Curator: Imma Prieto
Willem de Ridder and Philip Corner, artists and pioneers of Fluxus, and María Pérez, director of the documentary Malpartida Fluxus Village
Friday 19 May, 6 pm. Virreina LAB
Free entry. Limited capacity

Fluxus: present memories is an event dedicated to reflection on the conceptual universe of Fluxus, in order to find the link that still exists today between an attitude that emerged in the 1960s from a spirit of rupture, and the need to return to its theoretical principles in order to act and react from our contemporary perspective. Thinking of Fluxus and attending to its meaning involve accepting a revolution understood on the basis of an unexpected and anarchic gesture that is born from chance.

Fluxus is activated from a kind of procedural anarchy: it becomes action for change without the need for a discipline or methodology. Accepting the image, the word, silence or sound as signs capable of establishing a correspondence, it makes use of them, creating a language emerging from a radicalism found in freedom.

The name Fluxus leads us to the Latin word “flow, fluid,” but from the same classical universe it is worth recalling the Greek expression coined by Heraclitus panta rhei (Πάντα ῥεῖ), “everything flows”. Heraclitus states that everything that takes place in the sensible world is subject to a process of constant change. Everything that surrounds us is in continuous movement, in a kind of eternal journey in which everything that is part of our physical universe is born and destroyed.

This direct link between the collective Fluxus and that idea that suggests flow, understood as a symptom of an uncontrollable becoming, is relevant for seeing a Fluxus action as being in constant change and metamorphosis, pointing towards a revolutionary, rebellious and, above all, anarchic gesture. Even if we repeat an action that could have been carried out more than fifty years ago, returning to it is already something different: not only is the individual who carries it out different, but the environment, with all its present conditions, is also different.

The project Fluxus: present memories is based on three activities: a performance by Willem de Ridder and Philip Corner, artists and pioneers of Fluxus, the screening of the documentary Malpartida Fluxus Village, directed by María Pérez, and a round table with the participation of all three.

6 pm Performance by Philip Corner and Willem de Ridder. A sound performance in the courtyard of La Virreina. Philip Corner will perform “Canto Fluxus Anarchico” and “Contemporary Folklore”, and Willem de Ridder will perform an action based on the elements and situations that occur uniquely and unexpectedly in the courtyard.

6.30 pm (Virreina LAB) Screening of the film Malpartida Fluxus Village(2015), directed by María Pérez.

7.45 pm (Virreina LAB) Round table with María Pérez, director of the documentary, Philip Corner and Willem de Rider. Moderator: Imma Prieto.

Philip Corner (New York, 1933) is an American composer, trombonist, vocalist, pianist, music theorist, musical educator and visual artist. In 1961 he became one of the founders of Fluxus. He worked as a composer and musician with the Judson Dance Theater and later with the Experimental Intermedia Foundation at the invitation of Elaine Summers. In addition to his work as a composer and musician, he has created several assemblages, collages of calligraphy, drawings and paintings, many of which have been exhibited around the world.

Willem de Ridder (‘s-Hertogenbosch, 1939) is an artist and pioneer of Fluxus. He visited Nam June Paik in the early 1960s and told him about his projects. He had brought together some of the young Dutch composers to create a new kind of music. Nam June Paik was fascinated by the idea and told him: “You are fluxus”. Willem did not understand what he meant and was given no explanation. He later received a call from George Maciunas, who told him: “You are fluxus” and invited him to participate in the first Fluxus event in Amsterdam (1962), where he met Wolf Vostell, Dick Higgins, Nam June Paik, Alison Knowles and other artists.

María Pérez (Plasencia, 1984) is a film director and documentary maker. She moved to Cáceres at the age of eight and since then has been connected to the Vostell family and their Fluxus Museum in Malpartida. She holds a degree in Audiovisual Communication from the Complutense University of Madrid and completed her university studies in Rome in the film section of La Sapienza. She participated in the eighth edition of the Berlinale Talent Campus and in the last edition of the Short Film Corner of the Cannes Film Festival with her short film Robin & Robin.

Imma Prieto (Vilafranca del Penedès, 1975) is a curator, art critic and lecturer in Contemporary Art and New Media at the ERAM University School of the University of Girona. She has curated exhibitions in Spain and abroad. She writes for the supplements Encuentros of the Diari de Tarragona and Cultura/s of La Vanguardia and for Campo de relámpagos. She has been the manager of the European research group European Live Art Archive (ELAA).