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Fluxus Pieces
by Ben Vautier
Ben Vautier’s performance at The Culture House was a potpourri of works by other Fluxus artists. All the titles of the works have been written on large pieces of paper hanging to the left of the stage. Whenever Vautier was ready to perform a new work, he tore off the paper announcing the previous work and the title of the upcoming work appeared.
During his one-hour performance, Ben Vautier managed to perform 28 works. From short and simple everyday actions like tying shoes (Orchestral piece for George Maciunas) and putting a vase with flowers on a piano (Piano Piece # 2 by George Brecht) performed by Ben Vautier to orchestrated performances with several performers like Afraid of Piano by Ben Vautier or Piano Piece #1 & #2 by George Maciunas.
Many works paid special attention to the sounding qualities of everyday objects e.g. candy wrappers (Sweets by Ann Noël) or dripping water (Drip Music by George Brecht). Also, alternative or experimental use of musical instruments characterized a number of the works. The piano in particular was the focus of many works (Piano Piece #1 - #2 by George Maciunas, Piano Concerto for Fluxus by Koering etc.)
The 28 events are listed below. Please note that the titles are based on Ben Vautier’s introduction to the events. Therefore some of the titles may be Vautier’s version of the original title and not entirely correct.
Counting Song by Emmett Williams
Ben Vautier and Ann Noël count the audience as a joint venture (there are 76 people).
Chair Music by La Monte Young
Ben Vautier instructs the audience to push their chairs across the floor to make a noise.
Piano Concerto for Fluxus by Koering
Ben Vautier and Eric Andersen both sit on the small piano stool fighting over the piano. The fight leaves them chasing each other around the piano. Eric Andersen wins the fight.
Piano Piece # 2 by George Brecht
Ben Vautier places a vase with flowers on the piano.
Piano Piece # 1 by George Brecht
Ben Vautier sits at the piano. The light is turned off for 20 seconds. When the light re-appears, Vautier has disappeared. The piano is all alone.
Wind Instruments Solo by Bob Watts
Ben Vautier enters the stage with a tuba under his arm, takes a bow and table tennis balls fall out of the tuba.
Trace for Orchestra by Robert Watts
Eric Andersen, Ben Vautier and Ann Noël are seated on chairs with music stands in front of them. The lights are turned off. The performers set fire to their scores, which light up in the darkness. The performance lasts longer than the one at Roskilde Hall.
Piano Piece by Nam June Paik
Vautier sets down a bucket of water next to the piano, sits down and starts playing the piano loudly. After 10 seconds he pours the bucket of water over his head and continues playing for a short while.
Drip Music by George Brecht
Eric Andersen and Ben Vautier wipe up the water with cloths. A microphone is placed close to the bucket and picks up the sound of dripping water from the cloths.
Afraid of Piano by Ben Vautier
Ben Vautier briefly touches the key of the piano and escapes the stage. He is chased by Eric Andersen, Bent Petersen, and Ann Noël. Vautier is captured by his pursuers and although he resists, he is dragged back to the stage and placed in front of the piano.
Concerto for Cheon by Ben Vautier
Vautier carries a tray with glasses and a bottle to the stage and puts it on the piano. He pours wine into the glasses. Eric Andersen, Geoffrey Hendricks, Ann Noël, Robert Watts and Emmett Williams join him for a drink.
Sweets by Ann Noël
Ann Noël throws caramels wrapped in paper to the audience. The audience is encouraged to make music with the wrappers.
Micro by Kuzugi
Vautier enters the stage with a copy of the newspaper Die Welt. He takes one page and wraps it around the microphone. The sound of paper crumbling can be heard through the speakers. He asks the audience to keep quiet and leaves the paper on the microphone, waiting for it to emit a sound as it unwraps.
Amplifier by Eric Andersen
Eric Andersen uses Ben Vautier as an amplifier. Andersen whispers words in Vautier’s ear, and he amplifies it by yelling it out loud. The words are as follows:
This piece is all about amplifying
It doesn’t mean anything
And it’s hardly entertaining
This piece is performed by Ben Vautier
And can only be performed by him
Incidental Music by George Brecht
Ben Vautier and Philip Corner build towers of wooden bricks on either side of the piano. Corner’s tower collapses first, Ben keeps on building for a long time, but eventually his tower collapses as well. As the tower falls over and hits the top of the piano, Corner hits the pedal of the piano, sustaining and enhancing the sound.
Violin Solo by Mieko Shiomi
Ben Vautier disappears from the stage. Moments later a violin suspended from the ceiling of the stage slowly descends, eventually touching the floor.
Violin Solo by George Brecht
Vautier polishes a violin and puts it in its case.
Thanks by Jackson Mac Low
Anne Tardos and Jackson Mac Low enter the stage. They exchange apples and say “Thanks”.
Newspaper Music by Alison Knowles
Ann Noël, Ben Vautier, Eric Andersen and Philip Corner line up on stage with newspapers and start reading aloud from the papers simultaneously. The papers are in different languages. The performers start raising their voices until they almost scream, then they gradually lower their voices again until they’re barely audible and finally disappear.
Zen for Head by Nam June Paik
While Philip Corner plays the piano, a long scroll of paper is unrolled behind him stretching down the stairs from the scene and through the aisle of the auditorium. Ben Vautier dips his head in paint and draws a long line on the paper with his hair.
Piano Piece #1 & #2 by George Maciunas
Philip Corner starts playing a tune on the piano. After a while Ben Vautier hammers a nail through a key on the piano and Ann Noël starts painting the piano white. Ben Vautier continues hammering nails through the white keys, gradually limiting the range of Corner’s playing. Eventually all the white keys have been nailed to the frame of the now white piano.
Cream for Benjamin Patterson
A naked girl covered in whipped cream is carried on to the stage and placed on the piano, where she makes herself comfortable. Performers and enthusiastic members of the audience start licking the whipped cream off her body. She remains on the piano for the rest of the performance.
Disappearing Music for Face by Meiko Shiomi
Ben Vautier, Philip Corner, Eric Andersen, Emmett Williams, Ann Noël, and Geoffrey Hendricks enter the stage smiling. They stand smiling on stage looking at the audience. Slowly the smiles disappear and the performers end up looking miserable.
Constellation by Dick Higgins
Ben Vautier hands out instruments to the performers, Philip Corner, Eric Andersen, Jackson Mac Low, and Geoffrey Hendricks. Ben Vautier conducts the performance which consists of one simultaneous stroke of the instruments. The work is performed a couple of times, first instrumentally, then vocally and finally by the audience.
Composition # 2 by La Monte Young
The work instructs the performer to ‘Play a composition of your choice as best you can’. Ben Vautier announces that this work must be performed by someone from Poland. A (Polish) member of the audience enters the stage and sings a song in Polish.
Orchestra piece for George Maciunas
Ben Vautier enters the stage, unties his shoelaces and ties them again.
Mama by Guiseppe Cial
Ben Vautier continuously yells “Mama” with increasing desperation in his voice.
Bags by Benjamin Patterson
Lead by Andersen, everyone must put a paper bag over their heads. While holding on to a rope, Andersen will then lead them to the Alison Knowles performance.
1985
“…a 20 year old girl from Copenhagen, is lying on top of the piano. She is smeared with some sweet stuff and the audience is rushing to the stage; the girl actually tastes pretty good.”
Palle Schmidt, “Vild med Flødeskum,” BT, May 30th 1985
1985
“In a classic Maciunas number, Philip Corner was playing a beautiful piece of music on the piano. In walks Ben Vautier with a hammer and a box of nails. Immediately he starts nailing the white keys to the piano all while Ann Nöel comes in with a paint brush and a bucket of paint. She starts painting the piano white.”
Arild Batzer “Fluxus gags og klovnenumre,” Roskilde Tidende May 20th 1985
1985
In a resemblance of a concert, Ben Vautier is performing two pieces by George Brecht, “one of the great composers. In the first piece, Ben enters the stage carrying a vase. He is placing the vase on the piano. In the other piece, he enters the stage, sits down at the piano… and all the light goes out. A solo piece for violin starts with a violin in a rope being lowered from the ceiling.”
Arild Batzer: Art makes me sad – from a radio reporter’ diary.
1985
”Of the artists at the Roskilde festival (…) Vautier, from Nice, is perhaps the most nostalgic. His evening of performances was a rapid-fire, slapstick barrage of classical Fluxus events…”
- Henry Martin, Art News / September 1985
1985
”In a piece of his own called Zen for Nam June Paik, Vautier dipped his head into a bucket of ink and then used his hair as a brush to draw a line 50 yards long on a scroll of paper that tumbled off the stage and down the theater aisle as he crawled along backward, unrolling it with his feet and the assistance of the gleeful children in the audience. Maciunus once decreed that Fluxus had to have an air of Spike Jones, and Vautier still agrees.”
- Henry Martin, Art News / September 1985
1985
7PM BEN VAUTIER - with Phil Corner, Eric Andersen and Ann Nöel
We performed 32 original Fluxus pieces in about an hour, including Brecht’s “Incidental Music”, and others by Dick Higgins, Robert Filhou, Giuseppe Chiari and Emmett Williams. The longest, actually two events by George Maciunias we did simultaneously. Phil played the piano as best he could as Ben nailed down the keys and I painted it white. It was fast and furious and the audience loved it, even though as some critized afterwards, Ben reinterpreted the pieces to create a Fluxus cabaret too much intended to please them. I feel he gave them real value for their money, kept them surprised and was generous about finishing in plenty of time to allow them to reach the Viking Museum, wearing paper bags over their heads and holding onto a rope in a blind procession along the streets and through the park down to the shore. As performer I thoroughly enjoyed myself.
- Ann Noël in her diary, May 1985
November 12th, 2008
Performance in what Ben Vautier calls Maciunas # 2. Chopin Prelude # 2 (Philip Corner’s title for the work). Note that this piece, hammering down the keys with nails is not by George Maciunas. And neither his performance of it in N.Y. in the 60s, nor the score itself, calls for anything to be played at the same time. I have subsequently rewritten it as Piano deFlux.
- Philip Corner in letter to Marianne Bech, October 2006
April 7th, 2009
The nailing down of piano keys which Ben attributes to George Maciunas is actually SANITAS NO. 151, FLUXVARIATION 1, by Tomas Schmit. Ben did not want to believe this (recent conversation with him) but i have the Fluxus page of the Expanded Arts issue of Film Culture to prove it.
When George did it there was no question of playing the piano at the same time.
Nevertheless the counterpoint is both entertaining and meaningful; too bad the video is abbreviated….especially the
end would be a good effect.
Actually i rather dislike these shit-on-the-classics numbers, and making fun of the past is dangerous: it has a way of making fun of you—better.
But, Ben asked me to play Chopin. As it happens, one of my “as a revelation” series is a piano solo derived from the Chopin Prelude in D Major, from which a passage of three chords is played over and over. This seemed appropriate for the occasion.
My notes got gradually cancelled out, to good effect.
The piano then became an objet d’art in the collection of the Galeri Sct. Agnes, thus restoring its value, or even augmenting it. (see my comments “Shiva turns into Brahma” in the Fluxus& Happenings catalog from Köln).
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LaMonte’s “Chair Music” is actually “Poem for Tables, Chairs, Benches, and other Sound Sources”—originally a very precisely systematic chance score and subsequently relaxed to permit a more improvised version. This does not mean that he cannot be extremely critical: reports are that he disliked the performance i organized in 1962 at the Living Theater. Although a similar version was done under his direction at the Biennale of Venezia in 1990 in the context of Ibi Fluxus Ubi Motus—with chosen performers—it is unlikely that the audience go-to would have met with his approval.
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I don’t know what this next Piano Concerto is and i never heard of a Koering. Rather, it sounds like what Ben invited me to do with him (i have found no score for it) where we should each try to play in the other’s area of the keyboard while preventing the other from playing there. Ben interpreted this more as a tussle on the bench, so the performance was short with very little music. A more serious duet is certainly conceivable.
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Bob Watts’ piece is actually F/H TRACE,1963 and asks for a french horn. The tuba will surely make the effect; maybe even more. Bob has a tuba piece which is very different. I have played it with him using my bass trombone.
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“Afraid of Piano” sounds suspiciously like Ben’s “Pano Concerto for Paik No.2 (1965). There is suposed to be an orchestra. There is no mention of playing anything; infact, the opposite is implied—not even sitting down. When i played it with students at the New Lincoln School in New York they really got off on manhandling the teacher, to cheers from the auditorium. When i mentioned it to Ben years later in Nice he asked me if i had started to play a Rachmaninoff concerto. (Uff!) I had sat down before running away but did not play anything. Ben had so far forgotten his own score that he argued with me about it; but when i suggested that at was a performance of John Cage’s 4′33″ (the silent piece) he said, “Oh, then it’s alright.”
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note spelling of Kosugi (Takehisa).
One would not have to ask an audience to be quiet, but unfortunately Ben is not: i have heard him give an impromptu lecture on how beautiful it is and then turn the mike off before the cellophane has stopped sounding. (Yes, it should be cellophane……sounds better.)
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When i do Brechts “Incidental Music” (no.2, incidentally), as for instance with Phœbe Neville in our duet program The Complete Piano Music of George Brecht, as at the Fluxus festival in the Villa Croce, Genova, recently, i let Phœbe build a single pile of blocks—two is counterproductive. And, it makes more sense letting them fall on the strings—otherwise it might be on a table or anything. This is so specified in the score.
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The closest thing to this by Mieko Shiomi (who by-the-way was called Chieko at that time) is EVENT FOR THE LATE AFTERNOON, 1963-FLUXVERSION 1, where the rope that holds the violin is cut by a samurai. Ben may have been thinking of Larry Miller’s artificial finger descending to play one note on the piano.
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What became known as “Zen for Head” was Nam June’s interpretation of LaMonte Young’s “Draw a straight line and follow it” (Composition 1960 #10, for Robert Morris).
The piano is a gratuitous addition; i should not have agreed to do it.
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Birgitte Bang was the “flødeskum pige” and she was abandoned as everyone left for the Museum. I “rescued” her, wrapping her in a robe and taking her to my room to wash and change her clothes…or, rather, to change into clothes.
This was a tastier performance than the one years before in Germany, where the cream curdled.
And i am sure that the title is wrong, but i have not been able to locate it in the “Black & White File”. Let Ben do it.
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This circumstance permitted me to get a good view of the heads-in-bags procession, since i could not be in it.