UN TROU AU TRAVERS DUQUEL VOUS POUVEZ VOIR LA PLEINE LUNE POUR WATTS
A hole through which you can see the full moon, for Watts

UN TROU AU TRAVERS DUQUEL VOUS POUVEZ VOIR LA PLEINE LUNE POUR WATTS
A hole through which you can see the full moon, for Watts

Robert Watts (1923–1988) was an American artist and central figure of the Fluxus movement, known for his incisive humour, conceptual clarity, and radical rethinking of the everyday object. Trained as a scientist before turning to art, Watts brought an analytical yet playful approach to material and form, creating works that questioned authorship, consumer culture, and the boundaries between art and life. His practice ranged widely from sculptural multiples and found-object assemblages to mail art, happenings, and experimental collaborations with figures such as George Maciunas, Alison Knowles, and George Brecht.
Watts was also deeply drawn to natural and astronomical phenomena. His Flux Atlas was a box of pebbles collected from specific locations around the world, with Maciunas crowd-sourcing contributions from Fluxus members across multiple countries. The moon, like a pebble from a specific beach, is a natural object defined entirely by its location and moment of observation.
The manifest again uses "pour" (for Watt); not "de" (by Watts). So as with the beans for Knowles and the target for Knižák, this is an object placed in reference to Watts and his sensibility rather than contributed directly by him.
A metal washer or ring is a found industrial object, cheap, mass-produced, entirely functional, entirely anonymous, with a circular hole at its centre. It is the most minimal possible framing device: a circumference defining an absence. Held up to the sky on the night of a full moon, the hole frames the moon precisely, isolating it from its surroundings and transforming the act of looking into a performance, a score, an event.
This operates on the same logic as Kosugi's Theatre Music "keep walking intently",where the instruction transforms a mundane act into heightened awareness. Here, the instruction is implicit in the object itself: hold this up, find the moon, look through the hole. The washer is simultaneously a tool, a frame, a score, and a sculpture.
The object also rhymes beautifully with Watts's scientific background and his interest in optics, measurement, and the physical world. Watts sought to bring the universe into the home, and a washer through which you can see the full moon does exactly that, collapsing astronomical scale into the diameter of a hardware store fitting.

Anonymous / George Maciunas (likely selector); in reference to Robert Watts

References the practice of Robert Watts (American, 1923–1988), founding Fluxus member; component of Fluxus International & Compagnie boîte-catalogue No. 15/100, Nice, 1979; relates to Watts's Flux Atlas and his broader engagement with natural phenomena as artistic material

Metal ring or washer; found industrial hardware object

Realia; found object; Fluxus multiple; object score