Collectivism after Modernism - autonomous learning - Blogs

After the “Descent to the Everyday” 67
In the next summer project, Current of Contemporary Art, the
members themselves made a voyage from Kyoto to Osaka. On July 20, 1969,
ten members assembled a Styrofoam raft—in the shape of a gigantic arrow,
3.5 meters wide and 8 meters long—and rode on it, going down the rivers of
Uji, Yodo, and Dojima (Figure 2.7). The whole journey took twelve hours.
Staging the project on a day before the historic landing of Apollo 11 on the
moon, they struck a claim against scientiWc rationalism as well as placid
everyday life, by spending a leisurely time on a rickety vessel. The trip from
Kyoto to Osaka was subsequently repeated twice. In August 1970, eleven
members walked with twelve sheep for eight days and slept seven nights
along the roadside (Sheep); in August 1972, twenty members constructed a
house with a footprint of six tatami mats (4 meters by 3 meters), which became
a vessel in which the Wve members spent six days, drifting downstream
on the rivers Kizu and Yodo (Ie [House]).
Invited to the 1973 Kyoto Biennale, The Play transplanted its
outdoor aspiration in the museum’s exhibition hall. They built a thirtymeter-long
suspension bridge that connected the entrance and the exit of
the assigned gallery. After the exhibition, in a move characteristic of the
group’s whimsical temperament, the members “returned” this bridge—which
was the “essence” of the bridge dissociated from its natural environment—
to landscape, creating a new crossing over the Kizu River, albeit for a single
day. This was the group’s summer project that year.
FIGURE 2.6. The Play, Voyage: A Happening in an Egg, 1968. Document (map and project
summary). Photograph courtesy of Ikemizu Keiichi.