In 2008, the artist and designer Perry Garvin formed the performance group FLUXCONCERT to explore Fluxus event scores though a series of public performances. This documentation shows Garvin performing George Brecht’s Drip Music (Drip Event) (1959–62) at Triskelion Arts in Brooklyn, New York, in February 2009. Garvin can be seen following the performance convention of using a ladder, but he innovates with his use of a cloth to help control and accentuate individual drips.
Here, living Fluxus artists (Alison Knowles, among others, was in the audience) witnessed a younger generation of artists and musicians, many born long after the original wave of Fluxus activities had ceased, return to these historical pieces and animate them anew. This footage shows that the event clearly belongs to a new technological era, in which images and video documentation can be snapped with a cell phone camera and easily shared online. Nevertheless, the audience response is remarkably similar to earlier performances from over fifty years ago.
In contrast to the 1979 concert at The Kitchen, Garvin’s goal in 2008 “was not to create historical recreations but simply to reanimate the works in the fleeting present,” privileging “the radically democratic and anti-institutional approach the work embodied.” More specifically, Garvin recalls of his realization of Drip Music: “I remember trying to be as immobile as possible during the dripping so that all audience attention would be focused on the water and the sound. My quick inversion of the empty vessel at the end was intended to mark the conclusion of the event and, practically, to prevent spillage!” (correspondence from Perry Garvin to Natilee Harren, 2017).
