Fluxus
International art and music movement of the 1960s that places the idea above the finished work.
What it means
Fluxus is the name of an international art and music movement of the 1960s. The name, Latin for “flowing,” was coined by the artist George Maciunas. Characteristic is that the idea and the action matter more than the finished, lasting artwork, and that art and everyday life are meant to merge.
Musical use
In music, Fluxus took up John Cage, whose concepts of chance and silence widened the limits of what counts as music. Fluxus artists wrote “event scores,” short instructions for action that the performers turned into sound, gesture, or an everyday act. Names involved include Nam June Paik, Yoko Ono, George Brecht, and La Monte Young. In 1962 a pioneering festival took place in Wiesbaden, the Fluxus International Festival of Very New Music.
Fluxus should be distinguished from new music in the narrower sense, which continued to create composed works, and from aleatoric music, which uses chance as a compositional procedure. Fluxus rather puts the idea of an action above the sonic effect. It is often also meant as a cheerful, ironic play with the art world.
Performance practice
If you perform a Fluxus piece, keep to the instruction as exactly as possible, since the effect arises from the literalness of the idea. Allow chance and the unexpected rather than aiming for a perfect execution.