Barbara Moore was an active member of Fluxus during the 1960s and 70s (as was her husband Peter Moore, the photographer) and after Maciunas’ death was left with many of the latter’s inventory. Moore opened her bookshop dealing in historic avant grade material (with an emphasis on Flusus) and in the early 1980s began to recreate the original Fluxus boxes issued by Maciunas by utilising the original parts that she had found in the artist’s estate and by sourcing the original producers of the parts where none were available.
These “continuation edition” works were designated by Moore as “REFLUX” items and on the boxes and other publications she would emboss stamp that label to clearly distinguish them from the originals.
It was easy at first to find Reflux boxes – one turned up at Moore’s bookshop “open by chance or by design” and if Barbara was in a good mood you could sit and chat and buy them for tens of dollars. Other times one might find her a little difficult (I once arrived for an appointment but made the mistake of visiting her next door neighbour first – a former partner in the building lease but later had gone sour – she was annoyed and left me outside her door for an hour until I said I was going at which point she deemed to let me into the office.
The Reflux boxes included items by Maciunas, Yoko Ono, Robert Watts, Ken Friedman, George Brecht, ben Vautier to name just a few and they were some of the first Fluxus related items I could afford to buy (later I could buy originals but these sated my curiosity to begin with,
When Bound and Unbound closed in the early naughties Printed Matter took over the distribution of the various publications – they still sell a few of the remaining stock but most have long gone and the prices of Reflux boxes have soared in recent years.
Below is a collection of the Reflux Boxes we have for sale but you may enjoy perusing them in any case.