Uncertainty Theory #16

Fluxus and its influence

AUDIOS

Yoshi Wada - Earth Horns with Electronic Drone (Track 1) (2009)
John Cage - Solos For Voice 2 (1967)
COUM Transmissions - Nude Supper (The Sound of Porridge Bubbling) (1968)


INTRODUCTORY TEXT

Theory Uncertainty is realized for no one.
It is created in darkness and released into nothingness.
Theory Uncertainty becomes.
Uncertainty Theory fails.
It moves between chaos and order and moves forward.
Theory Uncertainty is an accident.
Theory Uncertainty will remain and will be lost.


MANIFESTO ART/FLUXUS / GEORGE MACIUNAS

ART

To justify the elitist, professional and parasitic status of the artist in society, must demonstrate the indispensability and exclusivity of the artist, must demonstrate the public's dependence on it, must demonstrate that no one but the artist can make art. Therefore, art must appear complex, pretentious, profound, serious, intellectual, inspired, skillful, significant, theatrical. It should appear to be calculable as a commodity, so that it provides you with an income to the artist. To raise its value (the artist's income and the profit of his patrons), art is made to appear rare, of limited quantity and therefore obtainable, and accessible only to the social elite and institutions.

FLUXUS ART-FUN

To establish the non-professional status of the artist in society, must demonstrate the dispensability and inclusiveness of the artist, must demonstrate the self-sufficiency of the public,
must demonstrate that anything can be art and anyone can do it. Therefore, fun-art should be simple, fun, not pretentious, concerned with trifles, requiring no skills or rehearsals that has no value either as an institution or as a commodity. The value of fun-art must be reduced by making it unlimited, mass-produced, obtainable by all and eventually produced by all. The fluxus art-fun is the rearguard without any pretensions to participate in the competition of "reach another level". with the avant-garde. It appeals to monostructural and non-theatrical qualities. of the simple natural event, a game or a joke. It is the fusion of the Vaudeville from Spike Jonesthe joke, the children's games and Duchamp. Manifesto on Art / Fluxus Art Amusement by George Maciunas, 1965.

ABOUT FLUXUS

The Fluxus started when George Maciunas wrote a manifesto in which he proposed to organize all the great European artists of the time to fight against the 'excessive' intellectuality and pretentiousness of art. Fluxuswhich in Latin means flow, then it was proposed to put aside all the figures that at that time integrated the 'bourgeois art'. establishing that art is not a piece per se, but that any work, including life itself, is a work of art. For this reason Fluxus turned out to be so experimental that it was named as the 'anti-art.

In music it was no different, artists set out to break with every kind of figure or genre established up to that moment except for the influence of who is surely the most influential musical figure of the last two centuries: John Cagewho, without even knowing it, carried out the experiments proto-Fluxus (see experiment White Label in which Cage He only gave a series of explanations to the listener to assemble his own instrument with wooden objects and make it play for hours or his most famous piece, '4 33'a song that consists only of silences).

Although for Fluxus anything can be art, in his time he did carry a set of rules within music. To begin with, for an artist to be FluxusHe had to present his work in front of an audience in a special kind of performance due to the idea that music, like life, is only about small, unrepeatable and unique moments.

An artist Fluxus cannot make music with musical instruments unless they are previously modified and have a particular purpose implied. The compositions Fluxus are better on paper, as this requires the listener to interpret it for himself, and therefore each time it is played it will sound different and will not have a single version. 'original. Other characteristics, unwritten, follow the line of being completely impulsive and violent, given its nature of 'let it flow.

FLUXUS CURIOSITIES

Much of the content of Fluxus defies categorization according to established artistic disciplines - music, performance and the written word often come together in hybrid forms.

In Fluxus the extended situations were intended to blur the lines between performer and audience. Fluxus performances were generally short and simple. The happening has no stage, it is the participation of the public interacting with the artists, it is simultaneity in the acoustic space. Categories such as dissonance and noise lost all meaning and the dividing line between sound and musical sound disappeared. All sound had then become musical sound.

A space filled with an almost palpable sound develops around one's body thus intensifying a sense of corporeality and especially when the body receives the vibrations of the amplified sound. By downplaying the importance of time, the spatiality of the sound is emphasized; the long sound can occupy and be heard differently in different rooms and from different points in the same room, it can also drift from one point to another.
The 4 factors that define the work of Fluxus: - Fluxus is an attitude, (it is not a movement or a style) - Fluxus is intermedia, (see what happens when you cross different media) - Their works are simple, (art is small, short texts and short performances). - Fluxus is fun (humor was an important element).

GENESIS P-ORRIDGE AND COUM TRANSMISSIONS

Before forming the group that would lead to the integration of mechanical sounds, concrete music and punk in a single genre, the industrial, with Throbbing Gristle, Genesis was already doing his thing musically speaking with a fluxus performance group called COUM Transmissions.
Within a COUM Transmissions presentation you could see Genesis smashing bottles on the floor, screaming like locx, hitting each other with the rest of the group or the audience, etc... It was very successful in New York and led to many contacts that would later help him in his literary and musical career.