# Before the Internet Made Everything a Performance, New Jersey Artists Were Already Doing It. 2026-10-30 · New Jersey · Culture Long before social media turned everyday activities into shareable content, a group of experimental artists at Rutgers was challenging the boundaries between ordinary life and art. Long before social media turned everyday activities into shareable content, a group of experimental artists at Rutgers was challenging the boundaries between ordinary life and art. --- In January 1969, students gathered inside Voorhees Chapel at Douglass College in New Brunswick for what would become a particularly unusual assembly. Artist Geoffrey Hendricks arranged for a massive sheet of plastic to descend over the audience. Performers wrestled, wrapped one another in toilet paper and rearranged stacks of white boxes. The performance, called The Sky Is the Limit, was part of a larger artistic revolution taking shape in New Jersey. Its participants weren’t particularly interested in making art that stayed politely inside a museum. They wanted to make everyday life part of the performance. During the 1960s and 1970s, Rutgers became an important center for Fluxus, an international experimental arts movement that challenged conventional ideas about creativity, artistic authority and what qualified as art. The Rutgers circle included Geoffrey Hendricks, Robert Watts and Allan Kaprow, whose influential “Happenings” similarly transformed ordinary situations into artistic experiences. Their work could incorporate music, movement, common household objects, audience participation and deliberate absurdity. Sometimes the experiments were controversial. A 1970 performance at Voorhees Chapel called Flux-Mass reimagined elements of religious ceremony, attracting both critical attention and public condemnation. 2 But provocation wasn’t the entire point. Fluxus challenged the assumption that art required a conventional masterpiece or a specially trained audience. A familiar object, an unexpected gesture or an ordinary activity could become meaningful when someone invited others to experience it differently. More than half a century later, Rutgers is revisiting that legacy. As part of the 50th anniversary celebration of its Mason Gross School of the Arts, the Rutgers Filmmaking Center produced FLUXUS/RUTGERS, a 13-minute documentary examining the experimental artists who taught at the university during the 1970s. The film was featured in the program Everyday Practice: Fluxus and Rutgers, scheduled for October 22 at the Civic Square Building in New Brunswick. The free program also included an alumni discussion exploring how the movement’s emphasis on experimentation, collaboration and challenging conventions continues to influence contemporary artists. The timing offers an interesting cultural comparison. Today, millions of people routinely transform cooking, decorating, traveling, shopping and ordinary conversations into performances for online audiences. Activities once considered too mundane to document have become entire categories of digital entertainment. Fluxus didn’t invent that behavior, and social media isn’t simply a digital extension of the movement. Their purposes are often quite different. Fluxus questioned artistic conventions and the boundaries between creators and audiences, while social media platforms frequently encourage polished presentation, personal branding and measurable popularity. Still, both raise a fascinating question: Who gets to decide which moments of everyday life deserve an audience? Rutgers artists were exploring that question decades before smartphones, influencers and viral videos gave ordinary activities global visibility. The difference is that today’s performers have cameras, editing apps and distribution platforms in their pockets. Back in New Brunswick, a sheet of plastic, some cardboard boxes and an audience willing to be surprised were enough. The technology has changed enormously. The impulse to turn life into something worth watching is considerably older. SOURCES Mason Gross School of the Arts, Rutgers University. “Everyday Practice: Fluxus and Rutgers.” October 22, 2026 event listing. https://www.masongross.rutgers.edu/calendar-event/everyday-in-practice-fluxus-and-rutgers/ Rutgers University. Fredda Sacharow, “Celebrating a Movement, Born of the Tumultuous ’60s and Nurtured at Rutgers.” September 22, 2011. https://www.rutgers.edu/news/celebrating-movement-born-tumultuous-60s-and-nurtured-rutgers Princeton University Art Museum. “The Sky Is the Limit: Princeton’s Happening.” January 3, 2014. https://artmuseum.princeton.edu/art/stories-perspectives/sky-limit-princetons-happening --- ProbleMattic is written and maintained by Matthew Kulcsar, a software engineer, project manager, technologist, platform builder, emergency-services-trained helper, grandfather, and lifelong collector of broken systems, odd behaviors, and useful nonsense.