Fluxus and after Fluxus:

I love the Fluxus project – it is often my favorite class, largely because it is built out of what is in the space at that moment. The assignment was to develop three Fluxus event scores on a 3 x 5 index card – one sculptural, one sound oriented, and one performative – so one to be looked at, one to be listened to, and one to the watched. I asked the students not to label their cards, but simply put their name on the back. When they arrive for class I gather and distribute the cards – explaining that students should not randomly pick their own card. Then we begin. The first card each student executes is the one they had an immediate reaction to. So – that is round one. Round two is to pick the one they have no idea what to do with. Round three is open. The pieces take on the characteristic of the class – they are often a mixture of funny, sad, touching, boring, loud, quiet, too short, too long, thoughtful and phoned in. Some touch me deeply, some do not. It is clear once the performances start that this particular moment could never be recreated.

Part of what I like about the Fluxus pieces is the simplicity – they require no special skill or training, just a willingness to follow an idea. But that also means that there is a great deal of room for interpretation. Students are instructed not to read the card prompt until they have completed executing it. Many times students don’t even realize when someone is performing their card. We all also try and guess what the card says. Some times this is easier than others. When asked, many students never saw a particular interpretation as even an option. The question of who owns the piece or who is the creator becomes moot.

Beyond the simplicity I love that these are conceptual pieces, pieces that acquire meaning as we think about them. The prompts that pose a question or a philosophical idea often require a level of engagement that goes beyond executing a task – but not always. It is interesting to watch how the pieces are performed and not necessarily what is being performed.

The follow up class was wonderful. I do try and use these open days as a way of gathering together the ideas that have been developed to this point in the term. We started the day with students creating a sound piece from a situationist psychogeographical map. What was surprising about this was how quickly these pieces came together. Asking this in the first few weeks would have taken ages – now – students just dive right in. It is with these projects that the make up of the different classes becomes much more pronounced. The 8:30 class seems to be much quieter – and so very often their projects have a more introspective quality. The 10:00 – a bit louder and generally more vocally engaged tend to produce less introspective pieces.

So – from this we reviewed the Fluxus material. The main question to start revolved around how we derive meaning from an open work. We listed the traditional aesthetic criteria – things like unity, balance, order, skill, technique, process subsumed into product, etc and then talked about how this could or could not be applied to an open work. This lead to a discussion of the Paths to the Present classes and the major questions. Looking over the list of techniques we have discussed so far I asked has anything changed from the Self, Society, and Cosmos classes to this material. The general consensus – as it often is – is that humans search for meaning – that has not changed – but how they search and what questions they ask has.

This lead to a discussion of modernism and postmodernism – with specific attention to the Internet as a postmodern phenomenon. I do find the recent FCC ruling that the Internet remain neutral an interesting modern/postmodern rift. Wanting to lock it down, control it, monetize it seems very modernist – the openness seems more postmodern. This rejection of authority is dug in deeply to most of the ideas we have discussed. This has translated into placing more and more emphasis on the spectator. So – rebelling against authority allows these artists to rebel against their own authority and pass those questions of meaning on to the audience. When asked what overarching idea tied all of these ideas together the students generated this list:

Consistency of change

Reactionary

Conceptualism

Shake it up

Continual questions

Uncertainty of meaning

The question I posed at the end of this discussion is how succeeding generation(s) rebel against the rebellion? Perhaps we can address that with the final project – now it is on to sound machines.

Surrealism follow up and Cage

Clearly the theme of this blog is how many classes can I cram together in one post. But, due to loss of class time it has also been about how we can get all of the material in in less time. So – that said – students presented their surrealistic projects and we discussed them all in one class, with a bit spilling over into the next class. The projects we fantastic – some wonderful pieces built out of the prompt – put two or more contrasting things together. The difference this time round is that I tried to employ the method of discussing that Lois Hetland used at the faculty/staff workshop on Studio Thinking. Looking at each object we start with ten observable things – not judgments – but observations. This is a much slower process than I am used to, but I have often felt that our discussions about the projects is the weakest element of these classes. By starting just with observables we are able to begin to dissect how the piece is constructed – what elements are at work and how they fit together. After observations we begin to discuss meaning. What are people getting out of this piece – what do they see in it? This allows for a conversation about intent, but also interpretation. Finally the student can then talk about how or why they put the piece together. Doing this with each project takes a long long time, since some pieces could be discussed for quite awhile. The danger is running out of time. With only an hour and 20 minutes to cover 17-18 projects – we barely made it in the first class (largely because two people were absent) and did not finish in the second class. I prefer to do this all at once so we have all of the pieces in the space, but it may be necessary to think about splitting into to presentation days.

We started the next class reviewing the pieces that students were able to bring back – some of which had decayed in a beautiful way after a week off for spring break. Then on to a discussion of intent. Did any of our observations go beyond the intent of the artist? Did we miss anything? What I find interesting about this process is how well we rationalize meaning. Random pieces together must have an intention, there must be an underlying reason – and so we look for it or construct it. This adds an interesting layer to how we discuss works of art. Next was to tie this to Brenton’s surrealistic manifesto. Why, for example, would an artist try to create as many short circuits to the brain as possible? What happens in these moments. Were there any pieces that could not be rationalized, where the logic could not be figured out? What does this do to how the piece is viewed?

The next step was to create a list of terms, ideas, technique we have discussed. We came up with this list:

The next step was to discuss John Cage. Bit of background, but mainly his work as a composer using chance and indeterminacy – so students listened to the Williams Mix and watched a video on how to prepare a piano. I love the fact that Cage was incredibly specific about how the piano was to be prepared – what object, how far along the string to place it, what strings the object to interact with – except not specifics on the objects – so each time the piece is performed is sounds a bit different. One of the really interesting things to develop in the second section was a bit of a argument surrounding 4’33”. In a way, the reaction was to this wry game Cage seemed to be playing – baiting the listener – and how that might deviate from a more traditional artistic form of expression. But, that is exactly the point. Pushing out beyond what is known into the unknown, or unpredictable. Cage’s notion of non-intention – while still showing a great intention – is an interesting approach – but it does seem to contradict itself. We do need to cycle back to these questions after the Fluxus stuff and delve into how this material relates to the Self, Society, and Cosmos stuff.  

Snow, loss and compression

Wow – lost two weeks to snow and me out of town. Whatever rhythm we had established has been curtailed and will take some time to get back. This is interesting, since the last time I taught the class I feel we had really peaked around this point in the term. This time around we still have along way to go – which is good. I always find it odd re-teaching a class since part of the objective is to hit all the same marks that were hit last time, but also discover new material. Today was a compressed day to make up for lost time, and so we did dada projects in the first part of the class and then talked about them the rest of the time.

Three projects – make a dada poem, make a dada collage or photomontage and create a simultaneous poem. Executing the projects in ten minutes each is not the hard part, but missing out on seeing what everyone has created or what happens when the students get board with these projects is not possible in that amount of time. So, t was just a taste. I seem to recall last time I taught the class dada day was what broke some of the energy open.

From the projects it was a quick romp through some basic dada ideas. I am leaning on Roselee Goldberg’s book to provide some of the historical context. It is just impossible to cover both and do projects in the amount of time we have in class. So – the main question was – if, as Danto suggests, the dadas were basically rejecting western culture how did the projects exemplify that? We focused in on things like chance, randomness, and nonsense – with a health dose of not taking any thing seriously, but also seriously at the same time.

One of the connections I don’t think I have ever made as strongly as today is what position the spectator is put into by statements like “dada is a farce of nothingness in which all higher questions are involved.” Ball fractures the notion of western logic by creating a statement that demands you hold “yes” and “no” in mind simultaneously. He doesn’t decide which side to come down on – the spectator does.

The same is also true of Duchamp’s readymades. With pieces like the urinal he is posing fundamental philosophical questions about art but not giving an answer. His pieces, by virtue of being conceptual in nature, demand a spectator to complete the work. In short, the urinal isn’t art unless someone looks at it that way. I am not sure the same can be said for, say, Michelangelo’s David. But possibly it can if it is viewed outside of the western cultural tradition.

In the end, an interesting day – compressed, but not without value.