Ben Patterson was a ground-breaking Fluxus artist and a very kind, brilliant, relaxed, unpretentious and humorous person.
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
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.“