Join us for a conversation about the avant-garde art and music of Fluxus and Zaj – movements that sprang up in the 1960s in New York and Spain and which continue to resonate with artists and musicians today.
About the participants:
Alice Centamore, together with Christian Xatrec, curated the exhibition “Call it Something Else: Something Else Press, Inc. (1963-74)” which presents the objects and activities of Dick Higgins's experimental publishing house. This exhibition is on view at the Reina Sofía Museum until January 22. Alice is an art historian, editor, and archivist based in New York. She is the editor of A Something Else Reader (2024), an anthology of writings from Something Else Press authors, and Fluxus Newspaper, a complete collection of the newspapers issued by the Fluxus collective between 1964 and 1979 (forthcoming spring 2024). Her research on her has been supported by a fellowship from the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts.
Iñaki Estella is associate professor in the Department of Art History at the Complutense University of Madrid. His research deals with art since 1945, performance art, and art historiography. His publications include George Maciunas: History, bureaucracy and community (2020), one of the first monographs on the Fluxus artist Maciunas, Fluxus (2010), the co-editions of Call it performance (2012) and the first four volumes of Disagreements: about art, policies and the public sphere in the Spanish State (MACBA). Iñaki has been visiting researcher at Columbia University, MoMA, the Getty Research Institute, and the Sohm Archive (Stuttgart). In Madrid, he has lectured at the Universidad Autónoma and the Universidad Carlos III. He has given lectures in several cities in Spain, Santiago de Chile, Providence (RI), New York, St. Petersburg and other cities. In 2012, as part of the celebration of the 50th anniversary of the Wiesbaden Fluxus concerts, I curated the exhibition “Fluxus to the People” at the Reina Sofía Museum, which included an exhibition of documents, a concert, and a Flux-Olympiad. He is currently researching the notion of artistic networks in the second half of the 20th century.
Henar Riviere is Assistant Professor in the Department of Art History at the Complutense University in Madrid. She has been Research and Project Manager at Archivo Lafuente, Santander (Spain). She was awarded predoctoral and postdoctoral and scholarships at institutions such as the Freie Universität Berlin and the Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles. She is a scholar of Fluxus, Zaj and the new intermedia, performative and conceptual art practices developed from the end of the 1950s onwards. Her particular focus is action art, sound art and experimental writing, on which she recently edited the book Writing subject. Between the sign and abstraction in the era of intermedia (1950-1980), (Madrid, Editorial CSIC, 2022). In connection with this, her most recent line of research centers on mail art, as well as on the archival practices developed by the exponents of these expanded artistic practices. She has curated and co-curated exhibitions on Fluxus and Zaj artists in institutions such as Galerie Krinzinger in Vienna, the Akademie der Künste in Berlin, the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Castilla y León (MUSAC) and the Centro Andaluz de Arte Contemporáneo (CAAC ) in Seville.
Sonia Megias is a composer and multidisciplinary artist based in Santa Pola, Alicante. She completed a Master's in Musical Theory and Composition at NYU in 2011 on a Fulbright scholarship, and it was during her time in New York that she composed the mini-opera “Puerta colgada del vacuum” together with Vanessa Montfort and with the poetry and support of Teo Millán. Sonia is the director of the “CoroDelantal” choir, which has members in Alicante, Madrid and New York, and she forms half of the duo “Dúa de Pel, together with Eva Guillamón. In the spirit of Fluxus and Zaj, Sonia is also the founder of her own publishing company, “EdicionesDelantal”.