You see, the reason I am so concerned with [functionalism] is that that’s an architect’s training. I mean, that’s the way the architect thinks, he thinks in functionalism otherwise he’s not an architect, he’s a sculptor or a stage designer.1 George Maciunas’s Prefabricated Building System was the most literal expression he ever made of his […]
The Fluxhouse Cooperatives In 1966 George Maciunas, an artist working in the dadaist tradition of anarchistic and irreverent art, became entranced with the idea of artist cooperatives as a vehicle for the emancipation of artists. Beyond residences and studios, Maciunas hoped to establish collective workshops, food-buying cooperatives, and theaters to link the strengths of various […]
TIME TRAVEL IN A CABINET By Carolina Carrasco When in 2001 critic Arthur Danto used aesthetician William Kennick’s 1958 metaphor of the world as a warehouse to describe Fluxus’ views on the relationship between art and life, he did not suspect that he was tapping into Maciunas’ most fundamental symbolic nucleus for the movement: storage […]
George Maciunas: Architect By Ken Friedman I. Architect, Designer, Social Planner George Maciunas had several careers in his short, active life. One of these was architecture. George was first of all an architect. The art world has neglected George’s work as an architect, social planner, and designer to emphasize a dramatic but somewhat inaccurate role […]
From Planned Utopias to Jerry-rigged Realities: The Multiple Forms of Maciunas’s Living-Working Systems By: Mari Dumett Reflecting on the life of Lithuanian-born artist and Fluxus founder George Maciunas, fellow artist Geoffrey Hendricks once stated: “To understand George it is helpful to reflect on where and how he lived, for the spaces he created paralleled how […]
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