In 1962, as a scandalous avant-garde, the Fluxus movement conquered art associations and theaters in Germany. Artists such as Yoko Ono, Nam June Paik, John Cage and Ben Patterson approached music, art, and literature in a completely new and often quite concrete way. First, the Rhineland and then the New York art scene became infected with the Fluxus-virus. In the 1970s, conceptual art and land-art emerged as the new avant-garde, but this was by no means the end for imaginative, enchanting and revolutionary Fluxus events, which still take place today. But what exactly happened from the 1980s to the 2000s, before the artists were honored – in time for the 50th anniversary – with great retrospectives (2013: Yoko Ono, Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt, 2015: Ben Vautier, Museum Tinguely, Basel, Carolee Schneemann, Museum der Moderne, Salzburg, 2017: Ben Patterson, documenta, Kassel and Athens)? Wolfgang Träger, photographer for Kunstforum International since 1990, was there and photographed everything: the actions at Venice Biennale in 1990, in the same year »fluxus subjektiv« in Vienna, in 1992 the Fluxus-Virus with grilled 2CVs on the top floor of a car park, and »da capo« in Wiesbaden and, more recently, the world tour of the »Fluxus Medicine Show« in 2014. The photos from Europe and the US show performances and portraits, as well as artists at work and in private. The Fluxus movement never ceased to exist; it has always shown in an enchanting, charming and humor-ous way that art is able to heighten our awareness. Sadly, some of the Fluxus artists have since died, but in Wolfgang Träger’s book, they are gathered once more for a family portrait. - Snoeck
