Robert Filliou – L’Histoire chuchotée de l’art, 1995

In L’Histoire chuchotée de l’art (“The Whispered History of Art”), Robert Filliou dates the beginning of art to one million years ago, on 17 January – his own birthday – when someone dropped a dry sponge into a bucket of water. He later declared the date Art’s Birthday, celebrated around the world since 1963. Presented as both a book and a recording, the work traces a history shaped by anonymous people carrying out simple actions. The stories also function as instructions, a kind of score that allows these gestures to be passed from one person to the next. Work as Play, Art as Thought brings together a photograph of Filliou at a café with hand-drawn arrows on a simple wooden plank. The arrows trace a path across its surface without arriving at a destination, giving form to thought in motion. Across both works, actions and thoughts remain in a state of becoming, reflecting Filliou’s concept of Permanent Creation.

At the core of Robert Filliou’s practice are ideas of language, play and exchange. Trained in economics and associated with Fluxus, he conceived art as a continuous, collective activity embedded in everyday life. His work challenges conventional notions of authorship, value and production, favouring openness, humour and participation. Through gestures that blur the boundaries between art and non-art, Filliou redefined creation as an ongoing process of thinking, making and sharing, an approach that continues to shape the understanding of art as a space of exchange.