Ken Friedman

Ken Friedman (19 September 1949, New London, Connecticut) is Chair Professor of Design Innovation Studies at Tongji University College of Design and Innovation and Eminent Scholar at the University of Cincinnati College of Design, Art, Architecture, and Planning. He is Professor Emeritus at Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne, Australia, where he formerly served as Dean of the Faculty of Design. Friedman is editor-in-chief of She Ji: The Journal of Design, Economics, and Innovation published by Elsevier in cooperation with Tongji University Press. He is co-editor of the Design Thinking, Design Theory book series from The MIT Press.

Friedman works at the intersection of design, management, and art. His research focuses on strategic design and value creation for economic innovation. Friedman has done research in theory construction, research methodology, philosophy of design, doctoral education in design, knowledge management, and philosophy of science. He has done design policy studies for Australia, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Norway, and Wales. In 2007, Loughborough University awarded him the degree of Doctor of Science, honoris causa, for outstanding contributions to design research.

Ken Friedman is an artist and designer active in the international laboratory of art, design, music, and architecture known as Fluxus. He had his first solo exhibition in New York in 1966. His work is represented in museums and galleries around the world, including the Museum of Modern Art and the Guggenheim Museum in New York, the Tate Gallery in London, the Hood Museum of Art at Dartmouth College, and Stadtsgalerie Stuttgart.

The University of Iowa Alternative Traditions in the Contemporary Arts is the official repository of Friedman’s papers and research notes. The Silverman Fluxus Collection at the Museum of Modern Art, Archiv Sohm at Stadtsgalerie Stuttgart and the Mandeville Department of Special Collections at the University of California hold extensive archives on Friedman’s work of the 1960s and 1970s. (2019)

Publications

• Chronology of Fluxus West, 1966-1970, 1970, 9 pp.
• "Flowing in Omaha", Art and Artists, London, Aug 1973.
• "Mail Art History" The Fluxus Factor", Flue 4:3-4, Winter 1984, pp 18-24.
• editor, Fluxus Virus, 1962-1992, Cologne: Galerie Schüppenhauer, 1992, 399 pp. Catalogue. (German)/(English)
• editor, The Fluxus Reader, Academy Editions, 1998, 309 pp.
• editor, with Owen Smith and Lauren Sawchyn, The Fluxus Performance Workbook, new ed., Performance Research, 2002, 117 pp.
• editor, with Owen Smith, Performance Research 7(3): "On Fluxus", Routledge, Sep 2002, 142 pp.
• editor, Visible Language 39(3): "Fluxus and Legacy", Sep 2005, PDF.
• "History, Historiography, Historicism, Legacy", Visible Language 39:3, Sep 2005, pp 308-317.
• editor, with Owen F. Smith, Visible Language 40(1): "Fluxus After Fluxus", Jan 2006, PDF.
• "The Literature of Fluxus", Visible Language 40:1, Jan 2006, pp 90-112.
• "Working Together", in Artistic Bedfellows: Histories, Theories, and Conversations in Collaborative Art Practices, ed. Holly Crawford, University Press of America, 2008.
• Ken Friedman: 99 Events, 1956-2009, New York: Stendhal Gallery, 2009, 140 pp. Catalogue.
• "Fluxus: A Laboratory of Ideas", in Fluxus and the Essential Questions of Life, ed. Jacquelynn Baas, Hood Museum of Art, 2011, pp 35-44.
• with Lily Díaz, "Intermedia, Multimedia and Media", in Adaptation and Convergence of Media, eds. Lily Díaz, Magda Dragu, and Leena Eilittä, Espoo: Aalto University, 2018, pp 26-60. [1]
• Ken Friedman: 92 Events, Kalmar: Kalmar konstmuseum, 2023, 175 pp. Catalogue. Exhibition.
• more

Interviews

• Martin Grennberger, ”Here, it’s personal”, Kunstkritikk, Feb 2023.
  • "– Här är det personligt", Kunstkritikk, Feb 2023. (Swedish)

Literature

• Peter Frank, "Ken Friedman: The Fluxus Years", Helsinki: Oy Wärtsilä Ab Arabia, 1987.
• Jon Hendricks, "Ken Friedman", in Fluxus Codex, Detroit: Gilbert and Lila Silverman Fluxus Collection, and New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1988, pp 251-258.
• Estera Milman, "Ken Friedman: Art(net)worker Extra-Ordinare", in Milman, Alternative Traditions in the Contemporary Arts: Subjugated Knowledges and the Balance of Power, University of Iowa Museum of Art, 1999.
• Peter Frank, "Ken Friedman: A Life in Fluxus", in Artistic Bedfellows: Histories, Theories, and Conversations in Collaborative Art Practices, ed. Holly Crawford, Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 2008, pp 145-186.

See also

• Omaha Flow Systems exhibition, 1972.

Links

• Academia.edu
• Wikipedia
• Friedman in Fluxus West Digital Collection, U Iowa. [2]