Fluxus 1

Overnight, the gallery was transformed into a greenhouse for 'the germination of Fluxus',[3] hosting events by Dick Higgins, Jackson Mac Low, Yoko Ono, La Monte Young and others.

[4] The gallery had gone bankrupt by mid 1961; to avoid his creditors, Maciunas took a job working for the US Army as a freelance designer in Wiesbaden, West Germany.

AN ANTHOLOGY appeared in Spring 1963; Most of Fluxus 1 was printed by the same German printers contemporaneously, but Maciunas doesn't seem to have put any copies together until sometime in early 1964, by which time he'd left his job in Germany due to bad health and had returned to New York.

The book originally sold for $6, with a 'Luxus Fluxus' edition costing $12 containing 'film, tape, objects and accessories' [6] Amongst many other influences, Maciunas was directly inspired by LEF, the communist journal founded by Mayakovsky and Ossip Brik; an artistic organisation aimed at unifying left-wing artists to help build the newly emerging communist state in Russia.

Thus our festivals will eliminate themselves (and our need to participate) when they become total readymades (like Brecht's exit) [11]The book consists of a number of envelopes bound together by metal bolts, each containing printed works by a single artist.

There is a printed folded sheet attached featuring Maciunas' typographic representations of each artist's name, and the whole book is contained in a wooden case sprayed with the title.

[13] Marginal figures in Fluxus, such as Giuseppe Chiari and Sohei Hashimoto, were dropped in favour of artists such as Yoko Ono and the Hi Red Center, whilst Dick Higgins is noticeable by his absence after a feud with Maciunas over the setting up of the Something Else Press.