To watch four men fueled by a deep commitment to chamber music perform with intense conviction and emotion was awe-inspiring and evoked internally hidden feelings to physically manifest. An ensemble comprising solely of string instruments, with one member wielding a cello, two members wielding violins and another member wielding a viola, the strokes, down-bow and up-bow, were moving in an orchestrated manner to produce melodies dictated by particular paces. At certain points, the melody being played was in allegro (fast) or adagio (slow) or in some other tempo. The passion infused into the music can easily be seen from the swaying motion of their bodies.

Nowadays, choreographed music videos rid the accompanying background music of its “authenticity” because these videos cannot capture the true feelings experienced by the singers / musicians at the time of composition. Formerly a cello player, I was intrigued at the quality of the music due to the long duration of the pieces before any rosin was applied to the bows to maintain the coarse horse hairs’ firm grips on the strings of the instruments. I did not question the tuning of the instruments, for usually high temperatures are the main cause of the strings becoming out of tune in a smaller interval of time. Although the music reminded me of the scenarios in Looney Tunes cartoons in which Elmer Fudd would creep towards Bugs Bunny, visual animations would have distracted audience members from the “audial” roller coaster ride they can only be understood through rhythm and tempo, not by flashy lights or unreal situations seen in contemporary music videos. Being born in a generation that does not appreciate music the way older generations do, this event exposed me to the clearly-evident distinct difference between the “young people’s” perception and the “old people’s” perception of chamber music.

Disorienting, insane, strange, awkward, entertaining… confusing?

“I don’t believe in outer space” was a one of a kind experience. I don’t think I have ever seen a performance as complicated, but simple at the same time. To say that words cannot describe the dance, is a total understatement. The underlying theme of the song “I will survive” throughout the different “scenes” was so cleverly done, because at times, the song was used for comedy purposes, but what stuck out for me was the ending scene. It was very depressing, how one of the main performers started listing out things that people might have to live without, for example, No more parties, No more husbands, No more barbecues, No more drinks, No more love, No more smiles… It was a huge emotional shock, since the scene before it was a comedic one. It was very cleverly done that this song had the flexibility to fit into angry scenes, sad scenes, scary scenes and funny scenes. But I do feel as if the actual song wasn’t as important as the underlying idea that this whole production was completely random, and goes against all societal expectations.

This production, for me, definitely related to Nietzsche. Though it wasn’t completely Dionysian with regards to music and the inner self taking over, it was a very good bridge to join together reality and the surreal. First of all, this performance had no linear plot (maybe I’ve missed it…or something?) and though our human brains are trying to make some sort of connection between all this chaos and emotions and loud music, our brains really can’t come up with something this disconnected. It forces us to just enjoy the dance, and not question where all these ideas were coming from. It honestly felt like a dream sequence. One minute you could be scared out of your mind because of “the new neighbor wanting whisky” or the next moment you could be wondering “As if by chance…” It was truly a roller coaster ride. Nothing seemed to make sense together, (not that this should be analyzed) but thing’s seem to make sense part by part.

I was really amazed at the talents of these dancers, because it seemed graceful, but at the same time, it had that awkwardness to it, which seem to contradict each other, but it worked very well in this performance. Also, I was wondering the whole time how one of the performers (can we call her an actress?) memorized all the lines to “As if by chance…” It all seemed to correlate so well with the dance movements of the other performers, that she could not have possibly improvised any of it. I actually did find myself trying to imagine what would happen if “everything fell” or if “nothing fell at all”.

After it was over, it was the first time I felt myself lost for words after a performance. I couldn’t come to terms with what I just saw. And when one of my friends asked me what the play was about, I actually could not even give one concrete detail of it, except that “At first I was afraid, I was petrified”

I thoroughly enjoyed the performance of “I Don’t Believe in Outer Space.”  I thought it was very Fluxus, considering it didn’t have a storyline or plot and there were many random things happening at once.  I like how they carried the same song throughout each part of the performance and used it in different ways.  As we were saying in class, music can affect everyone differently and the lyrics of the song were portrayed differently in each scene.  In the original song, you can really hear Gloria’s feelings with the musical sounds behind the lyrics she sings.  With the dancers speaking the lyrics of the song without music, they were able to change the feeling and meaning of the original song.  For example, when the creepy neighbor visits the woman and is told “no” after asking for a drink from the whisky cabinet and hoping to “get down,” he speaks the lyrics sarcastically, making the scene humorous.  Other scenes of the performance were also funny, including the one in which the “politician” uses sexual innuendos to try and get elected.  He wanted to “undress and world and share his cocktail with everyone.”  His remarks kept the audience laughing and awake.  For me, certain parts of the performance became boring, when the music and dancing became very slow.  I enjoyed watching all the chaos onstage and trying to figure out what was going on.  One of the most chaotic scenes was when the narrator kept repeating, “As if by any chance.”  My favorite parts were when the individual woman spoke the dialogue of the creepy neighbor and the woman.  I found it very entertaining the way she moved her body and changed her voice.  The ping pong scene was also very enjoyable, because although there actually was no ping pong ball, the way the dancers moved to the sounds made you believe there was.  I think the performance displays a very Dionysiac art, with randomness, chaos, and a few sexual references.  I think when Nietzsche says we need more Dionysiac art, he means art like “I Don’t Believe in Outer Space.”  To me, many ballet performances are boring and lack excitement, but I think “I Don’t Believe in Outer Space” breaks the boundaries of the usual ballets and gives the audience a new experience.  If this is what Nietzsche meant, then I would agree that we need more art that isn’t so Apollonian, or confined, to show the real world.

The tribulation and sadness experienced as a result of the loss of loved ones are difficult to overcome. At some point in life, there is an acknowledgement of this fact that one can no longer suppress these over-bearing feelings and because of this, the pent-up emotions can be poured onto paper in the form of words, aesthetically and structurally crafted to convey messages that any other person can relate. The “First-Year Common Reading Author Visit” event at Whitman Auditorium enabled Brooklyn College faculty and students to gain insight into the mindset of Edwidge Danticat through the discussion of her memoir, Brother, I’m Dying. Even though her main intention in writing it was to converse with her deceased father and uncle, the memoir’s popularity and powerful themes including the terrible consequences of political intrusion on families make it somewhat of an essential, mandatory reading when used as a didactic tool. By sharing it with previous and future generations, she hopes that they won’t be absorbed into or be ignorant of their pasts, but rather, confront and embrace them.

Haitian proverbs are brought into the discussion to elaborate on the underlying themes and intentions in her autobiography. One notable proverb, “When you see an old bone on the road, remember it once had flesh,” delineates how one should not look down on people, for one would lose a sense of humanity, since the “bone” was once a person. She wanted to put the flesh back on the bones of her uncle and father because they were diligent and vested their hopes in their children. She pays tribute to her family and acknowledges and never forgets the sacrifices made by older generations. Immediately proceeding after is a reading of two excerpts from her memoir: the first one, “Transition,” talks about the moment when she gives birth to her daughter and names her after her father; and the other one, a folktale, describes how a daughter had a difficult time coping with her father’s death. Both excerpts accentuate the theme of the continuous cycle of life and death.

Transitioning from the discussion phase to the question phase, noticeable moments included someone mistakenly classifying her book as a novel and her joking about how her memoir should be assigned as mandatory reading to all immigration workers (Homeland Security personnel) in the near future. When asked who or what she thinks was responsible for her uncle’s death, she explains that the immigration system is broken and medical assistance was not provided when required. When asked if she was able to find closure in writing the book, she states that she wanted to write it before she forgot her memories since they were very vivid in her mind at the time. Although she wasn’t able to find closure, it served to be very therapeutic and cathartic to her. She addressed numerous issues that were not made clear in her memoir, and so, the event helped to alleviate the curiosity caused by the many unanswered questions in classroom discussions.

Fluxus was more than a movement; it was a revolution, a new approach to art, against the constraining standards of past traditional artists, to liberate art from the common perception of “sophistication” bestowed upon it by present-day people, derived from modern art museums. These “institutionalized prisons” only intensified this image of art by dividing works into different sections such that each one was comprised of those most subject-related, followed by a certain arrangement of objects and an implementation of a “no-touch” policy. However, if George Maciunas, the founder of the Fluxus movement, was to visit the “Fluxus and the Essential Questions of Life” exhibit at the Grey Art Gallery at NYU, he would have been extremely disappointed and condemned the curators who orchestrated this “funeral” for Fluxus.

According to Maciunas, art was meant to be manipulated and applicable in society by challenging artistic expression and provoking various responses from people. Best exemplified by Yoko Ono’s “Painting to Be Stepped On,” a piece of canvas on the floor with its name literally denoting its purpose, Fluxus’ attitude was considered to be insulting and disrespecting to traditional art. Adding on to the anti-conformity was the distortion of every day objects, including the recordings of cacophonies of random sounds, a clock measuring length instead of time, a television set displaying altered electrical current, a strip of clear film continuously looping, etc. Individual sections were labeled to question broad life topics such as freedom and love.

Contrived from a manifesto, Fluxus’ concept was a combination of intermedia and fluidity because of the facilitation of intermedia currents in the process of promoting its form of art to all types of people, regardless of whether or not they process prior artistic knowledge. To grant future generations the privilege of experiencing Fluxus, an appropriate preservation method for Fluxus art pieces must be adopted. Though the issue is controversial and still remains a complete mystery, the Grey Art Gallery desecrated its legacy by following the traditional ways of art museums and failing to enable physical interactions between art and people.

I constantly find myself asking questions like, “What is art?,” “What is the meaning of this[everything]?,” and especially, ”What am I?” These are the questions that the idea of Fluxus attempts to answer through what they consider art. The problems with such a task are; is this really art and are they answering the questions.

In my opinion, the idea of Fluxus is more art than the actual pieces themselves. Upon visiting the Grey Art Gallery, the events scores and flux boxes, for example, were quite intriguing. They were truly simple and creative. Art can be simple but brilliant, but that’s only when you intend to create something brilliant without the intention of being simple. I feel as if the people who crafted, or even just came up with these pieces, purposely tried to be simple in their pursuit of brilliance. That is why I can’t consider them great pieces of art.

This brings me to another point, is this stuff even art in the first place? Honestly, I don’t think most of it is. I guess I can consider the painting on the floor art, and even the television tubes with the adjusted screens, but the “G-d in a Box” piece, not at all. Some idiot just placed random stuff in a case and sealed it shut. That screams desperation to me. I think it’s fair to say that art is what affects people. I also believe that some actual work should be incorporated into the project, a little more than gluing or pasting some stuff together.

I was left with more questions than answers after viewing the exhibit. The brochure explained to me the questions that Fluxus is intended to answer, yet if anything, he pieces only represented those topics. They didn’t actually provide answers, and no matter how the “artists” describe the explanations, I still wont get it.

I can’t say the whole exhibit was all bad though. I actually found the “Star-Spangled Hot Dog” quite peculiar, in a good way. I’m just hoping there wasn’t a real hot dog under all the glitter. I found most interesting, though, the door with the caution around it. That was the first thing that caught my eye when I entered the gallery. I really just wanted to step over the tape and touch it. Unfortunately, I didn’t get to. I guess it’ll just have to be a venture for another day.

On Thursday September 1st, the Macaulay freshman class and I visited the Macaulay Center in Manhattan to go meet some documentary film makers and learn about the art of making a documentary film. I, probably like most of my classmates, was really annoyed to have to travel right after school straight to Manhattan when the weekend was right around the corner and freedom was so close, but we went anyway because it was a Macaulay requirement and we had no choice. I initially thought it would be boring, but even though the dark room and comfy auditorium chairs almost made me fall asleep, I managed to stay awake for the entire first film, which was fairly interesting. It was about former Von Dutch partner Bobby Vaughn, and the struggles he faced trying to relocate to Queens and start a clothing company after a murder allegation against him in Los Angeles. The documenters were a former graduate of the Macaulay Honors program and a professor currently teaching in the city. They both chose to make a documentary on this man because he was an interesting character in the community and he was reaching out to help the neighborhood he lived in, so the documenters also wanted to be in support of that. I found the movie, especially his account of fighting off an attack by his best friend only to then take his life, very interesting.

The documenters also talked about the process of making a film. Besides choosing a topic that would be exciting enough to make a movie on, they also had to get the funding, the supplies, and the manpower to make a film. The student who graduated from Macaulay, whose name I’ve forgotten, talked about the relative ease of getting technology good enough to make a feature film. He said that this was the easiest time for an amateur to make a film, because now it only cost a few thousand dollars to buy a good camera and rolling tape. They also mentioned that while shooting the film took only a month or so, editing the entire film took a year, which was pretty shocking to hear. I have more respect for filmmakers now, even though I didn’t think their job was easy before this event either. But it was pretty interesting to see someone be able to make a film and to learn some of the techniques on getting the entire piece put together.

Before attending the “Fluxus, and the Essential Questions of Life” exhibit I wasn’t exactly sure what Fluxus was. I had a vague idea from our discussions in class and reading “Lunch Poems”, but hadn’t been able to concretize it in my head. Only after viewing the art that isn’t art yet is art in person did I realize that there is no definition for Fluxus past “an art movement of the 1960’s”. The fact that there is no clear explanation that can capture the movement is reminiscent of the movement itself. Fluxus is questions and answers, yes and no, and everything and nothing. Fluxus asks and replies without actually providing an answer.

The artists were looking at everything and questioning, while turning it into an art form. The exhibit was set up according to what the pieces were asking of their audiences.  In the section entitled “Nothingness?” Nam June Paik’s “Zen for TV” and “Zen for Film” asked us if the blank screens in front of us were indeed blank. Does the fact that there is nothing on the screen except a line or static make it empty? Is anything ever truly empty?

In the section called “God?” we saw Ben Vautier’s “Fluxbox Containing God”. This piece was created to entice even the most hardcore skeptics to try to open it. However, the box is glued shut which shows the artist’s (or is he a non-artist?) doubt in whether God exists or not and puts those same thoughts in the head of one who tries to open the box and is disappointed.

Fluxus is unlike many other art movements in its accessibility. Anyone who wants to can pick up an event score and follow it in their own way, giving themselves a piece of Fluxus. There are no limitations or rules; anything can be art, which brings me back to my original question. What is Fluxus?