In celebration of the 50th anniversary of Fluxus—the international laboratory of art, architecture, design and music—Swinburne University of Technology has released a free digital copy of The Fluxus Reader.
Fluxus began in the 1950s as a loose, international community of artists, architects, composers and designers. By the 1960s, Fluxus had become a laboratory of ideas and an arena for artistic experimentation in Europe, Asia and the United States. Described as ‘the most radical and experimental art movement of the 1960s’, Fluxus has challenged conventional thinking on art and culture for half a century. Fluxus artists had a central role in the birth of such key contemporary art forms as concept art, installation, performance art, intermedia and video. Despite this influence, the scope and scale of this unique phenomenon have made it difficult to explain Fluxus in normative historical and critical terms.
In The Fluxus Reader, editor Ken Friedman offers the first comprehensive overview of this challenging and controversial group. The Fluxus Reader is written by leading scholars and experts from Europe, the United States and Australia.
First published in 1998, the book was out of print for several years and only available from rare book dealers and galleries. To celebrate the 50th anniversary of Fluxus in 2012, Swinburne University arranged for a complete digital edition in PDF format, copy-enabled with full search features.
To download The Fluxus Reader please visit
hdl.handle.net/1959.3/42234
Ken Friedman is now University Distinguished Professor and Dean of the Faculty of Design at Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne, Australia. Friedman is a practicing artist and designer active in the international Fluxus laboratory.
Friedman had his first solo exhibition in New York in 1966. His work is represented in major museums and galleries around the world, including the Museum of Modern Art and the Guggenheim Museum in New York, the Tate Modern in London, the Hood Museum of Art at Dartmouth College, and Stadtsgalerie Stuttgart.
The University of Iowa Alternative Traditions in the Contemporary Arts is the official repository of Friedman’s papers and research notes. The Silverman Fluxus Collection at the Museum of Modern Art, Archiv Sohm at Stadtsgalerie Stuttgart and the Mandeville Department of Special Collections at the University of California also hold extensive archives on Friedman’s work of the 1960s and 1970s.
Swinburne University of Technology is based in Melbourne, Australia. Swinburne’s PhD program in design is recognised as among the world’s best, as is the design research unit. The Faculty of Design has a history of cutting-edge teaching and revolutionary programs such as Design Anthropology, Product Design Engineering, Design & Business, Communication Design, Industrial Design, and Interior Design.
Swinburne Design began its Industry Placement program in the 1970s, and in 2011 year opened the Swinburne Design Factory in collaboration with Aalto University of Helsinki, Finland.