Megalopolis Aborigines: The Tokyo-Osaka Action Art Ensemble’s 1992 Tour

MUSIC/SCIENCE FORUM Megalopolis Aborigines: The Tokyo­Osaka Action Art Ensemble's 1992 Tour zyxw Christophe Charles WhileJapan is well known for its eco­ nomic power and its tea ceremony, its language is still much ignored. Homage is due to the translators of classical and modern Japanese literature, but transla­ tions of documents on contemporary culture are comparatively few. Impor­ tant lags in the transmission of informa­ tion about the social and cultural situation undoubtedly reinforce funda­ mental misunderstandings. I believe it is urgent to proceed to an effective revi­ sion of cliches and stereotypes such as the idea of difference. It has, in some cases, become obsolete to discuss dis­ tinctions between East and West, as there is—especially in Japan—an enor­ mous curiosity and an ultra­fast assimila­ tion of specific elements of European and American cultures, which are im­ ported because they somehow fit a cer­ tain "Eastern" sensibility. The difference is often not where we believe it is. THE FORMATION OF THE TOKYO­OSAKA ACTION ART ENSEMBLE Since 1984, the Hinoemata Perfor­ mance Festival has happened every summer. It was first organized by Oikawa Nobuhiro's Scorpio­INPA (In­ ternational Network Node of Perfor­ mance and Art and Performing Art) office, and afterwards by related teams of artists and critics, among them Kogawa Tetsuo, Hamada Göji, Ogushi Köji, Takei Yoshimichi and Itö Tali. Be­ cause of its flexibility, many young art­ istsjoined the event, and the little village of Fukushima Prefecture soon became a unique place for communica­ tion and discovery. Music/ScienceForumfeatures conference and meeting reports, reviews of group music and technology shows, course descriptions ofinter­ disciplinary university teachingprograms and descriptions of organizations dedicated to the interaction of music, science and technology. From the time I began participating in these events in 1990,1 imagined pre­ senting our activities to a European au­ dience. In the domain of experimental performance, dance and music, the well­known Ono Kazuo, Kosugi Takehisa and Suzuki Akio regularly give concerts in Europe and America. Nev­ ertheless, there had been no recent representations of a larger group of art­ ists that would give a global idea of the situation of this domain. In May 1991 I met Matthias Osterwold, director of Freunde Guter Musik, who presents, for the most part, avant­garde music in Berlin. He invited us to participate in his Urbane Aboriginale Festival, which was to be held in 1992.1 asked the most original people I had worked with to think about it. As a result, Chino Shüichi, Fujieda Mamoru, Furukawa Toshimasa, Haino Keiji, Hamada Göji, Ishii Mitsutaka, Ito Täli, Kazakura Shö, Merzbow (Akita Masami, Azuma Reiko and Sakaibara Tetsuo), Mukai Chie, Nozawa Mika, Op­ era (Kakiage Nahoko and Sagara Nami), Office Trip (Takei Yoshimichi and Seidö Toshiyuki), Shimoda Seiji, Takeda Kenichi, Yoshizawa Motoharu and my­ self all gathered under the name Tokyo­ Osaka Action Art Ensemble. I also sent documents to Paul and Helena Panhuysen of Appollohius, Logos Duo (Gottfried Raes and Moniek Darge) and MANCA (Musiques Actuelles Nice Cöte d'Azur) Director Michel Redolfi, who all showed much interest in the project. Tokyo Gallery Surge's director Sakai Shinichi offered to help in November 1991. Together we visited the major Japanese institutions that usually sponsor contemporary art and music, but we could only gather enough money to fly to Europe: Japa­ nese companies rarely sponsor events happening outside Japan and have dif­ ficulty understanding experimental art. However, we finally embarked on a tour entitled "Megalopolis Aborigines," appearing at the Urbane Aboriginale Festival in Berlin from 16 to 27 October (the Toki DokiJido Ensemble took part on the last two days of our perfor­ mances) ; at Apollohuis and other ven­ ues in Eindhoven, the Netherlands, from 29 October to 1 November; in the Logos Tetraeder of Ghent, Belgium, from 3 to 6 November; and at the Musee d'Art Moderne et d'Art Contemporain de Nice, France, during the MANCA Festival, from 12 to 15 November 1992. MULTIPLICITY The diversity and openness of disci­ plines and directions seemed to me a necessary condition for the develop­ ment of the activities of the Tokyo­ Osaka Action Art Ensemble. Our "common...