Performances Fluxus - Partie I

Fluxus performances

Reproducing the form of the action-concerts started up in 1962 in Wiesbaden, a dozen young performers from the Avignon Ecole Supérieure d’Art revisit part of the musical heritage of the Fluxus movement. The Art-Amusement Fluxus manifesto (1965) set the tone for these actions, conceived as "simple and natural events", games and gags, like a song consisting of just counting the audience (Emmett Williams), or a concert with a conductor bowing off the stage after simply doing up his shoelace (George Maciunas). But humour, expressed through often highly sophisticated scores, was also a means for experimenting with new, incongruous sounds – ping-pong balls falling from a wind instrument (Robert Watts), paper being torn or crumpled (Benjamin Patterson), everyday objects activated according to cards picked from a pack (George Brecht), and songs improvised in invented languages or imitating animal sounds.