FLUXUS series
FLUXUS in rehearsal, Photo by
Four interpretations of Fluxus Compositions
by John Cage, La Monte Young and Ben Patterson, adapted as devised evening-length theatre works for the closing day of the Los Angeles Philharmonic's Fluxus season in the Noon to Midnight program, in collaboration with Chris Rountree and Kate Nordstrum, with designs from Chu-Hsuan Chang, Nina Caussa, Kate Fry and Jackie! Zhou.
Each piece dealt with themes of repetition.
“If You Will Forgive Me John Cage’s Water Walk: Repetitions and Resets”
In February 1960, John Cage performed Water Walk on the celebrity guessing-game show I’ve Got a Secret with an obstacle course of objects from a bathtub to a Campari soda. Cage’s TV appearance, which is recreated and gradually abstracted here, examines the nature of rehearsals, retakes, apologies and second chances.
“ La Monte Young: Piano Piece for David Tudor No. 2”
Asks the performer to open and close the piano cover without making any sound, trying again and again until they reach a natural conclusion. Joanne Pearce Martin, the LA Philharmonic’s keyboardist, and a group of performers as concert musicians, looked at repetition in terms of practice, solitude, mastery, lifelong relationships with interactive objects, animation, inanimation, action and rest.
“Benjamin Patterson: Composition for Any Situation”
'I don’t believe in manifestos. What I try to do is open people’s minds, ears, and eyes with surprises and unexpected things so they become more aware and sensitive to the world around them.' - Benjamin Patterson
Led by a team of composer guides: Odeya Nini, Tomas Peire, Mia Doi Todd, Shruti Kumar and Cobaine Ivory, audience participants completed hypothetical compositions of their own, using Patterson’s scientific instructions, solving for mass, velocity, duration and repetition.
“Composition 201960 #5: Improvisation, Meaningless Work, Natural Disasters”
La Monte Young’s Composition 1960 #5 appeared in An Anthology, edited by Young, a publication he described as “chance operations, concept art, anti-art, indeterminacy, improvisation, meaningless work,” and “natural disasters.” This response to Young's original piece includes a sound installation and durational physical theatre performance examining our simultaneously worshipful and destructive relationship to nature, and in particular with butterflies, which are increasingly endangered and associated symbolically in many cultures with life, the soul, transformation, endurance, change, hope, and transition (fluxus).
