Museum of Modern Art

Peter Oleksik, Kate Lewis, Danielle Johnson – The Museum of Modern Art, MoMA

The Silverman Fluxus Collection was acquired by MoMA in 2008 and has been challenging institutional approaches and care for material ever since. Once staff began to process this collection into various departments (the Drawings & Prints curatorial department and Library and Museum Archives), media conservation was enlisted in 2011 to survey the time-based material. This survey prompted numerous engagements: migrations, reconstructions and activation. This presentation considers 2 case studies illustrating how MoMA has cared for, and learned from, the collection.

The first case-study includes Nam June Paik’s Zen for TV and Shigeko Kubota’s Nude Descending a Staircase, and Berlin Diary:Thanks to My Ancestors which engaged an active approach to Cathode Ray Tube (CRT) monitors to support their long term display in MoMA’s galleries.The second case-study focuses on the films of Dick Higgins and how traditional methods of film preservation and migration are challenged by his practice, and how networks of research and care are necessary to exhibit and conserve this material. The aim of this presentation is to illustrate how these Fluxus works force the museum to approach the material with an open mind, allowing the art to guide in its translation into the present and point to how the work should be cared for in the future.

Capri Battery: Powering Decolonial Display Practices through Multisensory Interaction

Dr Inbal Strauss

ABSTRACT: According to the dominant Western paradigm of aesthetic reception, artworks differ from everyday artifacts in activating us solely through visual perception. Correspondingly, Joseph Beuys’s Capri Battery is commonly exhibited inside a vitrine with the lemon replaced with a plastic one. From a conservation perspective, these decisions prevent physical interaction and having to continually replenish the decaying exhibit. However, from a critical perspective, the fact Beuys designed Capri Battery for physical interaction and arguably appropriated the lemon for its ephemeral multisensory properties calls up the surreptitious reasons behind these “conservationist” display decisions. Rooted in colonialism and racial sensory hierarchies, they privilege sight over marginalized modalities historically considered non-Western. How, then, may Capri Battery still challenge the dominant and visualist Wetsern paradigm of aesthetic reception to inform contemporary museum practices?

The paper introduces Wolfgang Kemp’s theory of aesthetic reception, which describes how artworks activate viewers through visual perception, and Donald Norman’s theory of interaction design, which describes how everyday objects activate users through multisensory perception. Drawing on both theories, it offers a keyhole comparison of an everyday lemon battery and Beuys’s Capri Battery, whereby the interaction analysis of the former enables an unexpected aesthetic reading of the latter. The analysis builds upon Capri Battery’s accepted environmental reading yet sheds fresh light on how its display affects the efficacy of its call for action.

Finally, the paper suggests how this case study—and the broader legacy of Fluxus—can inform museum practices that re-embody disembodied spectatorship and decolonize the still-pervasive visualist paradigm of aesthetic reception/perception.