Fluxus on a red Ikea sofa
Feb. 26th, 2004 01:52 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
imomusSong of Uncertain Length
Performer balances bottle on own head and walks about singing or speaking until bottle falls. (Musical score by Emmett Williams, 1960)
In the winter of 2001, just before I left New York for Tokyo, I felt a strong urge to plunge myself into something resembling 'Fluxus New York'. Romantically, I wanted to find something with links to the Chambers Street loft concerts where Yoko Ono first met La Monte Young. I wanted some glimpse of the old SoHo where fellow Lithuanians Jonas Mekas and George Maciunas had their cultural institutes, Anthology and Fluxus, hidden in the still-industrial 'wrought iron district' from property speculators and city inspectors alike. In a way, that SoHo ended when artists' multiples store Printed Matter moved from Wooster Street up to West 22nd Street in Chelsea and became just another art bookstore. But in other ways its spirit -- minus some of its quixotic, improvisatory impishness, perhaps -- was still traceable in New York in late 2001 in the events people like o.blaat and John Zorn were putting on at places like Share and Tonic, and even in the Fluxus-ripped graphics Fischerspooner were using on their record sleeves.
Duet for Performer and Audience
Performer waits silently on stage for audible reaction from audience which he imitates. (Musical score by Emmett Williams, 1961)
But who'd have guessed that I'd have to move to Berlin to meet an actual member of Fluxus? Last night I went to a party at Bernhard Gal's place near Tempelhof airport. In fact it's a huge apartment supplied by the Berlin DAAD's artists in residence program. In amongst the German and Japanese musicians milling around, I found Phill Niblock, the 60-something American composer who's worked with people like Jim O'Rourke and Thurston Moore and directs the Experimental Intermedia Foundation in New York. In the course of our conversation he pointed to a hunched little old man, a sort of cute straggle-haired Tolkein-like gnome sitting alone on a red Ikea sofa. 'That's Emmett Williams, one of the original members of Fluxus,' he said.
For La Monte Young
Performer asks if La Monte Young is in the audience. (Musical score by Emmett Williams, 1962)
Fluxus! The last great art movement! The missing link between Josef Beuys and Yoko Ono, between Beck's grandfather and the Velvet Underground! Fluxus, alive and well and sitting on a red Ikea sofa!
Fluxus turned out to be alive, but not entirely well.
Our encounter resembled my 2002 meeting with Jonas Mekas, with the farce replayed as tragedy. As with Mekas, I went to meet Williams with a Japanese woman by my side. This was an asset -- Emmett's partner Ann Noel exclaimed, as we settled at his feet, 'Oh, he'll like to have a Japanese girl to talk to!' (Perhaps Ayako's name also reminded him of his best friend, his Japanese collaborator, Ay.o.)
Me and my Japanese partner, we're 'cute-ass cop and smart-ass cop'. It's a pincer movement. Cute-ass sits on one side and Smart-ass on the other. Cute ass captures eminent avant guardian's attention, but follows up with rather lame and vague questions like 'Are you from New York, Mr Mekas? Where do you live?' -- to which Mekas answers, with withering patience, 'I have a place on East 2nd Street, it's called Anthology Film Archive.' Then, hoping to snatch something from the ambient banality that seems to be descending, Smart-Ass interjects, 'Mr Mekas, Cage said that noise turns, with repetition, into harmony, do you think that, by the same token, your films are turning into narrative?' Mekas, shuttle-cocked between Cute-Ass and Smart-Ass, is soon extremely irritated and tells us to seek him out at some other time, preferably when he's totally hammered in New York.
10 Arrangements for 5 Performers
Leader rings bell, performers move. Leader rings bell a second time, and all freeze, each saying a single word. (Musical score by Emmett Williams, 1962)
In the case of Emmett Williams, things are much more poignant. Quickly we realise that all is not quite right. Hunching forward, his face all a-twitch, this once-brilliant man, the inventor of concrete poetry (if Apollinaire didn't invent it, or Sterne, or Herbert, or some Roman mason), concentrates on our questions, one eye wide and the other narrow. Perhaps he's fried, perhaps mad in a King Lear sort of way, or perhaps, tragically, caught in the idiot grip of Alzheimer's disease. 'I'm a little bit cuckoo at the moment,' he tells us. I mention Fluxus. 'People keep asking me 'What is Fluxus?',' Emmett expostulates. Finding the words is clearly hard, but he has some preset phrases he can do, even although I haven't actually asked anything as silly as 'What is Fluxus?' 'All I can tell them is, read my fucking books, I've published 47 books and people should go away and read them, then come back and ask me questions.'
It's a perfectly sane and reasonable point. It's clearly his message to the world. Read the fucking manual, I wrote it. And he did.
An interview with Emmett Williams.
A concrete poem by Emmett Williams.
Extract from an opera by Emmett Williams.
An excellent survey of American concrete poetry from UbuWeb which discusses Williams.
Counting Songs
Audience is counted by various means -- for example, performer gives a small gift (coin, cough drop, cookie, toothpick, match stick, etc.) to every member of the audience, counting each as he does so, or marks audience members with a chalk, or keeps track by pointing finger, etc. (Musical score by Emmett Williams, 1962)
Performer balances bottle on own head and walks about singing or speaking until bottle falls. (Musical score by Emmett Williams, 1960)
In the winter of 2001, just before I left New York for Tokyo, I felt a strong urge to plunge myself into something resembling 'Fluxus New York'. Romantically, I wanted to find something with links to the Chambers Street loft concerts where Yoko Ono first met La Monte Young. I wanted some glimpse of the old SoHo where fellow Lithuanians Jonas Mekas and George Maciunas had their cultural institutes, Anthology and Fluxus, hidden in the still-industrial 'wrought iron district' from property speculators and city inspectors alike. In a way, that SoHo ended when artists' multiples store Printed Matter moved from Wooster Street up to West 22nd Street in Chelsea and became just another art bookstore. But in other ways its spirit -- minus some of its quixotic, improvisatory impishness, perhaps -- was still traceable in New York in late 2001 in the events people like o.blaat and John Zorn were putting on at places like Share and Tonic, and even in the Fluxus-ripped graphics Fischerspooner were using on their record sleeves.
Duet for Performer and Audience
Performer waits silently on stage for audible reaction from audience which he imitates. (Musical score by Emmett Williams, 1961)
But who'd have guessed that I'd have to move to Berlin to meet an actual member of Fluxus? Last night I went to a party at Bernhard Gal's place near Tempelhof airport. In fact it's a huge apartment supplied by the Berlin DAAD's artists in residence program. In amongst the German and Japanese musicians milling around, I found Phill Niblock, the 60-something American composer who's worked with people like Jim O'Rourke and Thurston Moore and directs the Experimental Intermedia Foundation in New York. In the course of our conversation he pointed to a hunched little old man, a sort of cute straggle-haired Tolkein-like gnome sitting alone on a red Ikea sofa. 'That's Emmett Williams, one of the original members of Fluxus,' he said.
For La Monte Young
Performer asks if La Monte Young is in the audience. (Musical score by Emmett Williams, 1962)
Fluxus! The last great art movement! The missing link between Josef Beuys and Yoko Ono, between Beck's grandfather and the Velvet Underground! Fluxus, alive and well and sitting on a red Ikea sofa!
Fluxus turned out to be alive, but not entirely well.
Our encounter resembled my 2002 meeting with Jonas Mekas, with the farce replayed as tragedy. As with Mekas, I went to meet Williams with a Japanese woman by my side. This was an asset -- Emmett's partner Ann Noel exclaimed, as we settled at his feet, 'Oh, he'll like to have a Japanese girl to talk to!' (Perhaps Ayako's name also reminded him of his best friend, his Japanese collaborator, Ay.o.)
Me and my Japanese partner, we're 'cute-ass cop and smart-ass cop'. It's a pincer movement. Cute-ass sits on one side and Smart-ass on the other. Cute ass captures eminent avant guardian's attention, but follows up with rather lame and vague questions like 'Are you from New York, Mr Mekas? Where do you live?' -- to which Mekas answers, with withering patience, 'I have a place on East 2nd Street, it's called Anthology Film Archive.' Then, hoping to snatch something from the ambient banality that seems to be descending, Smart-Ass interjects, 'Mr Mekas, Cage said that noise turns, with repetition, into harmony, do you think that, by the same token, your films are turning into narrative?' Mekas, shuttle-cocked between Cute-Ass and Smart-Ass, is soon extremely irritated and tells us to seek him out at some other time, preferably when he's totally hammered in New York.
10 Arrangements for 5 Performers
Leader rings bell, performers move. Leader rings bell a second time, and all freeze, each saying a single word. (Musical score by Emmett Williams, 1962)
In the case of Emmett Williams, things are much more poignant. Quickly we realise that all is not quite right. Hunching forward, his face all a-twitch, this once-brilliant man, the inventor of concrete poetry (if Apollinaire didn't invent it, or Sterne, or Herbert, or some Roman mason), concentrates on our questions, one eye wide and the other narrow. Perhaps he's fried, perhaps mad in a King Lear sort of way, or perhaps, tragically, caught in the idiot grip of Alzheimer's disease. 'I'm a little bit cuckoo at the moment,' he tells us. I mention Fluxus. 'People keep asking me 'What is Fluxus?',' Emmett expostulates. Finding the words is clearly hard, but he has some preset phrases he can do, even although I haven't actually asked anything as silly as 'What is Fluxus?' 'All I can tell them is, read my fucking books, I've published 47 books and people should go away and read them, then come back and ask me questions.'
It's a perfectly sane and reasonable point. It's clearly his message to the world. Read the fucking manual, I wrote it. And he did.
An interview with Emmett Williams.
A concrete poem by Emmett Williams.
Extract from an opera by Emmett Williams.
An excellent survey of American concrete poetry from UbuWeb which discusses Williams.
Counting Songs
Audience is counted by various means -- for example, performer gives a small gift (coin, cough drop, cookie, toothpick, match stick, etc.) to every member of the audience, counting each as he does so, or marks audience members with a chalk, or keeps track by pointing finger, etc. (Musical score by Emmett Williams, 1962)
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2004-02-26 06:30 am (UTC)first voice: somewhere
second voice: bluebirds are flying
third voice: high in the sky
fourth voice: in the cellar
fifth voice: even blackbirds are extinct
'During the course of operations,' explains Mary Ellen Solt (http://www.ubu.com/papers/solt/us.html), 'the bluebirds and the blackbirds exchange places. "cellar song for five voices" is both a typesetter's and a performer's nightmare, but it emerges visually as a beautiful typographical design entirely organic to the progression of thought within the poem, and it is meant to be performed. It is reported that during its first performance in the Living Theater in New York, the performers became so confused trying to keep the permutations straight they started to giggle; and the director, Jackson Mac Low, had to stop the performance and begin all over again.'
Bluebirds wing their way through the 20th century, probably helped considerably by Maurice Maeterlinck's 1908 fable The Bluebird (http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/maeterli.htm). You can download a .pdf of the play here (http://www.planetmonk.com/dramageeks/scripts/bluebird.pdf).