George Maciunas: Lecture and Performance

Doors at 7, program starts at 7:30

Join us at e-flux on Thursday, September 25, at 7pm for an evening dedicated to George Maciunas (1931–1978), coordinator and founding member of Fluxus. The program will include a lecture by Colby Chamberlain, the author of Fluxus Administration: George Maciunas and the Art of Paperwork and a performance of Solo for Violin, a piece by Maciunas from 1962.

In histories of SoHo, George Maciunas and the Fluxhouse Cooperatives are usually a single paragraph in the larger story of how the neighborhood became an “artists’ colony” and a template for gentrification. A closer look at the Fluxhouses shows that the takeover of SoHo by chain stores and real estate developers was never as inevitable as it now seems. Maciunas’s original vision suggests that artists might have played a different role in shaping the post-industrial city. Part counter-factual, part cautionary tale, this lecture will look at the nitty-gritty of the Fluxhouses’ organization and ask what lessons its successes and shortcomings hold for art and urbanism in the future.

Colby Chamberlain is the author of Fluxus Administration: George Maciunas and the Art of Paperwork (University of Chicago Press, 2024) and an assistant professor of art history at the Cleveland Institute of Art.

The program of sound performances at e-flux is curated by Sanna Almajedi.

For more information, please contact [email protected].

Accessibility–Two flights of stairs lead up to the building’s front entrance at 172 Classon Avenue.–For elevator access, please RSVP to [email protected]. The building has a freight elevator which leads into the e-flux office space. Entrance to the elevator is nearest to 180 Classon Ave (a garage door). We have a ramp for the steps within the space.–e-flux has an ADA-compliant bathroom. There are no steps between the event space and this bathroom.

Host or Publisher e-flux Screening Room