Series No.2: Drips, Bangs, and Silence: How Sound Made Fluxusand Happenings Happen

Focusing on the emergence of Fluxus and Happenings in the 1950s-60s, this lecture will explore the decisive role of sound in the artistic transformation of the period. We will trace back to John Cage’s perception of ambience, and the development of “Event Score” as a crucial hinge that utilizes minimal text notation to liberate sound from predetermined temporal structures, drawing the audience’s collective attention and stimulating their perceptions in an open setting.

Through works like George Brecht’s Drip Music, Yoko Ono’s Voice Piece for Soprano, and Nam June Paik’s Random Access, we will show how artists use sound to challenge authorship, cross media boundaries, and turn daily scenarios into shared experiences. The lecture will follow the continuation of such strategies in contemporary sound art, revealing the core of Fluxus: using sound to reconfigure the way we perceive things, are present, and coexist in a space.