Historical Design and Social Purpose: A Note on the Relationship of Fluxus to Modernism

Abstract

This paper explores why Fluxus’ ambiguous affirmations and denials of modernism are not contradictory but part of a self-conscious strategy designed to manipulate the operational apparatus of modernism without submitting to its agenda. Aware that the cannons of modernism rest less in the specifics of its terms than in their organization, Fluxus dislocated traditional means and ends relationships endemic to modernist objectives and dismantled the dependent relationships that account for modernism’s legibility as a "historical movement." Capable of expanding in an indefinite number of opposite, but mutually inclusive directions, Fluxus submitted to everything. Yet, in its separation of means and ends, Fluxus lost the authority to author itself, became the subject of a traditional modernist debate and the unwitting victim of modernist historical subjugation.