Fluxus (from the Latin word meaning “flow”) has been interpreted by art critics as “the most radical and experimental art movement of the sixties”  and, in contrast, as “a wild-goose chase into the zone of everything ephemeral” (Harry Ruhé and Henry Martin, respectively, in Phillpot and Hendricks, 1988). More a state of mind than an art movement and impossible to define (Anderson, 1983), Fluxus was an international forum of artists, composers, and designers centered on—at least in its 1962–78 phase—George Maciunas, who was an organizing force for the movement. Rather than characterizing it in terms of a uniform style or attitude, one might better consider Fluxus as a platform for certain activities, as well as for the distribution and publicizing of artworks.

With its roots in Dada, a European avant-garde movement of the early twentieth century, Fluxus propagated “do-it-yourself” aesthetics in a prolific way while valuing simplicity over complexity. Fluxus operated somewhere between the performing and the visual arts, implementing a variety of expressive means, such as film, painting, sculpture, poetry, electronic media (including video and television), performance, happening, and event. Events with their short “scores,” Fluxus boxes, new music, and editions belong to the diversity of Fluxus’s creative output. Fluxus’s origins lie in the concepts of indeterminacy and experimental music that composer John Cage explored in the 1950s.