Ben Patterson: Three Performances

Join us at e-flux on Thursday, November 21, at 7pm for an evening dedicated to Ben Patterson, one of the founders of Fluxus and a pioneer in performance art. The event will include three iconic Patterson performances: Duo for Voice and Strings (1961), performed by Holland Andrews and Lester St. Louis; Variations for Double-Bass(1961), performed by Brandon Lopez; and Paper Piece (1960) performed by students from Pratt Institute, in collaboration with Timmy Simonds. These works mark the beginning of Patterson’s explosive career in experimentation, particularly exploring the idea of experimenting in the moment. Rather than having a set of predetermined scores, Patterson’s scores are open-ended, refusing the conventional standards of Western musical notation and leading to a different performance each time. This event is the first in a series of performances at e-flux exploring works rooted in Fluxus.

Musician, composer, performance and visual artist, Ben Patterson (né Benjamin Anthony Patterson, Jr., May 29, 1934) established himself as a major contributor to Fluxus and Black performance art in the United States and abroad, maintaining a modest international art career between 1960 to 2016. Throughout his career, Patterson experimented materially and conceptually with sound and live action with varying mediums. Though known chiefly for work in performance, Patterson expanded his practice to include works on paper, assemblage, installation, video and sculpture. In the fall of 1962, when German journalists and broadcasters christened “Fluxus” a provocative art movement, Patterson stood among an array of musicians, writers and artists as collaborator and as one of Fluxus’ unanticipated co-founders. As a result, Patterson, a musician at this time, entered an artworld defining itself by rejecting Abstract Expressionism, modernist painting, and the mainstream commercialism of galleries.

Holland Andrews (they/them) is a vocalist, composer, producer, and performer whose work focuses on the abstraction of operatic and extended-technique voice to build cathartic and dissonant soundscapes. Andrews arranges music for voice, clarinet, and electronics, frequently highlighting themes of vulnerability and healing. Andrews harnesses these instruments’ innate qualities of power and elegance to serve as a cohesive vessel for these themes. As a vocalist, their influences stem from a dynamic range, including contemporary opera, theater, and jazz. They have cultivated their own unique vocal style, integrating these influences with language disintegration, vocal distortion, and environmental ambiance. Andrews previously performed solo music under the stage name Like a Villain. In addition to creating solo work, Andrews composes and performs for dance, theater, and film. Their work is toured nationally and internationally with choreographers such as Bill T. Jones, Dorothee Munyaneza, Will Rawls, Sonya Tayeh, Jenn Freeman, and poet Demian Dinéyazhi. Notable musical collaborations include Son Lux, Christina Vantzou, William Brittelle, Methods Body, West Thordson, Peter Broderick, Jeremy Toussaint-Baptise, and Nils Frahm. Andrews has also collaborated with visual artists, including Oliver Beers and Narcissister. Their previous work also includes composing film scores for Rebeca Huntt’s BEBA (nominated for an Independent Spirit Award and acquired by Neon and Onyx Collective/Hulu) and Sophie Compton and Reuben Hamlyn’s Another Body (awarded SXSW 2023 Documentary Feature Special Jury Award for Innovation in Storytelling). Andrews has gained recognition from publications such as The Wire, The New York Times, Vogue, Le Monde, and BBC Radio. Andrews was included in the 2024 Whitney Biennial and was a 2023 Foundation of Contemporary Arts and 2024 USA Artists fellow. Andrews is based in Brooklyn, New York.

Lester St. Louis is a New York born and based cellist, composer, improviser, sound designer, and curator. His works are rooted in dynamic environments of improvisation both sonically and socially. St. Louis began playing the cello at age sixteen and quickly learned that he had perfect pitch. Encouraged by his high school orchestra teacher, he dove into the cello with energy and respect. St. Louis has since had an extensive career, touring around the world and collaborating with artists such as Jaimie Branch, as part of the band Fly or Die, Chris Williams (under the moniker HxH), Edi Kwon, Dre A. Hočevar, Charmaine Lee, Isabel Crespo Pardo, Emeka Okereke, TAK Ensemble, The International Contemporary Ensemble, Random International, Superblue, Terrence Nance, Found Sound Nation, Amirtha Kidambi, and many more. As a composer, St. Louis has been commissioned by artists such as the JACK Quartet, RAGE THORMBONES, Jennifer Koh, String Noise, and Ghost Ensemble.

Brandon Lopez is a Puerto Rican bassist and composer whose work deals with improvisation and exploring new musical possibilities. His work has found him collaborating and working with the likes of poet and cultural theorist Fred Moten, Gerald Cleaver, John Zorn, The Mat Maneri Quartet, Nate Wooley’s “knknighgh”, Satoko Fuji, Zeena Parkins, Ingrid Laubrock and Tom Rainey, Standing On The Corner, Cecilia Lopez, Ash Fure, Joe Morris, Tyshawn Sorey, and many others. Some recent career highlights: His signature harmonic gliss was the opening sonic feature of TELFAR’s 2022 clothing line drop. Playing with the New York Philharmonic 2019 season as a featured soloist with the New York Philharmonic in the premier of Ashley Fure’s “Filament” under the baton of Jaap Van Zweden. His work has been featured at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in a live collaboration with silent films by the likes of Stan Brakhage and Germaine Dulac. His collaborative work with Fred Moten and Gerald Cleaver was critically acclaimed by publications of note and won Best of Jazz 2022 in the NYTimes. His most recent solo recording won best of 2023 in the NYC Jazz record. He’s been awarded the Van Lier Fellowship (2018) and Jerome Artist in Residence (2020) at Roulette Intermedium, The Artist in Residence at Issue Project Room (2018), commissions from the Robert D. Bielecki Foundation for the recording of SUN BURNS OUT YOUR EYES (2022), 2023 NYSCA grant for the multimedia piece NADA SAGRADA premiered at the Vision Festival, and an award in 2020 from the Doris Duke Charitable Trust.

Timmy Simonds is an artist who moves between sculpture, writing, and participatory exercises. He examines the practice of teaching, seeing the character of the teacher and our cultural expectations of it as reflective more largely of how we think of being, feeling, and knowing. His own experience teaching inspires his work as well as his archival research, teacher-focused workshops, and classroom observations of other teachers. This research inspired an exhibition, Airhead, that he co-curated with Eden Deering in 2024 at PPOW gallery. His work has been shared in solo and group exhibitions in galleries, through project spaces and institutions including PPOW, Dia Art Foundation, Museo de Arte Carillo Gil, Fall River MoCA, Greene Naftali, Kai Matsumiya, Cathouse Proper, Cleopatra’s, Knockdown Center, and Rond-Point Projects. He was an artist in residency at Triangle France in 2016, where he made his first works directly reflective of his experience as a teacher. Since 2018 he’s broadcast exercises over radio for the listener to follow with Montez Press Radio and Wave Farm Radio originally under the collaborative Tongue and Cheek, and now as a larger project called Miss Othmar School for Teachers that organizes series of workshops, meetings, and performances with communities of teachers in addition to its monthly radio broadcasts. Simonds teaches regularly at Pratt Institute where he coordinated a curriculum called Studio Writing, supporting creative writing for Fine Arts students.

The program of sound performances at e-flux is curated by Sanna Almajedi.

For more information, please contact [email protected].

Accessibility
–Two flights of stairs lead up to the building’s front entrance at 172 Classon Avenue.
–For elevator access, please RSVP to [email protected]. The building has a freight elevator which leads into the e-flux office space. Entrance to the elevator is nearest to 180 Classon Ave (a garage door). We have a ramp for the steps within the space.
–e-flux has an ADA-compliant bathroom. There are no steps between the event space and this bathroom.

Host or Publisher e-flux Screening Room