Ben Patterson: The Golden Age of Fluxus - Budapest, 2009 (excerpts)

The only existing short footage from the performance by Ben Patterson at the 2nd Relative (Cross)Hearings International Contemporary Music Meeting on 31st May, 2009 at the Artus Studio in Budapest, Hungary. Video by Anikó Bordos. Special thanks to Gábor Goda, Gábor Kocsis, Anikó Rácz and Titanilla Barbara Biró.
-- Ben Patterson (1934, Pittsburgh, USA) first studied piano with his mother and violin with his father. Later, at the University of Michigan he studied double-bass, composition and conducting ...and became skilled enough to be "first" double-bassist and/or assistant conductor with several smaller symphony orchestras in Canada, the USA and Germany. In 1960, during a visit to Cologne, Germany, he met John Cage. Patterson says, that this meeting was the most important encounter of his artistic life ...overnight he
was "converted" and "freed" to consider new and radical concepts for making art. Two years later, in 1962, he was critically involved with the "birth" of Fluxus in Wiesbaden ...and for the next several years, made important contributions to the Fluxus legend. Around 1968, he "dropped-out" of the New York "art scene" to lead an "ordinary life"....raise a family and make "real politics". 20 years later, he returned to the "art world"...and discovered that he was still known as a "Fluxus artist". Now, since the beginning of this third phase of his life (1988-89), he has been busy creating and presenting objects, installations, texts, musics, videos and performances throughout the world ...from New York to New Zealand, from Helsinki to Patagonia, from London to Tokyo, etc. In 1996 he travelled to Okandukaseibe, Namibia to establish his "Museum for the Sub-Conscious". In 2004 he made a 7 week tour of performances with the Trans-Siberian Railroad through Russia, Mongolia and China to arrive on Mt. Fuji (Japan) to celebrate his 70th birthday. During these last 5 years, Ben Patterson has presented performances and/or
exhibitions in Amorbach (Germany), Leipzig, Dresden, Frankfurt/M, Paris, Asolo (Italy), Genova, Hannover, Kassel, Ghent (Belgium), Bern, Geneve, Zürich, Basel, Potsdam, Prague, Krakow, Nantes, London, Madrid, Saville, Valencia, Barcelona, Budapest and Tallin. He now looks forward to his first museum "retropective", planned to take place at the Contemporary Art Museum, Houston, Texas in the fall of 2010.

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