FluxBooks

The depersonalisation of art and the formulation performance practice tending towards the idea that “everything is art” found a privileged communication space in books.
In this scenario, books began to lose their conventional form and were expanded to elevate uncertainty and chaos as supporting structures for ideas. So it was no coincidence that the first deliberate experiments with the book medium, conducted with an alternative vision on that “medium-space” which was to be given the name “artist’s books”, began in the 1960s. 

This occurred particularly in the fluxus environment, as noted by kate linker, where intermedial activities had their greatest impact on this new vision. Marc goethais points out how fluxus litrally laid the foundations of a new laungae, preparing a terrain which was later occupied and further explored by conceptual artists. For the fluxus artitst books provided the opportunity for an open space, and one that was, above all public. “in a situation where the book and media industry were blocking access and imposing restrictions the only alternative was for atists to publish their own work” Writes dick Higgins. From that moment, the visual features and normal functions of the book would be comprised in favour of a new potentional indetiy that became increasly less hybrid and more identiable as an artwork rather than a product intended to convey the artists work. Thus books, as a support space for various images, texts, sign and materials was totally versatile in terms of format and content, were found to be the optimum intermedial product. Moreover the fact that they could be easily and inexpensively reproduced made them an ideal tool for the project of democratic dissemination of culture.

“Having dispensed with their official role and elitist nature, Fluxus books occupied an entirely clandestine position, shirking conventional forms—not only in terms of their conception, creation, distribution and proposal—breaking all commercial ties and assuming the role of an instrument of struggle to make an impact, in their own way, on the dichotomy between life and art. This allowed artists to enjoy full autonomy in the production of their works and to become their own publishers, as well as to make use of new printing processes, often at a low cost, for broader distribution (stencils, photocopies, offset).
Books replaced museums, art galleries and theaters, and thus had to contain not only their usual informative capacities, but also the intermedial potential of artistic practice. They became events as well as containers of thoughts and images, and the physical presence of artistic objects. The traditional structure of the book object was found increasingly inadequate to contain all this, so it was transformed into a boîte, container, binder or box. [...]
The fluxus artists bookshed the physical qualities associated with books, together with their convetional forms of distribution: art galleries and books shops were replaced by a system of communication and distribution without intermediaries. Both critics and curators lost their promotional roles, being replaced by the new artists, who could now distribute and present their own work. – This Is a big step in how we distrubte
The fluxus book was brought to the world by the movements own uncompromising system, with its own distribution channels and capacity to regard the entire planet as territory to be conquered by the new thinking.
The need to distribute the word and the rediscored affinity between art and everyday life meant that the new artists books were seldom “unique” or limited editions, but rather multiples printed in an indefinite number of copys.