Collectivism after Modernism - autonomous learning - Blogs

60 Reiko Tomii
in diameter and Wlled it back in, in compliance with the river-related laws. 39
Its “Sisyphean task” was, in one critic’s words, “a brutal critique of the objectdependent
act of creation.” 40
Hole was probably the most “rewardless” (musho) work in 1960s
art. To dig a hole only to Wll it back in was a purposeless task that would garner
no artistic, moral, or emotional reward. Needless to say, there was little
expectation of marketplace reward, since virtually no art market existed at
the time in Japan for contemporary art and performance art was decisively
unsalable. The only reward was the collaboration in and of itself, and individual
authorship meant little. In this sense, it was also an anonymous act.
As the group proclaimed in its manifesto, its name embodied its goal: “Our
name ‘I’ is i of tan’i [unit], i of ichi [position], i of iso [phase]. That is to say, we
loosely mean each one of us is a unit within the multitude, and is positioned
within it.” 41 In its second exhibition, entitled “Impersonal Exhibition”
(Hininsho-ten), held in Kobe in November 1965, the group put this idea in
practice, with each member contributing two canvases, all executed in the
same, speciWed colors and composition (a red vertical line on a blue ground). 42
The goal was to call into question the modernist faith in originality through
presenting the eighteen identical abstractions, ironically accompanied by the
individual creators’ name tags. The members were no more than “parts” that
constitute the whole, and their creations made sense, if at all, only within
this framework. Group “I” continued its exploration of absolute collectivity
in the third exhibition at a small Osaka gallery in January 1966. It was an
indoor earthwork tour de force: a massive pile of gravels—actually twelve
tons, or four truckloads brought from the street by a belt-conveyer—Wlled the
gallery. 43 Entitled E. Jari, the exhibition paid homage to the French absurdist
Alfred Jarry, through a word play that combined the group’s name “I”
(rhyming with he) and the material used, gravels, which is jari in Japanese.
Before Group “I,” Gutai experimented with a different kind of
impersonality, when twelve members exhibited in the “Yomiuri Independent”
under the single name of “Gutai.” 44 The issue of originality and collectivity,
as identiWed by Group “I,” was further pursued by the conceptualist
Kashihara Etsutomu and two colleagues in their collaborative project What
Is Mr. X (1968–69), to create an “average” of the three. 45
Zero Dimension “Rapes the City”
Founded in Nagoya around 1959, Zero Dimension is the most important collective
among the so-called Ritualists (Gishiki-ha) of the 1960s—which also
encompassed such collectives as Kurohata (Black Flag), Vitamin Art, Kokuin
(literally, “Announcing the Negative”)—who specialized in outrageous street
and onstage performances. 46 The driving force of Zero Dimension as a