Dear Friends and Colleagues,
I have published my dissertation on Fluxus recently (Fluxus! Art and Life?
Mythes about Authorship, Production, Gender and Communitiy.--- Fluxus.
Kunst gleich Leben Mythen um Aturoschaft, Produktion, Geschelcht und
Gemeinschaft.) Alas it is in German. But I have also done many many video
interviews and did make a film out of it together with historical
material. So thanks a lot to Ken Friedman to start with Fluxus as a
network. As many of you will know it is always a battle about the power to
define what is this and that, and mostly art market and art history are
generating a view that is centered around just some single authors.
Therefore the film also tries to show the big network, the fights, the
political aspects, the star attitudes of some , gentrification and so on.
The film premier will be at Staatsgalerie Stuttgart at 13th of April. We
will also put up a website, (everything is always later as one plans) and
we would be very very happy to show it elsewhere. So- I totally agree with
Ken to see Fluxus as a network (and as a battleground),the Film is in
English; a collage of some sort; Best, Dorothee
--
Dr. Dorothee Richter
Head of Postgraduate Program in Curating
Institute Cultural Studies in the Arts
Zurich University of the Arts
Hafnerstr. 31
8005 Zürich
www.curating.org study program
www.on-curating.org webjournal
www.curatingdegreezero.org archive
Am 05.02.13 09:08 schrieb "Ken Friedman" unter <[log in to unmask]>:
>Friends,
>
>While I plan to return with my own statement, I want to tip my hat to
>Clive Robertson for his intro.
>
>This addresses several of the profound challenges in the concept of the
>Eternal Network, especially as Robert Filliou and George Brecht conceived
>it.
>
>Robert ultimately withdrew into the monastic life of Buddhism, dying on a
>five-year retreat. George withdrew to a nearly monastic life, answering
>his phone only when someone made an appointment by postcard, and nearly
>never going out. In theearly 1970s, Dick Higgins suggested that I find a
>way to make a living outside the art world I dipped in and out of the
>art world for some years, but I found a day job that suited me in the
>1990s: it suited me so well that I have mostly stayed away from the art
>world, doing my art privately. The issues involved are quite complex
>nearly everyone needs to make a living, so we all do something, and it
>sometimes touches on art. This is the case for Clive, too. He teaches art
>and art history to make a living.
>
>There are several questions I plan to address, dealing with networks and
>network effects, and globalism as distinct from globalization. Clive is
>in essence raising aquestion that Robert (Filliou, 2004[1966]: 16) asked
>in his 1966 manifesto, ³A Proposition, a Problem, a Danger, and a Hunch.²
>Robert called for a ³A refusal to be colonized culturally by a selfstyled
>race of specialists in painting, sculpture, poetry, music, etc....²
>
>You can get it in PDF format at this URL:
>
>http://www.ubu.com/historical/gb/manifestos.pdf
>
>But there are many sides to this coin. I donıt know if there is a good
>answer, or even a happy one.
>
>Clive ran one of the loveliest spaces, projects, and publishing entities
>in the not-quite-eternal network of the early 1970s, W.O.R.K.S. in
>Calgary. Iım always amazed at how much more intelligent and free things
>are when we donıt need to fund them through the governments and
>governmental systems that require us to become professional artists. This
>is what leads to the problem that Clive identifies so well: ³The network
>as shared in the early 1970s preceded the formalization of artists spaces
>that confronted / was confronted itself by network issues. The network
>itself was open to abuse as an alternative or oppositional disguise for
>self-promotion but remains I think a very different concept than what
>often poses now as reforms or improvements to a re-established
>hierarchical and exclusionary art system.² That, in essence, is the price
>in a world where professionalization and the submissive role are quite
>close to the same thing.
>
>My day job turned out to be quite a good thing I was good at it, and it
>suited me better than I could have imagined. No life is perfect, but the
>next best thing to living the life of a monk is working as a scholar and
>researcher.
>
>Two or three times in the past few days, I have had occasion to think of
>another Zen monk, Han-Shan (1966: 49), a 9th century Buddhist and poet.
>Iıll close with his words for now:
>
>When men see Han-shan
>They all say heıs crazy
>And not much to look at -
>Dressed in rags and hides.
>They donıt get what I say
>And I donıt talk their language.
>All I can say to those I meet:
>³Try and make it to Cold Mountain.²
>
>Ken
>
>Ken Friedman, PhD, DSc (hc), FDRS | University Distinguished Professor |
>Swinburne University of Technology | Melbourne, Australia |
>[log in to unmask] | Mobile +61 404 830 462 | Home Page
>http://www.swinburne.edu.au/design/people/Professor-Ken-Friedman-ID22.html
><http://www.swinburne.edu.au/design>
>
>Guest Professor | College of Design and Innovation | Tongji University |
>Shanghai, China
>
>--
>
>References
>
>Filliou, Robert. 1966. ³A Proposition, a Problem, a Danger, and a Hunch.²
>Manifestoes. New York: Something Else Press, p. 16. [Reprinted 2004.]
>Free digital copy available at Ubu Classics URL:
>http://www.ubu.com/historical/gb/index.html Accessed 5 February 2013.
>
>Han-Shan. 1966. Cold Mountain Poems. Translated by Gary Snyder. In Riprap
>and Cold MountainPoems. San Francisco: Four Seasons Foundation.
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