by Kevin Reynolds
from Basta! v1n3 (Winter/Spring 1998)
NOTE: After this letter was published, © BUFFLUXUS, a pen-name for nobody and everybody involved with Basta!, was used as the byline for several articles published anonymously, as well as a few art pieces. A few years later, sound-poet/performer Michael Basinski added an F and created the Bufffluxus Group, an anarchic performance and sound ensemble named after and at least partly inspired by this entry in Basta! The letter was received in the form of 4 scraps of paper penned by Kevin Reynolds while he was working at the Peggy Guggenheim Museum in Venice, where he received the Federman issue of Basta! and was compelled to respond.
CRAIG,
Your long article on Beckett, Buffalo and Maximillian inspired me to do my first visual piece since late '96. And I'll sell it to you for $8,000 out of my studio or $16,000 from my dealer/gallery in Venice:
© BUFFLUXUS
***
Most people think of Venice's heyday as somewhere between the end of the fourteenth and the end of the sixteenth centuries. Between 1600 & 1797 (the fall of the Republic), Venice consisted primarily of pimps, gamblers, whores, politicians, thieves . . . and artists. No glory, just misery. And the artists were visionary liars––if only there existed a Venice such as they portrayed it! Napoleon––and later, the Austrians––justified conquering Venice by emphasizing the low degree of moral fiber consistent with its being a capital-driven society––just as in America the rust-belt stigma justifies ignoring older industrial, commerce-driven cities like Buffalo––or worse, conquering them with corporate "sophistications" like chain stores. The similarities between the 2 cities do not end there: originally, the prestige associated with Venice's heyday stemmed from its strategic––and ultimately accidental––location, which made it an ideal east-west sea-port, very much like Buffalo in its time. Further, peopled with sea-merchants and governed by commerce, with a constant influx of foreigners arriving from east and west, Venice's importance declined when in 1497 Vasco da Gama's newly discovered sea-route to the east (around Africa's Cape of Good Hope) rendered the city obsolete––just as the Welland Canal sealed Buffalo's fate at the apex of its prominence. As Venice had done over three hundred years before, Buffalo soon fell into the hands of artists and thieves. Unfortunately, now Venice is the cultural center of the 3 richest regions in the world; however, as the rest of N. Italty is embracing succession or autonomy, the city of Venice remains firmly to the left, having just re-elected a mayor who is endorsed by all of Italty's major Socialist and Communist parties.
***
This fall working at the Guggenheim I was required to give a presentation to the faculty and other interns on whatever topic I desired. Knowing only that I did not want to follow the paths of my European piers, whose ground-breaking formal analyses of Kandinsky and Cubism nearly drove me to fire a pistol indiscriminately into an unsuspecting crowd, I decided on Fluxus (certainly you know about it, but if not, I tell you, it's more Dada than Dada and is all about destruction of construction, and of art and medium––it was perfect because I was researching the movement when I got Basta!. What you wrote about Buffalo living its own death and the artist's role in confronting the silence associated with this death made perfect sense to me; thus I have named this activity Buffluxus (or Neo-Fluxus, or Neo-Neo-Dada [as Fluxus is the most Dada of Neo-Dada]).
***
5 Propositions for the New Neo-Dada (Buffluxus)
1. Find a building about to be destroyed (in Buffalo, simply close your eyes and point). Sign your name to it (after all, you are the artist!) moments before it is to crash to the ground.
"It's true, Anyone can be a Dadaist [or do Fluxus], but even preconception is ephemeral. I'm part of a generation of true Dadaists."
2. Sign your name to everyone listed as "terminal" at the E.R.
3. Mom and Dad are better Buffluxusists that you or I.
4. I've said the word "Buffluxus" several times already and now it's beginning to mean something.
5. The Movement is now over.