Professor Ken Friedman, a famous Fluxus artist, who founded an international experimental laboratory of arts, architecture, design, literature and music, visited Vilnius for work in mid-February. Currently. he is Dean of the Faculty of Design at Swinburne University of Technology, Melbourne, Australia. He also teaches at the Department of Culture, Communication, and Language at the Norwegian School of Management in Oslo, and at the Design Research Center at Denmark’s Design School in Copenhagen.
Friedman was a good friend of George Maciunas and when he found out that there is a Fluxus exhibition on at the Jonas Mekas Visual Arts Center in Vilnius, he definitely wanted to see it. At this time, the center’s premier exhibition, The Avant-Garde: From Futurism to Fluxus, is being closed, but it was reopened for professor K. Friedman. He stopped at every work of George Maciunas presented at the exhibition and told stories about how these works of art were created. Professor Friedman also shared his memories and impressions of G. Maciunas.
Friedman has done research in the philosophy of science, the philosophy of design, and doctoral education in design. He works with national design policy projects in Estonia and Latvia, helping these countries to create industrial design policies that help them to remain competitive in global markets.