The Avant Garde in Attitude: Fluxus The History of an Attitude by Owen Smith—Aesthetic Critical Theory from San Diego State University Press (SDSU Press)

What breaks against the mold of convention, society and traditional cookie cutter art, literature, film, and media? Fluxus the History of an Attitude. The book that shows how new avant grande movement has begun to develop and expand. The evolution making way to allow for new abilities of thought and expression while continually moving away from conventional thought, mainstream ideology, and break from the bonds of conformity that has long limited true freedom of expression.

Medias such as paint, clay, ink and canvas are stripped away by fluxus. Instead, deciding to use what is left over by the community, the trash and carbon footprints transform into art. This helps build an individuality without relying on companies to create mediums and tools for production of expression, taking away the chains that suggest their route of creativity.

Fluxus is a form which the group has described as “non-art” since they do not wish to be associated with the same constraints as traditional artists who follow rules, ready to please the masses and unable to think outside the box.

It takes an open mind to be able to find art in all things, especially ones that are new and test your ability to look for beauty in things you originally had never noticed due to their “traditional” uses. Such examples include furniture, office supplies, electronics, and other things that help your day run smoothly, things that are easily bought and discarded.

“Fluxus [is] serious about not being serious” (242)

Being serious is by society standards, not the fluxus standard. One can be serious about their art but not be serious about what society wants them to do with art or create with their talent.

Fluxus in 2014 has evolved, as intended. Art being one of the largest mediums for thought and the new fluxis kit's which are sold by artists, each kit is different and can be manipulated. Read Thing/Thought Fluxus Edition to see examples of the "kit".

One art show in 2014 at the Rush Auditorium at Florida Southwestern State College gave a fluxus show with improve opera, spoken word poetry, and for the finale a whipped creamed blow up alligator topped with cherries and nuts which the audience was allowed to partake a piece of the art with a chip. Read the full article here.

Fluxus has continued to invade society with its unique form of individual art, ideas and media. To take a closer look at fluxus check out the full critique and essays by following this link.

Is It All Over Now? "In Memoriam To Postmodernism: Essays on the Avant-Pop"

Postmodernism is dead. Or so say Avant-Popists. Or so said Avant-Popists close to twenty years ago. So, looking at it today, has Avant-Pop deflated and died as well? Or has it exploded, continuing to combat the fractured yet ironically monolithic technological medium that has us updating Facebook with pictures for our status, while Tweeting about our innermost superficial thoughts, on our way to buy an organic muffin trucked in from out of town, to be washed down with a strong cup of fair-trade coffee from caffeine giant Starbucks, before we head into the nearest stadium-style theater to watch the latest reboot of a multi-million dollar movie franchise based on a TV character made popular in the eighties from a comic book first published in the sixties?

Mark Amerika and Lance Olsen’s In Memoriam to Postmodernism: Essays on the Avant-Pop asked questions in 1995 that we just might be able to answer today. A collection of definitions, essays, and musings, ending with manifestos for the movement, In Memoriam’s organization serves to first explain the measuring tape and then present us with what is to be measured, allowing the reader to move fluidly from the issues of the early nineties to a consideration of what they mean today.

Amerika and Olsen begin the collection with a nod to the neophyte, a slow roll into the twists, turns, and dark alleys of Avant-Pop. Most appealing, and amusing, is the “Avant-Pop Quiz” and “Click Here for More Information” sections, where in the former the editors attempt to frame that which refuses to be hung, while providing a catch-all reading list in the latter.

After the introduction, velocity picks up and celebrated Avant-Pop writers and theorists take over. The table of contents is a media-drunk cavalcade marching in to tear the house down, including such notable names as SDSU’s Larry McCaffery, Harry Polkinhorn, and a wonderfully salacious piece of trans-media “Zipper-Bustin’ ” by Harold Jaffe; the revered (or Avant-Pop Reverend?) Ronald Sukenick; Eurudice; award-winning Japanese scholar Takayuki Tatsumi; and “[a manifesto of sorts]” by “major influence on the avant-set” Raymond Federman.

In Memorium to Postmodernism runs the gamut of topics: Curtis White examines cultural politics, Brooks Landon looks at the hypertextual novel and the future of publishing, Martin Schecter discusses generational divides (an issue swirling around the entire collection and even more poignant in 2012), David Blair dives into film and virtual worlds, and Michael Joyce scrutinizes the tenuous relationship between reading and meaning. A particularly favorite piece from the collection is Steven Shaviro’s “Strategies of Disappearance: or Why I Love Dean Martin.” And damnit, now I love Dino too. So will you. 

Lance Olsen brings the collection to a close, and puts forth a challenge to today’s readers, by forcing us to look at the “Alzheimer’s province in the United States of Amnesia…a pioneer consciousness that doesn’t like to look over its shoulder, check out the rearview mirror, environmentally, militarily, culturally, because objects back there are always larger than they appear.”

In the living age of hypertexts, the death of publishing, “Reality” T.V., YouTube, mash-ups (one of the new words now featured in the updated Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary), instantaneous American Idol voting, CNN’s reporters on the street, and political revolutions sparked by social media, Yeats’ beast is no longer slouching towards Bethlehem to be born. It’s already here and indulging itself at the Hyperconsumer Capitalist party (thanks for the image McCaffery…I’m officially frightened fecal-less).

In 1995, In Memoriam to Postmodernism: Essays on the Avant-Pop asked if we were ready to face the technologically fueled cultural Armageddon coming at us. With relationships between writer and reader, consumer and producer shifting and reversing so quickly we can’t tell who is who anymore, it’s time to look back at these questions so we can start answering them. That is, if we’ve got the stones to do it.

Buy It From SDSU Press

MORE CONTEMPORARY LEAPS INTO AVANT-POP?

 

This isn't just an essay...

it’s a clinic and a reading list from Jonathan Lethem

Self-proclaimed epiphany addict and techno optimist Jason Silva...

on topics that would get Timothy Leary high

It’s Not Just a Sound Bite. Steinbeck’s Echo Gets Louder in "Homer from Salinas: John Steinbeck’s Enduring Voice for California" (and everyone else who’s listening)

I saw the news today. Oh boy. Apparently, depending on which of our presidential candidates you ask, the economic numbers tell different tales. (By the way, the numbers show unemployment rising from 8.2% in June to 8.3% in July). According to Mitt, ever the voice of the shrinking middle class (that voice, by the way, is coming from far above), the numbers are a “hammer blow” to the nation’s workers. And no, that’s not a cool sexual reference. If you ask our current man in the white house on the hill (also a voice coming from above…he is on a hill mind you), he states that things are getting better but “we’ve still got too many folks out there looking for work.” What is causing this, you may ask each candidate? Each one says it’s the other guy.

Thanks gents. You’ve made it perfectly clear that people are still getting screwed; it’s just a matter of lubricant. I’m impressed with both of your abilities to dilute into sound bites a problem more and more people are facing.

With election rhetoric heightening and finger pointing coming to that wonderful height of US politics known as “The other guys did it,” I can’t help but consider John Steinbeck and his oeuvre. Yes, I said it: the writer’s name that in my years of teaching high school English and university survey courses generally brought sighs of forced reverence and hidden questions of relevance. However, if you look closely at what this Californian covers, in an earnest desire to discover honesty in his words (and even some painful recognition of ethnic stereotyping and dubious characterization), what you’ll find are deep and fundamental questions of identity, ethnicity, poverty, and the exploitation of the dispossessed. You could easily flip a switch and have Steinbeck writing about our nation today.

And this kind of thoughtful consideration, this honest assessment, is exactly what you will find in Homer from Salinas: John Steinbeck’s Enduring Voice for California, deftly edited by Dr. William A. Nericcio and published by San Diego State University Press. From noted scholars, performers, artists, and photographers, this mélange of lectures, screenings, debates, discussions, and visual artifacts brings Steinbeck to the forefront of contemporary discussion. This “chaemera-like publication,” as Nericcio calls it in his introduction, compiles some of the most interesting moments from a Steinbeck celebration at San Diego State University in 2007. A celebration that took place right around the time the election season was ramping up before Obama’s first run at the office.

Questions about immigration, the economy, and the growing lower class (read impoverished, abused, taken advantage of) were all over the lips of politicians’ as much then as they are today. And in this volume of thoughtful analysis, creative response, and honest assessment, Steinbeck is given a modern day treatment that begs the question: has anything changed?

Nericcio’s collection is comprised of a beautiful mix of scholars, children’s writers, poets, and artists. The end result is an examination of the issues that plagued this nation in one of its worst economic and social times, that plagued it in 2007, and that sadly still plague it today. It proves that Steinbeck’s writings are an honest, if sometimes flawed, assessment of the “hammer blow” of “folks out there looking for work.” Echoes of this can still be heard today in the workers’ cries and the protestors’ chants, railing against the machine that’s running them over.

Homer from Salinas is not simply a look at Steinbeck and California’s past; it is a look at the ever-changing, and troubled, United States. This is a thoughtful work that digs Steinbeck out of the dust bowl and work camps of The Great Depression and foresees him center stage in the debates of the Occupy movement and Minuteman radicalism of today’s Great Recession. It would be a welcome novelty if our political leaders could be as relevant and honest as Steinbeck and this collection.

Buy it today from SDSU Press. High school and university classrooms cannot afford to be deprived of the thoughtful debates that this collection ignites.