Nomads and Monads: Fluxus as Infrastructure, Germany, Denmark and Holland, 1962-1966

Research output: Book/ReportPh.D. thesisResearch

The dissertation describes and analyses Fluxus acivities in Germany, Denmark and Holland during the period 1962-66. Its protagonists are Tomas Schmit, Wolf Vostell and Joseph Beuys (Germany), Arthur Køpcke, Eric Andersen and Henning Christiansen (Denmark) and Willem de Ridder and Wim T. Schippers (Holland), all eight local artists who first met Fluxus as a foreign (American) phenomenon and who who continued to represent Fluxus after its originator, George Maciunas, returned to the USA in late 1963. The main question that is addressed is, how these artists represented and developed Fluxus after Europe had moved from Fluxus' centre to its periphery and what this reveals about the way Fluxus functioned as a sociality. The underlying theme is the creation of community. The nomads and monads from the title represent two organisational modes: being together based on a whish to be together with other artists and being together as the result of a work of art. Both modes are defined with the help of the alternative organisational form that Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari describe in the Nomadology (1986) as the "War Machine". The word "infrastructure" in the subtitle of the dissertation refers to a general tendency in post-World War II art to create infrastructures - in the work of art as well as in other products (communal activity, book projects, various organisational forms) - that link artist and audience in a system of distribution and exchange.
Original languageEnglish
PublisherMuseum Tusculanum
Number of pages178
Publication statusPublished - 2010

    Research areas

  • Faculty of Humanities - Fluxus, Eric Andersen, Henning Christiansen, Arthur Køpcke, Willem de Ridder, Wim T. Schippers, Tomas Schmit, Wolf Vostell, Joseph Beuys, Infrastructure, Heterotopia, George Maciunas

ID: 21084215