For the second discussion in the fall 2020 series “In Conversation,” on September 12, 2020, Natilee Harren, assistant professor of art history at the University of Houston School of Art, joins Meredith Malone, associate curator at the Kemper Art Museum, for a talk about Fluxus, the international avant-garde art movement founded in 1962 with outposts in Europe, Japan, and the United States. The group is perhaps best known for its production of game-like kits called Fluxboxes, multiples in unlimited edition that were assembled beginning in the early 1960s. In our present moment of social isolation and economic uncertainty, Fluxus multiples—portable, interactive, transformable, and affordable—offer a compelling model for rethinking accepted modes of artistic subjectivity, production, and distribution.
This discussion brings to life the original context of the Fluxboxes—Pop art and the multiples boom of the mid-1960s—reanimating the political and aesthetic stakes of these objects while highlighting the signal contributions of Fluxus affiliates, including George Brecht, Alison Knowles, George Maciunas, and Daniel Spoerri, among many others.
The conversation is presented in conjunction with the exhibition "Multiplied: Edition MAT and the Transformable Work of Art, 1959-1965."
