You could think of Fluxus as an international, utopian conspiracy to alter the world’s collective consciousness in favor of noncompetitive fun and games and other peaceable and pleasurable pursuits. Their weapons of choice were feeble jokes, verbal and visual puns, satiric publications and instructions for absurd performances. Bypassing the commercial gallery system, Fluxus novelties were meant to be sold cheaply by mail and in artist-run stores.
Many works were in the form of “Fluxkits”: transparent plastic, compartmentalized boxes containing small found objects. Maciunas’s “Excreta Fluxorum” (1973) is a collection of droppings from various animals, including cockroaches, turtles and rabbits. A compartment for a unicorn contains a white glass marble. Thus the method of Fluxus madness: use silliness to liberate the viewer from the usual categories of knowledge and the structures of power that keep them in place.