PDF FLUX-tours: ON THE ROAD AGAIN(opens PDF in German language only)
A “travel brochure” about the FLUX-tours travels from May to June, 2014: FLUX-tours. Reisen in die Gegen_Wart. (opens PDF in German language only)
Night of the performance – Where is my home ? [Wo ist mein Zuhause?], June 23-30, 2014, Galeria Miejska bwa w Bydgoszczy, Poland.
Temporary blockade [Teilzeit-Barricade], FLUX-tours, 2014:
Romantic word machine, Polen Bydgoszcz, FLUX-tours, 2014:
FLUX-tours ambulant pulls up with the black egg and invites you to a 4’33 action.
On June 07, FLUX-tours came to the forecourt of the Pommersches Landesmuseum in Greifswald. Heat, low well water, interested active children, Friedrich’s painting puzzle and an area of radiant stones were already there…
dust mob-aquarells were drawn a lot and many passers-by perpetuated themselves on the romantic travel typewriter…
On May 23, the stationary FLUX-tours travel agency went to Stralsund. Heat and rainstorms, cellular concrete and duct tape, typewriter and brush-armour – all this was involved at Neuer Markt…
On May 16 the stationary FLUX-tours travel agency came to Stadthafen Rostock and captured all that was to be captured.
On May 8 the ambulant FLUX-tours travel agency stopped at the “Goatmarket” [Ziegenmarkt] Schwerin (without a goat!) and on May 9 in the quarter Großer Dreesch, both stations in Schwerin. Red buckets, traces of glue and chalk were scattered everywhere. Brush-armour mingled gay colours and rain water, and the trailers resisted 2 thunderbolts.
Video “Pfütze”, FLUX-tours in Schwerin, 2014:
Video “Streech den Dreesch”, FLUX-tours in Schwerin, 2014:
Why not use blenders, pots, water kettles, hair-dryers and other “junk” to create noises and turn those into a piece of music (John Cage)? Why not cut up a piano on stage (Dick Higgins and other activists)? Why not piece together large trash and scrap to a sculpture instead of discarding it inconsiderately (Robert Filliou and Jean Tinguely, for instance)? Why not examine the acts of peeling a potato or sweeping a square as a sculptural practice (Joseph Beuys)? Why not seek beauty in the gutter – to involve French Romanticism as instigation (Charles Baudelaire)? And why not “give the commoner an elevated mind, the ordinary a mysterious appearance, the familiar the dignity of the unknown, the finite an illusion of the infinite”? says the old – and obviously still valid – basic programme of Novalis, one of the leading figures in German Romanticism.3 So why not use the aesthetic peculiarities of everyday materials, everyday procedures and everyday situations as an opportunity to contemplate these artistically, as well as experiment with these and accredit their artistic worthiness and artistic faculty? With those and similar questions and respective answers did the transatlantic art movement “FLUXUS” raise some attention in the sixties of the last century. It continued and brought to a head what other ‘art revolutionaries’ thought and did before that, what was in the wind in the sixties in the last century and what is still alive in the high cultures subcultures of today. Fluxus or the activists of the “Situationist International”, for instance, supported, went along with and shaped the rebellion against “the fustiness of 1,000 years” under “the gowns”4 here and elsewhere – the awakening and uproar of the so-called ’68 generation and likewise malcontented in Europe and North America.
The Fluxus movement demonstrated in a blunt way how art by “ingenious amateurs” “without any talent” whatsoever5, and without any artistic “geek-ism” could look like. Instead, they performed critique on art and society with ruse, courage, impertinence and irony. All that with the intention of debunking the so far hidden and the thoughtless, by employing “anti-artistic” tools to take artistic action and cast off fixed technical traditions and thought patterns. EXIT! The artist Wolf Vostell boiled the Fluxus concept down to an essence: “Art = Life, Life = Art”.
Read more: (opens PDF: “FLUXUS, FLUX-tours: EXIT” text by Ulrich Puritz, text only available in German)
Visitor, on entering the musuem…
… let your eyes become butterflies.
Follow them. Use camera, pen and paper
for that. Be clumsy. Act without looking first.
Be taken by surpise.
With FLUX-tours via FLUX to romanticism and back again
Travel preparations: Be romantic and revolutionary. Leave humouressless and naïvity at hall stand.
Only phantasy, pleasure in thinking and joy of playing lead to the revolution of romanticism.
Travel route: The journey begins in the clouds. Flight above Neubrandenburg in the evening sun. Greeting the maltreated Buddah. Past an on-going fight to water music. Gentle slide above white lines in grime bed. Foretaste: grilled duck. It soon starts ist journey through the body. Pick up the telephone, it rings for you. Venus awaits you. Ben will give you something to drink. Enter the stage and be a FLUXUS star.
Sit in the bathtub and dream romantically. Be a FLUX-tours guest. The travel organizers will be delighted.
Traveller, approaching … … take a survey.
Greet man and beast.
Leave a message.
FLUX-tours in Klein-Amerika
Klein Amerika is a district of Brüsewitz near the Schwerin and not to be overlooked as such today. A place-name sign flaunts where there was sky only beforehand.
How did America come here and became so small? A pond was what the inhabitants of the northern district had to cross. And over the “big pond” lies – this is well-known to everybody – America.
Between the village centre of Brüsewitz and the northern district there is a well. From time to time it fills with water. A jolly-romantic idea of the house owners across the temporary water area named the district Little America [Klein Amerika], by now officially. A friendly local resident told that. FLUX-tours brought FLUXUS from big America to Klein Amerika for a few hours.
Ben Patterson celebrated his 80th birthday. First of all, he was celebrated. Bill Dietz (artistic head of the ensemble Zwischentöne) and Christian Kesten (Maulwerker) set a worthy frame. The concert programme compiled by them sported the motto “Benjamin Patterson. Sneak Preview” and gave a captivating panorama about the creative work of this amiable and roguish FLUXUS rebel. FLUX-tours was there – and was as keen as mustard.
Experienced FLUX-tourist with favorite activities for each region she visits, such as: Taking endless strolls out of curiosity through supermarkets and malls in foreign countries. Euphorically ordering exotic dishes in small, unflashy snack bars. Sitting around in public places and – perfectly disguised through inconspicuous behavior like reading or eating – studying people. She has much compressed her luggage over time; nevertheless, a pair of sun glasses and an insect repellent have to be in her bag! An old T4 being her favorite means of transport, it always stops along the way and allows her to open the black door of its trailer…
Bummer, dreamer and motorised miles collector. Favors flat land which is slightly too warm and windless for locomotion. Nevertheless living near the coast for good reason… Enjoys travelling from one place to another more than actually being in one of them and is, at all times enjoying sensory experience. Being a vagabond, he is out and about in disciplines crossing his way; sometimes heading here, there, and everywhere for this and that.
Seeman, nomad of the arts, lover of clear water and warm oceans especially if surrounded by mountains; métier: long-distance journeys right here and right now – whersoever.
Well-versed FLUX-tourist; does regularly suffer from the travel bug and passes it on to the travel partner straight away; counteractions: letting her finger travel on the tourist map, slide shows with prawn cocktails, swinging her hips for several minutes to salsa or – if all else fails – taking off with the paper aeroplane.
Loves nothing better than journeys to the cellar or the to the attic, strolls around the block or to the construction site around the corner. Searching for paths offside the main streets and short cuts leading through garages and gardens; hiking up and down the island of Rügen’s coast, gathering driftwood in Portugal, attempted to ride the bike to North Cape but only made it half, but fully to Paris still on bike, was camping on the roundabout in Versailles until the police and rain came, sailed around the island of Hiddensee and through the Öresund under heavy fog, can stand upright on a surfboard – only shortly on water, better sliding down the hill, did later fly to the land of the rising sun and the permanent smile, trip of a lifetime: Iceland
FLUX-tours ambulant, with its mobile art rooms and action rooms, pulls up at Ziegenmarkt in the city of Schwerin. From 2 p.m. to 6 p.m.: actions in public place and from 8 p.m. to 10 p.m.: FLUX-tours Lounge.
FLUX-tours ambulant, with its mobile art rooms and action rooms, pulls up at Großer Dreesch in the city of Schwerin. From 2 p.m. to 6 p.m.: actions in public place. The planned FLUX-tours Lounge from 8 p.m.to 10 p.m. will not take place due to bad weather conditions.
FLUX-tours ambulant, with its mobile art rooms and action rooms, pulls up at the Stadthafen in the city of Rostockand meets the FiSH-(short film) Festival. From 2 p.m. to 6 p.m.: actions in public place and from 8 p.m. to 10 p.m.: FLUX-tours Lounge (depending on weather conditions).
FLUX-tours ambulant, with its mobile art rooms and action rooms, pulls up at Neuer Markt in the city of Stralsund. From 2 p.m. to 6 p.m.: actions in public place and from 8 p.m. to 10 p.m.: FLUX-tours Lounge (depending on weather conditions).
FLUX-tours ambulant, with its mobile art rooms and action rooms, pulls up in front of the Pommersches Landesmuseum in the city of Greifswald. From 2 p.m. to 6 p.m.: actions in public place and from 8 p.m. to 10 p.m.: FLUX-tours Lounge (depending on weather conditions).