French Fluxus artist Robert Filliou's (1926-1987) conceptual artworks challenge the role of art in everyday life and its status as a final product. His conceptual strategies and innovative techniques utilize “poor” art mediums, such as every day objects that are spread through poetry, performance and video. Filliou established himself as a “happenings maestro” and an “action poet”, and believing that art can happen any time, at any place, called on the participation of the public to complete his art and make it work.

Trained in economics and Buddhist thought, Filliou and his wife Marianne, withdrew for 3 years 3 months and 3 days to a Buddhist centre at Les Eyzies in the Dordogne (France). For Filliou, the work of art was a means of direct action on the world. Like the Brahmin who attempts to integrate all the acts in life with his religious rites and duties, Filliou attempted to integrate them with artistic duty,  “without worrying about whether the works are distributed or not”: “When you make , it is art, when you finish, it is non-art, when you exhibit, it is anti-art.”

“I am not just interested in art, but in society of which art is one aspect. I am interested in the world as a whole, a whole of which society is one part. I am interested in the universe, of which the world is only one fragment. I am interested primarily in the Constant Creation of which the universe is only one product.”

Robert Filliou: Catalogue raisonne des editions & multiples, livres et videos, Les Presses du reel, 2003. Cat no 66