Fluxus or: How I Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love Free Nickels or: I’m a Good Ol’ Rebel

There is a Fluxus exhibit up in the Art Museum! And to celebrate, the UMMA has been hosting a variety of Fluxus events in their wonderful space as a means of promoting and expanding the ideas of a very, very unique and wonderful artistic movement. I had the pleasure of attending the premier of Professor Steven Rush’s new opera, U.S. Grant: A Flux-kit Opera as well as a performance of UM-Grad Robert Ashley’s In Memoriam… Kit Carson. But before I get to explaining the greatness of all these operas, you might be wondering…what exactly is Fluxus? What are you talking about?!

I feel like the best answer to your question is just to show you…

Fluxus art is pretty well represented by a performance like this. It was all meant to make you question the boundaries of that which we call “art” and that which we call “life.” This youtube video is an example of a piece called an “event score.” These were “scores” (in the vein of a musical score) that indicated an action to be performed. It could be performed in front of an audience, alone, or not performed at all. It was all part of the art, all the point. Regardless of if you think this kind of thing is art or not (I’ll talk about that in a second…) you’ve gotta hand it to them for being innovative and very…different. And it really hasn’t died out at all-the movement started in the 60s and has continued to be doin’ it’s own experimental thing ever since.

So, these operas that I got to see. The first was the Robert Ashley, a “30 minute long decrescendo,” as Steve Rush described it. And gosh darn it, he was right. The piece itself was a group of 9+ participants sitting in a square around a central table. At prescribed times, they would act out certain actions (telling a story to another actor, putting on a record, clapping, etc…) but all at the same time. The result was a mass of sound-a blur of speech and other noises that started at a small roar and continued until its quiet end. It was fascinating to watch being performed. Downright hilarious at times, and at other points, really quite inviting and captivating. It really made me appreciate the subtleties of the human voice-and how easily speech gets dissolved into a cloud of nonsense. But as I was sitting there I couldn’t help but get incredibly excited by the prospect of this opera. If simply talking to another human being was art what did that mean about my life? What should I be doing differently? What should I be doing with more intent-artistic or otherwise? And that’s the thing I think that is so cool about this Fluxus thing-it asks serious personal questions and might just make you a better person.

But regardless, the Steve Rush opera is next on the queue. This thing was simply fantastic. Perhaps one of the most entertaining performances I’ve been to, ever. The opera itself was created through parameters set up by Rush-the parameters being a board game (“a cross between candyland and monopoly”) which generated all of the content for each of the scenes of the opera. From playing this board game, the performers in the opera (members of the School of Music’s Digital Music Ensemble) were given assignments of material to generate. For instance, a performer might be given a musical number to arrange-they would be given the music (one of 15 civil war songs) and the text (either a random passage from U.S. Grant’s memoirs OR a random passage from Gertrude Stein’s Four in America) and told to somehow combine the two in a unique arrangement. There were also readings of Grant’s personal letters, videos on Grant and his various attributes, and reenactments of important civil war battles/events. But oh, the reenactments. The performers urged the audience members on to join their ranks to create a battle on the stage. I fought for the confederacy and was shoved around by many  union solider. And alas, we lost the war. But such is, I suppose. Regardless it was FANTASTIC fun to join the performers in the opera. It seriously pushed the boundaries of art for me. How can audiences participate in artistic events? Can something be that much fun and still be considered art? Can I be dragged up in front of 50+ people and forced to awkwardly dance the polka and still consider myself an artist?

But all this gets at what I really took away from the evening-that the simple act of questioning is so enormously, vitally, INCREDIBLY important. And Fluxus, in my mind serves to do that. T force us to confront questions that we normally don’t think about. And if you end up on the side of the artist, your mind is expanded! And if you think that this isn’t art, I would urge you to think again, but at least you come out with a stronger resolve in what you believe in. I had a rollicking good time and send my warmest congratulations to Steve Rush, the Digital Music Ensemble, and the UMMA for daring to have such a program put on. To you, gentle reader, I urge you to go to the UMMA and check out this Fluxus exhibit. It’s incredible, inspiring, and beautiful. Go. Go and ask some questions.