Benjamin Patterson | Methods & Processes

Benjamin Patterson
Methods & Processes
Paris, France: Self-published, 1962
27 x 18.8 cm.
Edition of 100


Benjamin Patterson was born in 1934 in Pittsburgh, and graduated from the University of Michigan, in 1956 with a Bachelor of Music. He performed as a double-bassist with the Ottawa Philharmonic Orchestra, a job he planned to return to after visiting Cologne and Paris in 1960.

During his travels he met John Cage, David Tudor, Merce Cunningham and Karlheinz Stockhausen (he found the latter insufferable) and eventually a number of artists who would go on to form Fluxus. Daniel Spoerri encouraged him to publish Methods & Processes and Robert Filliou gave him his first gallery exhibition (in the artist's hat). Patterson assisted George Maciunas in organizing the historic 1962 Fluxus Festival in Wiesbaden, and his interview with Emmett Williams became the first article ever published about the group. The first film documentation of Fluxus - news coverage by German Television - featured Patterson's performance of his Variations for Double-Bass.

Methods & Processes features some extremely discreet performance scores (such as a step-by-step instructional on walking) and also Lick Piece, a notorious Fluxus classic that is now wisely performed with both male and female subjects (see below).


"Works like Methods and Processes were very slippery, meant to infiltrate at a near-subliminal level and then exit, leaving behind little or no trace/evidence"

- Ben Patterson, From Black to Schwarz: Cultural Crossovers Between African America and Germany 

Benjamin Patterson
Methods & Processes
Tokyo, Japan: Gallery 360°, 2004
11 pp.,  21 x 15 cm., loose leaves
Edition of 500

A reprint of the extremely rare 1962 edition, produced in conjunction with Patterson's exhibition at Gallery 360°, "Ben Patterson interrupted Fairy Tales and other appropriate works".

Benjamin Patterson
Methods & Processes
Dijon, France: Les Presses Du Reel , 2011
2 pp., 18,5 x 27 cm / 27 x 126 cm (unfolded), softcover
Edition size unknown

Reprinted again, this time as a facsimile accordion-fold, in 2011, as part of the Incertain Sens series, which also includes works by Dieter Roth, Maurizio Nannucci, Robert Barry, Anne Mœglin-Delcroix, Herman de Vries, Peter Downsbrough, Jessica Stockholder and many others.

Available from the publisher, here, for €7.00.