Red Roses For a Blue Lady: Fluxus

Fluxus “Anti-art is life, is nature, is truly reality – it is one and all.”

I’ve always had a special endearment for Underground movements and recently I’ve found out one, or let’s say I got to know it more profoundly. Fluxus is one of these revolutionary and avant-garde ones.

I had a glimpse on live, just in front of my eyes when I went to Paris in the last Fall. I was walking through the old streets of old Paris with my Ukrainian rocker friend and I’ve just remembered that in that same street there was a Maison d’artistes, it is a building with several apartments that were transformed into open ateliers which artists from all kinds work or even live in there, it is such an interesting place, I told to one of them “I wish I could live here”.

Yoko Ono The Cuting piece

At the second floor we walked in one of the ateliers, we were looking around there was every sort of objects, paitings, artistic pieces, even ordinary objects from quotidian like pans, cutlery etc, there was other wondered guests like ourselves, and suddenly an absolute silence. A tall and fitted man dressed as a female version perhaps of himself, steps in and starts performing for us, we have become an audience to this performer and we were watching the scene attentively with big eyes. It looked completely like a Happening to me as he was joggling with all objects from that atelier and then he had inserted some dolls, they looked dead but he picked them from the floor as if they were delicate creatures. He spoke eloquently, seducing us with his Shakespearian English with a French accent, he was just marvelous… Marvelous! He came toward us dancing dramatically, so close, so confident! We felt transported to his world, he made us part of it, there was no escape.

Thinking of it, or remembering such an episode made me think about Fluxus - Equals to flow. Inspired from Dada or Dadaism, the movement that is still alive nowadays was born with the genius George Maciunas in the 60's, as an attempt to fuse or marry cultural, social and political revolutionaries into a united front and action;