The following is excerpted from the book Energy Plan for the Western Man, pgs. 128-9. It concludes a 1982 interview.

The original Fluxus concerts were organized by people whose interest was in sound rather than painting or sculpture. Hence the link with John Cage, La Monte Young, and even Stockhausen and those concerned with electronic music. But their attitude was a revolutionary one and went against the traditional idea of the concert. Works were often presented simultaneously or followed quickly one after another. Often nothing more than a piano, a ladder and a pail of water were provided. The rest was improvised.

There were as many different ideologies and interpretations of Fluxus as there were people, and the chance to work with people of different opinions was one of the most challenging aspects. Anything could be included, from the tearing up of a piece of paper to the formulation of ideas for the transformation of society.

My first concert (apart from Beethoven at school and Satie at the opening of my exhibition in Kleve in 1960) was at the Galerie Parnass in Wuppertal in 1963. Dressed like a regular pianist in dark grey flannel, black tie and no hat, I played the piano all over- not just the keys- with many pairs of old shoes until it disintigrated. My intention was neither destructive nor nihilistic. "Heal like with like"- similia similibus curantur- in the homeopathic sense. The main intention was to indicate a new beginning, an englarged understanding of every traditional form of art, or simply a revolutionary act.

This was my first public Fluxus appearance. I participated in compositions by George Maciunas, Alison Knowles, Addi Koepke and Dick Higgins and presented two of my own works. On the first night I performed a "Concert for Two Musicians". It lasted for perhaps twenty seconds. I dashed forward in the gap between two performances, wound up a clockwork toy, two drummers, on the piano, and let them play until the clockwork ran down. That was the end. The Fluxus people felt that this short action was my breakthrough, while the event of the second evening was perhaps too heavy, complicated and anthropological for them. Yet the "Siberian Symphony, section 1" contained the essence of all my future activities and was, I felt, a wider understanding of what Fluxus could be.

[The Fluxus artists] held a mirror up to people without indicating how to change things. This is not to belittle what they did achieve in the way of indicating connections in life and how art could develop.