Stefan Fricke Knihy

Before John Cage (1912-1992), few consistently questioned the boundaries of music and its connections to art and everyday life. Alongside figures like Erik Satie, Marcel Duchamp, Nam June Paik, and Joseph Beuys, Cage stands as a key strategist and pioneer of twentieth-century music and art. This publication explores twelve fundamental strategies in art and music since 1900: recording, collage, silence, destruction, calculation, coincidence, feeling, thought, belief, furnishing, repetition, and playing. It features interdisciplinary essays by art and music theorists, showcasing exemplary works and original sources from artists, musicians, and composers. Visual documentation highlights the diverse interactions between music and art, including contributions from Laurie Anderson, Robert Filliou, Anri Sala, and Iannis Xenakis. The exhibition schedule includes the Institut Mathildenhöhe Darmstadt from May 13 to September 9, 2012. Notable artists presented include Nevin Aladag, Luciano Berio, Janet Cardiff/George Bures Miller, Bruce Nauman, and Frank Zappa, among others, illustrating the rich tapestry of parallel and overlapping activities in the creative landscape.

The first ever Fluxus performance took place 50 years ago as part of the International Fluxus Festival of the Newest Music at the Museum Wiesbaden. Now this key moment is being revived here. Within the framework of the jubilee festival, 'Fluxus at 50' aims to reconstruct and reappraise this performance, musical and artistic movement. The catalogue presents Fluxus stories, motifs and methods using objects, musical scores and images from that period. Reworking the original festivals led to the exposure of a lot of myths, but it still didn't detract from the fascination of the Fluxus idea in itself, which back then spread out from Wiesbaden to change the world.