Dear Simon,

Thank you for your thoughtful response. (This is a reply to Simon's
response to my paper, Intermedia, Multimedia, Media. He wrote it to
me with a copy to the list.)

I appreciate the issues you raise.

Rather than respond comprehensively, I would rather open a small
wedge between the main point and the specifics of the approach to
intermedia that Dick Higgins took together with many Fluxus
colleagues.

You write, ". . . if you really want to make a product sell you
should work out how you can afford to 'give away' the key
facilitating element of what it is you have to sell."

This is exactly what Dick did. His effort to conceptualize intermedia
and to share an idea was not focused on an attempt to commandeer
territory, but rather to open it.

Through Something Else Press, Dick did an effective and generous job
of giving. While the SEP books were, obviously, for sale, these were
always produced in durable high quality editions at the lowest
possible market price. This was a contrast with many artist books of
later times. However, because not everyone could afford books at any
price, Dick also gave away copies to a huge comp list, and he
distributed the Something Else Newsletter at no charge to an immense
list.

For Dick, though, the point was never sales or marketing. It was
opening artistic territory.

It is difficult to understand just how the art world was structured
if we look back from the highly pluralistic and relatively pen art
world we see around us today. The art market dominated the larger art
world, and a handful of major dealers held a leading role in what was
visible, exhibited, and published. This remains somewhat the same,
but the intervening four decades have opened a few spaces that are
not entirely controlled by the flow of money linked to sales. The
rather bland observation that dealers dominated the art market on
behalf of a few artists was far more significant then, however, or a
simple reason. This was the heyday of New York Pop Art, and most of
the major artists were handled by one or two galleries whose position
in the market has no parallel in today's art world. The era of
Abstract Expressionism was not what it had been a few years earlier,
but the major figures still had an immense presence in what one
critic labeled "the triumph of American painting."

This era had little room for art aside from painting, for American
art outside New York, for art by those who did not participate in the
triumphalist American art world. While there were some interesting
art scenes here and there, they were generally invisible to anyone
who was not located at the specific "there," and many European
museums and galleries paid more attention to mainstream New York fare
than to anything else.

Dick coined the term "intermedia" in 1966. In 1966, few artists were
engaged in intermedia, Fluxus, concept art, happenings, video, or
other forms outside the mainstream. In those days, nearly everyone
working in these fields knew everyone else, and there were only a few
hundred of us on even the largest mailing lists and compilations.
Dick's project was more a matter of opening artistic and intellectual
territory than it was a matter of defining or restricting.

Dick always had a passion for opening artistic and intellectual
territory. As a publisher, he produced the first great anthology of
concrete poetry edited by Emmett Williams, and the first great
anthology of non-traditional music notation edited by John Cage. He
launched the revival of interest in Gertrude Stein's work with a
massive series of new editions of Stein classics, and he published
important books by Merce Cunningham, Robert Filliou, George Brecht,
Bern Porter, Ruth Krauss, Ray Johnson, Al Hansen, Jackson Mac Low,
Alison Knowles, Toby MacLennan, and dozens more.

Later, he pioneered the rediscovery and scholarship of pattern
poetry, collecting and editing the first major anthology of work in
that field.

 From my perspective, the economy of Fluxus and intermedia was in
great part a gift economy. I understand your point, and I would
probably agree with you in many cases. In this specific instance, the
times were different and our interest in opening territory and
creating social change necessitated an approach in which we shared
ideas, gave away a great deal, and often had to fund what we did from
our lives and work outside art.

I agree with you that the issues and ideas are important. The
definitions were important for the generative territory they opened.
To the degree that thinking things through requires some form of
knowledge and epistemology, it was important to clarify and explore
the territory. That is what I think Dick intended to do.

It is difficult to understand the world of 1966 looking back from
2003, It is more difficult still to get a sense of how things were in
the 1950s when Dick and Henry Flynt and the others began working on
the ideas that they would later publish. If you place Dick's writings
and philosophizing in historical, cultural, and economic context, I
suspect you will find a range of issues that resonates well with your
perspective.

Best regards,

Ken

p.s. Those who have never had a chance to read Dick's original
intermedia essay will find it reprinted in Randall Packer and Ken
Jordan's book on Multimedia.

Higgins, Dick. 1966. "Intermedia." Something Else Newsletter, vol. 1,
no. 1, pp. 1-6. (Reprinted in Multimedia. From Wagner to Virtual
Reality, Randal Packer and Ken Jordan, editors. New York: W. W.
Norton and Company, 2001)

--

Ken Friedman, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Leadership and Strategic Design
Department of Leadership and Organization
Norwegian School of Management

Visiting Professor
Advanced Research Institute
School of Art and Design
Staffordshire University