The Fluxus Reader now a click away

Students, scholars, and artists alike (not to mention fans of John Cage, Jackson Mac Low, La Monte Young, Yoko Ono, Joseph Beuys, George Brecht, Jonas Mekas, Allan Kaprow and Marcel Duchamp, among other compatriots of the Fluxus movement) will be pleased to know that The Fluxus Reader, edited by Ken Friedman in 1998, is now available as a free digital download. The Reader, comprising texts written by scholars and experts from Europe and the U.S., has been a desirable book for years now, with prices on bookfinder starting at $127, and shooting on up to triple digits (?!). Now you can download separate PDFs for one-off study, or the whole book (36MB), which includes essays about the historical design and social purpose; a transcript of the videotaped Interview with George Maciunas; and other chapters surrounding the primary perspectives, theories and documents of the Fluxus movement.

As Friedman explains in his introduction, “Fluxus has been a laboratory, a grand project summed up by George Maciunas’ notion of the ‘learning machines.’ The Fluxus research programme has been characterised by twelve ideas: globalism, the unity of art and life, intermedia, experimentalism, chance, playfulness, simplicity, implicativeness, exemplativism, specificity, presence in time and musicality….Each idea describes a ‘way of doing things.’”

Acquire your copy gratis right here. (Image at top is the Bandaged Orchestra during the Fluxus Festival, arranged by Yoko Ono at
Carnegie Recital Hall in 1965.)