Events

Inscriptions

Stamped, in ink, inside lid: ReFLUX. KOS/UGI events/1964/c [encircled] by fluxus.

Label

Begin by reading some of these event cards “Roll up a long cord.” “Scoop out one of your eyes 5 years from now and do the same with the other eye 5 years later.” Takehisa Kosugi, an avant-garde musician, proposes eighteen performances for viewers to complete (or simply consider), all assembled in a “Flux Kit.” The Fluxus movement of the mid-20th-century introduced art-as-games-in-a-box, among other things, the point of which was for viewers to experience the artwork for themselves.

With these sound-based events, Kosugi hopes to help people reimagine music as an everyday experience. He also creates absurdist performance art. The tasks range from simple to nonsensical. Can we even “Watch a flower until one of them falls or until all of them fall”? Why is Kosugi asking us to?

From the 2026 exhibition A Space for Dialogue 128, You Just Got to Laugh, curated by Sara N. Shelton ‘26, Class of 1954 Intern

Course History

Art History 83.06, Art and Life, Katie Hornstein, Spring 2023

Exhibition History

"Fluxus and the Essential Questions of Life" Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, April 16-August 7, 2011; Grey Art Gallery, New York University, New York, New York, September 9-December 3, 2011; University of Michigan Museum of Art, Ann Arbor, Michigan, February 25-May 20 2012, check list number 9.

A Space for Dialogue 128, You Just Got to Laugh, Sara N. Shelton ‘26, Class of 1954 Intern, Alvin P. Gutman Gallery, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, January 10 - March 1, 2026.

Publication History

Barbara Moore, ReFlux Editions, 351 West 30 St., New York, Catalogue no. 3, Fall 1988, no. 10/11.

Jacquelynn Baas, Fluxus and the Essential Questions of Life, Hanover, New Hampshire: Trustees of Dartmouth College, 2011, p. 89, checklist no. 9.

Provenance

Bound & Unbound, New York; sold to present collection, 1989.

Catalogue Raisonne

J. Hendricks, Fluxus Codex, New York, 1988, p. 305, no. 218 [reference to Originial, this Box is a ReFlux Ed., New York, 1987]

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