So is the mass a prayer­ful object of “hap­pen­ing” his­tor­i­cal OR is it a vol­ume, a spa­tial, ref­er­ence? And what of this New New Fluxus? It is sub­lime. It is crit­i­cal to the on-​going idea that is Fluxus. Yes, it may be dead but Fluxus doesn’t die any­more than Van Gogh is dead because if you leave your energy behind when you move to the next level, aren’t you still here? Fluxus Energy con­tin­ues to flow even if the blood in our veins is stilled and powder.

The argu­ment is not one. Not at all. It is a dis­cus­sion which con­tin­ues to flow. The Fluxus Energy Flows. It is hap­pen­ing now. But it ceased to be? How can this conun­drum exist? Sim­ple. Truly Sim­ple. Noth­ing dies, every­thing lives. And yet, all is dead. It is the:

Fluxus Para­dox.

There I have named it. NuvoFluxus seeks to instill the legit­i­macy of the Fluxus Para­dox into the equa­tion. I found a mar­velous arti­cle about Cecil Tou­chon and the on-​going avail­abil­ity of Fluxus Exhi­bi­tions — here’s the link Fluxus in Texas.

Tou­chon argues that this is the way col­lec­tors and cura­tors think, not artists. Col­lec­tors want move­ments to be lim­ited to a period, a place, a canon of select works. This increases the value of their own col­lec­tions. Iron­i­cally, Tou­chon him­self is clearly a manic col­lec­tor. But for him, while Flux artists may play with boxes, Fluxus itself can’t be con­tained in one. The impulses behind Dada and Fluxus, he believes, resur­face dur­ing cer­tain peri­ods (World War I, the Cold War, the Bush years). Besides, he notes, over the years, Fluxus works have often been pro­duced by artists in their spare time (mak­ing an actual liv­ing at it would be directly counter to Maci­u­nas’ ideas. Not sur­pris­ingly, he died impov­er­ished). For them, Fluxart is a low-​cost side­line, as it were, a way to stretch the aes­thetic mus­cles, an intel­lec­tual game that doesn’t have to pay the bills.

It’s SODA. The Fluxus Para­dox con­tains us all.

Oh Fluxus, how do I love thee? I am start­ing to under­stand the dis­cus­sion and the sides of it each takes.
Let me count the ways.
I love thee like a summer’s day.

I, like Goya, intend to con­tain myself in a legacy “Mag­nif­i­cent etch­ings, some of the most beau­ti­ful prob­ing por­traits ever painted, and sub­lime and fan­tas­tic cre­ations in which he mer­ci­lessly exposed man’s van­i­ties, stu­pidi­ties, and bru­tal­i­ties as few artists have ever dared to do.”

Scathing and uncom­pro­mis­ing?
Nah. Just NuvoFluxus — the Fluxus Paradox.

~Brush your teeth with Ipana Plus … well, you’ll just never go back to any kind of tooth-​paste tube again~

c