Robert Watts: A Flux Atlas

24-compartment transparent plastic box with lid, 13 1/8 x 9 1/8 x 2 1/4 inches. Each compartment contains a unique rock with a printed card giving its location of origin. The rocks were all gathered in the mid-1970's from a worldwide network of colleagues of George Maciunas, who published the original edition at that time. Thus, each box represents a different geographical accumulation. Rocks from the original collection; reprinted Maciunas-designed label and cards; new box. (There is one at MoMA and ReFlux Edition authorized by the Robert Watts estate).

This Fluxus edition is one example of how the members of the geographically-dispersed Fluxus community could work to each other's mutual benefit. In the April, 1973 Fluxnewsletter, Maciunas sent out a call for assistance: "We need about 50 pebbles...from specific and well described locations (country, town vicinity, which beach or shore, which sea, lake or river). This is for a large Geography box by Bob Watts, which will contain pebbles from various parts of the world....All contributors will receive a box in return." In its emphasis on collective artistic production and worldwide geographic distribution, it is closely aligned with works like Mieko (Chieko) Shiomi's series of "Spatial Poems" (M26472-M26475). Where Shiomi's works existed as coordinated but ultimately ephemeral actions, gaining their physical form through the gathering of information, Watts' edition gathers physical matter itself. As is often the case, much of the work necessary to transform the object from a "box of rocks" into a "Flux Atlas" is performed by Maciunas' label design. The compartmentalization of the designation "a flux atlas by bob watts" on the label mirrors the structure of the box's interior. The label's graphic association with a premodern cartographic tradition both indicates that this atlas is founded on actual experience rather than on rational, scientific principles, and participates in the longstanding Fluxus appropriation of outmoded graphic idioms.