Collectivism after Modernism - autonomous learning - Blogs

56 Reiko Tomii
from the ambitious networking of George Maciunas, the principal organizer
of Fluxus. Not that HRC was oblivious of international art; on the contrary,
it lived in the age of what was then critically termed “international contemporaneity”
(kokusai-teki doji-sei). 28 Still, when HRC and the post-HRC collectives
departed the exhibition hall and entered the public sphere (that is,
Japanese society) in their collaborative projects, their immediate concerns
were more local than international.
In the local context of artists’ collectivism, the list in HRC’s Xyer
indicates a Xuid collaborative network of small collectives directly or indirectly
associated with HRC. (There are six of them, marked with an asterisk
above.) Most important on the list is Group Ongaku, a musicians’ improvisation
collective, founded in 1961, whose member Yasunao Tone was close
to Akasegawa. Both Group Ongaku and HRC, together with such individuals
as Yoko Ono, were part of a loose afWliation of Fluxus Japanese Section—
better known as Tokyo Fluxus. In turn, Ono’s May 1962 concert at the legendary
Sogetsu Art Center was a forum of collaboration, in which her colleagues,
including Akasegawa and Tone, performed her instruction pieces. 29
Furthermore, the Wrst pre-HRC event, Dinner Commemorating the Defeat in
the War, held on August 15, 1962, was a collaboration among Neo Dada,
Group Ongaku, and the experimental dancers’ group Ankoku Butoh, with
Akasegawa joining as a “performer-eater.” (The performers ate a sumptuous
dinner before the audience, who unknowingly purchased a 200-yen ticket
for the privilege of watching them eat.) 30 Even Cleaning Event itself was part
of a larger collaboration, submitted as an entry to Tone Prize Exhibition, a
conceptualist work conceived by Tone in critique of the “open call” exhibition
system. 31 After HRC, this kind of “intercollective networking” would
be adopted by the commune-oriented and conceptualist Kyukyoku Hyogen
Kenkyujo (Final Art Institute), active in 1969–73, which participated in the
1973 Kyoto Biennale with Nirvana Data Integration. 32
In addition to the socially conscious “descent to everyday life,”
HRC’s aspiration for “anonymity” set Cleaning Event apart from the paradetype
precedents of Nika, Kyushu-ha, and Neo Dada, which all received publicity
in the media. Like it or not, by 1964, publicity entered the avant-garde
equation, as a logical consequence of artists taking their action-based works
to the streets, and creating and/or receiving publicity became routine with
the post-HRC collaborative collectives. In contrast, the operation of HRC
was frequently secretive. In a literal sense, wearing the white uniform assured
anonymity in the crowd. However, more was at stake conceptually: not only
was there no public notice for its guerrilla act of Cleaning Event, HRC did
not even want to give the name of Art to its cleaning in rejection of the modern
concept of Art. This embodied an Anti-Art attitude for “namelessness”