This article is text by Ryo lkeshiro ond Atou Tonoko about how sound art is viewed and percieved in the Japanese context. We are told about how sound is a very important part of Japanese culture, we are also shown historical sound art pieces by various sound artists from the years 1949 to 2013. Sound art is still relatively a new term in Japan.
Jikken Kōbō was an artist collective founded in Japan in 1951 and was disbanded in 1957, the group consisted of 14 members, they were artists, musicians, choreographers and poets who were self taught. Their leader Shuzo Takiguchi played a pivotal role in introducing Dada and Surrealism to Japan through connections to Andre Breton and Marcel Duchamp. They were described and being like Bauhaus but without the buidlings.
Gutai Art Association were another Japanese Avant-Garde artist group founded in the Hanshin region In 1954. In their early work they created a series of striking works anticipating later happenings, performance and conceptual art. “In which the artist rolled half naked in a pile of mud, remains the most celebrated event associated with the group.”
https://www.tate.org.uk/art/art-terms/g/gutai
Fluxus was a movement in art put forward by George Maciunas in 1963. The leaders of Fluxus consisted of George Maciunas, Yoko Ono, Nam June Paik, La Monte Young, etc. Fluxus’s work was profoundly influenced the nature of art production since the 1960s. The work had no single unifying style but adopted the DIY mindset.
“Purge the world of bourgeois sickness, ‘intellectual,’ professional & commercialized culture, PURGE the world of dead art, imitation, artificial art, abstract art, illusionistic art, mathematical art, — PURGE THE WORLD OF ‘EUROPANISM’!” – Maciunas
Glossary-
Wabi-Sabi – “beauty of irregularity.” Muneyoshi Yanagi “The notion of wabi-sabi may be seen as the aesthetic grounding of the Japanese reinterpretation of Buddhism, reflecting plainfless and simplicity, aged and solitary states.”