Ben Patterson

Benjamin Patterson (May 29, 1934 – June 25, 2016) was an American musician, artist, and one of the founders of the Fluxus movement.

Biography Benjamin Patterson was born in Pittsburgh on May 29, 1934. He attended the University of Michigan from 1952 to 1956, where he studied the contrabass, Composition, and Film Direction. As an African-American musician, he found it impossible to get a job at a symphony orchestra in the United States, so he started playing with Canadian orchestras. From 1956 to 1960, he worked as a double bassist at the Halifax Symphony Orchestra (1956–57), the US Army Seventh Army Symphony Orchestra (1957–59) and the Ottawa Philharmonic Orchestra (1959–60). In 1960 he moved to Cologne, Germany, where he became active on the contemporary music scene of the most radical, focusing its activities at the studio of Mary Bauermeister and "against the festival." Between 1960 and 1962 he played in Cologne, Paris, Venice, Vienna and other places. At Bauermeister's atelier, Patterson also met Nam June Paik, through whom he met Fluxus founder George Maciunas and came to play an integral role in organizing the early European Fluxus festivals. On 6 October 1960, at Bauermeister's studio, Patterson took part in the premiere of John Cage's Cartridge Music, alongside Cage, Paik, David Tudor, and Christian Wolff. Patterson was a founding member of Fluxus and participated in the first Fluxus Festival in Wiesbaden (1962). At the festival he performed his Paper Piece (1960), in which participants fold, crumple, tear, and wave sheets of paper. Among his best-known scores is Variations for Double-Bass (1962), which directs the performer to bow, comb, and rub the instrument and to balance it upside down on its scroll; a typed copy of the score is held in the Gilbert and Lila Silverman Fluxus Collection at the Museum of Modern Art.

Selected exhibitions

Pianofortissimo (Milan and Genoa) Ubi Fluxus ibi Motus (Venice Biennale, 1990) Fluxus (Museion in Bolzano, Cortona, Volpaia, Bassano del Grappa) The Fluxus Constellation (Museum 'Arte Contemporanea di Villa Croce, Genoa), Wiesbaden Festival 2002 4TFLUXUS (Paris) L'Avventura Fluxus (Museum of the Absurd – Castelvetro of Modena), Benjamin Patterson, Born in the State of FLUX/us, November 6, 2010 - January 23, 2011 at Contemporary Arts Museum Houston Benjamin Patterson, Born in the State of FLUX/us, March 31, 2011 – June 26, 2011 at The Studio Museum in Harlem. Benjamin Patterson, Born in the State of FLUX/us, June 2 – September 23, 2012 at Nassauischer Kunstverein Wiesbaden