La
Monte Young produced an Event score simply named Composition 1960 # 2, which invites the performer to build a small
fire in front of the audience and listen to the sounds it produces until it
burns out, with or without amplification. In Composition 1960 # 5 (fig. 10) a butterfly is the only intentional
sound producer. The audibility of this piece is entirely dependent on chance
happenings determined by situations in and outside the performance area. This
piece is particularly original as it focuses on the intricate workings of
nature, and the value of each sound produced, however small; it alerts the
listener to the sounds of movement. Young asserts: ‘I felt certain the
butterfly made sounds, (…) unless one was going to dictate how loud or soft the
sounds had to be before they could be allowed into the realms of music… the
butterfly piece was music as much as the fire piece’[1].
This simplification of the concept of music demonstrates the Fluxus opposition
to rigid Viennese traditions.
Arnold Schoenberg (1874-1951) was the innovator
of atonality in an era of Romanticism. He created a new musical language where
all notes remain equally important and there is no dominant key. In 1921,
Schoenberg developed the twelve-tone technique, a method of composition using
tone rows, where all twelve notes of the chromatic scale are repeated in a
pre-determined sequence. This sequence can be reversed, inverted, or inverted and reversed, but a note can only sound
after the remaining eleven have been played. This can be transposed to
different octaves, and any instrument may play each note. Karlheinz Stockhausen
(1928-2007) built on these techniques: in his serialist compositions all music
components, such as timbre and dynamics, are determined by these rules.
Stockhausen began to include other parameters into this form such as the
spatial location of a sound.
At the 1964 New York Festival for the
Avant-Garde, a conflict arose amongst Fluxus artists. Stockhausen was to
premiere his experimental theatrical piece Originale:
in this piece we see cameramen filming one of Stockhausen's earlier
compositions Kontakte, amongst
models, poets and painters who are 'acting' as themselves. There is a Flux-like
use of irony here, however, the timings of each action are governed by
serialist rules. The performers included George Brecht, Dick Higgins, Allan
Kaprow, Alison Knowles, Jackson Mac Low and Nam June Paik, all playing
themselves.
George Maciunas fronted a protest against this
concert, supported by Henry Flynt and Ben Vautier, distributing flyers (fig. 11)
proclaiming Stockhausen to epitomize 'cultural imperialism'. Maciunas objected
to any mathematical approach to composition, as his vision of music is
described by the movement he named: the word Fluxus derives from the Latin to
'flow'. The picketers were opposed to all European high culture, which they
felt to be constrictive and elitist. However, they were soon to be joined by
Dick Higgins, Alison Knowles and Allan Kaprow, who each performed, and
protested against Originale.
Fluxus poked fun at the notion of the
composer's grandeur, and made games of the artist's exaggerated status. The
concept of art being encompassed within the individual’s perception of it, each
person's equally important and valid, is prominent in many works. Ben Vautier
questioned the authority of art critics by exhibiting certificates which
proclaimed 'BY THE PRESENT CERTIFICATE I BEN DECLARE AUTHENTIC WORK OF ART .......
DATE ....... (I DONT SIGN)'[2].
In Dick Higgins' Anger Song # 6 of
1966, busts of Wagner are destroyed to declare an
end to Viennese traditions in music; the Fluxists condemned all Western pre
twentieth century composition as classist and racist. Further than rejecting
the structural format of themes, developments and expositions in Romanticism,
Fluxists were in contempt of the whole nature of the composition, opposing
moralistic themes in classical music. The Fluxist Henry Flynt believed
that all art and culture should have exclusively communist values and his
political writings, particularly On
Social Recognition, are demonstrative of this[3],
however, this view was shared only by Maciunas and generally seen as one of his
many eccentricities. In 1973 Maciunas outrageously advertised a concert with a
poster reading '12 Big Names!' and a lists of artists, including Andy Warhol
and minimalist Philip Glass, - when the recital hall was packed the famous
surnames simply appeared projected onto a screen[4].
Subversively, Maciunas relished opportunities to play pranks on his audience,
in one instance leading a group into a forest on the outskirts of New York in
the darkest night, under the pretence of organising a happening. After
confiscating the torch belonging to each of his guests, Maciunas inexplicably
disappeared, taking with him not only the sole source of light, but driving the
several miles home in the vehicle in which they had all arrived.
Absurd scenarios and impossible predicaments often featured in
Fluxus Events. The humour employed by Fluxus artists was of a playful nature,
decidedly more light-hearted than the farces and dark satires of Dada or
Futurist theatre. A shining example is La Monte Young’s Piano Piece for David Tudor #1, 1960, where the performer is
invited to feed the piano with hay and water, and ends when the piano decides
whether or not to eat (fig 12). George Brecht also poked fun at the rituals of
concert performers, in Concerto for
Clarinet, Fluxversion 1 (1962) a clarinet is suspended from above, and the
performer must leap into the air in an attempt to play the dangling instrument,
aiming to catch the reed between his lips. Both in the fantasy world of the
former piece, and in the game element of the later, a youthful indulgence is
present, and upon examination this becomes apparent in all Fluxus works. Even
in the demolition of objects as a protest form, the Fluxus artist embodies the
role of a naughty child.
The material value of an
instrument or object is unimportant within Fluxus, as it is the experience of
music
and art that is valuable, not the artwork or instrument itself. Al Hansen
famously pushed a piano off a five storey building, which was then to be
repeated as an Event in 1959 entitled Yoko
Ono’s Piano Drop. The colossal sound of wood smashing to pieces on a hard
concrete pavement with the last jolts of the strings, hammers, ivory keys and
brass pedals, became a composition. The destruction of a classical instrument
also occurs in Nam June Paik’s One for
Violin (1962), where the performer is
invited to lift a violin as slowly as possible and, when they feel ready, smash
it upon a surface. The anti-art statement is clear in such Fluxus works but,
more importantly, in demolishing a traditional instrument Paik demonstrates the
Fluxus belief in ‘real’ sound. To Fluxus artists sounds, which you can see
happening are more interesting than those, which are not obvious. Paik reveals
the mechanics of instruments in his Exposition of Music (1963). Five
television sets are placed on top of an upright piano. Inside the piano
is a series of cameras recording and documenting the mechanics and manoeuvres
inside as each key is pressed and the hammer touches the string. The television
screens show the audience what is happening inside the piano as it is
electronically played, revealing what is hidden and therefore making the sound
of more value in the Fluxus attitude.
The
artist Rirkrit Tiravanija began to deconstruct the role of the curator by
inviting the audience to install Fluxus paraphernalia and a miscellany of
associated articles into Hallwall's Contemporary Art Centre’s gallery during a
1992 exhibition. As the audience entered, they were handed an Event card
inviting them to pick up some white gloves and move an object to where they
felt was appropriate. This idea epitomises the spirit of Fluxus, where the role
of the audience is to participate in the creation of the product. For this
exhibition Christian Marclay provided an artwork called Tape Fall which consisted of clear bin liners filled with cassette
tape commenting on the disposability of mass marketed music. Marclay pays
tribute to Nam June Paik in Guitar Drag (2000):
an electric guitar is trawled along the street, producing a diverse variety of
creaks, twangs and other noise, as the pickup on the bridge amplifies the
strings as they are rubbed, irritated, and eventually snapped, accompanied by
monumental amounts of feedback.
[1] Quote
taken from page 106 In the Spirit of
Fluxus, Elizabeth Armstrong and Joan Rothfuss, (Walker Arts Centre,
Minneapolis, 1993)
Cologne,
1970), pages unnumbered.
[3] Flynt summarises his findings in an article printed in Fluxshoe, David Mayor, Ken Friedman and
Mike Weaver (eds) (Beau Geste Press, Langford Court South, 1972) page 33.
[4] Poster catalogued in Fluxus: Selections from the Gilbert and Lila Silverman Collection, Clive Phillpot and John Hendricks (eds), (Museum of Modern Art, New York), 1988, page 32.
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