Ken Friedman, Myth begins as form, 1987, 1990, Silkscreen on cloth, 140 × 162 cm, Edition of 30
Courtesy of Archivio Conz, Berlin
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Grid of six pieces silkscreened on cloth, which may be cut into six individual pieces as each is signed, numbered, and dated.
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Ken Friedman is a design researcher and artist associated with Fluxus. From 1966 onwards, although very young at the time, he was involved by George Maciunas in numerous collaborations with Fluxus, eventually becoming head of Fluxus West and General Manager of Dick Higgins’s Something Else Press in the early 1970s. Conceived as one of the four branches of the Fluxus organizational structure envisioned by Maciunas, Fluxus West, directed by Friedman, linked together artists from the western United States and soon became a prolific and emblematic reality. In 1967, Friedman purchased a Volkswagen bus later named Fluxmobile, with which Fluxus West began touring across the United States, giving lectures, performing concerts, and disseminating leaflets. Shortly after, through the collaboration with Mike Weaver, Friedman founded the international Fluxshoe, a traveling exhibition active for a whole year between 1969 and 1970. Spontaneously and with great involvement, many artists participated with performances and graphic works mailed to Friedman. The eponymous catalog published in 1972 collected interventions by Ay-O, Joseph Beuys, George Brecht, Ugo Carrera, Henri Chopin, Robert Filliou, and many others. Parallel to his active contribution to Fluxus through 1992, Friedman held prestigious academic positions. He graduated from San Francisco State University in 1971 and received a doctorate from the United States International University in San Diego in 1976. A thinker and innovator, Friedman was Director of the Institute for Advanced Studies in Contemporary Art in San Diego. As a professor, he has taught in Oslo and Copenhagen, was chair of the Faculty of Design at the Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne, and currently teaches at Tongji University in Shanghai. In 2007, he received an honorary doctorate from Loughborough University in the United Kingdom. Friedman is also a prolific author and writer. His numerous articles in international journals and anthologies, such as The Fluxus Performance Workbook (1990) and A Fluxus Reader (1998), are indispensable sources for a historical and theoretical understanding of Fluxus. Friedman’s scores, correspondence, and papers are preserved in major museums worldwide, including The Museum of Modern Art and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, the Tate Modern in London, the Hood Museum of Art at Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire, and the Staatsgalerie Stuttgart.
