all things flow is a compilation of texts exploring artistic practices centered in the interplay of fragmentation, circulation, and ephemerality. Active from the 1940s through the 1990s, the artist Ray Johnson described his work as miniatures cataloguing free-form fragmentations. His practice of mail art, the making of collages, relief surfaces, and correspondence objects demonstrates how fragments can be constantly rearranged and reassembled. Engaging with Daoist philosophy, his work reflects the fluid nature of social relationships.

Through experimental autoethnographical writings about Johnson, this thesis critiques the limitations of institutional categorization and the ways modern and contemporary art are defined, created, sold, and understood through International Art English. Johnson’s work resists classification within completed/enclosed systems. By engaging with his methods of creating counterparts and paradoxes, this project invites readers to move away from normative modes of speculation, and explore alternative interpretations of existing categories in art historical and archival practices.