UbuWeb

UbuWeb has hundreds, perhaps thousands, of videos, sound files, and texts. When I started the draft for this post in April of 2006, (procrastination is sometimes a fault, sometimes a virtue) the first video listed was of Abbie Hoffman making gefilte fish, a huge download (180 mb., MP4) just to watch an anti-war activist cooking fish. [Now, of course, UbuWeb has streaming video and audio.] But, hey, I did it and I think it is always good to see an iconic figure doing everyday tasks. It reminds us that ordinary people can do extra-ordinary things. For more info on Hoffman, see his Wikipedia entry or do a Google search.

One of UbuWeb's excellent resources is the material it has on Fluxus. 37 Short Fluxus Films shows those films in MPEG format. It may take a while to load, but all 37 files will show as black boxes on one page and each can be played from there. The resources listed at the bottom of the page link to other UbuWeb Fluxus material. The film and video section lists "over 300 avant-garde films and videos" (not all by Fluxus artists) and is well worth browsing. As for me, I'm looking at a "dada film by Marcel Duchamp" before I upload this blog entry. Incidently, Duchamp was born in 1887, not 1940.

Read their FAQ which is a good explanation of UbuWeb's reason for being.