Dear Allen, I'm very happy of all the precisions you're giving here, and I congratulate you for the work you' ve done with Ben P. on the museum of unconscious (but I'll speak about that further on).
> Bertrand, I am happy to be corrected. Perhaps I was being a little harsh > and inaccurate in my assessments of the remaining Flux folk. I am prone to > sweeping generalizations based on incomplete information. OK, but don't do that again (joke) > > I have met Ben "Look at Me!" Vautier (probably my favorite early-Fluxus > artist) and corresponded with him a couple of times, but was unaware of his > activities in regard to young artists. I would be curious to know what the > relationship of these activities was to Fluxus (trying to make a > connection, totally independent, etc.) Ben Vautier is a fabulous character Basically, I think this has to be relied on with his former activity of record seller/gallerist. Moreover, he used to organize pretty much events in his house sine the seventies (pour ou contre eveings for example) and in the sixties exhiited a lot of people in his small gallery "Ben doute de tout" where he exhibited he people of the Ecole de Nice ( Bozzi, Erebo, Alocco, Le Cl�zio, Venet, Serge III, Noel Dolla and theSupport-Surface group) but also fluxus, filliou, La Monte, Boltanski, Sarkis, Gutai etc. After that he have been a kind of agent for Olivier Mosset in the seventies, then he helped a lot the Figuration Libre in France by buying, exhibiting, introducing them (Di Rosa brothers, etc.). Today, he supports a collective named La Station, which is essentially constituted of young artists from the Villa d'Arson, a National Art School. Besides, he employs young artists as assistants, to help him...and them. > and ball of human energy. Of all the original Flux folk, he has the best > (and only?) free-standing website (i.e., not tied to an exhibition or > gallery) <http://www.ben-vautier.com/>. I suspect that it is created and > maintained by someone else because I have seen no original work in the > digital medium by Ben...it all seems to be writings and drawings scanned The site is maintained by his assistant, but Ben is working a lot on it: he does not know much about the technological devices, but he knows what he wants, and understands pretty well how it has to be done. So he's following and directing each step of his site. > and digitized & re-packaged for display in the digital realm. I have been > told that he is quite famous in France (e.g., school children buy and carry > book bags with his "Ben" signature and expressions on them). I hope that > Ben is famous and rewarded because I think most Fluxus artists have not He is really famous. But no one seems to recall he's a fluxus artist... > received the recognition and rewards that I believe they deserve (e.g., > Dick Higgins being a good case of this). Ben Vautier is also famously > contentious...sometimes bordering on rude?mean? in his comments and Yes, that's true, but he loves saying mean things, just to say them. Besides, he has his own understanding of FLuxus and Fluxus concerts (quick, funny, rythmic, and pedagogical) so he often mock his colleagues for their long, meditative, boring pieces, and says it quite rudely sometimes. Strange enough, they do not seem to be very affect by this > writings about other Fluxus artists (e.g., Ken Friedman) but this also I remember that he wrote on his site some lines about Ken's coming to Odense Festival, and he was very sad of what was happening to him, saying it was a real shame: he was pointing the fact that Eric, though his personal dislike of Ken, and the reproaches he was formulating against him, was always using his performance workbook to settle his concerts...Moreover, he always told me that he had no problem with Ken, and did not understand why others had. > I also made contact with Ben Patterson one time in Weisbaden in the mid > 1990s and subsequently worked with him (via fax) to set-up the online > version of his Museum of the Unconscious > <http://www.nutscape.com/sub-conscious/sitemap.htm> (the donor list of > which has not been updated in several years...like most of my other > broken-down fluxus-related websites). Bertrand, tell us more about his > work with Eastern European artistic collectives (is this in the past or Well he's in connection with several underground activists there (in Slovaquia, Czech Republic, particularly) from his implication in the Rosenberg Museum of Violin, inViolin Nove Zamky in Slovaquia. He performed two or three times with the festival "String'em up" organized by Jon Rose from the museum (in Paris, Rotterdam or Violin Nove Zamky, making violin case jam, playing a double bass made of a huge toothbrush (which he also gave to the museum) etc.) and from that, met a lot of performance artists of this area, with whom he has occasionally met and worked since (like the (Soiety for Non Conventional Music, in Slovaquia). > present?). My impression of Ben Patterson is that he is a technology > luddite...I don't know if he has finally even gotten an internet connection > and email address?! No, he still does not. I was to give him a computer, but it collapsed before he could have it. So he still does not have an internet connection, and is still working on an electric typing machine. > When Eric Anderson used to imply that none of the > original Fluxus artists would participate on Fluxlist because they didn't > consider it to be legitimate or serious, I always thought...."Yeah, the > real reason why most of them aren't on here is because they are tech > luddites and don't even have email." I suspect they all have email now, > but would be curious to know how many have someone else (like a secretary) > handle their email for them. Nam June Paik put up the first website on the > internet devoted to Fluxus, but I don't think he touched any part of the > project (it was all Paul Garrin's <http://pg.mediafilter.org/> doing, I > believe )...and have never heard that he has or uses email (this from the > "hi-tech" artist who coined the term "information highway")! Well, you're right, most of them have one (Emmett Williams, Ben Vautier, Alison Knowles, Larry Miller, Geoff Hendricks, Milan Knizak, Mieko Shiomi, etc.), but when they have one, they use it, or have someone to use it for them (mainly their wifes/husbands...), it's sometimes a question of choice, and it's sometimes a question of money too. > I am thrilled to hear that Emmett Williams and Rene Block curated an > exhibition last year that was 1. Fluxus in name, and 2. involved > younger/not-original Fluxus artists (and I now stand corrected in my > assertion that Ken Friedman is the only Fluxus artist to ever do such an > exhibition). The English title was something like "Fluxus and the > following one," is that correct? I want to know more (perhaps this was > mentioned on the list last year and I wasn't paying attention). Is there a > website for this exhibition? Anything online? Where can I get the > catalog? Bertrand or anyone else...did you go, can you tell us more? Yes I went there, not so much to look at the exhibition as to attend the Flux-Mass organized by Geoff Hendricks (with Emmett, Ben P., Milan, Takako, Ann No�l etc.). But of course I've seen the Fluxus und die Folgende show(s). To be honnest, I was not very enthusiastic about it. First, it was spread in various places in the town (due to the fact that the direction of the Wiesbadener Museum is absolutely not interested in FLuxus...)and second, the choice of artists was not so much relevant: it was mainly visual art (no performance) and small things, very well done, very cute (drawings of everydays objects with white chalks and cut outs on black/brown sheets of paper, tiny installations with cooking objects and knitted wool etc.) but not as strong as one would have intended to be (mainly young artists, in their beginnings I guess, apart of course of an exhibition of drawings of Tomas Schmit). Much of the works I've seen (but I have not seen everything, of course) was very interesting in itself, but quite killed by the Fluxus big name glued on it. I have the complete program somewhere, but can't find it now. Anyway, the catalog is not issued yet, and will not be apparently before next year. Mark Sch�ltze was there too, so maybe (I don't if he is still on the list) he could give another sound about this show? However, I would like to say that Emmett did a courageous attempt to resist the pressure of everyone to make a Fluxus birthday in Wiesbaden, and to try to propose something else. I would like to say also, that I was not there for the opening of the exhibition, but I've been said that everyone from Fluxus that could showed up at the opening, was there.. Finally, the best piece, was Ben Patterson's Bar in the Fluxus Freunde Headquarters, who was full from opening to closing, and had a very good atmosphere, with nice works of Ben P. > I have decided to freely expose my thoughts and opinions here in hopes that > others will correct or adjust them where they know them to be in > error. Thank you. So as anyone writing on any list, isn't it? However, I was not "correcting" you, and I fully agreed to many things you've written, I was just telling what I had experienced from working with these artists, and the little information I could gather from them. Bertrand. PS: there are some pictures of Ben Patterson Dental Bach Performance and of the FluxMass on our website at http://www.4t.fluxus.net/events/wiesbaden01.htm and http://www.4t.fluxus.net/events/cordessaintouen02.htm and for the different events where we 've been involved: http://www.4t.fluxus.net/evenements.htm
