Fluxconcert PDX

In the spring of 2003, Liminal organized Fluxconcert PDX, the first Fluxus event of its kind in Portland, Oregon. The evening consisted of several short performances executed by Portland artists from seminal classic Fluxus scores and several entirely new Fluxus scores conceived for the event.

As the self-professed Fluxus Chairman George Maciunas often noted, Fluxus is a way of life. It is not art, but a kind of anti-art—the concrete world presented as nonproductive events and objects. In Fluxus, social aims often take precedence over aesthetic ones. Fluxus upsets the routine of art and life. Fluxus is not a high form of art, but rather, “good, inventive gags.” Other Fluxus artists would not necessarily agree with Maciunas’ description, but there is a Zen-like ambiguity in his words that hits squarely at the Fluxus mystique. Indeed, such open-ended and differing interpretations make Fluxus unique in contemporary art movements. Fluxus is what you make of it.

While Fluxus finds its namesake in the early 1960s when Maciunas coined the term, the idea of Fluxus transcends specific time frames, groups or people. Yet, it is historically appropriate to note that a particular community of artists did come together to pursue parallel interests and ideas that are indicative of the energy and playful anarchy generally associated with Fluxus from the late 1950s forward. Their inspiration came from a number of antecedents and sources—Dada, Futurism, Surrealism, Duchamp, Klein and Cage immediately come to mind. Despite these connections, artists engaged in Fluxus activites often resist calling it a movement. Rather, Fluxus provides a context for understanding a kind of iconoclastic creativity where simple elements, when combined, express complex ideas.

Image gallery

News release

Concert plan [pdf]

Dick Higgins’s A Child’s History Of Fluxus [pdf]

List of scores