The Fluxkit / George Maciunas
In my curiosity to examine George Maciunas’s design work and his systematic processes behind gathering the Fluxkit and his historical charts, “Diagram of Historical Development of Fluxus and Other 4 Dimentional, Aural, Optic, Olfactory, Epithelial and Tactile Art Forms,” I choose to research the ‘Fluxkits’ which he designed and assembled. Enclosed in a black attaché case and priced at $100, the Fluxkit was a collection of small art objects made by various Fluxus artists ranging from Alison Knowles’s Bean Rolls, Ay-O’s Finger Box, Mieko Shiomi’s Endless Box, George Brecht’s Games and Puzzles, Nam June Paik’s film loops and others. These pieces were originally intended to be a part of the performance art pieces but since they were cheap to mass produce, it branched off into it’s own series of Fluxus Publishing. This Fluxus anthology of interactive boxes, games, film and a Fluxus journal, allowed the masses to explore the pieces on their own time, so as not to be reliant on “the authority of museums” who can “determine the value of art.” As multi-sensory art pieces, they were to “merge art and life towards an ideal of unfragmented enlightenment” and experience “concrete art” through everyday objects that we don’t think twice about and for what it “is.” Maciunas coined the name ‘Fluxus’ after seeing the word “flux” in a dictionary as a noun, a verb, adjective and a total of seventeen different meanings, which he used as a base for his 3-part Fluxus Manifesto of ‘PURGE’, ‘TIDE’ and ‘FUSE.’
