#Fluxus and feminism

[abwwia]

INTRODUCTION: Women & Fluxus: Toward a feminist archive of Fluxus | Midori Yoshimoto* New Jersey City University, Jersey City, NJ, USA

This introduction presents the theme of the volume ‘‘Women and Fluxus’’ and provides historical background, as well as an overview of the existing scholarship on the subject. The author then introduces the contents, comprising of three essays, a dialogue, and a roundtable discussion, contextualizing them within the theme of the volume.

Keywords: Fluxus history; Fluxus and feminism/feminist criticism

Many female creators such as Alison Knowles, Yoko Ono, Takako Saito, Mieko Shiomi, Shigeko Kubota, Carla Liss, Kate Millett, Alice Hutchins, Charlotte Moorman, Carolee Schneemann, and Sara Seagull were in or around Fluxus at different times

From left: Shigeko Kubota, Alison Knowles, Mieko Shiomi, Yoko Ono, Carolee Schneemann, and Sara Seagull, at the Fluxus exhibition ‘‘Ubi Fluxus, Ibi Motus’’ during the 1990 Venice Biennale, with director Achille Bonito Oliva in the background. Photo Larry Miller, 1990.

[the-cricket-chirps]

Yoko Ono

Eyeblink (Fluxfilm no. 9)

1966

[visuallanguagegiovanna]

Artist Research: Ana Mendieta

‘Ana Mendieta was an interdisciplinary artist, referring to herself as a sculptor. She is best known for her earth/body works, most specifically her now iconic Silueta Series, in which she used her body, and later the absence of the body, in the landscape as a way of connecting with nature and the universe. Spanning a period of 15 years, Mendieta created groundbreaking work in sculpture, photography, film, drawing and site-specific installations using organic materials such as earth, water and fire.’

✩Best known for her “earth-body” artwork, Ana Mendieta is considered one of the most influential Cuban-American artists of the post-WWII period.

‘Mendieta received a BA in art in 1969 and an MA in painting in 1972, both from the University of Iowa. Seeking a more powerful means of image making, Mendieta then enrolled in the university's progressive MFA Intermedia Program, founded and led by the German artist Hans Breder. She found an affinity with the work of Vito Acconci, Lynda Benglis, Chris Burden, Bruce Nauman, Robert Smithson, and Carolee Schneeman, as well as the work of the Viennese Actionists and the Fluxus group.’

✩ Mendieta quickly developed a practice in which her body, the earth and various organic materials such as fire, feathers, blood and wood served as a strong subject within her photography, films, slides, and performances as well as prints and videos.

“My art is grounded in the belief of one universal energy which runs through everything: from insect to man, from man to spectre, from spectre to plant, from plant to galaxy. My works are the irrigation veins of this universal fluid. Through them ascend the ancestral sap, the original beliefs, the primordial accumulations, the unconscious thoughts that animate the world.”

– Ana Mendieta

✩ Mendieta’s most notable work, the Silueta series, active from the years of 1973-1980, where Ana Mendieta would depict her silhouette in various natural situations. In this body of artwork, Mendieta would display her body in natural forms such as within grass, dirt or against a tree. She would then cover herself in found materials such as mud, flowers etc to then become a tool within her work, painting a natural canvas as though her body was the brush, using the imprint she left behind within the earth as her final silhouette piece.

✩ Born in Cuba and torn away from her home at an incredibly young age, Mendieta allowed the process of these works to reconnect with her home. The motif of her silhouette within her work served as a reminder of how she had been wrenched away from Cuba, leaving only her body’s imprint in the earth, symbolic of her connection with the land.

✩ Not only was her work giving a voice to feminism but also having clear reflections and communicating themes regarding race, intersectionality as well as immigration as she remained incredibly connected to her roots tributing these parts of herself fascinatingly and beautifully.

✩ https://www.anamendietaartist.com/about

✩ https://www.guggenheim.org/artwork/artist/ana-mendieta

✩ https://www.theartstory.org/amp/artist/mendieta-ana/

✩ https://womenshistory.si.edu/blog/how-groundbreaking-artist-ana-mendieta-remembered-her-homeland

[disease]

“VAGINA PAINTING” @ PERPETUAL FLUXFEST SHIGEKO KUBOTA 久保田 成子 // NYC, 1965 [gelatin silver print | 14 x 14″]

[mattachinesocial]

“Bow down to the queen of noise” - Ono Soul, Thurston Moore. Happy Birthday to one of my life long artistic heroes, iconic visual artist, writer, peace activist, and avant guard musician Yoko Ono. It’s taken decades but music has finally caught up to her brilliance and innovation. She’s survived WWII, she survived the decades long onslaught of racist sexist boys blaming her for the break up of the Beatles. She has weathered decades as the preeminent tragic Rock n Roll Widow (a rarified club mostly consisting of Yoko and Courtney Love). Her visual art remains inspiring and stunning and her records audacious and succinctly aware of the style of the world. Happy Birthday Yoko. #yokoono #art #feminism #peace #fluxus (at Los Angeles/Hollywood California) https://www.instagram.com/p/CaIlr5nvMRA/?utm_medium=tumblr

[msvenusofwillendorf]

Yoko Ono. (b.1933) “Cut Piece”. (1964) 

[susnie-blog]

W10: Thoughts on Women & Fluxus

Women & Fluxus

Fluxus was an artistic movement and philosophy starting in New York City in the 1960s. Midori Yoshimoto aims to archive the work and story of the women involved in a feminist archive of Fluxus.

An example of accidental wrong contribution is the Flux Chess created by the woman Takako Saito which was wrongly related to a male artist’s name because she wanted to maintain her individuality apart from Fluxus.

Apparently there where few gender issues when working together but more in terms of aesthetic judgement, women’s pieces like Yoko Ono’s 1964 Cut Piece for example was rejected by male colleagues for its feminist elements (such as overt sexuality).

Despite being a rather loose network and philosophy, Fluxus brought many female artists together who continue to create work until this day, seeing Fluxus as a “mother ship” that connects these individual female artists.

Bibliography & Image sources

“Women & Fluxus: Toward a feminist archive of Fluxus” by Midori Yoshimoto

https://www.moma.org/artists/5117

https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-yoko-onos-5-iconic-works

[loonngggoonne]

He said we are fond of you You are charming But don’t ask us To look at your films We cannot There are certain films We cannot look at The personal clutter The persistence of feeling The hand-touch sensibility

Carolee Schneemann, Fluxus artist, in response to George Maciunas, rejecting Schneeman as a member of Fluxus, calling her "guilty of Baroque tendencies, overt sexuality, and theatrical excess."

Women working within Fluxus were often simultaneously critiquing their position within a male dominated society while also exposing the inequalities within an art collective that claimed to be open and diverse.

[hockneyvevo-blog]

Carolee Schneemann - Interior Scroll (1975)

Carolee Schneemann is a multidisciplinary artist who began working in the 1950s, in New York amongst artists such as Yoko Ono and Yayoi Kusama, and particularly within the Fluxus movement. Her work focuses particularly on themes of female sexuality and sensuality, the oppressions of gender, and the politics and liberation of the female body. She was particularly influential in exercising the freedom of the female body in art, forcing the industry to recognise the force of the feminine form outside of the static nude portraits in which it had been fettered for centuries. As Schneemann herself says “In some sense I made a gift of my body to other women; giving our bodies back to ourselves”.

Interior Scroll was performed to a predominantly female audience in East Hampton, New York. It involved Schneemann walking up to two dimly lit tables and enacting life-drawing poses, whilst reading from her book Cezanne: She Was a Great Painter, all the while dressing and undressing. Subsequently, she draws a narrow scroll of tet from her vagina, reading it aloud. The text is a conversation with the critic and art historian Anette Michelson, who couldn;t watch Schneeman’s films.

For Schneeman in this work, the vagina is the source of creative energy, of imagining and interacting with the world. It is a feminist comment, rooted in an age of male-dominance in art and a new wave of feminism, overturning the male precedent to explore the creativity within the female body. It is a demonstration of the obscene and primitive in female creative force in a total lack of eroticism. The performance theorist Jeannie Forte commented of the work that “it seems as though [Schneemann’s] vagina itself is reporting... sexism”.

Find out more about Interior Scroll here and here

[automaticar]

Video Art, Video Works, Vertical Art, Video İnstallation, Experimental Art, Contemporary Art, Digital Art, İnternet Art, Video Exhibition, Digital Collage, Performance Video, Digital Paint, Contemporary Art, Visual Art, Media Art, Visual Narratives, Audio Art, Body Art, İnterface, Augmented Reality, Virtual Narration, Interaction, Participation, Art and Telecommunication, Multimedia, Avant-Garde, Mass Media, Sound Installation, Natural İnterface, Virtual Space, Interactive, Genetic Art, Video and Media Activism, Cyber-Feminism, Post-Colonial, Public Space, Politico-artistic Activism, Fluxus, Contemporary Art, Tematic Art, Robotic Art,

[bscottpollbbbwc2019]

Evaluation

Having never created a piece of conceptual art, nor a performance, endurance or body artwork, I believe that my work was powerful and thought provoking however, I think that my lack of experience in this field was noticeable in some areas. My performance piece had many elements that I tried to combine to further my concept, however, in hindsight, the work could be considered too obvious in depicting my ironic message about emasculation. I could have made the piece more simplistic and allowed the location and the audience to play a bigger role in the piece. I was trying to use the multiple, exaggerated elements in the piece as a further representation of masculinity, I wanted to create a masculine outcome, which I felt started with a hyper-masculine plan. I feel now that I may have debased myself by overcomplicating the work.

I think my main criticism of my work throughout the project is that I was not thinking about the project brief, aka, the time, date and location from the very beginning of the project. I focussed on primary and secondary research, which I believe was very successful. My self-set challenges of pilgrimage and solitary confinement was a deeply interesting experience which enriched my work heavily. My research into performance art of the Fluxus movement was also very rewarding and inspiring, which ultimately shaped my final outcome and improved my ideas tenfold. Fundamentally, however, I should have been doing other primary research into my target audience, the general public and locational experiments. It was unforeseen, of course that I would not be able to complete this type of research at a later date, and I believe that this was damaging to my concept and potential execution to my work. 

I predict, however, that my piece would have been extremely exciting and powerful to witness. Overall my concept is consistent throughout all of its elements and it also would have been very interesting aesthetically. I successfully targeted a specific audience, yet the performance plan was relatable, as well as being extremely personal. The consequences of toxic-masculinity are felt by everyone so my message could resonate with all types of people.

I am proud to produce this style of hyper-masculine conceptual art, even though there are not many examples for me to research. This meant I was persevering majorly and I could have possibly dug much deeper to find some more inspiration for the work. I also think my research is lacking in my studies into feminism, even though I read up on the movements and theories, I should have done more research into some of my favourite artists and theoretical philosophers who are/were pioneers in the subject. 

I found it difficult to make a definitive decision in my work and I constantly second-guessed myself. I feel now that I should have stuck to my guns, so to speak, and not worried about judgement, in the future I need to listen to myself more, even though sometimes it can be extremely difficult to not overcomplicate the conceptual elements. I do feel, however, that I raised many important questions in my work, and I have certainly learned a lot about myself as an artist, about what I stand for and what I believe.

[dragonofeternal]

Shigeko Kubota (Niigata, Tokyo, lives and works in New York*) pioneered the artistic use of video only five years after the introduction of consumer, nonbroadcast, video cameras and recorders. Her close relationship to Nam June Paik made her also participate in the Fluxus movement. She was among the first to discover the emotive potential of the combination of strong sculptural forms with video imagery. Her first exhibition dates back to 1972. Her artistic vision combines questions of her childhood, feminism in art and philosophical reflections on nature and existence. "Berlin Diary: Thanks to My Ancestors" is part of a series of "Broken Diary" that combine real images with memories in journal entry style.

-from ArtBasel

*Kubota passed away in 2015

Shigeko Kubota: 'Thanks To My Ancestors' (1981)

[aetherradiorelativa]

En la primera temporada exploramos diferentes espacios a través de la música y otros archivos sonoros.

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1x01 Espacio Interior

El primer programa de aether supone un viaje a través del Espacio Interior con intervenciones sonoras diversas, desde discursos de Pauline Oliveros hasta performances de Steve Reich.

tracklist: Alto - Anthony Naples, Arrpfaded - Terekke, The Lies That Bind - Madteo, Die Hards Of The Darwinan Order - Barker, Mirror In My Room - Lifted, Crushing Indifference - Jonny Nash & Suzanne Kraft, Hundred (Heathered Pearls’ Survey…) - Loscil, Held - Malibu, Dedekind Cut, Pendant - Des Vieux Temples, Sky Could Undress - Balmorhea, Jeffrey Cantu-Ledesma. 

archives: NO-DO (España, 1965). Minidocumental sobre Zaj y el surgimiento de la música electrónica en el movimiento Fluxus // Sobre el significado de éter: space is considered by scientists to be empty but for many centuries it was believed to contain a material known as the aether - a medium for transporting waves such as light and gravity. Jeff Yee // Discurso “Future Feminism”, Anthony and the Johnsons // Performance “Clapping Music” Steve Reich (1972) // Cortometraje Necktie, Yorgos Lanthimos // Entrevista a Siri Husvedt sobre memoria y arte // Anna Ajmatova leyendo su poema “Musa” // Multidentity, Multiconpani on Noods (artwork: Lexie Smithe, ‘Variation on your theme, detail’) // Sexes - Convolution (spoken word audio which was used in the opening performance by SEXES&Friends in the SEXES installation at Balance Festival Leipzig 2019) // Entrevista a Pauline Oliveros sobre el deep listening o la capacidad de escucha profunda // XLIV by lilly kane - Some kind of sentimental confessional from too many tsunami videos and through a lightening storm.

[just2muchbeauty]

Studio rationale - reflections on 3 artworks I’ve made this semester

1. Drawing performance by Catherine Kolmer 

I made this work because I wanted to make more drawing work but I also wanted it to relate to the body. I think I am uncomfortable with the personalities or something around drawing performance because it seems to foreground the performer as this kind of genius who can’t make mistakes and like a weirdly mystical experience, or so it seems to me. I love drawing but I think it’s banal af. 

Catherine Kolmer is this alter ego I’ve been thinking of for a while who is a white woman who is even more privileged than I am and so able to push her career further than mine. A form of punching up? Maybe I should be punching up on men instead of women, though? Naomi compared her a lot to Carolee Schneeman just through the look of the work but I’m not sure what Schneeman’s background is like. She’s like this splint I can use to do more drawing work but make it have an interesting theoretical grounding? Or maybe that’s just a weird justification I’m using. 

Anyway, I think it’s interesting to also be wearing a costume whilst doing a drawing performance. It’s easier for me to re-watch the footage anyway. 

The concepts around this work are like undermining or satirising drawing performers who do a lot of very serious durational stuff, although I’m not sure if I’ve pushed it enough. Endurance art. Performed at home. Also ideas around exploring an alter ego, who can do things with her practice that I won’t do in my normal practice. The form of this work involves a performance which is filmed, and also is through the documentation of the drawing itself which is installed in the uni studio space. The context of this work is performance drawing, durational drawing, artists who make gestural drawings, and artists such as Carolee Schneeman. 

2. Voice piece for the Clown 

This work concept: taking after Yoko Ono’s Voicepeice for the Soprano. Except I wanted to continue with the humour, laughing, etc. I have been doing this semester. Concepts of connection with people you connect with virtually because coronavirus, and intimacy with them because I am so physically close and engaging with that person on the screen. Cathartic sound performance? Performed at uni. 

Form: written text instructions that anyone can interpret, the sound performance, the filmed documentation of the performance 

Context: Yoko Ono, Fluxus

3. Hysteria  

Concepts: humour, cringe, sympathetic response, feminism, durational/endurance performance. Banality. 

Form: Video work of performance. At home/domestic setting. 

Context: Marina Abramovic, Bruce Nauman

[jaymebeetus]

The Counter Culture

Gordon Parks

Used photography to address inequality in the United States

Shined a light on injustices black Americans faced (poverty, violence, oppression)

Photographs reveal humanity, implore empathy, pose questions, provoke outrage

Had a fellowship with the FSA

Photos of inner cities, Office of War Information, Standard Oil, fashion, sports, entertainment, poverty, racial segregation, and African American leaders

Distinctive style that emphasized the look of models and garments in motion, rather than in static poses

Ana Mendieta

Known for “Earth Body” performances

Explored her identity as a female immigrant and her desire to return to her homeland

Was exiled from Cuba at the age of 12

Addressed issues of displacement using the Earth

She would press her body into the Earth and photograph them in her Siluetta works (used rocks, twigs, flowers, fire, feathers, wood, and blood)

Wanted to invoke primitive art

Expressed immediacy of life and the eternity of nature

Feminism, identity politics, religion

Interested in connection between female body and nature

Reclaiming her roots and becoming one with nature

Addressed violence against women

Used her own menstrual blood

Chris Burden

“I had an intuitive sense that being shot is as American as apple pie. We see people being shot on TV, we read about it in the newspaper. Everybody has wondered what it’s like. So I did it.”

Takes seemingly “inartistic” gestures and makes them conceptual art

Concerned with art based on ideas rather than objects for an elite market

Focused on violence, influenced by the violence of the Vietnam War

Showed pain as a reality to viewers who had become desensitized to violence

Wanted to make viewers question their morals

Explores suffering through his own pain and suffering

Explored the relationship of the viewer and the artist, and how the art could serve humanity

His most famous piece Shoot had him getting shot in the arm by his friend, which brought up themes of pain, violence, and the nature of following orders

Judy Chicago

“I am trying to make art that relates to the deepest and most mythic concerns of human kind, and I believe that, at this moment of history, feminism is humanism.”

A pioneer of feminist art in the 70s

Used vaginal imagery and explicitly female content

Addressed the underrepresentation of women in the arts

Used “feminine arts” normally dismissed by high art as “craft” such as needlework and embroidery

Her works referenced and commemorated female historical figures and achievements of women throughout history

Allan Kaprow

Used “happenings”, spontaneous, non-linear actions

Interested in the theoretical and the relationship between the space art holds and the viewer

Focused on the act of production

Changed the idea of art as something concrete to anything that can be experienced

He constructed the physical spaces and deliberately composed sights and sounds for his pieces

Based his art on an “aesthetic of regular experience”

Fluxus Movement

Founded by George Maciunas

Did not agree with the authority of museums to define the value of art

Did not agree that viewers had to be educated in order to understand the art

Holds a loose definition of the movement, as any definite ideas would be too limiting and reductive

Goal was to destroy the line between art and life

Desired to change the balance in power in the art world

Used humor but were serious about creating change

Had an irreverence for high art

Involved the viewer and included an element of chance

Held that the importance of the art was in the process, not the finished product

Yoko Ono, Nam June Paik, Joseph Beuys

[the-cricket-chirps]

Clay Perry

Yoko Ono

1967