ABSTRACT
Disinterested in perpetuating the commercialization of the avant-garde, Fluxus artists took their work out of the gallery and the museum. This chapter explores the community ethos of Fluxus and its dependence upon the construction of new sites of production, distribution, and display. This dimension of Fluxus is not suitable to the established conception of the avant-garde as a practice founded upon critique. It is instead more akin to the operations of what Eugene Holland has called “the slow-motion general strike.” Rothman proposes that Fluxus is best understood in relation to what Holland calls “nomad citizenship” and “free-market capitalism.” Fluxus aimed to “rescue market exchange, not perpetuate capitalism” and to do so by establishing a form of citizenship “within and beyond the boundaries of the State.”
