Aberystwyth in Flux 1968-2008

Restaging the FLUXCONCERT BY AND FOR FLUXUS

29 November 2008: 8pm, Castle Theatre, Aberystwyth (Fluxclinic 4-6pm)

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Photos: Daniel Ladnar

Documentation available here.

With support from the SIR DAVID HUGHES PARRY AWARDS 2008.

“The Fluxus Concert was a real success… Slides of cowboy drawings. We pull crackers, burst bags, howl. Somebody chases his mate around the parish hall to hit him. Flux-Pin-Up No. 1 showers down. It is a picture of Brian. […] People howl and throw streamers, and stick coloured papers on their faces, and somehow behind the light Brian throws us another set of instructions. Caution, Art Corrupts."
(John Hall, ‘A State of Flux – John Hall at the Aberystwyth Festival’, The Guardian 30 November 1968)

From the 27th to the 29th November 1968, artist Brian Lane came to Aberystwyth with his collaborators, the First Dream Machine, to organize a 3-day Fluxus event. He had been invited by the annual Aberystwyth Arts Festival, a committee that was made up of students from University College Aberystwyth (including Bob Marsland, John Osborne and Steve Mills). The participatory and imaginative nature of Fluxus appealed to the organisers who, as they stated in their invitation to Lane, were looking to "reach a wide enough audience" and were "attempting to revitalize the Festival by pushing the idea of Art as Fun, Art as something to be enjoyed".

In response, Brian Lane devised an ambitious programme for Aberystwyth: a 12 hour concert of electronic music (which featured pieces by Karlheinz Stockhausen, Pierre Henry and Adrian Nutbeem), one of the first Fluxusclinics in the country, an international graphics exhibition and a session of Total Theatre. At the heart of the festival was a Flux Concert, featuring performances of now classic Fluxus scores by artists such as George Maciunas, Ben Vautier, George Brecht and Chieko Shiomi. Adrian Glew, curator at the Tate in charge of the Brian Lane Archive, calls the event "seminal", as it "entered the contemporaneous Fluxus canon and the subsequent history of Fluxus in the UK". (Glew 2007).

In a year in which the revolutionary impetus of 1968 and its legacy was being widely reassessed, we paid tribute to this seminal example of experimental art practice exactly 40 years after it first occurred. Aberystwyth-based artists performed their interpretation of the original Fluxus scores used in 1968.

...if you don't know what a Fluxconcert is you must come and see for yourself...
[Brian Lane, 1968]

Scores:

Foyer Balloon Event
George Maciunas: In Memoriam to Adriano Olivetti (1962)
Robert Watts: Event: 10 (1962)
Ben Vautier: Three Pieces for Audiences (1964)
Robert Watts: Event: 13 (1962)
George Brecht: Two Durations (1961)
George Brecht: Three Yellow Events (1961)
Chieko Shiomi: Disappearing Music for Face (1964)
Ben Vautier: Audience Piece No. 2 (1964)
Brian Lane: The Black and White Tea Party(1968)
Chieko Shiomi: Flash Piece (1966)
Ben Vautier: Choice (1964)
Tomas Schmit: Sanitas No 35 (Date unknown)
Tomas Schmit: Sanitas No. 151 (Date unknown)
Ben Vautier: Apples (1963)
Chieko Shiomi: Flash Piece(1966)
Brian Lane/ Rainbow: FLUXUS Leaflet Concert (1968)

with:

Arseli Dokumaci, Cara Brostrom, Carmel George, Chris Okerberg,
Daniel Ladnar, Esther Pilkington, Gareth Llyr Evans, Gemma Abbott,
Glesni Mair Edwards, Kasia Coleman, Louise Ritchie, Shannon Roszell,
Naomi Turner, Rhiannon Morgan, Richard Allen, Sarah Guice,
Sinead Cormack

technical team:
Emma Hayward, David Haylock, Nicola Rothwell, Ben Cole

thanks to:
Mo Tingey, Adrian Glew (Tate Archive), Nick Strong, Andrea Wiltshire, Becky Mitchell, Mike Pearson, Melissa Donaldson, David Ian Rabey, Arthur Dafis, John Blake, Howard Adair and Aberystwyth students of 1968 who have kindly shared their memories

Project Director
Dr Heike Roms, Performance Studies, Prifysgol Aberystwyth University

NOTE: We are still looking for eyewitnesses to the 1968 event - please visit here.