Wednesday, August 6, 2014

Jack Coke's Farmer's Co-Op | Find the End:



Jack Coke's Farmer's Co-Op
Find the End: A Fluxgame
New York City, USA: ReFlux, circa 1991
12 X 9 cm.
Edition size unknown


In early 1967 George Maciunas received a parcel containing ideas for new works, which he initially attributed to Paul Sharits. The artist wrote Maciunas in the Spring to clarify: “your newsletter really freaked me out (I thought ‘wow, did i send all that stuff to george? i can’t even remember making any of it’)”. He then explains that the proposed works came from the students of Jack Coke, who taught alongside Sharits at the St. Cloud State College. Coke had been impressed with the early Flux Boxes and had assigned that his students should make their own. Sharits continued, “so, credit for that should go to the 'st. cloud state college farmer’s cooperative' (most of the kids up here are from farms and thought it would be nice to label themselves as such…weird kids, eh?!”

There is zero information online about Coke’s time at St Cloud (the above comes from Jon Hendricks’ comprehensive Fluxus Codex) but several Fluxus works were advertised by the collective, and at least two produced - Find the End and Human Flux Trap.

The box label is designed by Maciunas and includes a series of strings  knavishly knotted together. This Reflux reissue was released in the early nineties. The Fluxus version was advertised (for $3) in 1967.

Available from Printed Matter, here, for $45.00 US.

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