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…
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.
Drawn primarily from the SAC journal published at the Sogetsu Art Center, this growing list presents original source documents in Japanese along with English translations. They offer insight into the issues and debates that circulated among artists and critics involved in experimental art, film, and music in 1960s Japan. You can continue to develop this list by…
“Dear Kara Juro, please forgive me for being late with this design.” —Yokoo Tadanori (1967)
An extensive two-part interview with Tone, together with documentation from a concert of his works that was held at The Museum of Modern Art in January 2013 in the context of the exhibition Tokyo 1955–1970: A New Avant-Garde, and with material related to his output, since the 1960s, as a musician, artist, and critic.
The featured APN (Asahi Picture News) portfolios are comprised of modern photographic prints showing sculptures made in 1953 and 1954 by Yamaguchi Katsuhiro and Kitadai Shozo, members of the avant-garde collaborative Jikken Kobo (Experimental Workshop). Founded in Tokyo immediately after World War II, Jikken Kobo’s intermedia, cross-disciplinary works helped to foster the rebirth of the…
The following are selected works and related archival materials presented by Postwar Japan Moving Image Archive. The digitization of these materials was supported by JSPS KAKENHI Grant Number 24720048. Matsumoto Toshio has made approximately eighty film and video works ranging from avant-garde documentaries, features, and experimental films to multimedia installations. He has collaborated with artists…
How can art disrupt and transform the status quo? How can art and the everyday be reconciled? What is the artistic significance of train rides, urinal cleaning, and fabricating fake banknotes? What is the sense of a musical performance that can be heard by no one but the performers? What is the purpose of art…
