The Lithuanian metropolis of Kaunas, a European Capital of Tradition this yr, had not less than one head begin when drawing up a program for 2022 – it was the birthplace 60 years in the past of the distinctive “‘anti-art” motion Fluxus. The very fact will probably be celebrated on the Kaunas2022 FLUXUS competition on September 10 and 11.
It was avant-garde artist George Mačiūnas, born in Kaunas on November 8, 1931, who within the early Sixties rebelled towards the “bourgeois” artwork and music of the day by creating a brand new motion that had no single unifying type.
The Latin phrase fluxus means flowing, and in English a flux is a flowing out. Mačiūnas said that the aim of Fluxus was to “promote a revolutionary flood and tide in artwork, promote dwelling artwork, anti-art”.
The concept shortly gained nice recognition with the period’s largest avant-garde artists, together with Joseph Beuys, Dick Higgins, Alice Hutchins, Yoko Ono, Nam June Paik, Ben Vautier, Robert Watts, Benjamin Patterson and Emmett Williams. The primary Fluxus occasion was staged in 1961 in New York and was adopted by festivals in Europe in 1962.
Kaunas’ European Capital of Tradition programme will embrace not solely the Fluxus competition itself but in addition a serious retrospective from one of many largest cultural icons concerned with the motion, Yoko Ono.
Multimedia artist, musician and peace activist Ono opened an set up in Kaunas in January known as “Ex It”, and she is going to now return to town with “The Studying Backyard of Freedom”, her retrospective exhibition.
“Ex It”, within the Financial institution of Lithuania constructing, consists of 100 picket coffins of many sizes with bushes rising out of them and a sound recording of dwelling nature. It’s described as a robust picture of the aftermath of warfare or pure catastrophe, a metaphor for the resilience of life and the vitality of nature. In response to the artist, “Ex It’s life as a continuation”. The set up might be considered till September 11.
“The Studying Backyard of Freedom” will run at Kaunas Image Gallery till December 4, that includes Ono’s conceptual artworks, installations, objects, experimental movies, performances, sound and textual content works. It is going to enable guests to “discover extra of her creations and discover undiscovered traces of her life’s mysterious works”.
The Fluxus competition in September in honour of George Mačiūnas will characteristic a suitably numerous assortment of exhibitions and performances that culminate with a large celebration, months within the making. Kaunas’ Fluxus competition started in 2021 and this yr will probably be greater with greater than 30 performances, seven gentle installations and nearly 400 acts by Kaunas metropolis and Kaunas district neighborhood members. Throughout final yr’s competition Kaunas renamed its airport, so this yr’s guests will probably be flying into Kaunas Fluxus airport.
The competition culminates at Parodos hill, close to George Mačiūnas sq., which will probably be closed for exactly 22 minutes to permit festivalgoers the prospect to climb to the highest in essentially the most dramatic and sudden methods attainable.
See https://kultura.kaunas.lt/en/occasions/view/fluxus-festivalis-2022/4659