[Image: Vytautas Landsbergis with a cardboard figure of Lt. Colonel Oliver North on a visit in the USA, picture: private] FLUXUS EAST - Fluxus Networks in Central and Eastern Europe
:: September 27 - November 4, 2007; Wed - Sun 2-7 pm :: Opening: September 26, 7 pm :: Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Mariannenplatz 2, D-10997 Berlin.

Fluxus is well-known as an (anti-)artistic, international network with centres in the USA, Western Europe and Japan. But what about this “intermedia” art — art encompassing music, actions, poetry, objects and events — beyond the “Iron Curtain”? What echo did Fluxus find in the states of the former Eastern Bloc, and what parallel developments existed there? As a “programme of action”, Fluxus — according to its self-styled “chairman”, the exiled Lithuanian George Maciunas in a letter supposedly to Nikita Chruscev — was predestined to bring about unity between the “concretist” artists of the world and the “concretist” society of the USSR. Maciunas planned Fluxus as a collective based on the model of the Russian LEF (Leftist Arts Front). But these plans — e. g. for a performance tour by the artists on the Trans-Siberian Railway –, developed with polished communist rhetoric in manifestos and letters, were to remain no more than a utopia.

After 1962, a different FLUXUS EAST developed through creative exchange between Fluxus artists and artists/musicians of the former Eastern Bloc, leading to events including Fluxus festivals in Vilnius (1966), Prague (1966), Budapest (1969), and Poznan (1977).

FLUXUS EAST represents a first stocktaking of the diverse Fluxus activities in the former Eastern Bloc; the exhibition shows parallel developments and artistic practices inspired by Fluxus, which are still adopted by some young artists today. Besides the “classic” Fluxus objects, the display will include photographs, films, correspondence, secret police files, interviews and recordings of music that document the presence of Fluxus in the former Eastern Bloc. As an interactive exhibition, FLUXUS EAST aims to facilitate a profound encounter with ideas, works and texts — some presented as facsimiles to permit intense study. It is possible to play at FLUX PING PONG, and visitors are also invited to explore the POIPOIDROME by Robert Filliou.

With Gábor Altorjay, Eric Andersen, Tamás St. Auby, Azorro, Robert Filliou, György Galántai, Geoffrey Hendricks, Dick Higgins, Tadeusz Kantor, Milan Knízák, Alison Knowles, Július Koller, Jaroslaw Kozlowski, Vytautas Landsbergis, George Maciunas, Jonas Mekas, Larry Miller, Ben Patterson, Mieko Shiomi, Slave Pianos, Endre Tót, Gábor Tóth, Nomeda and Gediminas Urbonas, Jirí Valoch, Ben Vautier, Branko Vucicevic, Emmett Williams

curator: Petra Stegmann, exhibition architecture: Andrea Pichl

Performances by Eric Andersen, Geoffrey Hendricks, Milan Knízák, Alison Knowles, Larry Miller, Ben Patterson, Tamás St. Auby, Ben Vautier and others will take place at the opening on September, 26.

The exhibition will be accompanied by a catalogue (German/English, ca 250 pages, ca 200 images, hardcover).

The exhibition at Künstlerhaus Bethanien and the catalogue are funded by the German Federal Cultural Foundation.

From September 27-29, 2007 the conference FLUXUS: NETWORKS BETWEEN WEST AND EAST — a joint event of Künstlerhaus Bethanien and House of World Cultures — will take place at House of World Cultures and Art Forum Berlin.

Further exhibition venues: Contemporary Art Center, Vilnius (November 30, 2007 - January 13, 2008), Bunkier Sztuki, Kraków (February 7 - March 30, 2008), Ludwig Múzeum, Budapest (April 17 - June 1, 2008).

Network programme in Berlin:

Tschechisches Zentrum Czechpoint
Czech Action Art of the 1960s to the 1990s
Exhibition, September 14 - November 2, 2007

Collegium Hungaricum Berlin Portable Intelligence Increase Museum. Pop Art, Conceptual Art, and Actionism in Hungary during the 60s - 1956-1976 / The Near-East-European Criss-Cross (1956-1989)
Exhibition, September 26 - November 4, 2007

Polnisches Institut Berlin Galeria Akumulatory 2
Exhibition, September 28 - November 8, 2007

Art Forum Berlin Slave Pianos: Dissident Consonances
(The Flux-Labyrinth & the Iron Curtain at the Art Forum Berlin)
Concert, September 28, 2007

For more information about FLUXUS EAST contact: fluxus@bethanien.de or presse@bethanien.de