Flux-proof or “sometimes no one can read labels in the dark”: Carolee Schneemann and the Fluxus paradox

Abstract

Carolee Schneemann's relationship to Fluxus has notoriously been described as controversial. Anette Kubitza's essay is questioning the continued, arbitrary and possibly personally motivated exclusion of Schneemann's art from publications and exhibitions of Fluxus art in the US. It intends to renew a discussion of Flux-ness in part of Schneemann's oeuvre, taking a close look at early performances such as Glass Environment for Sound and Motion (1962) and Looseleaf (1964), as well as at her later environment Electronic Activation Room (1970–1), realized in Cologne with John Lifton, and works created in connection with the British Fluxshoe group in the 1970s. While Kubitza's essay is not an attempt to finally establish Schnemann as a Fluxus artist, Schneemann's early connection with Fluxus can be considered not only an important step to the artist's innovative, more radical body and performance pieces that placed her at the forefront of these new genres and later of feminist art. It also acknowledges her pivotal role in helping shape the avant-garde of the 1960s and beyond, including Fluxus.