He also began a correspondence with Raoul Hausmann, an original member of Berlin Dada, who advised him to stop using the term "neo-dada" and concentrate instead on "Fluxus" to describe the nascent movement.

[7] Duke University Professor Kristine Stiles has discussed Fluxus as part of a movement towards global humanism achieved through the breakdown of boundaries in artistic media, cultural norms, and political conventions.

[8] The blurring of cultural conventions, which began in the early 20th century with movements such as Dada and Futurism, was continued by Fluxus artists in correspondence with the changes taking place in the sixties.

Like the definition of "Flux", which means "to flow", Fluxus artists sought to reorder the temples of production and reveal "the extraordinary that remains latent in the undisclosed ordinary" during the midst of the dramatic modernist epoch.

[2] As well as Maciunas' concerts at the AG Gallery in March 1961 featuring music and events by Maciunas himself, Toshi Ichiyanagi, Mac Low and Dick Higgins,[10] the two other most important precursors to Fluxus were La Monte Young's influential series of performances in the Chambers Street loft of Yoko Ono and Toshi Ichiyanagi in 1961 involving Henry Flynt, La Monte Young, Joseph Byrd & Robert Morris amongst others; and Robert Watts and George Brecht's Yam Festival, spring 1963 at Rutgers University and New York, which included a series of mail art event scores and performances by John Cage, Allan Kaprow, Alison Knowles, Ay-O, and Dick Higgins.

[2][11] Other key influences noted by Maciunas included the Happenings that had occurred at the Black Mountain College involving Robert Rauschenberg, John Cage, David Tudor, Merce Cunningham, and others; the Nouveaux Réalistes; the Concept Art of Henry Flynt and Marcel Duchamp's notion of the readymade.

Its aesthetic practitioners, valuing originality over imitating overworked forms, reconceptualized the art object and the nature of performance through musical 'concerts', 'olympic' games, and publications.

[13] In 1960, whilst attending composition classes of the electronic composer Richard Maxfield at the New School for Social Research in New York, Maciunas met many of the future participants of Fluxus, including La Monte Young, Al Hansen, Allan Kaprow, and Jackson Mac Low.

To avoid debt collectors, Maciunas took a job as a civilian graphic designer at a U.S. Air Force base in Wiesbaden, Germany in late 1961.

This festival featured various "concerts," scripted actions performed by Fluxus artists, as well as interpreting a number of works by other members of the international avant-garde .

One of the most notorious events performed at Wiesbaden was Maciunas' interpretation of Philip Corner's Piano Activities, the score of which asked a group of people to 'play', 'scratch or rub' and 'strike soundboard, pins, lid or drag various objects across them.'

It was quickly followed by similar collected works of other affiliated artists, such as Ben Vautier and Robert Watts; the Fluxkit contained in an attaché case (1965–66) and another compendium Flux Year Box 2 (1966–68).

[2]Maciunas, a trained graphic designer, was responsible for the memorable packaging of Fluxus objects, posters and newspapers, helping to give the movement a sense of unity that the artists themselves often denied.

Thus our festivals will eliminate themselves (and our need to participate) when they become total readymades (like Brecht's exit) (see [1]) Whilst Maciunas was still alive, no Fluxus work was ever signed or numbered,[21] and many weren't even credited to any artist.

As such, huge confusion continues to surround many key Fluxus works; Maciunas strived to uphold his stated aims of demonstrating the artist's 'non-professional status...his dispensability and inclusiveness' and that 'anything can be art and anyone can do it.

'[22] This strategy was maintained throughout his life; key works that have been assigned to him include USA Surpasses all the Genocide Records!, c1966 (see [2]), an American Flag comparing massacres in Nazi Germany, Russia and Vietnam; the Flux Smile Machine c1970 (see [3] ) in which a spring forces the mouth into a grimace, usually considered a critique on capitalist imperialism;[23] and the film 12!

Maciunas held several prestigious professional positions as an architect and graphic designer in firms including Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, Air Force Exchanges (Europe), Jack Marshad Inc., Olin Mathieson Chemical Corporation, and Knoll Associates.

As an efficient modular system intended for factory production, this eco-friendly and sustainable design can be adapted to construct a single family home, a mid-rise building, or a neighborhood community with the multiplication or subtraction of units.

[24] Maciunas converted buildings into live-work spaces for and envisioned the Fluxhouse Cooperatives as collective living environments composed of artists working in many mediums.

Kaplan Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts, Maciunas began buying several loft buildings from closing manufacturing companies in 1966.

Maciunas continued the co-op despite contravening planning laws, buying a series of loft buildings to sell to artists as working and living spaces.

Strategies included sending postcards from around the world via associates and friends to persuade the authorities that he was abroad, and placing razor-sharp guillotine blades onto his front door to avoid unwanted visitors.

On November 8, 1975, an argument with an electrician over unpaid bills resulted in a severe beating, allegedly by 'Mafia thugs', which left him with 4 broken ribs, a deflated lung, 36 stitches in his head and blind in one eye.

He left New York shortly after, to attempt to start a Fluxus-oriented arts centre in a dilapidated mansion and stud farm in New Marlborough, Massachusetts.

Impossible.Adrian Searle, art critic for The Guardian, put it succinctly in a review of a Fluxus exhibition; Maciunas was fascinating, talented, and by all accounts a nightmare.

He would charm them, boss them around for years, then perform summary excommunications, banishing those who displeased him..... Maciunas would take against individuals for no good reason – composer Karlheinz Stockhausen was one – and damn by association those who had anything to do with them.

Richard Long's walks, Gilbert and George posing as living sculptures, Sarah Lucas's early work and a million other small gestures, actions and ephemeral objects can trace their origins back to Fluxus.