Collectivism after Modernism - autonomous learning - Blogs

After the “Descent to the Everyday” 63
was canceled. 52 Yet, Bikyoto ultimately lost in their political battle, as the
government authorities deployed their massive power to crush the student
movement before the expected extension of Anpo in June 1970.
After 1970, under the leadership of Hikosaka, Bikyoto reorganized
itself into a constellation of subgroups to perform both discursive and
artistic operations. Among them, Bikyoto Revolution Committee was responsible
for giving concrete forms to Bikyoto’s critique of “internal institutions”
that would appear in an individual artist’s mind whenever he makes and
exhibits his work. In 1971 (see Figure 2.4), it organized a series of members’
solo exhibitions outside the institutional sites; and in 1973 it proposed a pact
of “not making or exhibiting” during the year 1974.
Collaborative collectivism was central to some members’ practice.
Hori incorporated other members’ writings to create his installation for his
solo exhibition held under the auspice of the revolution committee in 1971;
his performance work Act in 1973 was an ingenious experiment to deconstruct
consciousness, by integrating multiple readings of fragmented texts via livefeed
video. 53 As his individual project, Hikosaka formed a “duet team” with
Shibata Masako, while he led Group of Five’s Photo-Book Editorial Committee
(Gonin-gumi Shashinshu Henshu Iinkai), active 1971–73, and Shihyo
(“History and Criticism”) Group, which contributed a slide anthology,
Art Movements That Explore Collectivism, to the 1973 Paris Biennale. Invited
to the 1973 Kyoto Biennale, the Group of Five, together with an additional
Wve associates, examined the tension between individuality and collectivity
by altering each other’s work without completely destroying the originals. 54
Mail-Art Collectivism
Mail art was a great catalyst in conceptualism to go beyond the exhibition
and, more signiWcantly, transcend geographical restrictions. In the context of
collectivism, Genshoku (Tactile Hallucination), founded in 1966 by Suzuki
Yoshinori and others in Sizuoka Prefecture, mailed their object-based works
to each other and nonmembers around 1968.
A collective that existed exclusively through mail art was the
Psychophysiology Research Institute (Sisehin Seirigaku Kenkyujo), initiated
as a student-led seminar by Ina Ken’ichiro and Takeda Kiyoshi, then
students at Tokyo Zokei University. 55 DissatisWed with the conventional curriculum,
Ina and Takeda searched for a communication-based strategy, taking
their cue from HRC, On Kawara, and Matsuzawa Yutaka, Japan’s mail-art
pioneer who had disseminated his language works via postal mail since 1964. 56
The premise of their monthly mailing scheme was as follows: “An invisible
museum, in which local institutes participate through actions or nonactions
that take place simultaneously at a speciWed time and space in their own