Summary: Collaborations in Modern and Postmodern Visual Arts | Ken Friedman For nearly five decades, the international Fluxus community has served as a laboratory of ideas in art and architecture, music and design. In 1966, Fluxus co-founder Dick Higgins sent a 16- year-old college student and avant-garde radio producer to meet Fluxus chairman and impresario George Maciunas. That youngster was Ken Friedman. Friedman planned on a career in the Unitarian ministry and a life as a theologian. Maciunas enrolled him in Fluxus. In a keynote presentation on community, culture, and context, Friedman will talk about a life in the Fluxus laboratory that unpacks the hermeneutics of collaboration. The talk will reflect on Fluxus as a way of life and Fluxus as an occasional but reluctant way of doing art. Ken Friedman is Professor of Design Theory and Strategic Design at Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne, and Dean of the Faculty of Design. Active since 1966 in the international laboratory known as Fluxus, he is also a practicing artist and designer. Friedman had his first solo exhibition in New York in 1966. He is represented in major museums around the world including the Museum of Modern Art and the Guggenheim Museum in New York, Tate Modern, London and the Hood Museum of Art at Dartmouth College. In 2007, Loughborough University awarded Friedman the degree of D.Sc. honoris causa for outstanding contributions to design research. Friedman's web page is located at URL: http://www.swinburne.edu.au/design/people/Professor-Ken-Friedman-ID22.html
