Flux With Us

For a movement with such giddy disdain for being told what to do, the merry pranksters of Fluxus sure left a lot of instructions, from Yoko Ono's dance festival how-to ("face the wall throughout the year and imagine banging your head against it") to Ben Vautier's iconic "Total Art Matchbox" ("Use these matches to destroy all art"). In fact, the genius of Fluxus was realizing that anarchy isn't chaos; it's a program programmed against itself. To make anti-art, you needed anti-rules. Luckily, these anti-rules ("scores," they called them, in a nod to composer John Cage) have been collected over the decades and made available to the public as "workbooks." This Friday, a local group of artists calling themselves the Fluxus Workshop Collective will "flux" some workbook classics at the White Page gallery. Expect chance, absurdity, and a lot of highbrow head-scratching. Should be … happening. (Fri. 6-9 p.m., $5 suggested donation, 3400 Cedar Av. S., Mpls. the-white-page.org)

GREGORY J. SCOTT