Robert Filliou – L’Immortelle mort du monde, 1967

L’Immortelle mort du monde (“The Deathless Dying of the World”) is the score for a chance-based theatre piece. Performers randomly combine colours, emotions, sounds and fragments of speech: “I deny that...”, “Let’s form a committee and decide if really...”, “Who has told you that...”, “I know that...”. First devised in 1960 and published in 1967, it was Robert Filliou’s first work of visual art and already contains many of the ideas that would shape his later practice. He conceived it as “a play that changes all the time”. The paradox of the title – The Deathless Dying of the World – reflects Filliou’s conviction that the world exists in a constant state of transformation, where nothing remains fixed and every ending gives rise to another beginning. The work is continually reconstituted as each performer brings their own experience to it.

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.