Robert Filliou Biography
Robert Filliou (Sauve, 1926 – Les Eyzies-de-Tayac-Sireuil, 1987) joined the Fluxus movement in 1962, working with irony on the mixing of genres. The theme of creation, not linked to a condition of "privilege" of the artist, but contained in all individuals, even those who normally are not aware of it, is the substratum of all his research. His works therefore also undermine the barriers of art, sharing with George Maciunas, Nam June Paik, Emmett Williams, Arthur Köpcke, Josef Beuys the same urgency to contradict and reject traditional aesthetic categories, operating between different media, from performance to '“action poetry” to the video. After studying economics from 1948 to 1951 at the University of California in Los Angeles, Filliou participated for three years, on behalf of the United Nations, in a program aimed at South Korea, an experience which, together with the trip to Japan, allowed him to learn about philosophy Zen, who played a fundamental role in the development of his research. Returning to Paris in 1958, Filliou dedicated himself to writing, preferring to consider himself, even later, more than an artist and above all a poet-writer. Over time, the interest in writing leads to a reflection on the possibilities of the text to operate on unpredictable boundaries, which give rise to performances such as, in 1960, Le Collage de l'immortelle mort du monde, a decomposed and casual transcription of a theatrical text, in where the disarticulation of conventional rules opens up semantic possibilities that are not always controllable.
