Collectivism after Modernism - autonomous learning - Blogs

After the “Descent to the Everyday” 59
go to Senkon for their preplanning of the trial as a performance work—most
typically for the Wrst day of the trial in 1966, which is now commonly known
as Exhibition Event at the Courtroom (Figure 2.3); and it continued to actively
appropriate the courtroom as its own discursive space. Also notable was the
involvement of the law-enforcement authorities, who became unwitting collaborators
of Akasegawa in bringing his money work out to a wider space of
society. This participation of “nonartists” was inadvertent, to be sure. Yet
this form of “inadvertent collectivism,” so to speak, could expand the scope
of a work—particularly when the work was staged in public space—making
innocent bystanders an integral part of the work. In the case of Akasegawa’s
incident, without the police and the prosecutors’ inadvertent collaboration,
there would have been no Model 1,000-Yen Note Incident, which made HRC
the best-documented Japanese collective of the 1960s.
After the regional court rendered the guilty verdict in 1967,
Akasegawa went on to turn “inadvertent collectivism” into “participatory
collectivism,” expanding the role of nonartists in his work. By exploiting
the print media, he invented a few scenarios to create a loose community of
“willing” participants. In his Greater Japan Zero-Yen Note (1967), many helped
him avenge himself against the state that put him through a legal ordeal by
replacing real money with his new money of no value. 35 In his graphic project
The Sakura Illustrated (1970–71), he conceived a mail-in program to recruit
for his Sakura (“Cherry”) Volunteer Army, which boasted a membership
of over two hundred. 36 In 1972, he devised an ongoing project, Ultra-Art
Tomason, for which participants sent him photographs of nameless works of
“ultra-art” they found in everyday life. 37
Group “I” and Anonymity
The end of the “Yomiuri Independent” triggered a few artist-organized independent
exhibitions. Notable among them was the eleven-day-long “Gifu
Independent Art Festival,” held in August 1965 in Gifu. In this mountainous
town in central Japan known for cormorant Wshing, the organizer Vava,
a local collective active since 1958, 38 extended Gutai’s legacy of outdoor
exhibition by selecting the venues at a riverbank, a park, and a gymnasium.
A total of some one hundred individuals and nine collectives gathered,
including such regional groups as Okayama Young Artists Group, Saitama
Avant-Garde Artists Group, Jack’s Society, Zero Dimension, Nomo Group,
Gaga Contemporary Art, and Group “I.” Although most of the outdoor works
tended to be drowned out in a vast natural setting, Group “I”—which consisted
of nine Kobe residents, including Kawaguchi Tatsuo—drew most attention
with its Hole on the bank of the Nagara River. Silently toiling under
the scorching sun for the duration of the festival, they dug a hole ten meters