Methods & Processes

Methods & Processes
Author: Benjamin Patterson
Publisher: Incertain Sens
Language: English
Pages: 12 folded pages
Size: 18,5 x 27 cm
Weight: 64 g
Binding: Softcover
ISBN: 9782914291460
Price: €10.00
Product Description

The facsimile of the pioneering work of artistic experimentation of the 1960s, a set of poem-scores and collages at the origin of the most radical Fluxus performances

A radical musician and artist, Ben Patterson (born 1934 in Pittsburgh, lives and works in Wiesbaden and New York) is one of the founders of Fluxus.

Methods & Processes, a pioneering work of artistic experimentation in the 1960s, has remained in almost total confidentiality to this day: published in 1962 in Paris in 100 copies at the author's expense, it had become untraceable due to its fragility and Restricted. This facsimile, produced from the only copy still in the hands of the artist, is therefore a rare opportunity to rediscover this essential work.
Combining poem-scores and collages of press images, Methods & Processes anticipates, by its form and content, later publications such as An Anthology by La Monte Young, Water Yam by George Brecht, or De-coll/age by Wolf Vostell. Its structure made of sequences of instructions, its composition using repetition as well as the break in the discourse, its presentation in leporello allowing to play with the order of the texts, the very nature of the instructions given, everything fits to place the reader, not in the usual position of the receiver but in that of the actor of the text.
Moreover, it is this actionist and interactive dimension that allowed the interpretation of these poem-scores as Fluxus performances, positioning Ben Patterson as one of the major actors of this period. Thus, “Lick Piece”, which saw Letty Lou Eisenhauer delivered naked and covered in whipped cream to the mouths of the audience in New York in 1964, remains among the most radical Fluxus pieces.