Label Power
Over the past 20 years psychologists have been discussing the power that labelling has over perception. People are inclined to view things according to how things are labelled. For psychotherapists, concerns have been raised that once a person has been labelled with the name of a mental illness, that person is no longer seen as being anything besides the name of their illness.I have been exploring the power of labels in my Fluxus work. By labelling (literally) a place as a Fluxus Free Zone, that place becomes a Fluxus Free Zone. Even if the person reading the label does not know what Fluxus is, they are now seeing the place in the context of its label. They "know" that they are in a Fluxus Free Zone even if they don't know what a Fluxus Free Zone is. The labelling is equally effective for people who do know what Fluxus is. Those people must now reflect on whether or not they agree with the label, and on what makes the labelled location a Fluxus Free Zone. The same principle applies to the objects and mail-art that I label as Official Fluxus Objects. By labelling objects as Fluxus objects they become Fluxus objects.
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