FLUXUS L'avant-garde en mouvement

Fluxus is an international network, not a movement or a group. More often than not, Fluxus artists, poets or musicians get together on the occasion of a decennial anniversary of the founding act, the music festival held in Wiesbaden in 1962. Artist and performer Charles Dreyfus cut his path through Fluxus in the early 1970s and has also become its historian and analyst. It took him 35 years to write a dissertation, now published as a book by Presses du Réel-in a timely manner, since the network prepares to celebrate its 50th anniversary. Time passes differently for Fluxus anyways since events, or counter-performances, sometimes last but a handful of seconds. The book features precious accounts by the main protagonists, including an original interview of George Maciunas, one of only three ever given by him, but it also analyzes and puts in perspective without ever indulging in a professorial tone. Besides the fact that Fluxus has managed to steer clear of art (even as contemporary art cannot do without Fluxus), its participants, including Maciunas, have always avoided codification and definitions that would be too specific. Because this tribe of primitives should be treated with the utmost respect (participants used to say that there were no artists in the network, each of them just doing everything the best s/he could), we have asked tenor-baritone and composer Vincent Bouchot to intervene in whatever way he likes in the course of the conversation.