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about art’s birthday:
The idea of Art’s Birthday grew out from Filliou’s concept
of ‘permanent creation’ (1963), “He proclaimed: close
the schools and the factories! Let the people eat cake and make art!
And the next year let it be two days of holiday, then three days, then
four, five, six and so on, until every day is Art’s Birthday,
at which point everyone can get on with the art of living.”
/Anna Fritz: Art’s birthday/.
Permanent creation is a model of creative activity that Filliou summarized
in 1978 as “whatever you do, do something else, whatever you think-think
something else”. Between 1965 and 1968 Filliou and another Fluxus
artist, George Brecht organised ‘La Cédille qui sourit’
(The Smiling Cedilla), a ‘non-shop’ in a small village in
France, which became the international centre of permanent creation.
Their aim was to close the gap between art and life and to “join
artists and audience in a common creation” /Filliou/. The
place had to be closed after three years due to financial problems,
which then gave the basis of their new idea of La Fête Permanente
(Eternal Network) to disseminate La Cédille’s idea and
activities through (at that time postal) communication between artists
and practitioners around the world. As Filliou later explained: “the
artist must realize (…) that he is part of a wider network, La
Fête Permanente (Eternal Network) going on around him all the
time in all parts of the world”. /Filliou/
Since Filliou’s death in 1987, every year more and more people
join to the Eternal Network to celebrate Art’s Birthday in the
spirit of Fluxus* and of the permanent creation “based on joy,
humor, detachment, goodwill and participation.…"
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Roddy Hunter |