Deconstruction of cinema in the neo-dada project: the fluxfilm anthology in the anti-aesthetics context

Fluxus, a neodadaist group of artists, poets, and musicians is known by its multiples namely cardboard boxes containing surprising objects, editions, scores and other similar works of art. One of such works was the Fluxfilm Anthology through which the Fluxus artists were able to express their ideas. Principles of game, irony and art deconstruction were realized in that project as the main aesthetic principles of Fluxus art. The Fluxfilm Anthology as a project involved a lot of Fluxus artists who in turn created more than 70 films. A common search for stylistic forms of avant-garde cinema was expressed in the Fluxfilms when the filmmakers refused of to shoot and to edit the film for the sake of ready-mades and assemblages. The Fluxus works in cinema are very diverse. They can be subdivided into many purpose types. The first type of films makes a deconstruction of cinema as an art form of because its authors abandon principal expressive means of cinema. The second one is represented by the films with a broken narrative but recreated sign structures. The third group of films includes an anthropological discourse made of a series of similar items and actions. The fourth group consists of assemblages and ready-made films which are focused on elements of human environments. More precisely, the film-assemblage is a special technique of filming any performed materials and objects. The ready-made is a mode of filming or showing previously used film loops. The most famous and important Fluxus films can be assigned to the first of the above types. Zen for Film by Nam June Paik is among them. The peculiarity of the film is the way of its creating at the time of the show, coinciding with the passage (and simultaneous deformation by scratching) of the film loop through the film projector. It is an example of ‘undetermined’ film as well as Paik’s thinking about the nature of the motion pictures. Another example of image experiment is Blink directed by J. Cavanaugh. It consists of white and black alternating frames whose flicker postulates the moving image as the basic principle of cinema. G. Brecht’s Entrance to exit is conceptually identical to the film mentioned before. A smooth linear transition from white, through greys to black is used for making image in it. Maciunas’s experimental films were made without camera. He upgraded the shooting process when replaced the work with the camera to work in the laboratory. It can also be said that he has turned a film into design with a film. W. Vostell’s films are illustrations to his original concept of Decollage according to which an image captured by TV should be disassembled into component parts by camera. Another representative of the Fluxus, namely J. Cale, practiced shooting flickering lights, unusually spectacular when viewed. P. Kennedy’s and M. Parr’s films are indicative for Fluxus for technical experiments with the format of a rectangular frame and its transparency. In such ways, in accordance with aesthetic views of Fluxus artists, a consistent destruction of the ‘language’ of cinematography carries out in the The first type of Fluxfilms.

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