Robert Filliou – Teaching and Learning as Performing Arts Part II - Breakfasting Together, If You Wish, 1979

Drinking tea and reading the morning newspaper, Robert Filliou suddenly looks up and calls, “Hey you!”. He invites the viewer to open the newspaper at the same page and join him in reading the job advertisements. They become the starting point for a conversation about the meaning of labour and the values by which it is judged. The conversation opens onto Filliou’s idea of a poetical economy, inviting the viewer to imagine forms of work guided by curiosity, imagination and continual learning instead of productivity alone. The morning newspaper is read against the grain, turning the classifieds into a space for imagining other kinds of work.

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.