I believe that painting ultimately still rests on a linguistic level, which enables us to make proper judgments regarding the proficiency and profundity of expression. In other words, what matters to artists is what kind of language they authentically have a feeling for and whether they have entered a desirable linguistic state….Sometimes the feeling for…
The mail art network connected hundreds of artists around the world, heralding art forms based on communication systems rather than objects. In 1981 in Mexico City, the artists’ group Colectivo 3 initiated Poema Colectivo Revolución in Mexico City in 1981 and drew upon the international mail art network, some of whose members had been exchanging artworks and…
Ay-O, a Japanese artist who had been part of Fluxus in New York, returned to Japan in 1966 after an eight-year absence. He organized Happening for Sightseeing Bus Trip in Tokyo which was recorded on film and in photographs taken by some of the participants. post presents the film and selected photographs by Nishiyama Teruo, who took part in the tour.
We cannot always quantify change; is Istanbul changing very fast? … too fast? To document and archive in a place that has a habit of describing itself as “in flux” is of immense importance; we rely on the stories we record and tell to create a collective memory. We thank the individuals and institutions that…
Performance’s only life is in the present. Performance cannot be saved, recorded, documented, or otherwise participate in the circulation of representations of representations: once it does so, it becomes something other than performance. —Peggy Phelan Figures 1–6 are scans of what remains of Circle & Square, performed at LUX in London on the October 13,…
When a stem breaks the water perpendicularly, its angle is measured to be 0 degree, and the degree gets closer to 90 as it is slanted more, and the level surface is 90 degrees.[from the Sogetsu ikebana handbook] Silence is not acoustic. It is a change of mind, a turning around.[John Cage] Arranging flowers takes…
Here lies a bibliography to be stepped on. It is composed of forty primarily English-language publications that take the form of exhibition catalogues, anthologies, artists’ books, and scholarly treatises. Together, these volumes give voice to and reflect on a movement with many histories, a movement propelled by artists living in New York, Eastern Europe, and…
Ethnomusicologist David Novak brings you to the noisy scenes of Japan’s 2012 antinuclear protest movement in Tokyo, Osaka, and Fukushima, mixing commentary with field recordings, musical examples, and interviews about the role of arts and culture in the ongoing political crisis.
What does it take to perform an object?
Mieko Shiomi conducted a series of nine events called Spatial Poems which often took the form of an intimate action poem that anyone could perform.
A talk and performance by Shiomi presented in conjunction with the exhibition MOT Collection Chronicle 1964–: Off Museum at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo, on April 29, 2012.
Most of the literature on Fluxus focuses on the movement’s American and European adherents, barely acknowledging the contributions of Japanese artists. This essay sheds light onto the catalytic role Japanese artists played in this trans-Pacific artistic exchange.
