Draft:Fluxus Train

Fluxus Train (original title in german: Fluxus-Zug; subtitle Das mobile Museum Vostell. 7 Environments über Liebe, Tod, Arbeit, "The Mobile Museum Vostell. 7 Environments on Love, Death, Work") was an art project by Wolf Vostell conceived as a travelling museum. A train of nine walk-in containers holding seven environments travelled through 16 railway stations in cities of North Rhine-Westphalia from 1 May to 29 September 1981. About 60,000 people visited the project.

Background

Vostell began planning the project in 1979, after the art historian Dagmar von Gottberg and Peter Kruse, press officer of the Hamburg freight company CONTRANS, had proposed transporting contemporary art through West Germany in containers. Vostell took up his concept of an ideal academy, which he had outlined in 1969 in an interview with Friedrich Wolfram Heubach in the journal Interfunktionen and which the Fluxus Train catalogue reproduces.

Concept

Vostell understood Fluxus Train as mobile cultural work and as an opening of the traditional museum. The train moved from city to city and was meant to integrate into the local art and cultural scene during each stop; its arrival was accompanied by an opening and a press conference. It was conceived as a living art school in which the public could exchange ideas with the artist. In its content the project linked the world of work and human alienation with the themes of happiness and play. It was dedicated to the Fluxus group.

Structure

The train consisted of nine containers, two from the Deutsche Bundesbahn and seven from the freight company CONTRANS, which were carried on flatcars and connected one behind another on site. The public entered through a video library and communication car holding information material, slides, and video documentation of Vostell's work. The ninth and final car showed large-format black-and-white photographs of works that Vostell had previously realised in North Rhine-Westphalia or designed for the region. The remaining containers held seven environments under the common title Die Liebe, der Tod und die Arbeit ("Love, Death and Work"). The project was financed by the state of North Rhine-Westphalia under the patronage of Minister-President Johannes Rau; the Museum am Ostwall in Dortmund was among the organisers.

The environments

Die Engel

Die Engel oder meine süße Augenweide ("The Angels, or My Sweet Feast for the Eyes") was lined with eight large-format paintings showing human figures uniting with angels, some wearing gas masks. Plastic chops were mounted onto the canvases.

Die Flüsse

In Die Flüsse oder jeder Mensch ist ein Kunstwerk ("The Rivers, or Every Person is an Artwork") visitors passed through a long, dark, narrow corridor. Seventeen doorbell buttons on the walls triggered, through hidden tape players, distorted excerpts from Giovanni Battista Pergolesi's Stabat Mater sung by the mezzo-soprano Teresa Berganza. The space alluded to the people deported to and murdered in concentration camps.

Die Tänze

Die Tänze oder die Menschenrechte sind Kunstwerke ("The Dances, or Human Rights are Artworks") presented a living room cast entirely in concrete. The concreted domestic space turned a place of rest into a cold environment and referred to the family as well as to the political systems divided by the Berlin Wall.

Die Winde

Die Winde oder die Medien ("The Winds, or the Media") was filled by a Mercedes-Benz 600. A television set in the radiator grille showed entering visitors as moving electronic portraits, recorded by a video camera on the dashboard. Smaller monitors in the bonnet, on the roof, and at the rear emitted static, and mirrors on the ceiling reflected the sets. Artificial logs glowed in the rear seat; behind the car, on a floor covered with coal, lay the limbless torso of a shop mannequin connected by a hose to a monitor. According to Erin Hanas, the torso referred to the cover of Der Spiegel of 13 April 1981, which showed the force-fed prisoner Gudrun Ensslin.

Die Steine

Die Steine oder die Herkunft des Menschen ("The Stones, or the Origin of Man") consisted of two round tables with telephones whose receivers were in many cases replaced or supplemented by animal bones. Some telephone cables led to empty jute sacks on the walls.

Die Wolken

Die Wolken oder der eiserne Vorhang ("The Clouds, or the Iron Curtain") was lined entirely with lead; moulded ears projected from the walls. On eight beds lay eight likewise lead-covered shop mannequins that were moved mechanically and struck against their casings. According to Hanas, the arrangement, which evoked a triage room, a morgue, or a shared coffin and pointed to surveillance during the Cold War, was based on a photograph showing a police officer photographing the dead in a New York morgue.

Die Feuer

In Die Feuer oder meine Kämme sind aus Zucker ("The Fires, or My Combs are Made of Sugar") the floor, apart from a narrow passage, was covered with the red Spanish paprika powder Pimentón de la Vera. On it lay seven taxidermied dogs with knives protruding from their bodies; dried peppers hung from the ceiling.

Stations

The train was open to the public for five days in each city and stood either in a railway station or on a square. The stations were Dortmund, Aachen, Mülheim, Hamm, Bochum, Wuppertal, Cologne, Remscheid, Oberhausen, Essen, Düsseldorf, Münster, Leverkusen, Duisburg, Gelsenkirchen, and Bonn.

Reception

The regional daily press reported on the project, among them the Rheinische Post and the Neue Ruhr Zeitung. Individual environments were later shown separately; Die Winde was included in 1984 in an exhibition on art and the automobile at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. The project was also the subject of a doctoral dissertation by Erin Hanas (Duke University, 2013).

Catalogue

The catalogue Vostell. Fluxus-Zug. Das mobile Museum (Verlag Frölich & Kaufmann, Berlin 1981, 159 pages) accompanied the project. It was conceived by Dagmar von Gottberg, with layout and typography by Vostell. Minister-President Johannes Rau wrote the foreword; further contributions came from Wilhelm Salber, Georg F. Schwarzbauer, Jürgen Schilling, Ernesto de Sousa, Richard Erny, and Karl Richter.

External links

• Fluxus Zug at Medien Kunst Netz

Category:1981 in art Category:Fluxus Category:Installation art Category:Culture of North Rhine-Westphalia Category:Art museums and galleries