Julia Robinson: Working In the Spirit of Fluxus

How do museums handle the legacy of a collectivist initiative whose life and energy had a great deal to do with its avoidance of museums, galleries, and the art market? More comfortable in auditoria, and in the streets, Fluxus artists produced scores and performances, first of all. When they did contribute objects—found items, invented games, balls, lengths of string, playing cards, film strips, chess pieces, photographs, etc.—they were non-autonomous to the extreme, relying on activation by playing, performing, or relating to other items in groups, small and large. George Maciunas, who was on the receiving end of this ‘content,’ said that Fluxus was producing “anti-commodities.” What is left behind is only valuable if this context of precarious acts, performative strategies, and ephemeral gestures is preserved along with its fragile material residue. This lecture addresses the nature of this context by specifying score types, considering viable modes of activation—or, as the artists called it, realization—and the importance of Fluxus for historical analyses of contemporary art.