Ben Patterson was a ground-breaking Fluxus artist and a very kind, brilliant, relaxed, unpretentious and humorous person. This site documents our co-operation during the BENJAMIN PATTERSON - SNEAK REVIEW that Bill Dietz, Christian Kesten and I organized to mark Ben’s 80th birthday in spring 2014. He will be terribly missed. PS, 26 June 2016
“Shake, Break Tear, Crumple, Rumple, Bumple, Rub, Scrub, Twist, Poof, Pop” – are some of the instructions for the PAPER PIECE by Ben Patterson – one of the most famous Fluxus works. Here, paper is the instrument that is being crumpled, torn, and pierced. This piece and other Fluxus classics helped broaden the notion of art and music, and to overcome boundaries between artistic genres.
Ben Patterson played an important part in the very first European Fluxus festivals in Wiesbaden, Düsseldorf, Wuppertal, and Paris. And he was one of the few Fluxus artists that were still active until very recently. To celebrate Patterson’s 80th birthday and his work, a series of events began in Berlin on 11 March 2014. it was comprised of a performance tour, a concert, an exhibition, and “Dr. Ben’s Medicine Show”. The event was accompanied by this catalogue – a portrait of the artist including documentation, essays, new works by Fluxus colleages and young artists.
The BENJAMIN PATTERSON – SNEAK REVIEW is inspired by an event that took place on 3 July 1962 in Paris (SNEAK PREVIEW. fluxus. happenings, environments, poèmes, danses, compositions), in which Ben Patterson and Robert Filliou meandered throughout the city for a whole day and sold small works of art. This tour occupies a special place in the canon of European Fluxus activities in part because of its conspicuous lack of documentation. Hence, space for a “free-enactment” – a free interpretation of the Paris events as a review of singular aspects in Pattersons work. In addition to the artistic contributions, the catalogue is comprised of interviews and texts on the historical Sneak Preview and the potentials and challenges of reenactments.
BENJAMIN PATTERSON - SNEAK REVIEW ed. Petra Stegmann, DOWN WITH ART! Verlag, Potsdam Authors: Eric Andersen, Chloë Bass, Valerie Cassel Oliver, Philip Corner, Charles Gaines, Geoffrey Hendricks, Jon Hendricks, Kiwa, Alison Knowles, Jarosław Kozłowski, George E. Lewis, Mitch McEwen, Larry Miller, Ann Noël, Ben Patterson, Willem de Ridder, Astrit Schmidt-Burkhardt, Slave Pianos, Tamás St.Turba, Aslı Sungu, Robert Watts and many others.
contributions in English, German, Italian 136 pages, numerous colour illustrations hand-bound with binder screws, cover with different coloured translucent papers
print run: 500 copies
ISBN: 978-3-9815579-1-6
price: 30 €; postage (Germany: 1,50 €; other countries: 4,00 €)
Please order at: publications@downwithart.de
DR. BEN’S MEDICINE SHOW, 14 MAR 2014 SCHAU FENSTER, RAUM FÜR KUNST
Benjamin Patterson, DR. BEN’S MEDICINE SHOW (2014)
“The overall intention
is a kind of ‘walk down memory lane’ to about 10 venues from Paris to Zagreb,
to ‘say’ Thank you (not farewell) for supporting me in the ‘dark old
days’ …by means of a special performance. This event – a specially
designed program – I am entitling ‘Dr. Ben’s Medicine Show’. You will
remember the old fashion ‘Medicine Show’, where a ‘quack doctor’ travelled
around the country side with a horse-drawn wagon, played a banjo or performed
some tricks to draw a crowd and the tried to sell a cure-all ‘snake oil’.
My Medicine Show will be a Fluxus parody…after a few
‘nano-Fluxus’ performances to wam-up the audience, Dr. Ben gives an illustrated
lecture on how the brain functions and how certain ‘blockages’ can cause
problems for people trying to understand and appreciate contemporary art.
After members of the audience are invited on stage to have a ‘brain scan’
(while watching a Fluxus performance), Dr. Ben analysis the ‘scans’ (which
appears on his laptop screen) and discusses with the ‘patients’
‘dangerous blockages’ … prescribes one or more of 6 different ‘Fluxus Elixirs’,
guaranteed to cure EVERYTHING!!! The whole thing will be about
90 minutes long … an evening long event.“
CONCERT EXAMINATION , 11 MAR 2014 ACKERSTADTPALAST, 21:00
A portrait concert including legendary and lesser known works from five decades on the occasion of Ben Patterson’s eightieth birthday. Organised by Bill Dietz and Christian Kesten, with Ben Patterson, Ensemble Zwischentöne and Maulwerker Supported by initiative neue musik e.Vs
PERFORMANCE-TOUR, 11 MAR 2014 FERNSEHTURM, PLAYGROUND, 8:30
Geoffrey Hendricks, A PROJECT FOR BEN PATTERSON (2014)
“A PROJECT FOR BEN PATTERSON Transpose Nam June Paik’s score One for Violin Solo, 1962 to the Double Bass (and I’ll paint sky on the inside of all the fragments) Geoffrey Hendricks 2013”
Geoffrey Hendricks’s composition for Ben Patterson alludes to Nam June Paik’s One for Violin Solo, by transferring the idea to Patterson’s instrument, the double bass. An instrument is lifted very slowly and with deep concentration above the performer’s head and is smashed by a single forceful attempt.
PERFORMANCE-TOUR, 11 MAR 2014 MARX-ENGELS-FORUM, 9:00
Marc Schulz, MEDLEY (2014)
This new composition entitled Medley refers to two iconic works by Patterson, the VARIATIONS FOR DOUBLE BASS, in which a double bass is prepared and played with many different things and the „Lick Piece“ from methods & processes with the instruction: „cover shapely female with whipped cream lick … topping of chopped nuts and cherries is optional“