My account of a Fluxus concert and exhibit in Cambridge. I have previously discussed Fluxus when reviewing the "Yes, Yoko Ono." [http://authorsden.com/visit/viewarticle.asp?AuthorID=4855&id=3392]
Saturday, November 8th:
I trek through the bloody cold by way of Western Ave. towards Central Square. Above, the shadow of our planet begins to nibble away at the moon, leaving a bright blue band against the lunar disk andshimmering filaments made by the reflected sunlight passing through our turbulent atmosphere, my own eyelashes and the thin layer of fluid left on the surface of my eyeballs every time I blink.
Once in Central, I head up Temple Street and duck into the Cambridge YWCA before the cold air rips through my denim any further. I have come for the Flux Concert. The concert involves about a dozen local artists conducted by Fluxus artist Larry Miller performing classic works of the Fluxus movement. Between this and the Yoko Ono retrospective that I saw not quite two years prior, I think I have some idea of what Fluxus involves. The lines that divide artist, interpreter, and audience are in flux. Sculpture and installations invite interaction and in the case of this concert, the compositions are ones that can be performed without any virtuoso training.
Leaving aside the theory used to justify this sort of work, Fluxus just provides immediate sensual pleasure and playful fun. As we seat ourselves in the auditorium, both Ben Vautier's "Look at Me" and Willem de Ridder's "Flux Card Events" are being played. One of the performers walks about holding a sign reading "Look at Me" while cards are circulated into the audience. The cards direct us to pass them along, shake hands, demand others read the cards in our hands, tear the cards up, or stomp on them. Milan Knizak's "Snow Storm No. 1" has the space between floor and ceiling filled with the pink papered programs folded into the form of paper airplanes. Miller's own "Remote Music" has him playing one note on a piano by way of a plaster cast of a hand, index finger extended lowered from a rope and pulley.
Children in the audience mill about, hoarding airplanes and murmuring "cool" and 'wow" at the climax of various compositions.
There are many opportunities for audience participation, ranging from the "Constellation" pieces by Dick Higgins, to Miller's "Chewed Drawing" during which we take a piece of paper marked with the title and the date and chew it. It doesn't taste as bad as I thought and afterwards, I make sure to get this collaborative work signed both by myself and Miller.
We have an intermission of ten minutes to step outside and appreciate the lunar eclipse at its apex. Cast in shadow, Luna takes a reddish cast and actually looks like a globe and not a bright flat disk in the heavens. I bump into a friend who has a pair of binoculars and get a closer view.
The concert ends with Ben Patterson's "Paper Piece" in which long roles of wide white paper are unfurled over our heads. We improvise: Some by helping unfurl the paper, others by ripping it. I find myself spinning and allowing myself to be wrapped in the paper while yet others work to unwrap me.
By the end, the floor is littered with paper. Fluxus concerts are a messy business.
Afterwards, I head to the reception at Arts Interactive which is hosting a Fluxus exhibition. There are classic pieces, including Yoko Ono "Imagine Piece" over which she first met John Lennon. I hammer a nail into it.
My favorite is the "Fluxus Labyrinth", an installation in the middle of the gallery space. It's something of a conceptual fun house. The doors hinge unexpectedly. The first one having its pivot in the central vertical axis and this leads to a corridor whose floor is rigged like a teeter totter (thankfully the walls have hand rails) I'm deposited upon a landing covered with foam rubber scraps and then another corridor which has me walking across marbles. I find myself asking that most profound of existential questions, "What Would Buster Keaton Do?"
My hand reaches through a cat door at waist level and opens a door knob on the other side before I find myself down another corridor working my way through a forest of elastic bands extended from ceiling to floor. Flung back and forth as I imagine old stone face would, the bands eventually throw me into the beach ball room where I sink down below. My way through is bottle necked by others struggling through the beach balls, I just slowly kick myself across the floor by planting my boots onto the walls and pushing as my hands periscope to the surface and play the roles of the hand puppet characters I've been developing for my mime act. Others mistake that for a drowning and call for help and try to rescue me.
Soon I am in another forest of elastic bands extending between the walls, I ricochet back and forth end up on a door that has brass doorknobs all along both sides, plant my feet on the lower ones, my hands on the upper ones and pull my center of gravity upwards. The strange door tilts on its horizontal axis and sends me tumbling in a somersault through a curtain where I land on my rump right by the refreshment table where there is wine and many fine pastries. I particularly like the almond danishes.
