Blanksmanship
Edition of 200 copies, hand-stamped sleeve, 24-page booklet. The first ever reissue of 1994 sound poetry masterpiece Blanksmanship, a high point in the work of legendary avant-garde poet and artist John M. Bennett. Editions Basilic and Luna Bisonte Prods previously collaborated on »A Flattened Face Fogs Through: Selected Sound Poetry (1986-1994)«, an anthology of Bennett’s sound poetry released in 2022 to widespread acclaim.
John M. Bennett’s Blanksmanship is a totemic representation of someth…
Selected Recordings from Grapefruit
For the first time a full album with recordings based on Yoko Ono’s 1964 collection of texts, event scores and drawings “Grapefruit”, a foundational cornerstone of what became known as conceptual art, and enveloping the orbits of Fluxus and experimental music. Performed by The Great Learning Orchestra which has during the 25 years of its existence worked with Gavin Bryars, Terry Riley, Pauline Oliveros, J.g. Thirlwell, Arnold Dreyblatt a.o.
Originally self-published in 1964 in a limited edition …
Il Divano dell'Orecchio
Taking a deep dive into some of the most important works ever created by the Italian avant-garde, Alga Marghen returns with a much needed and long-overdue brand new edition of their towering 5LP collection, “Il Divano dell'Orecchio”, dedicated to the work of Walter Marchetti. Gathering the composer’s seminal work for Cramps, issued between 1974 and 1989, and a host of archival material, scores, texts, and photographs, it’s an unprecedented dive into this truly singular voice, issued in a brand n…
An Anthology
Essential and visually stunning 1963 anthology edited by Young and Maciunas featuring most of the artist who would be take part in Fluxus. Very rare second edition published in 1970 of this important book.
Fluxus Arte per Tutti
158 p, ills colour & bw, 17 x 24 cm, pb, English/Italian edition. This book offers an in-depth analysis of the prominent role Italy came to play in the Fluxus movement, which emerged in the late 1950s. It explores the editorial experience of Fluxus, the creation of “editions” – objects, graphics, artists’ books – and the important role this had in the movement’s spread. Inexpensive to produce and easy to distribute, these works were accessible to the wider public and in turn contributed to the F…
Fluxus Again! A History of a Radical Experience 1952-1962-2022
Fluxus was a cultural, visual, and social adventure that began in 1962. Far from wanting to be a nostalgic celebration, 1962 is not offered here as a starting year, but as the first landing on a journey that began a decade before, in 1952, thanks to John Cage at Black Mountain College.During the Sixties, linguistic and formal experiments emerge in a teeming fervor, poised between Europe, the United States and Japan, in an innovative paradigm, extraneous to the aesthetic conventions experienced u…
The Influence of Transcription
Edition of 50 copies with 12-page booklet including a full transcription of the audio contents and texts by Rasmus Östling and early Fluxus member Ken Friedman. Translated by Hugo Strandberg, designed by Tom Backström and mastered by Sean McCann. Pentiments is happy to offer a uniquely modest document of contemporary Fluxus homage by Finnish artist Rasmus Östling. For this work, Östling paid visits to early Swedish Fluxus member Bengt af Klintberg (best known for his booklet The Cursive Scandina…
It's Not Quite That Inventive (Sixty Years with Broken Music)
The album, featuring Milan Knížák, Petr Ferenc and Opening Performance Orchestra, includes Knížák's 1973 private recording Broken Music, released as a multiple of forty copies by Armin Hundertmark in 1983 on Edition Hundertmark, and a live version of Broken Rebroken, performed in January 2020 at the Museum of Czech Music in Prague by Milan Knížák, Petr Ferenc (aka Phaerentz) and Opening Performance Orchestra. The album comes with a comprehensive booklet that includes an interview with Milan Kníž…
Judson Dance Theater: The Work Is Never Done (Book)
2024 stock. Taking its name from the Judson Memorial Church, a socially engaged Protestant congregation in New York's Greenwich Village, Judson Dance Theater was organized as a series of open workshops from which its participants developed performances. Redefining the kinds of movement that could count as dance, the Judson participants—Trisha Brown, Lucinda Childs, Philip Corner, Bill Dixon, Judith Dunn, David Gordon, Alex Hay, Deborah Hay, Fred Herko, Robert Morris, Steve Paxton, Rudy Perez, Yv…
Gamelan IX March
Big big Tip! Green Vinyl edition, it comes insert/score print, hand numbered. Edition 150 + 50. Live recordings from World Fair, Vancouver 1994 at Indonesian Pavillion Gamelan-IX-March prelude, featuring Gamelan Son of Lion.
Lament For The Rise and Fall of the Elephantine Crocodile
First-time vinyl reissue is limited to 750 numbered copies. Comes with poster. Yoshi Wada's Lament For The Rise And Fall Of The Elephantine Crocodile, originally released in 1982 on India Navigation, remains one of the most remarkable flowers to grow in the rarefied air of American minimalism – akin to Terry Riley's Reed Streams and Pauline Oliveros' Accordion & Voice, yet with a wild, liberated energy all of its own. After graduating from Kyoto University of Fine Arts with a degree in sculptur…
By Alison Knowles: A Retrospective 1960-2022 (Book)
The first survey of the Fluxus cofounder’s prolific avant-garde output, from eight-foot-tall books to make-a-salad performances
A Something Else Reader (Book)
368 pages. A Something Else Reader is a previously-unpublished anthology edited by Dick Higgins in 1972 to celebrate Something Else Press, the publishing house he founded in 1963 to showcase Fluxus and other experimental artistic and literary forms. The publication features selections from Claes Oldenburg’s Store Days, John Cage’s Notations, An Anthology of Concrete Poetry, Breakthrough Fictioneers, Jackson Mac Low’s Stanzas for Iris Lezak, Gertrude Stein’s Matisse Picasso and Gertrude Stein, B…
Op. 163 Penthesilea
*Limited edition of 300 copies* Beautiful, haunting and sombre, this 2LP presents the entire recording from Henning Christiansen’s Heinrich von Kleist tribute at Rene Block’s Rosenfest festival, Berlin, 1984. The Reality is a Ghost in My Mind (LP1) is a work that unfolds patiently with a mix of field recordings; wind, bird song and the sound of snow being crushed underfoot all unite in a foreboding atmosphere. IN Penthesilea Höhle (LP2) features electronic treatments to the original field record…
Piano Sonata #2 (Book)
* Rare original artist' book - Music scores and instructions for performance * After folding Something Else Press in 1974 due to financial difficulties, founder Dick Higgins would move on to other publishing projects for the remainder of his life and career, mostly under the imprint of Unpublished Editions and later Printed Editions. From 1980-1983, Higgins produced a remarkable series of publications using the format of common sheet music books. Within are experimental musical scores and instru…
Variations on a Natural Theme for Orchestra (Book)
* Rare original artist' book - Music scores and instructions for performance * Variations on a Natural Theme (1982), as in Dick Higgins words, is a large orchestral work, in some ways a companion to the Ten Ways, since this time it uses gamuts (in this case selected by the individual musicians) and photo derivations made from a female model; she was insistent that she not be recognizable, since she was a teacher and was afraid that it would be damaging to her professionally if it were known that…
Sonata for Prepared Piano (Book)
*Rare original arist' book - Music scores and instruction for performance* Sonata for Prepared Piano (1982) is a short work which, again, uses photoderivations as parts of the notation—this time nature with incomplete figure photographs, mostly obscured by the natural objects around them. (Dick Higgins, "The Strategy of Each of My Books" from Horizons, 1984)
"Four movements make up this thirteen minute work. Each uses a very different method of interpreting its materials, a set of four phot…
Twenty-Six Mountains for viewing the Sunset from (Book)
Rare original artist' book - Music scores and instructions for performance ** Twenty-Six Mountains for Viewing the Sunset From (1981) is for a small ensemble, including three dancers. It is a different kind of notation, not using photographs but using an indication of what kinds of tex- tures and patterns are desired. The title comes from a trip I took late one night with a teenager from Vermont, who brought me to some of his favorite places to view the sunset from; it was magical evening…
Ten Ways of Looking at a Bird for Violin and Harpsichord (Book)
Rare original artist' book - Music scores and instructions for performance Ten Ways of Looking at a Bird (1981)...is a playful variation on the name of a poem by Wallace Stevens whose work I have always admired, though, goodness knows, there is no modern poet more different from myself. This is a piece for violin and harpsichord; the harpsichord part is developed in “live time” (that is, during the performance) from what the violinist is doing, according to a set of rules. The violinist uses mu…
Piano Album. Short piano pieces (Book)
* Rare original artist' book - Music scores and instructions for performance * Although Dick Higgins is best known as a performance poet and artist, his creative life began with music, he studied with composers Henry Cowell and John Cage, and he has even made a phonograph record of compositions by himself and by Erik Satie. In fact, some of his Happenings and Fluxus works are essentially musical, such as the 1965 “Opera a Gogo” Hrusalk. For him music sometimes seems to be a matter of behavior ( …