Robert Filliou, Alan Carrying His Own Sun ona String, 1973, cardboard box in two parts withpastel and photograph, closed l7Vix l3/4x2%in.(45.1 X 33.7 X 5.7 cm) (artwork © Marianne Filliou;photograph by Florian Kleinefenn. Paris, providedby Galerie Nelson Freeman. Paris)

"Pure foolishness restores."

—Fr ied r i ch Nietzsche

Unfinished Filliou:On the Fluxus Ethos

and the Origins ofRelational Aesthetics

Earlier drafts of this text were presented at"The Stephen Bann Effect" symposium,University of Bristol, United Kingdom, and at••MIS-PERFORMANCE," Performance StudiesInternational conference # 15, Zagreb. Croatia(both held in June 2009). Thanks also to MasseyUniversity's Strategic Research Fund, whichenabled my participation in those internattonalevents, to multiple audiences and readers for theirgenerous feedback, and to the Belkin Art Galleryfor allowing access to Filliou^s video works, whichaided the development of this essay.

The epigraphs are from Friedrich Nietzsche,Twilight of Ihe Idols, trans. Waiter Kaufmann( 1895) in The Portable Nietzsche (New York:Penguin Books, 1977), 532, and Brecht quoted inThe Ashgate Research Companion to Experime/Ho/Music, ed. James Saunders (Burlington: Ashgate,2009), 71.

1. Robert Filliou, quoted in epigraph to NicolasBourriaud, Formes de vie: L'art moderne et l'inver\tionde soi (Paris: Éditions Denoël, 1999). My transla-tion of the original: •'L'art n^est qu'un moyen pourrendre la vie plus intéressante que l'art."2. See Nicolas Bourriaud, Relational Aesthetics.trans. Simon Pieasance and Fronza Woods withMathieu Copeland (Dijon: Les Presses du réel,2004), and Claire Bishop^s essays "Antagonism andRelational Aesthetics'' October 110 (Fall 2004):SI-79, and ••The Social Turn: Collaboration andIts Discontents,^' Artfonim. February 2006, 179-185, as well as liam Gillick, ''Contingent Factors:A Response to Claire Bishop s •Antagonism andRelational Aesthetics'" October 115 (Winter2006): 95-106.

"There is so little to do and .so much time to do it in"

—George Brecht

The current essay comprises a discussion of the influential yet underrated work

of the French Fluxus artist Robert Filliou {1926-1987) and aspects of his inter-

woven theory and practice, especially as recorded in his book Tcochinfl und Learning as

Martin Patrick Performing Arts and related video works. I intend also to examine the

influence of Filliou's work on other contemporary artists and the

corresponding use of the critical formulation "relational aesthetics"

(as posited by the French curator and writer Nicolas Bourriaud),

In Filliou's 1970 artist's book Teaching and Learning as Performing

Arts, the layout designed by the artist leaves a blank section of each

page for the reader to add her own comments, thereby participating

interactively in the unfolding of the book itself, wbich includes

interviews with (among others) Joseph Beuys, John Cage, and Allan

Kaprow, Moreover, it has become increasingly evident that Filliou's

methods can be linked by association to examples by several later artists, includ-

ing RirkritTiravanija, Pierre Huygbe, and Christine Hill, whose works have been

cited as exemplary of the relational-aesthetics paradigm, insofar as the impor-

tance of social relations, relations of exchange, and broader relations with the

surrounding context outweigh the direct consideration of the aesthetic proper-

ties of the work in question. Significantly, Bourriaud has frequently cited Filliou's

comment: "Art is that which makes hfe more interesting than art."'

The primary goal of this essay is to offer a provisional attempt to reconsider

Filliou's visionary approach to artmaking in the late 1960s and early 1970s and

what it portended for so much "relational" art yet to come. This radically inter-

disciplinary creative model helped to usher in a drastic shift in the notions

underlying many younger artists' works in terms of both theory and practice.

With increased historical perspective, the model has become highly relevant to

the current moment, as wimessed by the debates diat have played out recently

in several international magazines and journals.'

While the first major museum retrospective of Filliou's work in over a

decade, entitled Genie sans talent, traveled across Europe in 2003-4, the artist

remains a cult figure.' Although recognized by many experimental artists for the

compelling and innovative nature of his work, lie is all too rarely discussed by

the scholarly community* Meanwhile, relational aesthetics has become a topic

for global discussion. Closer examination of Filliou's life and work thus delin-

eates an important case study in the integrity of art practice as a holistic activity,

situated in an entirely different context and rooted in vastly different expecta-

tions than those promulgated within today's art world,'

Fil[l]liou*s Background: A Sort of Introduction

When does a work of art begin its existence? How can one evaluate its impor-

tance? How does a work of art made with peripheral and tangential relation

to the art market have determined worth? When is a "creative action" to be

45 artjournal

3. See Sylvie jouval et al., Robert Filliou: Génie SansTatent. exh. cat. (Villeneuve d'Ascq: Musée d'artmoderne Lille Métropole, 2003). The exhibition,organized hy Sylvie Jouval. first traveled toBarcelona and Dusseldorf.4. Major exceptions are the contributions ofFluxus scholars, including Hannah Higgins andChris Thompson. See the final chapter of Higgins'sbook Fluxus Experience (Berkeley: University ofCalifornia Press. 2002). which addresses Filliou'swork as a pedagogical model, and Thompson'sessay "Responsible Idiocy and Fluxus Ethics:Robert Filliou and Emmanuel Levinas," o-r-c 5 (July2001).5. Premiers mouvements-fragile correspondances.

the 2002 inaugural exhibition of the FRAC Ile-de-France gallery Le Plateau, enlisted contemporaryworks to pay homage to Filliou, According to thecurators Sylvie Jouval and Eric Corne, "The goaiof the project was. . . to offer up connections(either possible or impossible) between his work,its underlying thought process, and the work ofother contemporary artists." Exhibition descrip-tion, available online at www.fracidf-leplateau.com/en/index.html (consulted October 30.2009).6. The richest source of biographical informationon Filliou is the French language biography byPierre Tilman. RoberT Fí/1'ou; Nationalité poete(Dijon: Les Presses du réel. 2006), 16.

considered a performance, a happening, or a simple life occurrence? Whendoes simply "doing nothing" spawn creativity? When do the terms "art,""research," and "leisure" become equivalents? These are the sort of challengingquestions that emerge from even a cursory acquaintance with the art of Filliou,later Fillliou, as he intentionally in.serted an L between the two already present inhis surname—likely a gesture that infuriated numerous copy editors. The bilin-gual artist who used "Franglish" puns especially in the context of his writingsand performative works also became enamored of the near-rhyme word pairing"FEEL YOU [Filliou]."

Contradictions played major roles in the artist's work, as in his life, which isnot to treat them as mutually exclusive realms, however, because Filliou was anintegral figure in blurring such boundary distinctions. Today, this has become acommonplace of {often altogether more lucrative) performative and interdisci-plinary approaches.Yet from the 1960s to the 1980s FiUiou's concepts, driven bya hyperactive, inquisitive intellect and the determining behef that art was themost genuine route to personal freedom, were extraordinarily provocative intheir interrogation of contemporary art practice.

Raised in France and the recipient of a scholarship to secondary school—though often less than a model student, due to his wandering interests—he wasintellectually curious but according to one childhood friend, "with a pen, hewas the king, but in manual tasks, he was a nothing," an interesting foreshadow-ing of Filliou's dedication to the mere basic and skeletal rather than overly pol-ished craftsmanship.*' Filliou became a young member of the French Resistancebut later notably rejected any medals, accolades, and status as he became increas-ingly dedicated throughout his life to pacifism. A onetime Communist, he alsodiscarded specific ideological and political involvements, as time went on, infavor of a broader interest in social commitment via the apparatus of art and itssurrounding dialogues.

We can see liis views on nonviolence and pacifism evidenced on severaloccasions, such as üi the multiple Optimistic Box no. 1, which carries the phrase:"Thank god for modern weapons/we don't throw stones at each other any-more." On a larger scale. Seven Childlike Uses ofWarlike Maierid (1970) is a sculpturalinstallation of modest materials brought together with various textual inscrip-tions. Planks of wood state "Could be guns"; on a rectangular frame appears"Could be outer space"; on an overturned chair, "Could be Mountains"; on abottle, "Could be a Bonfire"; on a coat. "Could be Uniforms"; on a bucket:"Could be stars"; and on several cards, "Could be Flags and Bureaucratic Docu-ments." It is a subtle, yet terrifying piece, as it depicts "warlike materials" withgreat candor and simphcity as a bunch of grouped-together, ordinary object-toyscoupled with word-text juxtapositions one might more readily associate withRené Magritte or (Filliou's friend) Marcel Broodthaers.

Filliou gained training as an economist—earning a master's degree at UCLAin 19Ç0—and spent several years in the "straight world" in a variety of seem-ingly normal guises. He learned English while bottling soft drinks as a factorylaborer in the United States, and later he ironically referred to his job designa-tion as "Coca-Cola Man." FiUiou subsequently assisted in the production of aregular American television series on current political events, and acted as a keyeconomic advisor and negotiator with the United Nations in Egypt. Japan, and

S P R I N G - S U M M I K 3 0 I O

Robert Filliou, Seven Childlike Utes ofWarlike Material, 1970, instailation. wood,met.il, broken giass. various objects, tools, andclothing. 71'/^ in. X 13 ft. M/i in. x 35/).in. {182X 400 X 90 cm). Collection of Musée nationald"art moderne. Paris, Centre Georges Pompidou(artwork © Marianne Fiiliou/ADAGP, Pahs; pho-tograph by Philippe Migeat, © Collection CentrePompidou, dist. RMN)

Korea. However, by 1954, an altogether dissatisfied and restless Filliou "droppedout," thus commencing his artistic hfe at the ripe young age of thirty-seven. Inso doing, he insinuated himself wholly into the most advanced and experimentalart of the time, his work taking the form of performances, assemblages, dia-logues, artists' books, and concrete poetry. During the late 1950s, Filliou spentmuch time in Spain and Denmark as well as in France; befriended many artists,including Dieter Roth, Daniel Spoerri. and Emmett Williams; met and becameinseparable from his Hfe and art partner Mariaiuie (Staffeldt); and began writingplays, which soon developed into street theater events.

At first, and indeed for much of his career, he led a basic hand-to-mouthexistence that depended on strategic, personalized economies and decision-making, such as the use of charm and conversation, barter and exchange, intel-ligence and foresight. Filliou, it is sure, held the bohemian Hfestyle in highregard, perhaps romanticizing it to a fault, at the expense of his own comforts.Lack of money was a constant, but a wily attentiveness in how to maximizeopportunities was also present. When Filliou exhibited at the Galerie Kopekeof Arthur "Addi"' Kopeke in Copenhagen (circa 1961 ), he requested indirectpayment in tlie form of much-needed everyday articles, such as cases of beer,furniture, bedding, and more. (Notably, Kopeke also exhibited Piero Manzoni.Niki de Saint-Phalle, Roth, Spoerri. and Williams.)

47 artjournal

7. The 2007 exhibition Fluxus East FluxusNetworks in Central Eastern Europe included valu-able information on this activity. See www.fluxus-east.eu/ (consulted October 31. 2009).8. For details of Filliou's Canadian sojourns, seeRobert Filliou: Fram Political to Poetical Ecoriomy.

exh. cat. (Vancouver: Morris and Helen Belkin ArtGallery, 1995).9. "Conversation with Anny De Decker, Antwerp.November 16, 200-1," in Sophie Richard,Unconcealed: The htsrnational Network ofConceptual Artists 1967-77; Deolers. Exhibitionsand Public Collections, ed. Lynda Morris (London:Ridinghouse, 2009). 407.10. Jack Kerouac, Dharma Sums (New York:Signet Pr^ss, 1959), 78.

It is important to underline the international scope of Filliou's art activitiesthroughout his artistic career, as he exhibited work and traveled widely, includingto Hungary, where he collaborated with the artist Joachim Pfeufer on a Utopiancreative project, the Pöipoidrorae Installation ( 1976) ; his work was also included inboth the Documenta 5 and 6 exhibitions in Kassel, Germany.' Filhou visited Canadanumerous times and became influential in the alternative scenes exemplified bygroups and spaces such as Arton's and WO.R.K.S. (We. Ourselves. Roughly Know.Something.) (Calgary), Véhicule (Montréal), General Idea (Toronto), and the WesternFront (Vancouver).*' His work initially was not as well received in France, largelyowing to a broad antipathy toward conceptually oriented approaches. However,according to Aimy De Decker, codirector of the gallery Wide White Space inAntwerp:

When I showed Filliou. for example, I sold five or six pieces very quickly.People didn't know his work, but they liked it and they were used to objectsofthat kind. I was amazed to see that it worked pretty well, even thoughFilhou was almost unknown. People knew that he existed, but they didn'treally know his work. I think it was BenVantier who talked to us about him;we saw him often.'

Filliou's artworks often both convey his nomadic, playful spirit and involvethe repeated use of the artist's multiple, a format common to many Fluxusprojects. The multiples would frequently manifest the artist's wry humor, as inthe Frozen Exhibition, which offered documentation of various events and actionswithin a portfoho taking the shape of a bowler hat. referring to his Duchampianidea of a miniature exhibition transported on the artist's person. The godfatherof Conceptual art equally gets his share in Filhou's Optimistic Box no. 5 adornedwith this text: "so much the better if you can't play chess/you won't imitateMarcel Duchamp." Other works have a characteristically provisional and inten-tionally rough appearance, in contrast with their tender and whimsical senti-ments, such as MUD Carrying His Own Sun on a String and Permtmeni Playfulness (bothfrom 1973).

Filliou in his early career could be compared to the "seeker" types describedin Jack Kerouac s novel Dharmü Bums, published in the same period:

I see a vision of a great rucksack revolution thousands or even millions olyoung Americans wandering around with rucksacks, going up to mountainsto pray, making children laugh and old men glad, making young girls happyand old girls happier, all of 'em Zen Lunatics who go about writing poemsthat happen to appear in their heads for no reason and also by being kindand also by strange unexpected acts keep giving visions of eternal freedomto everybody and to all living creatures .. . '°

Filliou's interest in the "genius of the café" or the everyday gesture as awork of art is directly informed by the beat-hippie countercultural periodemerging in the late 1950s and 1960s. In a sense he was dropping out of main-stream society and into art, as many artists have chosen to do at the expense ofmaterial security, years before the members of Kerouac's rucksack revolutionwere exhorted by Timothy Leary to "tune in. turn on. drop out." "Tune in" isperhaps the pivotal term here, as Filliou over the course of the ensuing period

4 8 S P R I N G - S U M M Ï R Ï O I O

Robert Filliou, Permanent Playfulness, (973,wood, hooks, steel wire, pastel on tracing paper,phocograph, and pastel on cardboard box torn intwo, \yAxl9'Äx IWin. (35x75 X 3 cm) (art-work © Marianne Filliou; photograph by FlorianKleinefenn, Paris, provided by Galerie Nelson-Freeman. Paris)

11. See Daniel Spoerrl, Robert Filliou, EmmenWilliams, Dieter Roth, and Roland Toper. AnAnecdoted Topography of Oiance (1966; London:Atlas Press, 1995).12. See Helen Westgeest. Zen in the Fifties:Interaction in Art between Host and West (Zwolle:Waanders Publishers, 1996): and The Third Mind:American Artists Contemplate Asia. 1860-1989. ed.Alexandra Munroe. exh. cat. (New York:Guggenheim Museum, 2009).i 3. Robert Ftlliou. Teaching and Learning asPerforming Arts (Cologne and New York: VerlagGebrüder König, 1970), 95.14. Jeff Kelley, Childsploy: The Art of Allan Kaprow(Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004),200.

until his death in 1987 fine-tuned his creative capacities to a precariously bal-anced yet idiosyncratically incorporative approach, often skeptical but spirituallyinclined, willfully naive but deeply informed.

Similarly, as evidenced in such seminal works as Kerouac "s Dharma Bums andthe contemporaneous poetry of Allen Ginsberg and Gary Snyder, Zen Buddhismhad radically impacted the context of American art of the postwar period. Mean-while, in France, Zen notions also influenced the Nouveau Réaliste group, withwhich Filliou had many contacts and dose associations, most speciflcally withhis sometime collaborator Spoerri." Notably, Yves Klein, a judo adept, had spenttime in japan and had read DaisetzT. Suzuki's works on Zen. major touchstonesfor such figures as the composer John Cage. For Cage and Klein, emptiness andnothingness were exemplified via sonic and pictorial representations, or theirframing of the lack thereof.'

Filliou himself held out hope for art as an intimate form of subdued activ-ity, although often carried out amid the general clutter and noise of contempo-rary urban spaces. To embody this belief, he performed in New York City onFebruary 8, 1965. a work entitled Le Fiiliou ideal,The score of this "action poem"is as follows: "not deciding/not choosing/not wanting/not owning/aware of

self/wide awake/srrriNG QuimY/DotNG NOTHING,"'* FiUiou is one of a great manyexperimental artists who emerged from a background in poetry, including VitoAcconci, Dick Higgins, and Roth. In his final period before his death from can-cer in 1987, FiUiou spent time In the setting of actual retreat into a Buddhistmonastery, enacting again an emphasis on actions over representations, andan artist known as a garrulous talker became ironically wrapped in quiet (andhappy) solitude. The writer Jeff Kelley in his exhaustive recent study of AllanKaprow's work notes that although Kaprow was also influenced by Zen Bud-dhism, among the experimental visual artists of this period it was only Filliouwho managed to take the plunge of actually integrating Buddhist teachingsinto his life as well as his art. '*

49 art] ou mal

Robert Filliou, Teaching and Learning asPerforming Arts, 1970, front cover, interiorpage, and back cover, pub. Verlag Gebrüder König{artwork © Marianne Filliou)

Auf undab, 3 Jahrs dor Arbeit, und | B I I I srKhlBnBn Im V s r l ^ G*bt. Kfinlfl, Kö ln-Nnv York, día

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una don LESER, wenn «r will. Unlar Mitwirkuna von JOHM CAGE, BENJAMIN PATTERSON.

GEORGE BRECHT. ALLEN KAPHOVV, MAHCELLE, VERA und BJOESSI und KARL ROT,

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•nd in« READER II He n l i h « . wiir> (hs DBItcipslUn o< JOHN CAGE, BENJAMIN PATTERSON,

GEORGE BRECHT. ALLEN KAPROn. MARCELLE. VERA and BJOËSSI «rvt KARL ROT,

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SPRtNG-SUMMtH

Robert Filliou, Ample Food for StupidThought, I96S, 93 postcards in wooden boxwith sliding lid, ea. 5 x 7 in, (12.7 x 17.8 cm), pub.Something Else Press. New York. Jean BrownCollecuon, Los Angeles (artwork© MarianneFilliou: photograph b/ the author)

AMPLE FOODFOR STUPID THOUGHT

by Robert Filliou

15. Filliou, 75-76,16. Tilman, 59 (my translation).

Teaching and Learning: The Book

Much documentation about the notions central to Filliou's artistic practice is foundin his book Teaching tinii Learning as Performing Arts (published in a German-Englishbilingual edition in 1970). Here he launches an attack on what he perceives asthe limitations of contemporary art, and accordingly its social context, from avariety of angles:

Why do artists specialize? Problem of time, of course. Problem of limitsof everyone, of interests and aptitudes. But also, on the part of the artist,desire to maintain the image he has created, to impose it fully, and finallyto make a living out of it. That is to say. after creating a big enough racketso that there is a demand for his work, to supply it."

Here we have in summary form the anticareerist notions of Filliou, which werenot the most helpful for liim in terms of a stable and consistent Uvelihood. Asthe artist's biographer Pierre Tilman points out, "FiUiou foimd himself in anincessant and difficult contradiction: on one hand, he didn't want to consider artas a career, on the other, he didn't want to do something else to make a living.He refused, and even when he tried, it must be said, it didn't work." "'

The cover of Teaching onJ Learning describes the book as a "first draft" culmi-nating from "off and on 3 years of work." Significantly, in both these qualifyingnotes Filliou makes clear the intermittent aspect of production, evidently not arush-job, taking its time, its own course to emerge organically from seriousdiscussions and concerns. To call it a first draft is to acknowledge its status as awork-in-progress, further emphasized by the comment—again placed on thefront cover, for the reader not to miss it—"It is a Multi-book. The space providedfor the reader's use is nearly the same as the author's own." That is, an ongoingprocess begins in which the reader is encouraged to use the book as less an art-work tlian a workbook. As FiUiou notes on the back cover, "It is a long shortbook to keep writing at home." We could also say that this becomes a book tliat

irtjoiirnal

Robert Filliou, Teaching and Learning asPerforming Arts, Part II, 1979, vtdeo still {artwork © Marianne Filltou, photograph provided byGalerie Nelson-Freeman, Paris)

17. Quoted In Robert FilHou. exh. cat. (Hanover,Germany: Sprengel-Museum, 1984).18. Filliou, 14,19. See the exhibition website at www.e-flux.com/pro|ects/do_it/homepage/do_it_home.html (consulted October 31. 2009).

performs, and later it metamorphoses into video artworks made in response tothe book, performing it yet again.

The use of "performing" as a term in the book's title should also not betaken as the now-academicized interpretation of "performance art" as a discrete,circumscribed category, but as the performative aspect of "creation"—the termFilliou preferred to "artmaking," Filliou noted elsewhere, "Instead of using theword 'art' most of the time in trying to invent new concepts I have thoughtof our activity as one thai involves Permanent Creation. It is not surprising ofcourse the problems that people were tackling—like the Dadaists started to saythat life is more interesting than art. Of course art is only one activity" '' AsFilliou wrote in Teaching and Leorning, "Writing also is a performing art."'*

Filliou states {in all-caps): "WHATEVER I SAY IS IRRELEVANT IF IT DOES NOT

INCITE YOU TO ADD UP YOUR VOICE TO MINE," This democratizing impulsetoward dialogue and interaction is on the one hand clearly a characteristic prod-uct of the 1960s countercultural and Fluxus ethos, and on the other, it prefigures"interactive" or "dialogue"-based projects of some thirty years later, such asthose of the artists RirkritTiravanija and Phillipe Parreno, or the curator HansUlrich Obrist's DO IT (2002), a virtual exhihition of artists' instructions.''

In describing his chosen method of leaving blank space on one half of thepage for the reader to fill in—the reader thus becoming an author-participantas well—Filliou adds an aside in a footnote: "There must be better ones. 1 havethought of loose cards in a box, even postcards. You might want to start ourcoUaboration by suggesting some on this first page." In 196c Filliou had in factpubhshed a book in the form of ninety-three boxed cards entitled Ampk Food forStupid Thought, each one bearing a question, such as How are you and why.' Isn't art aremarkúble thing.'What's the big idea.' No iddding.' Moreover, one might think of othernonlinear experiments iu hterature, exhibition catalogues, art projects, and otherpublishing ventin-es in the 1960s and 1970s: a book of separate signatures to

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It no reaion for ui to j¡o ¡nio hinoryin jny detail. Part of the rcaion ihi iUuchimp's objtcii arc faicinatingwhile I CBHo't voice i< (adin(i 11, ihalthe Duchamp pietcs arc iruly be-nvecn media, hnween iculpiurt and«omeihinn elie, while a Piciuu iireadily cla«ifiahlc at a paiiiitil nrn-i-ment. Similirly, by invading ihe \aa¿brlwceii oilljfte ind phoiopraphv.ihe German [ohn Heartfitld pr»ductd what are ¡irdiulily the (¡trat-eu ^rapliin iif our qenlury. uuclyihe mcKt powerful puliiiol art chitbat been ¿one ui date.

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17

Dick Higgins, foew£ombwhnw, 1969, pp.

26-27, pub. Something Else Press, New Yhork

[SIC], ediiion of 4,000 (artworic © Estate of Dick

Higgins)

20. On viewing an excerpt of this material, the

New Zealand artist David Cauchi compared

Filliou's didactic manner to that of Sesome Street,

an interesting parallel in that the TV program

began in the same era as the Teaching cr^d Learning

book, and Filliou prided himself on making "child-

like" works, creating several artist's books of this

type. They include Toi par lui et moi (Brussels:

Lebeer Hossmann and Yellow Now, 1998), and

Mister Blue from Day-tiyDay (Hamburg: Lebeer

Hossmann, 1983).

21. Oive Robertson, "Meeting a Mentor in the

Making of Porta Filliou." in Robert Filliou: From

Political to Poetical Economy. 57.

22. Filliou. 204,

be read in any order the reader wishes by the British author B. S, Johnson; twoexhibitions (in Seattle and Vancouver) curated by Lucy Lippard with cataloguesprinted as envelopes of index cards; Water Yam, George Brecht's set of cards withperformative instructions; or even Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari's 1980 bookAThousünd Plairaus, in which the authors urge the reader to treat the book's sec-tions as if dropping a needle at points on a phonograph record.

During several artist residencies in Canada and in collaboration with a vari-ety of experimental artists, Filliou made a number of videos that unfold from thethemes presented in the earher book project. Filliou discusses a number of hiskey ideas while directly addressing the camera: over tea, newspaper classifieds,and a cigarette at the breakfast table, or onstage, his face covered with shavingcream, creating a kind of satirical burlesque before the audience. In these videos,his conversational and informal style significantly incorporates and records hisdialogue with off-camera members of the audience, usually other artists. "Thevideos are improvised, tecluiically basic to the point of being skeletal, rough,careless, and above all adamantly against polish or finish. As the artist ChveRobertson notes. "He was quite satisfied and prepared, as he said during one ofour evenings around the kitchen table, to make do with the mundane materialtechnology of a pencil."" Filliou never valorized technology for its own sake,although he was an early participant in a multitude of dispersed artistic commu-nities: "The artist must reahze also that he is part of a wider network, la FetePermanente {Eternal Network) going on around him all the time in all parts ofthe world."^^ His skepticism toward high tech arises also in liis assemblage work

53 art journal

George Brecht and Robert FMliou, LaCédille qui Sourit, 1967, intenorview,Villefranche-sur-Mer, France. Museum of ModernArt/Gilben and Lila Silverman Collection (photo-graph ©Jacques Strauch and Michou Strauch-Barelli)

23. Dick Higgins, foewScombwhnw: a grammar of

the mind and o phenomenology of love and o science

of tfie orts as seen by a sto/ker of the wild mush-

room (New York: Something Else Press. 1969). I I.I 5. 27. Hannah Higgins recently told me. "When Iasked Dick a year or so before his death if he everdeclined a book for the press and then regrettedit, xlr\e one book he mentioned was Teaching andLeorning. which he loved and admired." E-mail tothe author. October 30. 2009.

Video Jour—Video Nuit (1980-82). a charmiag concoction of cardboard, mirror,

pencil, and other basic materials.

Filliou's Teaching and Learning book also compares intrigiiingly with that of

his dose friend Dick Higgins's from roughly the same time, which bears the

unwieldy tide foew&.ombwhnw: a grammar of the mind and a phenomenology of love and a science

of the arts as seen by a stalker of the wild mushroom, an abbreviated title revealed in the

artist's introduction to stand for-—in full—"Freaked Out Electronic Wizards

& Oilier Marvtlüus Bartenders Who Have No Wings." The title, according to

Higgins's text, had initially been amusing, but Higgins then abandoned it except

for the codelike letters he refers to as a "shell," much like the cover of the book

itself, which with disarming accuracy resembles a Bible—embossed gold letter-

ing on a black binding, replete with fragile, crackling paper and a bookmark of

fabric. This ironic nod to rehgion is a kind of proto-postmodern gesture, as is

the arrangement of its text, the element most germane to our comparison here.

Higgins divides each page into two vertical columns, running four differing nar-

ratives, essays, art pieces, or poems at once. Depending on the length of each,

typography, and other graphic elements, some of the columns are packed with

textual intricacies, while others are emptied out, leaving entirely white space.

Quite appropriately, the book commences with Higgins's seminal es.say on

his notion of "intermedia," with its prescient opening gambit: "Much of the

best work being produced today seems to fall between media." Higgins contin-

ues to skewer what he perceives as the irrelevance of many media-specific modes

of practice, condemning the mercantile aspects of Pop art. He satirizes the move-

ment with his confîation of three integral figures. Ivan Karp (dealer), Henry

Geldzahler (curator), and Lawrence Alloway (critic) into one mythical beast, a

"Mr. Ivan Geldoway," who cannot prevent Pop from being "colossally boring

and irrelevant"; Higgins supports instead Happenings and other performative

actions. Higgins also cites Filliou in his remark that "the constructed poems

of Emmett Williams and Robert Fillion certainly constitute an intermedium

between poetry and sculpture."''

S4 SPBIKG-SUMMER lOlO

On Playing Games and Researching Nothing

24. George Brecht, Games at the Cedilla; or. TheCedilla Takes Off (New York; Something Eise Press,1967). See Anthony Huberman's con:iparison ofLa Cédilte's activities with those of current reces-sion-era initiatives, "Talent Is Overrated."Artforum, November 2009, 109-10.25. "Appendices, I. The Propositions andPrinciples of Robert Filliou," in Roben Filliou: FromPolitical to Poetical Economy, 77-78.26. Filliou, 14.27. Steven Harris, "The Art of Losing Oneselfwithout Getting Lost: Brecht and Filliou at thePalais Idéal." Popers of Surrealism 2 (Summer2004). !.26. Bourriaud, I I.29. "Appendices, I," in Robert filHou: From Politicalto Poetical Economy, 82.30, fbid., 83.

Another essential book published by Higgins's Something Else Press, GeorgeBrechts Games at the CedilJo (1969), collates an eclectic array of bits and pieces, theremnants of an experimental gallery/shop/collaboration—"a free city of thearts, a center of research, of ideas"^—operated by George Brecht and FilliouinVillefranche-sur-Mer in the south of France in the late 1960s.''' Brecht andFilliou's motto was: "La Cedille qui Sourit [the Cedilla that Smiles] inventseverything that has or has not been invented."'* Filliou states in the introduc-tory passages of his Teaching and Learning, "Since the end of world war 1 inventionhas tended to replace composition as the standard of excellence in avantgardecircles."^* Browsing through Games suggests that this brand of "invention" mani-fests itself as a proclivity toward verbal instructions and comic rejoinders. Thepoet-artists urge their correspondents, friends, and readers to engage in collab-orative activities.

The art historian Steven Harris notes that "Brecht and Filliou shared a greatmany ideas and values with the surrealists, yet Filliou, despite his friendshipwith the surrealist painter Victor Brauner, never referred to surrealism, andBrecht only did so to make his differences with it clear."'' Notably, we can alsorecall the introductory line of Bourriaud'.s "Relational Form," the first chapterof RelütionaMesthetics: "Artistic activity is a game, whose forms, patterns and func-tions develop and evolve according to periods and social contexts; it is not animmutable essence."'* Filliou's voice wraps itself around other material seem-ingly unrelated to art in order to perpetually reenact the unsteady realization tliatall experiences are basically tenuous and unstable. The best tools for navigatingthis uncertain landscape emanate from a bemused, conscious awareness ofhuman connections and the problems that befall us.

Such projects as the Cedilla but also Research at the Stedelijk ( 1973) distinguishthemselves by the realization that an has to involve the social, other disciplines,reciprocal discussions, and the notion that the museum might be an appropriatesite to house some of this activity. In residence at Amsterdam's Stedelijk Museumfrom November 5 to December 5. 1971. Filliou instituted the "Genial Repubhc"in which he carried out a series of interdisciplinary discussions. He used thenotion of "research" frequently in his work. Tlie term itself becomes malleable.bent and shaped according to the artist's specific plans of the moment. Heremarked, "Research is not the privilege of people who know—on tbe contrary,it is the domain of people who do not know, Every time we are turning ourattention to something we don't know we are doing research."''To use theterm "research" also creates an aura of significance simply through a nominalsleight-of-hand. In writing of one of his conceptual proposals. "The Speed ofArt," Filliou stated, "O.K. I leave it open, it's research in progress. 1 can only goso far—nobody so far has helped me carry out this type of research. That's thefate of most artistic propositions—we must do them ourselves."'°

It's perhaps too easy to discount FiUiou as a "major" artist, since in his prac-tice he questioned the inflated claims and posturing of "major" art and operatedin ways that are often considered minor: using humor and parodie strategies,and thereby preserving an ironic distance from mainstream thinking. At theCologne Happening und Fluxus exhibition in 1970, when assigned a small area in

55

which to perform, Filliou "created something I called the 'Wishing and JokingRoom,' there was a bowl full of water and a mic[rophone]. On the bowl waswritten. 'Toss a coin and make an innocent wish' and on the mic was written,'Now come to the mic and tell a joke."" One of the proposed projects of Filliouwith Brecht at the Cedilla was to compile an anthology of jokes, and in the early1990s, a portrait of Filliou adorned a catalogue of a group exhibition at theVenice Biennale entitled Infamie, which devoted itself to the notion of the failedand unrealized.

Perhaps a central notion for consideration here is failure, the incomplete, theopen-ended, the undone—in essence, to mount a defense for that which simulta-neously remains unrealized but has been planned, pondered, and initiated. Filhou'scareer was defined and highhghted by a series of such acts. Completion was not ameasure of their success. Any finality escaped them in their era. Today we canremrn to and revise our assessment of Filliou's actions with remarkable (and artifi-cial, convenient) hindsight. Turning toward Filhou's legacy now. as it has affectedmore recent art, is a significant outcome of this particular revised vantage point.

31. Robert FiUiou, exh. cat, (Hanover), 182.32. For a relevant example of intergenerationalartistic dialogue, see "In Another Country; YokoOno in Conversation with RirkritTiravanija,"Artforum. Summer 2009, 280-83.

Relational Aesthetics as a Stepchild of Fluxus

One could argue that the artists associated with relational aesthetics take superfi-cial and selective attributes of past works and statements by Fluxus practitionersand emphasize their (re-)presentation, production, and dissemination, ratherthan the ofïhandedness, ephemerality, and small-scale virtues evidenced in theirfirst instance(s). Relational-aesthetics artists are often the gleaners, scavengingfor the bits and pieces of conceptual and performative gamesmanship that nowcan once again coalesce into the appearance of novelty Some examples: ChristineHill may breathe an exhausted sigh when her German Volksboutique shop of theearly 1990s is compared with Claes Oldenburg's 1961 Store, but the comparisonis there and relevant; when Philippe Parreno projects films onto a multipanelwhite canvas at 4' 33" intervals (the duration and title of Cage's watershed"silent" composition of 1952), a certain brand of historicization verges onbecoming wearisome itself; the blankness of RirkritTiravanija"s emptied walls.spaces, and slide shows is all too reminiscent of Nam June Paik"s Zen for Film orYoko Ono's "nonexistent" but nonetheless sublime instruction paintings of theearly 1960s.''

We arrive then at the crux of the matter: in our postmodern era suchinstances sample the past, so to speak. The subjectivity and intentionality of theseartists become altogether irreconcilable with those of their 1960$ forebears, but astrange series of reverberations occurs, a temporal dislocation; many in the con-temporary art audience are in a certain sense caught by our own postmodernself-conscioQsness. While the incisive sting of FilUou's work, particularly his vid-eos with all their attendant awkwardnesses, emerges from its amateiir approach,that of the researcher who "knows nothing," today we know all too much howthe game is played. Playing "games at the Cedilla" seems like a lost world of pos-sibilities that we are incapable of accessing in all but a very limited though moredetailed fashion—endnotes in place of the experiential. Artists are historians,revising past approaches; curators are reenacting crucial exhibitions; and criticsare channeling voices we've heard again and again.

5 6 S P R I N G - S U M M E R 2 O I 0

Carsten Höller, Kinder demonstrieren fürdie Zukunft (Children Demonstrate for thefuture), from Exhibitions project, 1991,performance, Reichstag. Berlin. 1991 (artwork© Carsten Holler; photograph provided by EstherSchipper, Berlin)

33. George Baker, "An Interview with PierreHuyghe," October 110 (Fall 2004): 89.

We can also assess the reception of relational aesthetics as a notion in termsof an American-Continental European divide. That is to say, in discussions in theformer locale, relational aestheücs often elicits a climate of unease, likely owingto its lack of pragmatism, materiality, and medium-specificity. The more paradig-matic relational-aesthetics work is more geared to Europe, a bringing-to-bear ofthe social body not set apart in atomized alienation, but existing in convivial for-mations, often exclusive, occasionally flirtatious, and reminiscent of the livelyand haphazard groupings in cafés, bars, and restaurants, the private sphere spill-ing out on fine days into the public space.

A revealing exchange is captured in a 2004 interview with Pierre Huyghepublished in October. The interviewer. George Baker, inquires as to the dematerial-ized aspects of relational aesthetics, and Huyghe replies in seemingly abruptfashion, "We're not returning to that old trap." 'The artist thus asserts that inwhatever provisional form it might appear, his work stands as a material entity.Wliereas if we return by comparison to the example of Filliou. the genius whoinhabited the café across from the Cedilla at VUlefranche left residual traces suchas documents, photos, and posters, but the rent still came due. the landlordcame calhng, and the artist's actions in that parücular context ceased. If Huygheargues for the tangible primacy of his works, even as they are formally dispersed.Filliou spent his üme assisting in tlie fabrication of works by others, living in

s 7 art journal

Liam Gillick, How are you going to behove?A kitchen cot speaks, 2009, installation view,German Pavilion, Venice Biennale, 2009 (artwork© Liam Gillick: photograph © Natasa Radovic,provided by Casey Kaplan, New York, and EstherSchipper, Berlin)

modest accommodations, and seeking intellectual connection with others whilemaintaining a lightness and mobility which is in turn revealed in the lightnessof his practice, characterized by its sound, philosophically complex, and richpatterns of thought. Such a practice interrupts received ideas and constructs anddoes not touch down for very long at any one time.

There is also an argument that by contrast, despite the jet-setting mobihtyof a few renowned artists, a heaviness and predictability has attached itself (onemight say inevitably) to certain relational-style practices more recently. If dema-terialization is a trap, we can see FiUiou's practice as falling into it by virtue ofits disregard and disinterest in the object-world except as primarily feeding fur-ther discussions, "ample food for stupid thought," to repeat the artist's phrase.In the best relational-aesthetics works today, the discursive is not only presentbut enacted, as in: Huyghe's engagements with cinematically staged vs. actualreality, Liam Gillick's idiosyncratic narrative tableaus, and Carsten Holler's hybridworks also located somewhere between fact and fiction.This discursiveness maytake the form of the suburban celebratory festival recorded in Huyghe's videoStretimside Day (2003); of Gilhck's 2009 A Kitchen Cat Speaks, housed in the Germanpavihon of the Venice Biennale and featuring a "talking cat" perched over anInterior landscape of Ikea-style minimalism; or of Holler's earlier staged eventssuchas Children Demonstrate for the Future (1991-92).

58 SPRlNG-StJMMER 2010

Pierre Huyghe, Streamiide Doy, 2003, stillsfrom digital video projection of film and videotransfers, color, sound, 26 mm. (artv/ork © PierreHuyghe; photograph provided by MarianGoodman Gallery. New York)

34. Ibid-, 99.

In another crucial point in the aforementioned Huyghe interview, Baker asks,

GB: But your work's idea of the relational seems to focus upon ideas of theopen work, the link between practices, the permanent construction site. . ..Why is it important to work in this way now? Is it a political gestxire? Alinkage, like Pasohni's, between poetics and politics?

PH: It is an expanded field. The more tools, the more one can expand thegame. The more one can play. The tools themselves are not important incomparison to tbe ability to play.Think about Robert Filliou.'"

After that point there is no further mention of FiUiou or discussion of hisideas or practice, at a point in which his example could have become a dramaticand compelling one to insert into the discussion. Huyghe, a French artist, is wellacquainted witli Filliou's work, but my suspicion is that Baker, an American writer,is not, as Filliou is generally treated in the United States—if at all—as only aperipheral figure in the Fluxus movement, an arguably still-underliistoricized andperipheral movement itself Thus FiUiou, in the context of this interview, plainlydisappears, serving as a spectral referent not included and incorporated in theexchange. This absence and act of ehsion, as I have emphasized, is not unusual,but simply is yet another instance of Filliou's historical "invisibility."

S9 artjournal

However it is significant to note Huyghe's response to a lengthy interrogation

immediately after the FiUiou "nonexchange." Baker contrasts what he describes

as a displacement of

a model of pohtics and critique that was central to advanced art in the [980s.

. . . Is it a kind of pragmatism or realism that we face here—-a realization that false

pohtical claims for artistic practices were made in the 1980s, and one must not

falsely daim immediate pobtical functions for cultural or aesthetic projects?

PH: Your last point is key And it should apply as well lo critics and histori-

ans. It is obviously difficult to define oneself after a postmodern period

where we all became extremely self-conscious and aware about the conse-

quences of our actions. This is why conclusions should be suspended bul the tension should

remain.There is a complexity that should be recognized and thai produces a fragile object.

. . . It is a huge problem when ihe "political" becomes a subject for art.

For me Buren is a political artist. It is a practice that is political, not the sub-

ject or content of art."

Of additional relevance in this context is the fact that Huyghe has called his work

a "chantier permanent" or "permanent construction site"; the term is also the title

of a 1993 Huyghe work, and an interesting parallel to Filliou's earher interest in

"permanent creation."

It is not surprising that in Bourriaud's follow-up to Relational Aesthetics, he

characterizes recent art as involved in acts of "postproduction," and that the

representative examples of this are the DJ and the computer programmer: both

reorient, reconfigure, and revise existing materials, transforming them, with

their constituent parts "readymades" in turn shifted by the voice of the new art-

ist as instigator-editor-producer. To a degree, Fillioii was still engaged in the act

of making new patterns of discourse, arguably a proto-postmodernist, but still

involved in the notion of the originary, as in his ideas of perpetual creation,

As the artist recounted in a conversation with Cage:

What I had in mind was a kind of pioneer world that should be in the

hands of artists, where we will create, and by creating, make claims upon

this part of the world. I call this the idea of permanent creation. There

would be no difference between students and teachers. It might be just as

a kind of availability or responsibility that the artist is willing to take, but

anybody might make suggestions about what kind of things might be inves-

tigated or looked at and I think it might be in a spirit of fun at times, but

many problems may be solved by the

If Filliou casts less of a judgmental eye on finished products , it is because

for h i m the experiential process is pa ramount . To create is to make anew, and

Bourriaud 's pos tproduct ion is in some part a reheated bro th of p o s t m o d e r n i s m .

the "i ts-al l -been-done-what-do-we-do-then-with-al l- this-accumulated-baggage?"

line of inqui ry Fur thermore . Filhou's optimist ic interest in the challenge of dis-

course was still invested in potential mean ings that could be l iberatory Such an

outlook can only be put in to its specific historical setting. If we conjure such

35. Ibid, (emphasis added). u topianism today, it is in ironic fashion, in acts of quota t ion , citation, and repet i -36. Filliou, John Cage, in Teaching and Leoming, r / ' ^ '•116. tion to reiterate our distance.

6 0 S P R m C - S U M M F R 1010

To return to my title and the unfinished Filliou, my intention as an act ofin-conclusion is to emphasize the unfinished, ongoing, incomplete nature ofFilliou's visionary praxis. If originary traces of relational aesthetics, a dominantmodel for certain contemporary artists, are dearly manifest in Filliou's work, wemust quickly assert in addition that Filliou, along with Higgins (or even Beuysfor that matter). was just as engaged in dialogue with the premodern and mod-ern as the postmodern. Filliou was a highly self-aware and self-critical artist whorealized that he was entering art in the middle, that the games had begun andthe party had commenced long before his particular arrival, thereby beginningin the middle, in the midst, in-between. In addressing Filhou's approaches tomedia, location, and temporality, it is virtually impossible to effectively histori-cize such a shifting set of variable components except by presenting an array ofcorrespondingly associative, allusive fragments. I hope some poetic qualities havestill managed to emerge from this extended series of observations.

Martin Patrick Is an art critic and historian whose writings have appeared in many international publica-tions, including Afterimage. Art Monthly, and Third Text. He has taught at the University of Chicago, IllinoisState University, and the Savannah College of Art and Design, He is working on a book that examinescontemporary artists who engage with the art/life divide. He is currently senior lecturer of critical studiesat Massey University's School of Fine Arts in Wellington, New Zealand.

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