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Radio Fluxus: Stories from the Fluxus ArchivesAuthor: Activating Fluxus
Radio Fluxus: Stories from the Fluxus Archives is a podcast series which invites scholars, artists, curators, conservators and other art researchers and practitioners to share their stories about one Fluxus artwork, along with their views on its use and activation. This podcast is part of the research project Activating Fluxus located at Bern University of the Arts and funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation. More information about the aims of the project and its team is available at activatingfluxus.com. Language: en Genres: Arts, Visual Arts Contact email: Get it Feed URL: Get it iTunes ID: Get it |
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‘When Elephants Fight, It Is The Frogs That Suffer—A Sonic Graffiti’ (2016-2017) by Ben Patterson
Monday, 29 September, 2025
The sound installation When Elephants Fight, It Is The Frogs That Suffer – A Sonic Graffiti was conceived by Ben Patterson specifically for documenta 14, which took place in 2017 in Athens and Kassel. Development of the work was disrupted by the artist’s sudden death in June 2016 and was undertaken again by the artist’s estate in collaboration with Nassauischer Kunstverein Wiesbaden (NKW) and Berlin-based composer Bernd Schultheis. In this episode, Elke Gruhn—art historian, former director of the Nassauischer Kunstverein Wiesbaden, and longtime friend of Patterson—recounts the story of realizing the work in Patterson's absence, revealing details of gathering and arranging the components of the sound piece and translating the artist’s instructions into site-specific installations mounted in Athens and Kassel. Gruhn reflects on the challenges related to unavoidable speculation on the artist’s intention, technical difficulties presented by the two distinct sites of documenta 14, and the subsequent inclusion of the work in the collection of the Art Institute of Chicago.More information about the episode, the piece and the guest is available on the episode's website.
