Hanna Hölling

This project examines the lives and afterlives of Fluxus objects, events, and ephemera as seen through the collection of materials in the Nam June Paik Archive at the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, DC. Fluxus transformed irrevocably the landscape of artistic practice and challenged the dominant preconception of artwork as something that endures unchanged. While many histories of the post-war avant-garde focus on the implications of the nascent conceptualism and performativity for other artistic genres, this project considers the fundamentally material aspects of forms initially not destined for perpetuation. Building on many years of study of Paik as a Fluxus participant and one of the most prolific artists of the past century, I trace the material and conceptual transformations of Fluxus in the 1960s–70s. Through the lens of art history, conservation, and media and performance studies, I examine the coexistence of ephemerality and materiality in Fluxus. I am interested in the materialisation and mutability of Fluxus intermedia, and how change affects the shifting interpretation of their meaning. Rather than focusing on Fluxus intermedia as extant in-between media categories, I investigate the (in-between) state of transition in Fluxus works with potential implications for how we conceive of artworks in general.