Nam June Paik composed a series of symphonies as Fluxus scores, and the first among them was Young Penis Symphony (1962). The score instructs ten young men to stand behind a large sheet of paper set in front of a stage and pierce holes with their erect penises toward the audience. The piece was so provocative that even Paik had projected that the piece could not be staged earlier than 1984. The score was included in the second issue of Wolf Vostell’s Décollage and premiered in Festum Fluxorum Fluxus: Musik und Antimusik, Das Instrumentale Theater at the Staatliche Kunstakademie, Dusseldorf in 1963. The premiere was performed with fingers instead of penises for tearing the large sheet of paper on the stage. Paik’s vision of liberating the tradition and hierarchy of modern music through sex, which was relatively underdeveloped in music compared to literature or the visual arts, is revealed through this work.
