‘Open and Shut Case’ (1965) by Ken Friedman

Open and Shut Case (1965) is a score-based work which manifests itself in a variety of ways. As is often the case for Fluxus events, the score has been written down a posteriori, out of the creation of an object. The first pre-score iteration of the piece was an objet trouvé — a matchbox altered by Friedman with two imperative sentences: “open me” written on the outside and “shut me quick” on the inside of the box. Both this one and the subsequent version of this work, which also used a matchbox and was made by Friedman for Dick Higgins, have not survived. One year after Friedman formulated his initial concept,  George Maciunas asked the young artist to write down the instructions for the piece for the first time and subsequently interpreted it into a Fluxus box — Open and Shut Case (c. 1966). After Maciunas’ passing, his iteration of the score was republished by Barbara Moore as Open and Shut Case (1987) through ReFlux Editions, founded in the 1980s as a platform for continuing the publication of classic Fluxus multiples. In 1993, Dutch collector of artists’ books Peter Van Beveren published Open and Shut Case (1993) — a direct interpretation of the score also in the form of a box, mimicking the first matchbox version. Consecutive interpretations of the Open and Shut Case, generated often on the occasion of exhibitions of Friedman’s scores, resulted in aesthetically dissimilar objects. In 2021, Lyman Allyn Art Museum in New London, Connecticut produced a short TikTok video explaining the action scripted in the score with the use of a DIY Open and Shut Case made out of a wooden fruit crate. The elegant box in dark red faux leather made for the recent show in Kalmarkonstmuseum exemplifies an opposite approach to the realisation of the same, fairly simple instructions (see photograph below). The score as a text might also take on several material manifestations. While in the 1970s it was typewritten, xeroxed and distributed by post, in the 2000s it was sent digitally as a pdf and made into ‘print on acid-free paper’ using a high-quality inkjet printer. The printout can be consequently presented flat in a vitrine, pinned bare to the wall or presented in black or white Ikea’s Ribba frames.