Vanamie Art and Info Blog

Have just stumbled upon letters of Robert Filliou to Allan Kaprow (both belonging to the Fluxus group), written in 1967. All these crazy, ridiculous, crazily ridiculous ideas. One wonders how an artistic evolution could come to being on such fundaments. (But it did!)

(...) In an Institute of Permanent Creation, we might work on "gap-filling" games, and new ways of communicating on the individual, group, and international levels.
We might develop anti-brainwashing devices. Or anti-erosion programs. Toward that end, we might make a study of people with a gift for living, in any walk of life. We might map pit new areas of communication (...). We might investigate other gaps.
SEXUAL GAP: no need to elaborate. The sexual revolution must go on.
MIND GAP: it seems that the human brain is too slow to grasp the universe, or everything happens in the world at the same time, for that matter; or too gfast to stick to one particular practical problem: it spills over, then, and bad thought drives out the good. (...)
We might develop tools of self-awareness (...). And ways and means to put all these tools into practise (performances, toys, games, events, happenings, etc....). I need not elaborate, because in my mind all these things must be studied by the students and the artist. It is essential. (...) Think of what other artists like Cage, Brecht, etc.... might bring up, I mean man, just imagine what the students could get out of direct concrete contacts with such people, and these with such students. (...)
The artist should not try to influence anyone. (...) For remember, Allan, bulls die, and bullfighters too, eventually, but bull fighting is eternal. L[e] rêve des hommes fait [l']événement.