Radio Fluxus: Stories from the Fluxus Archives Activating Fluxus

Alison Knowles's Performance Piece #8 (Summer 1965) exists as a language-based proposition published in the first Great Beat Pamphlet (New York: Something Else Press, 1965). It also exists as a "graphic performance" entitled The "T" Dictionary. “The Dictionary” was first made public in the book The Four Suits (New York: Something Else Press, 1965). The following year, it was featured in the exhibition "Intermedia" at the Something Else Gallery. In this episode, Alice Centamore takes us on a journey through this fascinating piece and its various instantiations. She also delves into diverse topics related to Knowles's artistic practice, as well as the history of Something Else Press and Gallery. More information about the episode, the piece and the guest is available on the episode's website.

Dream Piece (1976) is a performance by John Armleder, conceived and enacted within the expansive context of the Ecart Group, an artistic collective that thrived in Geneva during the 1970s. Ecart's approach to art bore a strong imprint of Fluxus influence, a fact made evident by the numerous characteristics that situated the group firmly within the broader Fluxus network. Ecart's headquarters in Geneva was multifunctional, serving as a gallery, a concert venue, a bookshop, a library, a publishing house, and a distribution centre for art by Ecart’s extended network. Furthermore, invested in experimenting with alternative models of distribution and dissemination, Ecart became a key node and facilitator in the international mail art network.

In this episode of Radio Fluxus, Yann Chateigné narrates his multifaceted interactions with Dream Piece, assuming roles as an art historian, curator, writer, and performer.



More information about the artist, our guest and the work is available on the episode's website



Disclaimer: Feathers and face paint hold significant spiritual and cultural importance in Native cultures, with their meaning varying based on tribal customs and personal interpretations. They are typically earned through honorable actions that bring honor to tribes and nations. We are aware that wearing a headdress reinforces stereotypes about Native peoples, appropriates their culture with little or no regard for their traditions. We decided, however, to publish these images as a documentary evidence of artistic practice, rather than a display of our believes.

This episode features Ludwig van Beethoven, Ich Liebe Dich, performed by Lotte Lehmann (sopran) and Erno Balogh (piano), recorded March 13, 1936 and 1/1 by Brian Eno, Rhett Davies, Robert Wyatt from album Ambient 1: Music for Airports (1978).

Composed by Bengt af Klintberg in 1963, Orange Event No 3 (or Apelsinhändelse nr 3 in Swedish) is one of the scores from the series Twenty-Five Orange Events. The series was published several times, the first time in Swedish in 1966, together with other writings by af Klintberg. Like many other Fluxus scores, this particular work does not possess a singular manifestation; instead, it exists in various forms and entities. In this episode, we are joined by Magdalena Holdar, a Swedish scholar and author, who not only guides us through the different manifestations of this score but also provides insightful reflections on her own experience using it in her work with students. More information about the artist, our guest and the work is available on the episode's website.

Open and Shut Case (1965) is a score-based work which manifests itself in a variety of ways. As is often the case for Fluxus events, the score has been written down a posteriori, out of the creation of an object. The first pre-score iteration of the piece was an objet trouvé — a matchbox altered by Friedman with two imperative sentences: “open me” written on the outside and “shut me quick” on the inside of the box. Both this one and the subsequent version of this work, which also used a matchbox and was made by Friedman for Dick Higgins, have not survived.

One year after Friedman formulated his initial concept,  George Maciunas asked the young artist to write down the instructions for the piece for the first time and subsequently interpreted it into a Fluxus box — Open and Shut Case (c. 1966). After Maciunas’ passing, his iteration of the score was republished by Barbara Moore as Open and Shut Case (1987) through ReFlux Editions, founded in the 1980s as a platform for continuing the publication of classic Fluxus multiples. In 1993, Dutch collector of artists’ books Peter Van Beveren published Open and Shut Case (1993) — a direct interpretation of the score also in the form of a box, mimicking the first matchbox version.

Consecutive interpretations of the Open and Shut Case, generated often on the occasion of exhibitions of Friedman’s scores, resulted in aesthetically dissimilar objects. In 2021, Lyman Allyn Art Museum in New London, Connecticut produced a short TikTok video explaining the action scripted in the score with the use of a DIY Open and Shut Case made out of a wooden fruit crate. The elegant box in dark red faux leather made for the recent show in Kalmarkonstmuseum exemplifies an opposite approach to the realisation of the same, fairly simple instructions (see photograph below). The score as a text might also take on several material manifestations. While in the 1970s it was typewritten, xeroxed and distributed by post, in the 2000s it was sent digitally as a pdf and made into ‘print on acid-free paper’ using a high-quality inkjet printer. The printout can be consequently presented flat in a vitrine, pinned bare to the wall or presented in black or white Ikea’s Ribba frames.

The third episode of our podcast presents Mirror Piece (1963) by Japanese artist Mieko Shiomi. This work, as many other Fluxus scores, does not have a singular manifestation but rather exists as many different entities, the material ones and the performative ones captured through documentation. Two versions of the handwritten score – in English and Japanese, live in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art, NY and belong to The Gilbert and Lila Silverman Fluxus Collection. Mirror Piece exists also as one of the cards in Events and Games —a Fluxbox and a multiple designed and arranged by George Maciunas (c. 1964) and later re-editioned on several occasions. The work can be appreciated through interpretations of performance artists as well, including an instance by Elina Brotherus who experimented with various pieces by Shiomi, and Dicky Bahto, Taylor Doran, Tatiana Luboviski-Acosta and Yvonne Tam version commissioned by The Getty Museum in 2021. In this episode, Sally Kawamura gives a playful guided tour through diverse instances of the Mirror Piece including her own experience in enacting it on a Welsh beach.

This episode features Benjamin Patterson’s work Hooked (1980) from the collection of Getty Research Institute, acquired in 1985 as a part of Jean Brown Archive. Formally, Hooked is a fishing tackle box that contains several found, similarly unrelated objects adorned with either hooks or lures. One of the items included inside the box was a can of sardines. Our guest, conservator Albrecht Gumlich shares with us his story of how Hooked performs independently and beyond the control of its long-gone creator, disrupting the habitual functioning of a reading room in art archives. It is also a story about challenges related to conserving organic matter and often difficult decisions that need to be made to maintain Fluxus art materiality for future generations.

More details about the work, the guest and the artist are available here.