Ample food for stupid thought
"A look at the topic of restaurants in three artists' books from the MUMOK library... 'Ample Food for Stupid Thought'... a Fluxus publication, symbolizes for me the restaurant in the mind. For all its spectacular Actions, performances, and other sensational stagings, there is a quieter side to Fluxus. These can be found in texts, notes, and objects in boxes often made into so-called multiples, which as "three-dimensional poems" have been nourishing art and life since the nineteen-sixties. 'Ample Food for Stupid Thought' by Robert Filliou, created in 1965, can be either read or performed. The entire text is comprised of questions: one per page in large lettering on a white background. They are intriguing, ironic, whimsical, and also serious questions with the intention of receiving spontaneous, absurd, commensurate, serious answers. A small taster: "Whoever heard of a nice rat?", "If your aunt were a man would she be your uncle?"... "What's the quickest way to get the US Armed Services out of Vietnam?" The concept for 'Ample Food for Stupid Thought' functions on a multimedia level, with the first version from the same year comprising ninety-six individual postcards, which were stored for safekeeping in a wooden box... Sometime later, Filliou compiled this book, arranging the loose cards in the very same order. During one performance, at the prominent nightclub Café au Go Go in Greenwich Village on February 8, 1965, Filliou set questions from these to the audience. In another variation of the work, randomly selected questions random postcards were sent out by post in sets or as individual pieces." -- Simone Moser, "Restaurants in the Mind", 'MUMOK Insider' blog, February 22, 2021 [ https://www.mumok.at/en/blog/restaurants-mind ]
Print Book, English, 1965
Something Else Press, Inc., New York, 1965