Fluxfilm Anthology, 1962-1970

Since early 2007, the Frye has been presenting in its vestibule It is Not a Question of Knowing Whether This Interests You but Rather of Whether You Yourself Could Become More Interesting Under New Conditions of Cultural Creation, a series of task-based performances for the camera that culminate in the Museum’s presentation of Oliver Herring I Task on June 28 at the Seattle Public Library. The current offering is Fluxfilm Anthology, part of Fluxus artist George Maciunas’s ongoing effort to document, preserve, and brand what was unique about the Fluxus movement.

The Fluxus Movement dramatically redefined "how" and "where" art is made, choosing as locale for art the street, the home, and the railway station, rather than the art gallery, the concert hall, or the theater. An international, interdisciplinary, and loose-knit network of visual artists, composers, musicians, and others created events and scores, films and performances, along with the occasional object, all under the loose banner of Fluxus. It was Maciunas who named Fluxus (from the Latin for “flow”) in 1962.

Fluxfilm Anthology, comprising 37 short films ranging from ten seconds to ten minutes in length, includes both documents of performances for the camera by Fluxus artists and films created as art (some of which were created to be screened as continuous loops) specifically for Fluxus events and festivals. In addition to Maciunas, other artists represented are Nam June Paik, Dick Higgins, Chieko Shiomi, John Cavanaugh, James Riddle, Yoko Ono, George Brecht, Robert Watts, Pieter Vanderbiek, Joe Jones, Eric Anderson, Jeff Perkins, Wolf Vostell, Albert Fine, George Landow, Paul Sharits, John Cale, Peter Kennedy, Mike Parr, and Ben Vautier.

One source of inspiration for Fluxus performances was composer John Cage’s chance-based transformation of musical composition. For many Fluxus artists, the score suddenly came alive as a form to initiate both the most experimental of propositions and the most ordinary of everyday experiences. Many of the films in this compilation are documents of actions, simple and complex, performed in response to a score. This aspect of Fluxus is fundamental to Herring’s Task.