Book Description

"George Maciunas is typically associated with the famous art collective Fluxus, of which he is often thought to have been the leader. In this book, critic and art historian Colby Chamberlain wants us to question two things: first, the idea that Fluxus was a "group" in any conventional sense, and second, that Maciunas was its "leader." Instead, Chamberlain shows us how Maciunas used the paper materials of bureaucracy in his art-cards, certificates, charts, files, and plans, among others-to subvert his own status as a "figurehead" of this collective and even as a biographical entity. Each of the book's chapters situates Maciunas's artistic practice in relation to a different domain: education, communication, production, housing, and health. We learn about his use of the postal service to make Fluxus into an international network; his manipulation of US copyright law to pursue a "Soviet" ideal of collective authorship; his intervention in Manhattan's zoning restrictions as founder and manager of the "Fluxhouse" artists' lofts in SoHo; and his performances protesting against normative ideals of health and family, focusing on his own, ultimately failed medical self-management. Fluxus Administration is not a biography, but it does delve more deeply than any other book into Maciunas's life and work, showing the lengths to which the artist himself went to disrupt any easy account of himself"--