FluxBuddha

Our everyday relationship with time became a subject of artistic investigation with the emergence of the Fluxus art movement in the 1960s and 1970s. Fluxus grew to involve an international and interdisciplinary group of artists, including Yoko Ono, Joseph Beuys, and Nam June Paik creating time-based artworks. The movement’s deep connection to the American Zen Buddhist movement was helped through influential figures like John Cage, who believed one should embark on an artwork without a conception of its end. One might argue these Fluxus concepts are also found within the Tibetan Buddhist rituals of sand mandala and butter sculpture, which through their creation disrupt the same tendency to cling to time and identity. The impermanence and non-attachment these activities promote make their creation and destruction equally important.

Conceived by professor and “Flux-Happener” Christopher Kelley, FluxBuddha is an interdisciplinary performance art concert in eight parts. With experimental neuroscience interactions by Future Fellow David Eagleman, FluxBuddha is receiving its first performance at the Rubin Museum.

Through live performance, notions of time and identity will be disrupted. Instructions are simple: Open mind gently. Avoid familiar thought patterns.

Brainwave is supported in part by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council.

About the Speaker

Christopher “Doc” Kelley is an adjunct professor, consciousness hacker, Flux-Happener, and Buddhist psychonaut (among other things). He holds a doctorate in Buddhist Studies from Columbia University, where he studied under the guidance of Professor Robert A. F. Thurman, and he currently teaches classes at Eugene Lang College at the New School University.