Art and Street Politics in the Global 1960s 0367710676, 9780367710675

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Art and Street Politics in the Global 1960s

Anarchic street performances in late-1950s Japan; inauguration of the first Happenings in Antwerp and charging of the “magic circle” in Amsterdam; Bauhaus Situationiste and anti-national art exchanges, networks and communes. As “Happener” and “Art Missionary,” Yoshio Nakajima’s storied career traverses an astounding range of locations, scenes, movements, media, and performance modes in the global 1960s and 1970s in ways that challenge our notions of the possibilities of art. Nakajima repeatedly plays a role in jump-starting spaces of possibility, from Tokyo to Ubbeboda, from Spui Square and the Dutch Provos to Antwerp and Sweden. Despite this, Nakajima’s work has paradoxically been largely excluded from accounts where it might have justifiably featured. The present volume represents an international collaboration of researchers working to remedy this oversight. Nakajima’s work demands a reconceptualization of narratives of this art and politics and their specific interrelation to consider his exemplary nonconformity— and its exemplary exclusion. This history demonstrates the inadequacy of notions of specificity that would oppose an authentic local or national frame to an inauthentic transnational one. Conversely, Nakajima manifests a key dimension of the 1960s as a global event in the interrelation between eventfulness itself and the redrawing of categories of practice and understanding. William Marotti is Associate Professor of History at the University of California, Los Angeles. He teaches modern Japanese history with an emphasis on art and politics, everyday life, and cultural-historical issues. His works address the 1960s and the politics of 1968 as a global event through examinations of art, cultural politics, and oppositional practices. His publications include Money, Trains and Guillotines: Art and Revolution in 1960s Japan (2013), “The Art of the Everyday, as Crisis: Objets, Installations, Weapons, and the Origin of Politics” (2015) and “The Performance of Police and the Theatre of Protest” (2021).

Routledge Studies in the Modern History of Japan Series Editor: Miriam Kingsberg Kadia (University of Colorado Boulder, USA)

This series publishes original research in the field of modern Japanese history. It includes monographs, edited collections, annotated translations, and other types of publications. In pursuit of the best boundary-breaking scholarship, it is only loosely contained by its chronological, geographic, and disciplinary parameters. It welcomes creative contributions that toy with the confines of the “modern” period or that situate this era within a longer timeframe. It seeks transnational research that is not circumscribed by the borders of the contemporary Japanese nation-state or limited to a source base of Japanese-language materials. It embraces books in every historical subfield (social, cultural, intellectual, political, economic, medical, legal, diplomatic, etc.), as well as works that draw on methodologies employed across the humanities, the social sciences, and more distant fields. The series particularly supports research by junior scholars, independent scholars, scholars working off the tenure track, scholars whose native language is not English, women scholars, and scholars of color. Writing Manchuria: The Lives and Literature of Zhu Ti and Li Zhengzhong Norman Smith Chinese Government Leaders in Manchukuo, 1931–1937 Intertwined National Ideals Jianda Yuan Art and Street Politics in the Global 1960s Yoshio Nakajima and the Global Avant-Garde Edited by William Marotti

Art and Street Politics in the Global 1960s Yoshio Nakajima and the Global Avant-Garde Edited by William Marotti

First published 2023 by Routledge 4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2023 selection and editorial matter, William Marotti; individual chapters, the contributors The right of William Marotti to be identified as the author[/s] of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Marotti, William A. (William Arthur), editor. Title: Art and street politics in the global 1960s : Yoshio Nakajima and the global avant-garde / edited by William Marotti. Description: Abingdon, Oxon : Routledge, 2023. | Series: Routledge studies in the modern history of Japan | Includes bibliographical references and index. | Identifiers: LCCN 2022055677 (print) | LCCN 2022055678 (ebook) | ISBN 9780367710675 (hardback) | ISBN 9780367710682 (paperback) | ISBN 9781003149149 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Nakajima, Yoshio, 1940---Criticism and interpretation. | Arts--Experimental methods--History-20th century. Classification: LCC NX584.Z9 N3632 2023 (print) | LCC NX584. Z9 (ebook) | DDC 709.2--dc23/eng/20221125 LC record available at https:// lccn.loc.gov/2022055677LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc. gov/2022055678 ISBN: 978-0-367-71067-5 (hbk) ISBN: 978-0-367-71068-2 (pbk) ISBN: 978-1-003-14914-9 (ebk) DOI: 10.4324/9781003149149 Typeset in Bembo by SPi Technologies India Pvt Ltd (Straive)

Contents

Acknowledgments Notes on the Contributors

vi viii

Introduction 1 1 DAM ACT: Yoshio Nakajima in Japan, 1957–1964

7

YOSHIKO SHIMADA

2 Dancer, Happener, Provo: Yoshio Nakajima and the Dutch Happening Scene, 1964–1965

35

PETER VAN DER MEIJDEN

3 Yoshio Nakajima and the Interplay of Art and Activism during the Mid-Sixties in Belgium

83

STEFAN WOUTERS

4 Yoshio Nakajima: A Japanese Artist from Sweden

109

TANIA ØRUM

5 When Art Grabs You: Grasping Art and Politics in the Global 1960s with Yoshio Nakajima

139

WILLIAM MAROTTI

Selected Chronology Bibliography Index

181 186 196

Acknowledgments

This project began with a chance encounter and unexpected new directions—a result that we have come to understand as typifying Nakajima’s encounters over the years. It differs in one regard: the initial reluctance of Nakajima himself. While pursuing her doctoral study of the radical art academy, Bigakkō, and, in particular, the details of its offshoot, Suwa Bigakkō, Dr. Yoshiko Shimada discovered from organizer and former student Kosaka Mayu that Nakajima had visited the class of Matsuzawa Yutaka in 1972. With the aid of Nakajima’s son, Anders Nakajima, Dr. Shimada found that Nakajima was in fact in Japan, and over the course of several phone conversations, managed to persuade him to meet and to talk about his past work. Reluctant at first, Nakajima’s recollections came to coincide with a renewed interest in exhibition and performance, beginning with a small show in Ōkubo that seems to have rekindled his art and performance. In the process of participating in the unearthing of his own history and archives, Nakajima in a sense rediscovered himself—an unexpected result of an encounter with his own art as possibility. At the time, Dr. Shimada was also spearheading the excavations of Matsuzawa Yutaka’s personal archive, then in a state of neglect and disorder in his former atelier. Her many months of efforts yielded numerous discoveries, including voluminous correspondence between Matsuzawa and Nakajima and substantial other ephemera. Shimada’s subsequent investigations, including interviewing a range of Mail Art interlocutors of Matsuzawa and Nakajima, also catalyzed a number of professional encounters that brought us together with our European colleagues. Through a series of intertwined and wide-ranging collaborations in Japan, the United States, Denmark, and Sweden—including explorations of Matsuzawa’s complex legacy—the contributors to this volume began to unfold Nakajima’s own remarkable involvements. For her heroic labors in unearthing and preserving the broad and at-risk legacy of underappreciated and underexamined art in Japan and internationally, as well as her central role in envisioning and spearheading this project, we wish to give Dr. Shimada a special and heartfelt acknowledgment. Our many thanks to Yoshio Nakajima, of course, and to Anders Nakajima and the Nakajima family for their many kindnesses, and for their continuing work maintaining the Yoshio Nakajima Archive at Rausstenkärlsfabrik and the Yoshio

Acknowledgments  vii Nakajima Art Hall. Our thanks as well to Yoshida Atsushi and Yoshida Kakuya; to Kumiko and Haruo Matsuzawa and the Matsuzawa family; to Gunhild Borggreen; to Nagasaki Yumiko, Gallery 58, and Hashimoto Toshiko; and to Takamura Mukata and Peter Arnessen, both ex-students of Nakajima’s. A personal thank you to Amanda Coutts and Tatiana Sulovska for their careful proof-reading of the draft essays, as well as to Chris Nelson and students in my spring 2022 graduate seminar. Art is indeed the next possibility; our deep thanks for all who help make that possibility possible.

Notes on the Contributors

William Marotti, Associate Professor, UCLA Department of History; Chair, East Asian Studies MA IDP. Peter van der Meijden, PhD, associate lecturer, Department of Art History, Copenhagen University. Tania Ørum, Professor emerita, Department of Arts and Cultural Studies, University of Copenhagen. Yoshiko Shimada, PhD, independent artist and scholar; lecturer, University of Tokyo. Stefan Wouters, PhD, artist and art critic at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts Antwerp and co-coordinator of the René Magritte Museum/Museum of Abstract Art (Jette-Brussels).

Introduction

Figure I.1  Yoshio Nakajima in performance in Halmstad, Sweden, ca. 1966, bursting through his own “art missionary” image on a poster referencing his exhibition. The poster also advertises the Happening News, a joint production of Hugo Heyrman, Panamarenko, Wout Vercammen, Bernd Lohaus and Nakajima (six issues from 1965–ca. 1966). Photographer unknown. Courtesy Yoshio Nakajima Archive, Konstrundan Raus Art Center.

DOI: 10.4324/9781003149149-1

2 Introduction Happenings on streets and trains in Tokyo and in front of moving trains. Travel from Japan to Italy by hitchhiking and transport by smugglers, selling small artworks and performing for donations. Performances inaugurating the “magic center” in Spui Square in Amsterdam and catalyzing the Provos, for whom he becomes both emblem and international advocate. Alternative Documenta with the Bauhaus Situationiste. Performance, conceptual, sculptural, and figurative art; installations and oils. Dada and CoBrA, Unbeat and Bauhaus Situationiste. An assault on an art critic on the steps of a museum, who becomes a lifelong supporter. Hosting the International Ubbeboda Symposium, the longest outdoor art festival in Swedish history (authorities bulldoze an earth art work by an invited Polish artist). Expulsion from Belgium. The first foreign student enrolled in the Valand Art Academy. Visit to the Soviet Union. Invitation to the Pompidou Center. These are the exemplary and remarkably productive movements of an “art missionary.” In ways that challenge our imaginings of the role, place, and possibilities of art, Yoshio Nakajima’s storied career has traversed an astounding range of locations, scenes, and movements as well as media and performance modes. The paradox of Nakajima’s work is that, despite its apparent exemplification of art’s potential to move and to transform, it has largely fallen out of accounts in which its impact might have justifiably featured. The present volume represents an international collaboration of researchers working to remedy this oversight. Our accounts center on Nakajima’s activities from the late 1950s to the early 1970s, a time in which movement across spatial, practical, and conceptual boundaries pushed against commonplace conceptions of both art and politics. We detail the ways in which Nakajima offered an inexhaustible, unauthorized, and unexpected set of interventionist events, perturbing practices and understandings wherever he went. From Japan to Europe, and from country to country, Nakajima’s movements, creative engagements, and unscripted provocations arrived without warning, prompting confusion and stimulating imaginations. Nakajima’s role in all of this comes in the form of an improbable, radical self-authorization. As artist and scholar Dr. Yoshiko Shimada relates in her chapter in this volume, “DAM ACT: Yoshio Nakajima in Japan, 1957–1964,” Nakajima was the third son of a farming family from Saitama prefecture, without money, prospects, or connections. Nakajima struggled with a severe stammer as a child but was encouraged in art by an elementary school teacher.1 Moving to Tokyo in 1955 (at the age of 15) in search of employment, he enrolled in an evening high school and immediately engaged with a newly dynamic art scene surging with international currents and local experimentalism. Nakajima began a manifold approach to an art practice comprising drawings, painting, provocative installations, and interventionist performances—the latter a signature mix of “spontaneity and calculation,” as Shimada argues. He formed an art club at the night school, joining with classmates to host festivals on “Dada” and “Art and Anti-art” as the “Unbeat Organizers.” Combining documentation and extensive oral history work, Shimada reads Nakajima against art-historical exclusions and even against his own self-representation, revealing Nakajima in context as both attuned to his moment and impressively groundbreaking as an artist. Even within this moment of “action art” and

Introduction  3 increasing attention to performance and the body, Nakajima and his Unbeat artist group emerge as the first in Japan to develop practices that were exclusively performance-based—and which echoed contemporaneous transformations in political activism. Shimada reveals a much more engaged and intentional Nakajima than might be apparent from his wild-seeming actions or from his own accounts while giving weight to the risk and power of his performances as an “art missionary.” With encouragement from Dutch artist Daniel van Golden, Nakajima left Japan in 1964, again following a meandering, improbable route from Hong Kong to Saigon, across India, and all the way to Italy via Nepal, Egypt, Turkey, and Greece, supported by smugglers, hitchhiking, improvisational busking performances, and art sales. Arriving in Venice in September of 1964 during the 32d Biennale, he serendipitously met with a former acquaintance, artist Ikewada Yuko, wife of Austrian artist and architect Friedrich Stowasser, a.k.a. Friedensreich Regentag Dunkelbunt Hundertwasser. From there, as Peter van der Meijden, Stefan Wouters, and Tania Ørum detail in their chapters in this volume, Nakajima moves across a stunning range of locales and connections, bringing his performance intensity from scene to scene. His inexplicable, undeniable presence within already vibrant scenes catalyzes new possibilities for both art and politics, from Amsterdam to Antwerp, from Robert Jasper Grootveld’s “magic circle” to the Provos and to the Bauhaus Situationiste. He enrolls in the Rotterdam (1964), Antwerp (1965), and Valand (1966) art academies. We separate these travels into distinct locales in order to examine in detail the particular scenes of Nakajima’s performances and interactions and to consider his peripatetic presence and its uncanny appeal against more familiar, parochial accounts of them. Peter van der Meijden’s chapter, “DANCER, HAPPENER, PROVO: Yoshio Nakajima and the Dutch Happening Scene, 1964–1965,” traces Nakajima’s role in catalyzing a potent and dynamic mix of performance and politics in Holland. Nakajima’s actions contributed to lending key spaces an air of expectation and transformation and to opening the way for a politics operating within these newly opened vistas of possibility. This was Provo, a movement and a concept grasping the practical transformability of the everyday world. Such potentials, and the means to dramatically call them into practical being, had become envisionable via the inchoate actions of Nakajima in concert with better-known figures such as Robert Jasper Grootveld. Van der Meijden elaborates the range of Nakajima’s reception and his participation in what Grootveld would name the “magic circle,” a charged performance space drawing participants and observers into its counter-magic opposed to the practices and significations of Capital. Provo would subsequently occupy this undefined territory between activism and aesthetics, and, through its insistence on ludic activism and homo ludens as a way forward, further develop the intertwined dimensions of aesthetics and politics. Within Provo, images and accounts of Nakajima’s actions retained circulation as icons of creative action in the present and of the creative human being of the future—even as his own name often dropped away. Stefan Wouters details similarly explosive effects in “Yoshio Nakajima and the Interplay of Art and Activism During the Mid-Sixties in Belgium.” Wouters makes

4 Introduction a case for Nakajima’s powerfully transformative effects upon an already thriving “Live Art” scene, hitherto nearly unrecognized in scholarly analyses. Examining Nakajima’s provocative first “Happening” on the Groenplaats, Antwerp, in September of 1965, Wouters details a multilayered collaborative performance event with Wout Vercammen; Hugo Heyrman (in a “battle”); and others (including Henri Van Herwegen a.k.a. Panamarenko, present only as a photographer). The provocatively ambiguous event drew together site-specific references to the nearby bomb shelter, to the Vietnam War and the threat of nuclear annihilation, to pollution, and to deadly car crashes. With the passing out of candles, spectators were brought into an active role. Nakajima’s event triggers the belated adoption of the term “happening” and provides a performance vocabulary for subsequent local events. Moreover, as detailed by Wouters, it appears to have catalyzed the subsequent Belgian offshoot of Provo with its presentation of a “brutality that implicitly criticizes brutality” and with its energizing of the Groenplaats as an eventful space, a status that persisted for years after. Wouters traces Nakajima’s further exploits with Vercammen, Heyrman, and Panamarenko, culminating in the visit of Thom Jaspers at an event that puts police in an involuntary participatory role—and that results in Nakajima’s expulsion from the country as a “danger to public safety.” Wouters makes the case that, while Panamarenko’s subsequent fame has overshadowed that of Nakajima and others, it was in fact Nakajima who inaugurated a happening scene with both artistic and political ramifications. After a series of such international moves, often compulsory at the hands of police, Nakajima settled in Sweden. Tania Ørum elaborates Nakajima’s transformative work and connections outside of the boundaries of the narrowly national focus of art-historical accounts in her chapter, “Yoshio Nakajima: A Japanese Artist from Sweden.” Ørum traces Nakajima’s expansive and ever-growing network, one that led him to Sweden following his expulsion from Belgium to enroll as the firstever foreign student at the Valand Art Academy. As a student, Nakajima supplemented his studies with exhibitions, the creation of a gallery, and performances both locally and throughout Europe. During this time, Nakajima became an active member of the dissident Second Situationist International, or Bauhaus Situationiste, and participated in their wide-ranging art activism, performances, and declarations. His Ubbeboda Symposium of international sculpture, a 100-day outdoor self-organized art festival (the longest in Swedish history), engaged Nakajima’s extensive mail art networks to bring together artists from as far as Poland and Japan to the small village to create iconic sculpture and land art, and spurred the creation of an artists’ commune. The extended event reached a national and international audience when the local politicians demolished a work of land art by the participating Polish artist, Teresa Murak, an incident that was followed by a similar act of oppression in the Soviet Union, the “Bulldozer Exhibition.” Ørum considers the strange recognition and non-recognition of Nakajima—noting how, after a stay in Japan (1974–1977), Nakajima was welcomed “home to Sweden,” receiving a measure of local appreciation and growing respect, even as his global and extensive work remained outside of the purview of self-provincializing scholarly accounts. Such absences typify the career of this prolific “art missionary.” Despite his manifold involvements, Nakajima is nonetheless missing from scholarly accounts where

Introduction  5 his work ought to belong, including those ostensibly celebrating the long 1960s moment of international contemporaneity and proliferating, complexly interwoven, and parallel practices. Understanding the ways in which Nakajima has contributed to transforming perceptions and practices can help us grasp the unpredictable capacities of art in the world in ways that go beyond nation-centric notions of artistic belonging. In my own chapter, “When Art Grabs You: Grasping Art and Politics in the Global 1960s with Yoshio Nakajima,” I consider Nakajima’s work in relation to the global 1960s, to an evolving practice of happenings, and to the specifics of a local dynamism in Japan. I address the challenges for conceiving of the changing roles of art and politics in this moment, while considering the specifics of Nakajima’s career and its untimely, uncharacterizable dimensions as an aspect of these transformations in practice. Examining Nakajima’s deep connections and askew relations to internationalized art contexts and the politics of the moment, I argue that his untimeliness provides, paradoxically, a paradigmatic case of the relation of art and politics within the 1960s and for the continuing stakes of that relation in the present. I, in turn, elaborate a framework for considering such work, drawing from theorizations and practices that themselves emerge from this moment. Taken together, our approach has been to proceed from close examinations of Nakajima’s exuberant productivity and complex connections to find an avenue out of frameworks that have hitherto excluded such activity—and with it, a crucial dimension of the interrelations of art and politics in the 1960s and beyond. Artistic practices—like Nakajima’s—repeatedly exceeded normative categories. Such transgressions could, in turn, yield new perceptions and understandings of both art and politics, even as they provoked puzzlement and nonrecognition within conventional frameworks. Unfathomable rituals and magic circles in Spui Square or on the Groenplaats, for example, might make subsequent practices such as those of the Provos both thinkable and recognizable as politics, even as they paved the way for new forms of performance. Nakajima’s work thus provides a compelling case for evaluating approaches to these transformations of art and politics and to their specific interrelation. Nakajima’s peripatetic practices are exemplary in their nonconformity and demonstrate the inadequacy of notions of specificity that would oppose an authentic local or national frame to an inauthentic transnational one. Conversely, they manifest a key dimension of the 1960s as a global event in the interrelation between eventfulness itself and the redrawing of categories of practice and understanding.

A Note on Names Names of Japanese artists in this book are presented in their usual form in Japanese—surname first, personal name second: Akasegawa Genpei, for example—unless the name of the artist in question is commonly featured in an English name order (and without macrons) such as Yoko Ono and Yoshio Nakajima. * * *

6 Introduction

A Note on Translations Unless otherwise noted, all translations are by the respective authors.

Note 1 Nakajima has maintained a lifelong interest in education that addresses children and adults equally. See Shimada and Ørum’s essays in this volume.

1 DAM ACT Yoshio Nakajima in Japan, 1957–1964 Yoshiko Shimada

Nakajima’s Early Experiences I interviewed Yoshio Nakajima for the first time in 2013, on the subject of his actions as a member of the artist group “Unbeat” in the early 1960s. At the time of the interview, he was living in Japan after nearly 50 years in Europe. Nakajima had been largely forgotten in Japan and didn’t want to talk to me—especially not about his performances. He had enjoyed some success as a painter in Sweden, and the people who managed the sales of his paintings didn’t want to reveal his “crazy” past to mainstream art lovers and collectors. Nakajima himself insisted that he was first and foremost a painter, and that performance was something he had done merely to attract an audience for his paintings back when he was selling them on the streets of Tokyo. But as I saw more of the photographs of “happenings”—performance events he had staged but enacted extemporaneously all over the world—I started to suspect there was a lot more to these actions.1 Yoshida Yoshie, an art critic who had noted Nakajima’s actions early in his career, wrote: “He understood alternative communication intuitively and physically. His action was made up of involuntary, convulsive and manic gestures coming from his inner consciousness.”2 From the old performance photographs, one can sense the urgency and desperation of the artist. After further research and interviews, Nakajima confided in me that there had in fact been no “practical” reason behind the performances: he just felt compelled to do them, and their roots lay far back in his childhood. Yoshio Nakajima was born in 1940, the third son in a farming family in Fukaya, in the Saitama prefecture, about 70 kilometers northwest of Tokyo. He was a healthy and active child but had a severe stammer which caused him to be teased by his peers. He was sometimes frustrated at his inability to communicate well verbally and also felt restless in his small rural community. He felt an urge to “do” something extraordinary. In his autobiography, he tells of an accidental fall into a river and neardeath experience when he was two or three years old, and he told me that there had been another such instance, this time not an accident but rather quite intentional. On this second occasion Nakajima was about eight years old and playing with his friends near a small but quite deep irrigation reservoir. One boy had dared him to dive in, teasing him that he had survived his earlier fall and could do it again. Nakajima looked at the gushing water and suddenly felt a strange attraction to it. Before he knew it, he had dived in, and in the water he found the opening of an DOI: 10.4324/9781003149149-2

8  Yoshiko Shimada

Figure 1.1  Street performance in Ginza, circa 1961. Photographer unknown. Courtesy Yoshio Nakajima Archive, Konstrundan Raus Art Center.

outflow tunnel which was just about large enough for him to go through and leading to one of the rice paddies several meters away. He swam through it, came out unhurt, and stood in the paddy. He might have been in the water for only a minute or so, but he experienced it as being a much longer period. He had felt first total fear, then the power of the water and the joy of overcoming and surviving it. Nakajima said it was something he could never forget—it had left him feeling totally powerful and alive. He also saw it as the origin of his personal form of performance. He had dived in not to show off to other children, he said; he might have done it even without their provocation. Though he had enjoyed his audience’s awe and admiration, he himself was shocked to feel so alive in the face of death. In just a moment this one simple act transformed his reality, making everything feel alive, strong and beautiful. He repeated this existential explanation when I asked him about one of his first public actions at Ochanomizu station in Tokyo, in 1957. Ochanomizu is a busy railway station in the center of Tokyo, near Shōhei High School, where Nakajima had attended night classes after working in a factory by day. According to Yoshida, who heard about this performance from an eyewitness, Nakajima claimed himself to be a “moving object” as he started an intense action in front of the station, then went inside and jumped off the platform in front of an oncoming train.3 He was familiar with both the train schedule and the length of the train cars, so when he jumped off, he knew exactly when and where the train would arrive. Nevertheless, it was very dangerous to stand in front of a train moving into the station, and the commuters on the platform were horrified. The station security staff was summoned, and he was

DAM ACT  9 detained but not arrested. This was well before the word “happening” was first introduced into Japan and also five years prior to the better-known Yamanote line incident.4 What was Nakajima’s intention? Was he seeking attention? Was it a joke? No, Nakajima said. It was his expression. He wanted to transform an everyday scene with his action. He wanted to shock people and to be shocked himself.

Figure 1.2  Nakajima at Ochanomizu station before his action in 1957. Photographer Noda Michinori. Courtesy Yoshio Nakajima Archive, Konstrundan Raus Art Center.

This action is emblematic of a strange mixture of spontaneity and calculation in Nakajima’s performance. Although it looked as though he had carried out his action on a whim, he had in fact planned it carefully in order not to get killed. His preparation was, of course, unknown to those who witnessed the action, and Nakajima himself had no preconception of what was to happen once he jumped off the platform. For all of those present, an instantaneous action would transform everyday reality, and Nakajima became a part of this alternative reality, in which he felt omnipotent.

The 1950s: Radical Changes in Postwar Japan Perhaps the “everyday scene” Nakajima wanted to transform requires some explanation. For Japan, the 1950s and 1960s were decades of great change. After its

10  Yoshiko Shimada military defeat of 1945, the country was under US occupation for seven years. The old hierarchies were dismantled, and a more democratic system of governance was introduced. However, after the onset of the Cold War, and by the mid-1950s, politicians and bureaucrats from the prewar era had returned once more to form a conservative, pro-American government. The so-called “1955 system” was established that year through the political alignment of the newly established conservative Jiyūminshu-tō—the Liberal Democratic Party, which was formed in November of that year by merging the Jiyū-tō and Minshu-tō (Democratic Part[ies]) then in power, with the Shakai-tō (Japan Socialist Party). The LDP continued to hold power for nearly 40 years, until 1993. Abject poverty and confusion in Japan during the immediate postwar period were overcome as a result of the Korean War (1950–1953), which revived Japan’s industrial and economic growth. Indeed, in July 1956, Keizai hakusho, the governmentissued annual economic report, declared that “[Japan] is no longer in the post-war [period].”5 With the economic upturn came huge demand for workers in urban centers, and the emigration of young people from the surrounding countryside to

Figure 1.3 Nakajima childhood with his neighbors (Left, standing with a baseball glove) circa 1950. Photographer unknown. Courtesy Yoshio Nakajima Archive, Konstrundan Raus Art Center.

DAM ACT  11 big cities marked the largest demographic change in Japan’s history. By the mid1950s, junior high school graduates—known as “golden eggs”—were being recruited en masse from the surrounding farmland to work in Tokyo’s factories. Nakajima himself followed this pattern. The third son of six siblings, he was destined to be a farmer, cultivating a small patch of land allocated to him by the eldest son and taking a local girl as his wife. But after the Agricultural Land Reform Law (1947–1950) was implemented by the Japanese government and the Occupation authorities, Nakajima’s family, who had been medium-scale independent farmers, actually lost some of their land. Therefore, with no land to spare for him, Nakajima’s parents told him to make a choice: emigrate to Brazil, be adopted by a distant relative, or seek employment in Tokyo. Nakajima discovered the paintings of Van Gogh at around this time. Once, during his fourth-grade Japanese class, he was attracted to an illustration of a painting in a textbook and set about copying it. Tanaka Chu’ichi, his young teacher, saw this and, instead of scolding him, praised his copy and gave a short talk about the painting and the artist, Van Gogh. Mr. Tanaka himself had aspired to be an artist, and he encouraged Nakajima to pursue his interest in art. This was a period of democratization in Japanese education, and the Fundamental Law of Education, introduced in 1947 by the American Occupation authorities, advocated the importance of individuality. Some teachers, too, experimented with innovative methods that nurtured children’s self-expression, such as the Seikatsu-tsuzurikataundō (everyday-life writing movement), which focused on writing about daily experiences, and the Sōzō-biiku-undō (creative art education movement). Nakajima started school in the year the law was passed and he was therefore a child of the democratic education reform in postwar Japan. Mr. Tanaka continued to be his teacher while Nakajima was in junior high school and kept encouraging his aspiration to become an artist. In 1955, Nakajima partook of the “golden egg” mass employment opportunity by moving to Tokyo and finding work, first at a retail stationery company and later, because his employers did not keep their promise to let him attend evening high school classes, at a metal manufacturing factory, which did allow him to do so. In 1956, Nakajima enrolled in Shōhei High School, which strongly emphasized art education.

Art Informel and Anti-Art Life in Tokyo was not as rosy as Nakajima had expected. He worked during the day and went to Shōhei High School at night, although he still found some time to create abstract paintings. He had no formal art training, and his paintings were expressionistic even during that early period, showing an impulsive outpouring of energy. Nakajima’s abstract form of expression coincided with the so-called “Art Informel whirlwind,” an abstract expressionistic style from France that was unleashed by the Art of Today’s World Exhibition. This event was held in Tokyo in November 1956, then traveled to Osaka and Fukuoka the following year, leaving a strong impact on artists throughout Japan. The French artist Georges Mathieu came to Japan for a solo exhibition in September 1957, and his public painting demonstration in the Shirokiya Department Store made a deep impression on

12  Yoshiko Shimada

Figure 1.4  Nakajima in his studio circa 1956–57. Photographer unknown. Courtesy Yoshio Nakajima Archive, Konstrundan Raus Art Center.

Nakajima. He said Mathieu’s action painting confirmed the direction in which he had already been headed, making him think “I can do it too, and better.” However, his paintings were repeatedly turned down by the juries of various group exhibitions organized by the powerful societies (Kaiha) formed around established artists. Nakajima, a self-taught working-class teenager, had no connections to the art establishment. Yet he had some enthusiastic supporters such as Honme Yūichi, an artist and a director of a local library, who frequently came to see Nakajima’s paintings, which were exhibited on the sidewalk. Honme himself belonged to Shin Kōzō, an artistic society that held annual exhibitions at the Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum. However, he told Nakajima not to join the society as his paintings, which were so original and unconventional, would not be accepted by a conservative group such as his. In truth, the dominance of these Kaiha in the Japanese art world was already fracturing toward the end of the 1950s. In their place emerged a number of young artist groups that sought to break away from academism and the establishment, such as the Neo-Dadaism Organizers/Neo Dada,6 Kyūshū-ha,7 Zero Jigen,8 the Music group (gurupu ongaku),9 and others. Their main playground was the annual Yomiuri Indépendant exhibition (1949–1963), a non-juried, “anything goes” annual event sponsored by the Yomiuri newspaper and initially offering much-needed freedom to these frustrated young artists. The works in the Yomiuri Indépendant ranged from a portrait of pop singers by an amateur artist to a room installation of penis-like objects hanging from the ceiling by Kudō Tetsumi to pure junk—a pile of waste materials sent by Kyūshū-ha. In his review of the exhibition, the critic Tōno Yoshiaki called Kudō’s work “junk and Anti-art.”10

DAM ACT  13 Nakajima wholeheartedly embraced the Anti-art movement. Having discarded the idea of being accepted by any existing artistic society, he first participated in the Yomiuri Indépendant in 1958, tagging along with his mentor, Itoi Kanji, a senior artist whose relationship with Nakajima will be discussed later. In the years until its closure, in 1963, Nakajima’s participation in it was unauthorized as he did not have money to pay the entry fee. The sole exception to this pattern was in 1960, when he paid the fee and exhibited a painting titled A Wish of the Youth. Inspired by Mathieu’s action painting and Neo-Dada, Nakajima started to do actions in the streets of Tokyo in earnest circa 1958. Some photographs (undated, but probably around 1959, see Marotti) show him on a commuter train, painting on a scroll, dancing among cars in the streets of Ginza, or lying on a sidewalk with a radio or tape recorder. He claimed that these actions were intended only to attract people’s attention to the paintings he was selling, but as most onlookers stayed well away from him, this was not an effective sales technique. Rather, Nakajima’s Street actions seem to have been quite independent of his abstract paintings. While the actions of Shinohara Ushio, Shiraga Kazuo, and other Neo-Dada and Gutai11 members acted as visible demonstrations of their status as artists or created identifiable artworks (boxing paintings for Shinohara, foot paintings for Shiraga), Nakajima’s actions, by contrast, seemed to be deliberately inconsequential and without any obvious referent. Nor did they serve any publicity purpose, as did Kyūshū-ha’s and Neo-Dada’s public demonstrations, which advertised their upcoming exhibitions. Nakajima’s actions in the streets of Tokyo seem to have been spontaneous, nothing more than action for action’s sake. They also represent one of the earliest attempts

Figure 1.5  Street performance in Ginza, 1961. Photographer unknown. Courtesy Yoshio Nakajima Archive, Konstrundan Raus Art Center.

14  Yoshiko Shimada

Figure 1.6  Nakajima performing with a guitar and a tape recorder in Hibiya park, circa 1962. Photographer unknown. Courtesy Yoshio Nakajima Archive, Konstrundan Raus Art Center.

to move action outside established art institutions such as galleries, museums, and theaters, expanding its influence into the everyday life of the city. According to Nakajima, his practices of speaking through paintings and actions were inspired partly by his stammer and consequent incapacity to communicate verbally. Nonetheless, this nonverbal expression was not just an outpouring of his inner thoughts and anxiety, but, rather, an increasingly well-developed route to unexpected discoveries and new perceptions. From his earliest experiences, Nakajima realized the power of his actions to trigger unpredictable effects on his surroundings and audiences, and he repeatedly said in interviews that in carrying them out, he even “shocked himself.” With this realization, he was increasingly drawn in the 1960s to actions rather than to static painting.

“Now, There Is Nothing Left but Action!”: The Anti-Anpo Struggle and Direct Action “Action” was the keyword of the Anti-Anpo struggle, in 1959–1960. Nichibei Anzen Hoshō Jōyaku (the Japan–US Security Treaty, commonly referred to as Anpo) was signed in 1951, simultaneous with the San Francisco Peace Treaty, thereby establishing a US-centric postwar order in East Asia. Before the treaty’s proposed 1960 renewal, the Japan Communist Party, the Japan Socialist Party, labor unions and Zengakuren (the National Federation of Student Self-Government

DAM ACT  15 Associations) organized protest demonstrations. In 1959, the Bund (League of Communists), a New Left student group critical of the Japan Communist Party, took control of Zengakuren. The Bund took center stage politically through spontaneous direct action, overwhelming the ranks of Tokyo riot police, and breaking into the Diet (Parliament) compound for the first time in history on November 27, 1959, and marking a major departure from established left party strategies. Despite the nationwide protest, Jimintō (the Liberal Democratic Party), with its absolute majority, curtailed the parliamentary session, and on May 19, 1960, steamrollered the bill through the Diet’s Lower House. This ignited anger among ordinary citizens, leading more people to join the demonstrations. When students started to stage more aggressive demonstrations featuring spontaneous actions, the police counterattacked, armed with clubs and water cannons. In the mayhem of June 15, 1960, female Tokyo University student and Bund member Kanba Michiko was killed,12 arousing a great deal of anger among students against not only the governing Jimintō but also against the JCP and other established “Left” parties and indeed the parliamentary system itself. This clear generational division between the Old and New Left was presciently observed by Yoshimoto Takaaki, a wellknown political writer of the 1960s: [W]hat we [older writers and critics] did was to support Bund and their direct actions. Shima Shigeo, the secretary general of Bund at the time of Anpo, told us so-called “intellectuals” not to try to take leadership, not to act as if we were superior to the students. The students were clearly the main players, and they took the initiative. … The reasons why I supported Bund were, first, their action style. Their demonstrations were not the traditional lining-up, fist-inthe-air, shouting-slogans type. Theirs was more radical and disorderly. It was previously unheard of among the Japanese Left. I really liked their new approach. Another reason was they were autonomous—independent of the dogmatic control of the Soviet Union or China. I also thought this was the last chance for Japan to resist the overwhelming power of the postwar capitalist system. The JCP said Anpo enslaved Japan in subordination to the US, but for me, that was not the point. Rather, I thought Anpo would enable Japan to succeed as a capitalist nation equal to those in the West. Bund tried to stop this uncontrolled expansion of the capitalist system.13 It should be noted that, while Zengakuren-organized demonstrations embraced the “new approach” that Yoshimoto found appealing, the “mainstream” demonstrations led by the JCP and other political parties were very much of the traditional “lining-up … shouting-slogans” kind. Nakajima, Unbeat, Bund, and their comrades were, therefore, all provocatively out of sync even in comparison to contemporaneous radical and oppositional movements. During the anti-Anpo campaign, apart from those affiliated with the JCP, most avant-garde artist groups (including “Anti-art” ones) did not issue political statements against Anpo. Because of this, some art historians regard those young artists as essentially apolitical. However, by 1960, the nature of “being political” had changed among the radical youth of Japan, from making political gestures to taking

16  Yoshiko Shimada direct action. Some Anti-art artists, including members of the Neo-Dada movement, did participate in mass demonstrations, and Kudō Tetsumi famously declared at an anti-Anpo meeting for the cultural sector: “Imaya Akushon aru nomi!” (“Now, there is nothing left but action!”).14 Kudō and other radical young artists considered action itself to be political and shared the Bund’s acute disdain for any establishment—be it the JCP, academia, the government, or capitalism— was shared by some young artists in their rejection of traditional “good taste”; academism; and the centralized, hierarchical system of the art world. Nakajima and his friends Tashiro Minoru and Kagami Masayuki, from Shōhei High School, formed an artist/performance collective called “Unbeat” (to be discussed later). Nakajima said that though Tashiro had participated in a school student movement, he himself had not been deeply involved in politics. However, all three Unbeat members participated in the Anti-Anpo demonstrations. There, Nakajima met members of Neo-Dada, including Kudō Tetsumi and female students from Joshi Bijutsu Daigaku (Women’s Art University). Nakajima also attended a memorial for the slain activist Kanba Michiko because he wanted to be there with other young people, breathing the same air and feeling the energy. In November 1959, after having participated in a demonstration, Nakajima, Tashiro, and Kagami collected discarded protester placards in a handcart and used

Figure 1.7 Shohei High School Culture Festival signs with a “Junk Art” with discarded placards after anti-Anpo demonstration (one says “Dissolution of the Diet!”), November 1959. Photographer unknown. Courtesy Yoshio Nakajima Archive, Konstrundan Raus Art Center.

DAM ACT  17 them as materials for their art installation at the Dada Festival Exhibition at Shōhei High School (Figure 1.5). It was perhaps inspired by the “junk” art at the Yomiuri Indépendant exhibitions but also implied disdain for orderly mainstream demonstrations and the Anti-Anpo campaign by established political parties. After all, mere sloganeering had proven useless in stopping Anpo. Nakajima repeatedly claimed that he was not seriously engaged in the Anti-Anpo movement and had no political agenda when he performed, but his raw, unruly actions in the streets— which included stopping traffic and startling shoppers, taking place even in such hyper-orderly areas as the upmarket shopping area of Ginza—are reminiscent of Bund’s breaking away from the ordinary mass demonstrations by invading the Diet compound. The crossover between direct political action and art action was the main topic of a round-table discussion for special issues of the art magazine Keishō in 1963. Imaizumi Yoshihiko, an art critic, urged artists to take their works out of the white cubes of museums and galleries and onto the streets in order to “agitate” everyday life. Moreover, Imaizumi warned that taking action into public spaces was not enough in itself. The “normalizing” power of everyday life should not be underestimated, he explained: when the public encountered something strange, they tried to reduce it to something understandable, through which process an artist’s direct action could soon become just another unremarkable “art” event. In order to really agitate society, therefore, one had to counter this tendency toward psychological harmonization by going beyond anything familiar or predictable. To illustrate these points, the critic said “Nothing communicates better than a dagger suddenly attacking you from behind a door in the street” and “if you can call a sudden action that leaves a strong impact without taking a life as a tool for communication, then the bankrupted ideologues can be liberated from using language as a medium.”15 Here, Imaizumi argued that action, though seemingly incomprehensible, could be a more effective tool for communication. Nakajima shared Imaizumi’s view. He witnessed several important and putatively radical performance events, including: a John Cage and David Tudor concert; Yoko Ono’s performance at Sōgetsu Art Hall, in 1962; and the third Neo-Dada exhibition, in 1960. However, Nakajima said he was not very impressed by them. For him, these well-prepared and sometimes repeated actions seemed to have been catering to the expectations of an “art” audience and the mass media. In opposition to this tendency to predictability, Nakajima made it a rule to go out in the street every day and do some kind of action—even a small one, with or without an audience—but always without planning in any specific sense. It was a part of his daily routine, but he strictly forbade himself to repeat the same action. He was to do each action as if it were the first time he had ever performed it.

Itoi Kanji, a.k.a. Dadakan The artist who seemingly had the greatest influence on Nakajima was Itoi Kanji, a.k.a. Dadakan. Itoi was a self-taught artist who also participated in the Yomiuri Indépendant, exhibiting strange objects and installations. Born in 1920, he was 20 years older than Nakajima. During World War II, he was conscripted into the

18  Yoshiko Shimada

Figure 1.8 Nakajima and Dadakan in front of Shinohara Ushio’s self-portrait at Shinohara’s exhibition at Muramatsu gallery, Tokyo, Oct. 1962. Photographer unknown. Courtesy Yoshio Nakajima Archive, Konstrundan Raus Art Center.

army and trained to carry out a suicide bomb attack, an experience that made him a lifelong opponent of war and violence. In the postwar period, he spent some years laboring in coal mines and a shipyard; then, inspired by establishment of the permissive, unjuried, free-to-exhibit Yomiuri Indépendant in 1949, he started making artworks and exhibited them at the 1951 Yomiuri Indépendant for the first time. Itoi did some Art Informel-style paintings in 1957, but he soon abandoned the medium. His works at Yomiuri Indépendant were collages of found objects— often everyday clothing and utensils—that evoked vulgar eroticism.16 He was considered a practitioner of Genkai Geijutsu (Marginal Art), or art “by amateurs for amateurs,” as defined by Tsurumi Shunsuke, a Japanese philosopher, historian, and sociologist. Art historian KuroDalaiJee, discussing Itoi’s art works of the 1950s, wrote: More important than Itoi’s artistic medium, labeled “Marginal Art,” is philosopher Tsurumi Shunsuke’s criticism against expertise—institutionalized and often imported—Pure Art, and commercial and industrialized Popular Art. Thus, Itoi’s art had similar criticality in its exploration of alternative art

DAM ACT  19 practices without following the proliferation of Popular Art or Pure Art. Itoi’s art was, so to speak, his solo D.I.Y. (Do it Yourself) movement.17 During the next decade, Itoi further developed his particular style of performance. He famously ran naked through the street in Ginza in 1964, parodying the torch-bearing run of that year’s Tokyo Olympics. The action was repeated by Itoi in 1970 around the Tower of the Sun18 at Osaka Expo, this time in support of a protester who occupied the tower. Nakajima met Itoi when the latter attended the former’s 1956 painting exhibition. At that time Itoi was living in Ōmori, not very far from the factory where Nakajima was working, and had turned his house into the “Itoi Kan Contemporary Art Research Center.” Nakajima recalled that, as far as he could tell, he was the only student there apart from Itoi’s three-year-old son. Although Itoi had not received any formal art education, he subscribed to domestic and international art magazines and was well versed in contemporary art. He also took Nakajima to various exhibitions and events, one of which was Haisen kinen bansankai (loosely translated as “Dinner Commemorating the Defeat of the Second World War”)19 organized by Yoshida Yoshie in 1962, which was one of the first “happening events in Tokyo. Nakajima walked to Itoi’s house once a week, and they talked about art late into the night. Itoi, as his artistic pseudonym indicates, was an ardent Dadaist. Although he did not give Nakajima any particular instruction, he was very supportive of all of his experiments and endeavors. Indeed, Itoi wrote a passage for Nakajima’s mimeographed pamphlet for a 1961 group exhibition at the Meiji Gakuin University Festival: Desire for a tabula rasa fills the air on the earth. I am pleased that you are attempting something new. You said the time at the research center tormented you. You must know torment, humiliation, and indignation are important energy sources for Dada. Nakajima is a Dadaist of the highest order—one in ten million. It is not my responsibility—Dada is responsible. Dada is coming toward you with a naked sword! How do you confront it? You can’t fight it without letting go of something you treasure in your hand. Plunge into Dada! Don’t be flustered. Your white-hot sun has enough energy to burn Dada to death20 Nakajima recalled that Itoi repeatedly reassured him by saying “Do what you feel, and you will be alright,” for he saw in Nakajima the pure spirit of Dada. Thus, Nakajima’s impulsive desire for self-expression was given a direction. In our interviews, Nakajima stated that when he learned about Dada from Itoi, he realized that that was what he had been doing all along. They collaborated in various actions among members of Unbeat, and even after Nakajima’s departure to Europe, they kept up the connection by exchanging works of art through the mail.

20  Yoshiko Shimada

Art Missionary In his later years, Nakajima was often portrayed as an intuitive “wild child,” a pure and innocent genius uncontaminated by artistic or political theory. This image was perhaps intended to appeal to the many art lovers and collectors who preferred the joyous, childlike qualities in his later paintings—seeing these, no doubt, as a reflection of the artist’s character. Nakajima’s own comments contributed to that image as he claimed in later interviews that he did not understand art theories and that he had no political motivation at all. It is partially true that his intuitive energy was the driving force of his artmaking and that some manifestos attributed to him were actually written by his friend Tashiro Minoru, who was the “brain” of Unbeat. However, between 1957 and 1964, Nakajima eagerly tried to absorb information regarding the latest movements in contemporary art through visiting Itoi’s research institute and attending various events and exhibitions by Anti-art and Fluxus artists. In this period, he also organized Zokei Bijutsu Ikusei (Nurturing Form and Art) Studio for children. All of these actions imply that Nakajima was actually quite deeply involved in researching art and education. He may not have developed his own theory of art or written about the subject, but he was seriously trying to understand the roots of creativity in his own way. This is far removed from his later cultivated image as a “happy-go-lucky” painter solely following his intuition. Nakajima’s burning urge to do something—be it art, action, or destruction— was what he needed to satisfy; at the same time, however, he was tormented by this desire. He confessed, in a short essay published in the Tohoku Bible School newsletter, that he didn’t understand the force that drove him and sometimes felt ashamed of being “selfish” in following his compulsion to make art without any positive outcome.21 In response to this conflict and while attending Itoi’s art research center, Nakajima started to attend the Ochanomizu Christian Church, founded by American missionary O.D. Bixler.22 Initially, he was drawn to Christianity after reading Van Gogh’s biography, but he also sought some kind of inner peace through pursuing the faith. He was christened by Bixler in 1959 and later attended an affiliated Tōhoku Bible School in Fukushima, training to be a missionary. In the end, he abandoned this idea, but when he was to embark on the trip to Europe, he claimed the job title of “art missionary,” a label that at once suggests aspects of the roles of artist, proselytizer, and educator without being reducible to any one of them. Through his work with underprivileged children at the Ochanomizu Christian Church, Nakajima started his Form and Art Studio, which offered free art classes, in 1961, in Tokyo’s Meguro area. There, adults and children created artworks together, with Honme and other older artist friends’ occasionally joining the painting sessions. Numerous photographs from this period show Nakajima with small children holding large abstract paintings. Nakajima said he didn’t “teach” them how to draw or paint, and made no distinctions between adults and children or teacher and students. Paintings were done collaboratively, as an extension of play, without any plans or instruction. Later, Nakajima found out that this kind of exercise was similar to CoBrA’s whimsical collaborations. Nakajima went as far as enrolling in the Faculty of Social Science at Meijigakuin University to obtain a teacher’s

DAM ACT  21

Figure 1.9  Nakajima with his art class students, 1959–60. Photographer unknown. Courtesy Yoshio Nakajima Archive, Konstrundan Raus Art Center.

certificate and he also seriously considered becoming a teacher at Keimei Gakuin, a Christian school for returnees from abroad, where O.D. Bixler was a director. Nakajima considers himself as a person with a disability, not only in terms of his stammer but also with regard to his alienation from societal norms. In Nakajima’s view, there are no persons without disabilities of some sort, something acutely true in the case of artists. He argues that what are seen as disabilities should be considered marks of individuality rather than impediments. At around the time he pursued his teaching studies, Nakajima was introduced to Dr. Shikiba Ryuzaburō,23 a psychiatrist well known for taking an early interest in the art of Yayoi Kusama in its relation to her non-neurotypical perceptions. Through Dr. Shikiba, Nakajima met Yamashita Kiyoshi, a famous artist with an intellectual disability who made collages with torn pieces of paper. Nakajima also wrote an essay about one of his students, Masayo, a girl with severe physical and mental challenges. Masayo had been brought to his class by her father, and although she could not talk, her semi-abstract paintings impressed Nakajima, who wrote that her nonverbal expression contained strength and eloquence of a sort often ignored by mainstream education. Through a couple of years of art/play sessions with Nakajima—who emphasized the importance of art education in liberating the potential of persons with disabilities— Masayo’s art greatly improved. Nakajima’s essay about her was mimeographed and

22  Yoshiko Shimada distributed at one of his solo exhibitions as well as later included in his (never submitted) graduation thesis for Meijigakuin University, in 1963. Nakajima’s interest in the potential power of children’s and disabled people’s art parallels the contemporaneous interests of CoBrA, whose working method was based on spontaneity and experiment and who drew their inspiration primarily from children’s drawings and “primitive” art forms. As Marotti discusses in this volume, some works by CoBrA artists—including Karel Appel (1921–2006) and Algerian-born Jean Michel Atlan (1913–1960)—were shown in the Yomiuri Indépendant several times in the late 1950s, so Nakajima must have seen them. However, the degree to which CoBrA’s revolutionary ideas were introduced to the Japanese art world as a whole is questionable. The collective’s manifesto declared: In this period of change, the role of the creative artist can only be that of the revolutionary: it is his duty to destroy the last remnants of an empty, irksome aesthetic, arousing the creative instincts still slumbering unconscious in the human mind. The masses, brought up with aesthetic conventions imposed from without, are yet unaware of their creative potential. … The onlooker’s creative ability (inherent in human nature) will bring this new way of seeing within everyone’s reach once aesthetic conventions cease to hinder the working of the unconscious.24 This revolutionary aspect of CoBrA was not widely discussed in Japan. Karel Appel was introduced as a part of the Art Informel movement in Japan (see Marotti’s chapter). Critic Ogura Toshimaru argued that, though some avant-garde artists such as Taro Okomoto advocated in the 1950s for anti-academism, experimentalism and primitivism similar to CoBrA’s, the collective “unfortunately, did not acquire a theoretical backbone [and that] this poverty of theory may have resulted in a superficial apoliticality and radicalism in the Japanese art in the past 50 years.”25 He argued that CoBrA’s art was therefore typically perceived in Japan as the extension of merely another artistic style. It is not clear how much of CoBrA’s “theoretical backbone” or lack thereof influenced Nakajima, but his artistic and pedagogical practices at that time were already very much in sync with theirs. Perhaps it was not just a coincidence, then, that Nakajima later met Asger Jorn, who introduced Nakajima to the Scandinavian Situationist movement (see Tania Ørum’s chapter in this volume), in Europe. They had not met before but must have found a kindred spirit in each other.

Unbeat In his evening classes at Shōhei High School, Nakajima formed the aforementioned art club with his classmates Tashiro Minoru and Kagami Masayuki. Tashiro had been expelled from Hiratsuka High School for organizing a strike, which was how he had ended up in Shōhei’s night classes. He was the adopted son of a famous art historian and well informed about Western art theory. Kagami, who transferred in April 1958 into the third year of Shōhei High School’s four-year program, was making Art Informel-inspired paintings and had introduced Itoi,

DAM ACT  23 with whom he had become acquainted the year before, to Nakajima. From 1958 or thereabouts, they began staging street performances and events during school festivals. Nakajima, Tashiro, and Kagami carried on the group even after they enrolled at Meiji Gakuin University, in 1961, organizing improvisational street performances in 1962 and 1963 in which Itoi also participated. In 1961, they named their group “Unbeat” and retroactively referred to their previous actions from 1958 as Unbeat events. In a 1961 manifesto, Tashiro declared: We, Unbeat Organizers, admit that our history was false and misunderstood. We do rituals that express our desire to reach absolute freedom. These rituals are the result of our sincere reflection on our lives and our convictions about the current state of art. During our rituals, we ask you to be quiet and try to understand how we are sincerely trying to pursue our lives and art. “Happening” means an incident. And that is exactly what we are going to do now. Another manifesto, perhaps expanding on the concept of “incident” reads: We, Unbeat Organizers, invite you to this incident… This incident may not look like anything, but you must try to read in it the catastrophic and apathetic situation of our generation. At the same time, we refuse false peace based on the balance of power. Unbeat Organizers is a collective of independent spirits, and we are witnesses to the temporary insanity prevailing in our century.26 Both of Tashiro’s statements reflect negatively on the post-Anpo apathy and pretense of peace among many of his peers. Unbeat labelled their actions “Damact.” According to Nakajima, this word signified “stopping the flow,” thereby reflecting the group’s refusal, by consciously damming the flow of everyday life, simply to go along with the course of events. Thus, from their chosen terms “Unbeat” and “Damact,” we can perceive their critical attitude toward and attempt to distance themselves from contemporary trends. Indeed, in their pamphlet for the Dada Festival of 1961, they declared that “Dada means putting an X mark on everything—negating the existing artistic forms and systems.” The name “Unbeat” itself was an explicit rejection of the American “Beat” counterculture (though in Japan, this was more superficially understood as a fashion).27 While Unbeat was a group, each member did his own actions autonomously and spontaneously. There was neither a common theme nor any rehearsal, group structure, or director/leader. Nakajima, Tashiro, and Kagami were the main members, but they also collaborated with other students and with Itoi. Artistic groups such as Unbeat, with its emphases on individual expression and without any hierarchical structures, were (and still are) very rare in Japan. However, Unbeat is somewhat similar to Taishō Kōdō Tai (Taishō Coal Mine Action Troop),

24  Yoshiko Shimada a militant outfit organized by the poet and activist Tanigawa Gan28 after the failure of the Miike coal mine strike in Kyūshū, in 1960.29 Structurally, Taishō Kōdō Tai was deliberately anarchistic. Members were not to be registered: if one claimed to be a member, he was a member. There was neither a hierarchy nor any system of majority decision. If one wanted to do something, he—either alone or with likeminded others—simply carried out the action. Participating merely out of a sense of obligation or solidarity was frowned upon, and the only principle was “do only what you want to do.” Nakajima had no direct link or communication with Taishō Kōdō Tai, but he was close friends with Sakurai Takami, the leading figure of Kyūshū-ha and a labor union activist at the Nishinihon Newspaper Co. According to Nakajima, Tashiro participated in Kyūshū-ha’s Grand Gathering of Heroes performance event in Kyūshū, in 1962 (to which Nakajima could not go as he had no money for traveling). It is possible—even likely—that Tashiro came to know of Taishō Kōdō Tai groups through Kyūshū-ha, which had close communication with Tanigawa. Taishō Kōdō Tai was, in Tanigawa’s words, “a working-class self-liberation movement based on the idea of the urge for autonomy.”30 Such a perspective certainly would have resonated with the young members of Unbeat, and it could be said that similarities between these two distinctive groups suggest the upwelling of some new artistic and political ethos in postwar Japan. In 1959, Unbeat organized the Dadaist All-Night Session Exhibition at Shōhei High School, in which they exhibited “body painting,” “street theater,” and “self-objects,” but the details of the event are unclear, and there is no photographic record of it. In June 1961, at Meijigakuin University’s Shirogame campus festival, they staged the “A Ritual for the Sun God” happening with music. They also organized the Dada Festival and Art and Anti-Art at the same festival in 1962, where they presented works titled Modern Ballet by Nakajima, Unbeat Manifesto and Other Things, and A Scandal Featuring Unbeat Organizers and Avant-garde Artists, to which Kojima Nobuaki, an artist close to Neo-Dada, and Kyūshū-ha members Sakurai Takami and Kinoshita Shin sent their “junk” art. Before the festival opened, however, the Topological Cooking Methodology by Unbeat Organizers, an art object using a toilet bowl; Nakajima’s Cuba 62; and Tashiro’s A Murderer of Elsinore were removed after the festival committee protested that they were “rude and ethically unacceptable.” The committee was concerned about the political content of the works and that the toilet bowl might offend some distinguished American guests, including the US ambassador E.O. Reischauer, whose father taught at Meijigakuin University in pre-war time. After the committee threatened to close their entire exhibition, Unbeat reluctantly withdrew the works. During the pre-festival night event, Nakajima performed in the schoolyard using a motorcycle’s lights and engine noise. They also exhibited scores by John Cage, “The Lecture” and “Let Him Sleep at Once,” which Nakajima claimed to have taken from a Cage–Tudor performance at Sōgetsu Art Hall in October 1962. There was also a small painting by Claude Okamoto, a nine-year-old French-Japanese prodigy who was feted as a “child genius” at the time and whom Nakajima got to know through the child’s father, an attendee at Nakajima’s exhibitions in Meguro. The inclusion of this work reaffirms Nakajima’s interest in children’s artistic abilities, as discussed previously.

DAM ACT  25 In December 1962, Unbeat and Itoi performed in various locations in Kyoto and Osaka. There exist several photographs of them performing on the Kamogawa riverbed, in Kyoto, under the Gojō bridge. Four people can be seen in these: Nakajima, on the right, is on all fours over a long white scroll; Tashiro, in front, has a mirror in his hand and a guitar case in front of him; And Kagami is sitting on the ground with a ladle, listening to the sound of water.31 A fourth member, unknown, is sitting squarely on the ground. Although Unbeat was a group, they seldom performed in sync. Each member did their own action while Tashiro acted as a ringleader to deal with the audience and mass media. At the Nakanoshima vertical-lift bridge, in Osaka, Itoi stood on the parapet, wearing a short skirt without underwear, and threw a bowler hat to Kagami. He even tried to jump down onto a passing cargo boat on the river, though when this proved too difficult, he abandoned the effort. The police were called to the scene, and the performers were questioned but not detained. Nakajima said that, on most occasions, he and Itoi did some kind of actions, but Tashiro was there mostly to be a master of ceremonies who explained what was going on to the audience and, when necessary, to the police. Tashiro would also sometimes recite passages from Dada and Surrealist manifestos in English. A local newspaper reported this event as such: On the afternoon of December 4, eight oddly dressed young people jumped up and down and fell over on the lifting bridge in Nakanoshima, Kita-ku, Osaka. A man wrapped himself with nylon tape and paper strings, dragging

Figure 1.10  Unbeat performance in Kyoto, Dec. 1962. Photographer unknown. Courtesy Yoshio Nakajima Archive, Konstrundan Raus Art Center.

26  Yoshiko Shimada

Figure 1.11  Unbeat performance in Osaka, terminated by police, Dec. 1962. Photographer unknown. Courtesy Yoshio Nakajima Archive, Konstrundan Raus Art Center.

old water bottles and empty cans. A woman absent-mindedly ripped up a newspaper. A man in white face paint played a melancholy flute. … After a while, they started to scream. They were Mr. Minoru Tashiro, 22, from Tokyo, and other Unbeat Organizers, an avant-garde group of artists and poets, and they had just exhibited their collaborative work to office workers during their lunch break. … Mr. Kan (Kanji) Itoi, 42, coming from Kyūshū for this event, stood on his head on the bridge rail totally naked. Two police officers from the nearby Tenma police station stopped their activities and ordered him to turn himself in to the police station for public indecency. Mr. Tashiro pleaded “We would like you to believe that we were doing what we wanted to do at that moment, rather than wanting to be understood.”32 Nakajima said they often called their actions “scandals,” in a specific sense: not as mere sensationalism or indecency, but rather as a means to shock audiences and awaken their senses. Honme, who often saw actions by Nakajima and Unbeat, wrote: It was effective as it happened on the street. Your action cut like a sharp knife through the everyday scene we take as “natural.” We have become so apathetic that in order to appeal to our senses, we need such an incident in such a setting. I appreciate and respect you.33

DAM ACT  27

1963–1964: Farewell to the Yomiuri Indépendant Exhibition In 1962, the 14th Yomiuri Indépendant saw an expansion of the “Anti-art” scene, with more works involving three-dimensional objects and installations—some of which were removed because they were regarded as dangerous or obscene. Itoi’s work with pornographic ukiyo-e34 was rejected from the exhibition, and so were Haruji Hirokawa’s sculpture of a life-sized doll with a carving knife, Hamaguchi Tomiji’s wood relief collaged with a knife, and Yoshioka Yasuhiro’s enlarged photograph of a vagina. As a result, “A List of Standards and Criteria for Exhibited Works for Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum” was introduced by the museum’s authorities. It prohibited works that: 1) emit extremely high, loud, or otherwise uncomfortable sounds; 2) effuse a stench and/or are made of materials that may decay; 3) contain dangerous objects; 4) can be otherwise objectionable to the audience and possibly violate public hygiene regulations; 5) involve installation of sand or other materials on the floor that can damage its surface; and 6) are suspended from the ceiling. Most artists did not object to the introduction of these regulations; they just ignored them.35 In 1963, Unbeat performed a Damact with Itoi at the 15th Yomiuri Indépendant without the organizers’ permission. Nakajima, wearing a white shirt bearing the words of the Dada Manifesto and with his face painted white, lurked around the museum rooms with an expression of agony on his face. Itoi and Tashiro joined him at the front staircase and enacted what Unbeat called a “Dam Act, or Damact.” Nakajima then rushed toward Yoshida Yoshie, an up-and-coming young art critic of the time, who was there as an onlooker and scuffled with him. This was the first time Nakajima met Yoshida, but Tashiro had known him already and told Nakajima to “attack” him to get his attention. It was certainly successful in getting attention: Yoshida, despite this violent encounter, found Nakajima very interesting and supported him during the 1970s. However, Nakajima and Itoi were arrested after a museum attendant called the police. This Yomiuri Indépendant turned out to be the last one. In addition to Nakajima’s and Itoi’s arrests, other strange and controversial events had taken place: Kazakura Shō had stood on his head half-naked; Takamatsu Jirō’s Rope piece had been extended beyond the museum’s walls; Akasegawa Genpei had exhibited an enlarged 1,000 yen bill; Natsuyuki Nakanishi’s clothespins on canvas had been removed and surreptitiously pinned on the audience members; and the Zero Jigen group, later joined by Nakajima, had lain on futon mattresses placed on the floor. These unorthodox acts were more than the organizer, the Yomiuri newspaper, could handle. They had already reserved a space for the next Indépendant Exhibition, scheduled to take place in March 1964, but the organizer announced its termination one month before it was due to open. The sudden disclosure dismayed some artists, but others accepted it rather without objection or complaint—presumably because in a way, they had effectively destroyed it themselves by disobeying the regulations introduced in 1962. Yomiuri was the only place to stage their Anti-art work; paradoxically, the very nature of this art led to the dismantling of the institution on which they depended to allow them to practice it.

28  Yoshiko Shimada With the closure of the Yomiuri Indépendant, the Anti-art movement’s initial stage ended Indépendant-style exhibitions were organized by artists themselves in Gifu, Kyoto, Osaka, Sendai, and other cities. Also, in search of new venues to replace the Yomiuri Indépendant, artists staged performances in public spaces, as demonstrated by the actions of Unbeat, Zero Jigen and Hi-Red Center.36 Especially in the cases of Hi-Red Center and Itoi, performing in public spaces was also a critical reaction to the urban development that preceded the Tokyo Olympics.

1964 Farewell to the Tokyo Olympics and to Japan Hi-Red Center’s famous “Street-Cleaning Event,” of 1964, in which they dressed up in white lab coats and cleaned the streets of Ginza with mops and toothbrushes, was their ironic commentary on the increasing sanitization and regulation of Tokyo in the lead-up to the Olympics. In October, Itoi ran naked in the streets of Ginza in the style of an Olympic torchbearer and was promptly arrested. This time, he was sent to a mental hospital for several months. Nakajima was already in Europe when this happened and learned about it only several months later, when he received a letter from Itoi in which he did not explain or justify his motivation. It only stated what he did and that he accepted being in a mental hospital because he wanted to have such an experience.37 Nakajima said that because Itoi’s action was beyond explanation, it had all the more power as an artistic and political statement. Tokyo was being transformed into a sleek, international city, and any unruly or unexpected “raw” elements were quickly eliminated from its streets. Itoi’s action was like a sharp stake driven into the smooth surface of the city. Akasegawa’s recollection (and analysis?) of the “close encounter” between artistic and political direct action is worth quoting at some length: As the agents of direct actions on both [artistic and political] sides tried to cultivate their thoughts through action in everyday life, they separated themselves from their respective “proper” fields and went into the street … and their gaze eventually changed the nature of those everyday spaces and objects. That was when the “near collision” of artistic expression and political subversion occurred. … These kinds of action had never been “connected” in anyone’s minds before, and it was hard to distinguish political and artistic incidents or to determine who was responsible for them. It was as if many similar tails were hanging from many backsides in the street, and a dog [i.e., the police] was frantically sniffing at them to determine which tail belonged to which backside. As the dog could not uncover the nature of the tails, his illusions about them grew out of all proportion. These street actions had no names, and because of that, the dog collected every scrap of evidence carefully to determine their identities. … Some tails seemed to belong to the art world and others to the political world, and the dog began to imagine that they belonged not to these respective backsides but to the single huge arse of some unknown monster, which he named Shiso-teki henshitsu-sha (ideological pervert).38

DAM ACT  29 Being “unnamable” was an effective way to carry out subversive actions in the streets of Tokyo, but at the same time, it created suspicion and even fear on the part of government toward the agents of these actions. In consequence, friction with the authorities was unavoidable. In 1963, Nakajima—dressed in a white shirt with phrases from the Dada Manifesto written on it, his face painted white, his hands wrapped in wire—dragged a case with a tape recorder in it that was emitting concrete music (or “noise”) and walked and danced in a busy street of Ginza. A female passerby claimed that his paint soiled her crocodile-skin handbag and reported the incident to the police, which resulted in Nakajima’s being detained and not released until a wealthy artist friend paid a large sum of money to rescue him. Like Itoi, Nakajima did not verbalize his motivation, but his direct action was clearly an embodiment of his desire for absolute freedom, which the authorities saw as a threat to society. Around this time, with the Tokyo Olympics imminent, the Japanese government liberalized foreign travel for its citizens. Before 1964, only those who came from wealthy family backgrounds (such as Kawara On, Yayoi Kusama, and Yoko Ono) or with government scholarships (e.g., Kudō Tetsumi) were able to travel

Figure 1.12  Nakajima performance in Ginza, 1963. Photographer unknown. Courtesy Yoshio Nakajima Archive, Konstrundan Raus Art Center.

30  Yoshiko Shimada overseas, but with the liberalization of regulations, it became easier to travel outside Japan. Kyūshū-ha members Kinoshita Shin and Sakurai Takami went to Paris and San Francisco, respectively. Fluxus artists Shiomi Mieko and Kubota Shigeko left for New York, as did the experimental film-maker Ōe Masanori and the Music group’s (gurupu ongaku) Kosugi Takehisa. Nakajima befriended Dutch artist Daniel van Golden, who was in Japan to study ink painting on a Japan Foundation fellowship. He encouraged Nakajima to go to Europe and promised him a place at Rotterdam Art Academy, where he was a professor. Nakajima had considered the idea of becoming an art teacher at Keimei Gakuin school upon graduating from Meijigakuin University, but he had realized that in order to become a teacher, he would have to obtain a certificate and follow other rules and regulations that would not have suited his unconventional nature or practices. In the end, his ambition to become a fulltime artist was stronger than any desire to teach. After years of producing paintings and performances, Nakajima was still extremely poor, making ends meet with various part-time jobs. He had some enthusiastic supporters but was largely ignored by the mainstream art world. Nakajima said that although Tokyo seemed to be changing its appearance rapidly in the run-up to the Olympics, he didn’t believe the transformation would bring him the freedom and financial security to express himself fully. Therefore, he decided to get out of Japan for reasons rather similar to those for which he had escaped his little village in Saitama ten years earlier. Nakajima’s last performance with Unbeat39 was in the June 1963 Super AvantGarde Collective Exhibition at Artists Hall in Ginza, curated by Kagami. One of the group’s artists poured a foul-smelling substance onto the floor, in response to which the police were summoned. Although no charges were pressed against Nakajima over this incident, he—perhaps sensing which way the wind was blowing—left for Europe in April 1964. Clad in a dark suit and leather shoes for the first time in his life and carrying 3000 yen in cash, he took a boat from Yokohama to Hong Kong. On his arrival in Hong Kong, the money was stolen, but he got to know a smuggler who let him get on a boat carrying goods to Saigon. He eventually lost his suit, leather shoes, and the suitcase, but he managed to make money by dancing, singing Japanese songs, and selling paintings—vocations not dissimilar to those he had had in Tokyo. From Saigon, he went to Singapore, then to India. He hitchhiked to Nepal; back to India (Mumbai); then to Yemen (Aden); traveled across the Red Sea to Egypt; took buses to Jordan, Syria, and Turkey; then sailed to Greece and, finally, to Italy. He arrived in Venice in September 1964, where he bumped into an old acquaintance he had met while in Japan, Ikewada Yuko, who was now the wife of famed Austrian artist Friedensreich Hundertwasser. Nakajima worked at Hundertwasser’s studio for a while, where he met Lucio Fontana and Robert Rauschenberg, who were in Venice for the 32nd Venice Biennale. Nakajima’s recollections of his travels throughout Eurasia are rather sketchy. He said he was so focused on getting to Europe that he was almost oblivious to the process: he wanted only to head West.

DAM ACT  31

Conclusion Nakajima’s performances in Japan in the 1950s and early 1960s stemmed from his urgent need for self-expression. As a child with a severe stammer, his alternative mode of communication was through visual representations and physical actions, which were often unpredictable and bizarre. Nakajima shocked his audiences and himself alike, thereby transforming the mundane into something extraordinary. Though Nakajima’s performances were intuitive in nature, he also cultivated knowledge of Dadaism and other art theories and practices, both at home and abroad, with the support and collaboration of Itoi Kanji (Dadakan) and Tashiro Minoru, with whom—as Unbeat—he performed “Damact.” He was also keenly interested in investigating the primeval creative power of children with disabilities. Nakajima seems to have located his compulsive creativity in the premodern, the irrational, and the unconscious. As William Marotti wrote, “Nakajima’s performances would demonstrate an exemplary case of the eventful untimeliness that exists as potential in artistic work, and that gives art its political power.”40 Though Nakajima’s performances did not have a clear political intent, they corresponded with the rise of direct actions by the New Left student movement, in the early 1960s. Nakajima, Unbeat, Itoi, and other artists such as those of Hi-Red Center chose to perform in the streets to question and challenge rapid modernization, urbanization, and capitalism in the lead-up to the Tokyo Olympics in 1964. Their “unnamable” actions bewildered the authorities and made them as suspicious, if not more, of the artists as they were of overtly political protestors. Thus, their street performances were subversive precisely because they did not have an obvious political agenda. Nakajima’s prescient engagement with his sociopolitical context was a predecessor to the ideologies and practices of some angura (underground) artists in the late 1960s. Performance groups such as Zero Jigen and Kokuin, an alternative theater group Jōkyō gekijō (Situation Theater or Red-tent theater), led by Kara Jūrō, carried out their “crazy, nonsense, radical” actions in the streets of Tokyo. Zero Jigen moved to Tokyo from Nagoya in 1964 and staged the infamous Naked Gas Mask Walking Ritual naked in Shinjuku in 1967, and Jōkyō Gekijō’s street performance can be seen in the opening scene of Nagisa Oshima’s film, Diary of a Shinjuku Thief (1968). Zero Jigen, with other performance artists, formed Banpaku Hakai Kyōtō-ha (Expo’70 Destruction Joint Struggle Group) and staged several performance events in protest against the 1970 Osaka World Expo, whose theme was “Progress and Harmony for Mankind.” As Suenaga Tamio, one of the participants in the Banpaku Hakai Kyōtō-ha, wrote: “[Expo] enabled art and science to serve under capitalism and become a commodity.”41 Osaka World Expo exemplified the nation’s capitalistic and technological advancement at a time of high economic growth and urban development. In the only successful act of artistic subversion disrupting this event, Itoi Kanji (Dadakan) carried out an interventionist performance by running naked around the Tower of the Sun in the middle of the heavily guarded Expo grounds. Itoi and Nakajima, who became confidants and comrade of sorts, might have been seen as small specks in the history of art, but

32  Yoshiko Shimada through their continued collaboration in “Damact” performances, they certainly left a strong impact on artists and activists both in Japan and abroad. All translations are by the author.

Notes 1 For more on the terminology of “happenings,” “actions,” and “events,” see Stefan Wouters in this volume. 2 Yoshie Yoshida, “Kokkyō o tokashi toshi o name,” Bijutsu techō, August/September 1972, 193. 3 Yoshida, “Kokkyō o tokashi toshi o name,” 193. 4 Staged on October 18, 1962. Natsuyuki Nakanishi and Jirō Takamatsu boarded the Yamanote line train heading counterclockwise on its loop of a route and disrupted the normalcy of passenger’s commutes through a series of performative actions. Nakanishi and Takamatsu, with Akasegawa Genpei, formed the Hi-Red Center the following year. William Marotti, Money, Trains, and Guillotines: Art and Revolution in 1960s Japan (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2013), 204–44. 5 Shinji Yoshioka and Hirofumi Kawasaki, Japan’s High-Growth Postwar Period: The Role of Economic Plans, ESRI Research Note No. 27 (Tokyo: Economic and Social Research Institute, Cabinet Office, Government of Japan, August 2016), 8. 6 Neo Dadaism Organizers was a group of young artists formed in 1960 in Tokyo, renamed Neo Dada at the suggestion of artist and critic, Takiguchi Shūzō. Members included Akasegawa Genpei, Masunobu Yoshimura, Shuūsaku Arakawa, Ushio Shinohara and other ‘bad boys’ of the Yomiuri Indépendant exhibitions. They were forerunners of “junk” art, action painting and performance art, but disbanded after only a year. 7 Kyūshū-ha (1957–1963) was an edgy, experimental and rambunctious art group formed in Fukuoka, Kyūshū by Tatsumi Sakurai, Shin Kinoshita, and later joined by Mokuma Kikuhata. They were known for its antagonism against the conservative local art scene as well as the mainstream Tokyo art world. The suffix, ha, refers ambiguously to a group, sect, or faction. 8 Zero Jigen (1962–1972) was a performance group formed in Nagoya by Yoshihiro Katō and Shin-ichi Iwata. In 1964, Katō moved to Tokyo and staged their ritualistic performances (marching in the street naked, crawling on the ground etc.) in various locations. Later, they organized Banpaku Hakai Kyōtō-ha (Expo ‘70 Destruction Joint-Struggle Group) with various other performance groups. 9 The Music group (gurupu ongaku) was an improvisational music collective whose main members were Takehisa Kosugi, Yasunao Tone, and Chieko Shiomi; its name, chosen by Tone, was modeled on Littérature, the proto-Dada/Surrealist publication claiming to obliterate and renew literature in its entirety. They were active for only two years but collaborated with other artists including Akasegawa Genpei, Natsuyuki Nakanishi, and the Butoh founder, Hijikata Tatsumi. William Marotti, “Challenge to Music: The Music Group’s Sonic Politics,” in Tomorrow is the Question: New Directions in Experimental Music Studies, ed. Benjamin Piekut (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2014), 109–38. 10 Yoshiaki Tōno, “End/Beginning of Avant-garde,” Geijutsu Shinchō, May 1960. 11 Gutai was a Japanese avant-garde group formed in 1954 in Hyōgo prefecture by Jirō Yoshihara. Its younger members, including Kazuo Shiraga, Atsuko Tanaka, and Saburō Murakami, explored new art forms combining performance, painting, and interactive environments. It disbanded after Yoshihara’s death in 1972. 12 Chelsea Szendi Schieder, Coed Revolution: The Female Student in the Japanese New Left (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2021), 21–48. 13 Takaaki Yoshimoto, “Nihon shihonshugi ni sakarau ‘dokuritsu-sayoku’,” [“Independent Left” Against Japanese Capitalism], in 60nen Anpo/Miike tōsō [60s Anpo/Miike Struggle], ed. Kazuo Nishii (Tokyo: Mainichi Shinbunsha, 2000), 172.

DAM ACT  33 14 Akasegawa Genpei, Han Geijutsu Anpan [Anti-Art Indépendant] (Tokyo: Chikuma Bunko, 1994), 157. Kudō unfortunately used the loan word from the art world, akushon, making his urgent appeal largely incomprehensible to the larger activist audience. See Marotti, Money, Trains, and Guillotines, 190. 15 Tō Nagara [Yoshihiko Imaizumi], “Karera no sore wa shisō dentatsu no gu tarieruka?,” Keishō 8, (June 1963), 35–36. 16 Itoi’s work submitted to the 14th Yomiuri Indépendant (1962), titled Self-generator, was a collage of 20 security bonds worth 5,000 yen each, and a shunga (pornographic ukiyo-e) of a masturbating princess in the middle. The exhibition committee rejected the work, along with other obscene and “dangerous” pieces proposed for the exhibition. 17 KuroDalaiJee, “Marginal Art of Disobedience—Itoi Kanji’s Post/Performance and Network of Individuals,” (conference presentation, Art and Politics in Postwar Japan, University of Copenhagen, May 26, 2016). 18 The Tower of the Sun (Taiyō no Tō) is a 70m-tall tower created by Japanese artist Tarō Okamoto. It was known as the symbol of Expo’70. On April 26th, a young man wearing a red helmet ‘hijacked’ the tower and occupied one ‘eye’ of the tower’s face for 8 days. Itoi heard this news in Sendai and promptly got on a train to Osaka. He ran around the tower next day perhaps to express his sympathy to the young occupier. 19 The event was attended by Neo-Dada Organizers (Akasegawa, Yoshimura, Kazekura, and Yoshino), the Music group (gurupu ongaku), and Tatsumi Hijikata of the AnkokuButoh. For details, see KuroDalaiJee, Nikutai no anākizumu: 1960-nendai Nihon bijutsu ni okeru pafōmansu no chika suimyaku [Anarchy of the Body: Undercurrents of Performance Art in 1960s Japan] (Tokyo: Guramu Bukksu, 2010), 175–6. 20 Meiji Gakuin University Shirokane Festival, 1961 (pamphlet, Yoshio Nakajima’s private collection). 21 Yoshio Nakajima, “Geijutsu gakuto no sukui” [Salvation for an art student], Voice in the Wilderness, no. 42 (Sukagawa City, Fukushima: Tōhoku Seisho Gakuin [Tōhoku Bible School] newsletter, July 10, 1963). 22 O.D. Bixler was an American missionary from Churches of Christ. He arrived in Japan in 1918 and stayed in Japan except for during the war years, between 1939 and 1945. After the war, he returned to Japan and remained there until his death, in 1968. http:// digitallibrary.usc.edu/cdm/ref/collection/p15799coll123/id/91214 23 Ryuzaburō Shikiba (1898–1965) was a psychiatrist known for his interest in art. Shikiba published numerous books on subjects ranging from the Mingei (folk craft) movement and Van Gogh to introductory psychopathology and sex education. He was also involved in organizing exhibitions, including shows of Van Gogh reproductions and Kiyoshi Yamashita. He was also an early supporter of Yayoi Kusama. Shikiba’s far-reaching and enlightening activities helped shape current views of art (for example, associative concepts such as genius and madness, creation and destiny, and art and life). See https://www.hiroshima-moca.jp/en/exhibition/ryuzaburo_shikiba/ 24 Ellen Van Wiegand, “CoBrA: Marxist Expressionism of a Postwar Generation,” The Culture Trip (January 6, 2017), https://theculturetrip.com/europe/the-netherlands/ articles/cobra-marxist-expressionism-of-a-postwar-generation/ 25 Toshimaru Ogura, “Realism in War and Peace,” in Memories of the 20th Century 1946– 1956: Reisen—daisanji sekai taisen [Cold War—The Third World War], ed. Kazuo Nishii (Tokyo: Mainichi Shinbunsha, 2000). 26 A pamphlet published by Unbeat in 1963. 27 Though “Beat tribe” was generally understood in Japan to be a group of young people who acted recklessly against modern common sense and morals, there were young poets and artists in Japan who had a long and serious engagement with Ginsberg and Gary Snyder (who was in Japan between 1956 and 1968) in the early 1960s. Those Beatniks and hippies hung out in Fūgetsudō cafe in Shinjuku. Kaiya Yamada, Ai amu hippī: Nihon no hippī mūvumento ‘60–‘90 [I am a Hippie: Japanese Hippie Movement] (Tokyo, Mori to Shuppan, 2013), 33.

34  Yoshiko Shimada 28 Gan Tanigawa (1923–95) was a poet, theoretician, and political activist whose work played a decisive role in postwar Japanese intellectual and political life. See Gavin Walker, “Tanigawa Gan and the Poetics of the Origin,” Positions 25, no. 2 (May 1, 2017): 351–87. 29 The Miike coal mine strike became an all-out struggle between labor and capital. Thousands of supporters—including union activists, intellectuals, writers, and artists— traveled from all over the country to bolster the Miike picket lines. But it had been a complete failure. The mobilization of a great number of people had meant nothing; capitalists and government bureaucracy had succeeded in disempowering those workers. 30 Kenji Yamaguchi, Anaruko-komyunizumu no rekishiteki kenshō [Historical examination of Anarcho-Communism] (Tokyo: Hokutō Shobō, 2003), 164. 31 KuroDalaiJee, Nikutai no anākizumu, 145. 32 Asahi Shinbun (Osaka, evening edition), December 4, 1962. 33 Yūichi Honme, memo to Yoshio Nakajima, 1962 (Yoshio Nakajima’s private collection). 34 Though a classical genre of woodblock prints, shunga, or sexually explicit and bawdy prints, had been banned since 1872 and censored even post-WWII, until the 1990s. 35 For the details of the exhibition’s development, see William Marotti, Money, Trains, and Guillotines, 114–99. 36 Hi-Red Center (1963–4) was a short-lived radical art collective that emerged in postwar Japan. Its name was a combination of the first Chinese characters of its members: Jirō Takamatsu (Taka−High); Akasegawa Genpei (Aka−Red); and Natsuyuki Nakanishi (Naka−Center). 37 Nakajima, telephone interview with author, January 10, 2021. See also KuroDalaiJee, Nikutai no anākizumu, 424–5. 38 Akasegawa Genpei, Tsuihō sareta yajiuma: shisōteki henshitsusha no jūjiro [Banished Rubberneckers: Ideological Deviants at the Crossroads] (Tokyo: Gendai Hyōronsha, 1972), 22–4. The period of this “close encounter” covers both the period in which Nakajima was in Japan (1960 to 1964) and the intensification of conflict later in the decade. 39 Unbeat continued after Nakajima’s departure but soon disbanded. Tashiro and Kagami also went overseas—to Paris and New York, respectively. Tashiro later performed with Nakajima in Copenhagen in 1968, but they returned to Japan after a few years. 40 William Marotti, “The Untimely Timeliness of Nakajima Yoshio,” in Nakajima Yoshio Syndrome−Art is Always the Next Possibility (Tokyo: Nakajima Yoshio Syndrome Exhibition Committee, 2015), 15. 41 KuroDalaiJee, “Performance Art as/and Activism: Expo ‘70 Destruction Joint-Struggle Group,” Review of Japanese Culture and Society 23 (December 2011): 165.

2 Dancer, Happener, Provo Yoshio Nakajima and the Dutch Happening Scene, 1964–1965 Peter van der Meijden

Introduction In 1966, Yoshio Nakajima appeared on the cover of Ego, a youth magazine with a humanist bent whose primary readership consisted of military conscripts (Figure 2.1).1 The photograph shows him dressed in a ladies’ swimsuit, his face painted white, screaming into the face of a bearded man dressed in a lab coat, goggles, and a surgical mask. In the foreground, there is a stick on a round pedestal and a skull on a stool with a toy truck affixed to the top of it. Accompanying the photograph is the word “Provo.” The image is both contextually and chronologically out of place: not only was Nakajima never involved with humanism or conscripts, but Provo did not even manifest itself until after he had left the country. Any article that wants to come to grips with his brief spell in the Netherlands (September 1964–May 1965) has to come to grips with this image. Addressing the enigma of Nakajima’s presence, moreover, can in turn bring us to new understandings of the intertwining of politics, art, and becoming in his work and in Provo itself. To understand how Nakajima became part of the imaginary of Provo, it is necessary to understand something about the sociopolitical context of Dutch society and the nature of Provo’s impact on it. Nakajima’s time in the Netherlands was a period of change and unrest. On the one hand, theater writer Dimitri Frenkel Frank complained in the mid-1960s that “we are stuck with a religion from the year zero, a royal dynasty from the year 1500, rules from the year 1800 and a stuffy mentality from the year 1900.”2 On the other hand, the media, and in their wake the country’s sociologists, historians, criminologists, and other specialists, began to notice that things were changing—things they lacked the words to describe and the context to understand. Their collective efforts to make sense of the changing times has left us with an entire library of books and articles, all published between 1965 and 1967, that tried to offer an explanation of what was happening. The country, then, was simultaneously experienced as both stagnating and rapidly changing. The conflict will show itself to be an integral part of the explanation. One needs to go back to the end of World War II to understand how this could be. The war had left the Netherlands in ruins. Rotterdam had been bombed heavily in May 1940 to force a quick surrender; nearly three-quarters of the country’s Jewish population (around 101,800 out of an estimated 140,000 people) had been killed; much of the country’s hardware—from to bicycles and radios to heavy

DOI: 10.4324/9781003149149-3

36  Peter van der Meijden

Figure 2.1 The cover of Ego magazine, vol. 3, no. 55, 1966, showing Yoshio Nakajima during the opening of Thom Jaspers’s exhibition “Traffic in Town” at Galerie Honger in Schiedam on May 21, 1965. Photo: Cor Jaring (Cor Jaring/Amsterdam City Archives, nr. JARA00062000003).

Dancer, Happener, Provo  37 machinery—had been sent to Germany; the population had been starved knowingly during the winter of 1944–1945; and the liberation had left its marks from the southwestern region of Zeeland, which was bombed and partly flooded, to the eastern city of Arnhem, which was the scene of heavy fighting. As a result, the period between 1945 and 1958 is commonly known as the “Wederopbouw,” or the “reconstruction”: the entire country had to be rebuilt. Between 1948 and 1952, Holland received financial help, manufactured goods such as heavy machinery, raw materials, and food via the Marshall Plan (the European Recovery Program, or ERP). After that, the country managed by itself but only by means of a strict income policy that kept the wages low, thus limiting private spending and ensuring that exports greatly exceeded imports. From 1948 to 1958, the country was governed by a coalition of the Catholic People’s Party and the Labor Party, led by Social Democrat Willem Drees. This provided a degree of political stability that was rare in a country that was, to a large extent, denominationally segregated. To wit, each religious and political denomination had its own party, its own radio station, its own sports clubs and cultural organizations, and its own newspaper, and voters rarely shifted political allegiance, which led to a fragmented political landscape. The 1950s were experienced as a time of work and frugality, but also of stability and progress. The country’s postwar recovery was complicated by the process of decolonization. Before World War II, a considerable part of its gross national product had come from the East Indies, Surinam, and the Antilles. In 1942, the East Indies were occupied by Imperial Japan; when the Japanese left, in 1945, Indonesian nationalists stepped in to establish the Republic of Indonesia. The Dutch tried to negotiate a federation but had to agree to Indonesia’s formal declaration of independence in 1949. At this time, Dutch companies in Indonesia were still generating 8 percent of the national income; this income was lost in 1957, when all Dutchmen were ordered out of the country. However, this does not mean that the Netherlands ceased to be a colonial power: Surinam did not gain independence until 1975, and the Antilles remain part of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, either as independent states or as municipalities. This means that the Netherlands in the mid-1960s was neither a colonial nor a postcolonial state; rather, they were a colonial power under liquidation. There is nothing to suggest that Nakajima was met with ill will due to the harsh treatment of the Dutch by the Japanese in the East Indies. However, Provo’s protests against nuclear arms, the very weapons that had ended the Japanese occupation, were met with incomprehension by many, as were the group’s attacks on the monument to colonial general Van Heutsz in Amsterdam.3 Moreover, Nakajima’s happenings—in particular his use of white face paint, kimonos, and geta sandals in them—were marginalized as “exotic,” in a typical colonial hierarchization of “us” and “them.” With its gross national income on the rise and its status as a colonial power now threatened but by no means at an end, Holland was perceived by many as being back on course. What further added to the sense of unchangingness voiced by Frenkel Frank was the general absence of labor unrest. While neighboring countries such as France were plagued by frequent strikes, a “planned wages policy” that imposed consensus brought conditions of relative peace and quiet to the Dutch

38  Peter van der Meijden labor front. Trade unions and employers’ organizations, in concert with stateappointed independent advisors, formed a Socio-Economic Council that formulated the government’s labor policies. As a result, agreements regarding labor circumstances and wages had broad national support. This system later developed into a modern welfare state following the introduction of the General Pension Law (Algemene Ouderdomswet, or AOW) in 1957 and the General Benefits Law (Algemene Bijstandswet, or ABW) in 1963. What little protest occurred was initiated by non-unionized workers and a younger generation who protested against the authorities’ “patronizing” attitude. It was not until 1966 that the country experienced serious labor unrest: from June 13–17 of that year, in response to the unions’ subtracting a 2 percent administration fee from their holiday money, non-unionized construction workers organized protests that led to riots—initially supported but soon condemned by Provo—that left one demonstrator dead and many injured. This is not to say that there was no dissent but rather that it occurred at the margins. In the denominationally segregated society of the Netherlands the majority of the population had its niche, and dissent was limited to the fringe. Toward the end of the 1950s, this fringe consisted of youth movements such as the “pleiners” and “dijkers” in Amsterdam, the former being jazz-loving, drug-using bohemians that gathered in the bars and clubs around the Leidseplein and the latter working-class teddy-boys who congregated around the Nieuwendijk. At the more ideologically motivated end of the scale, there was the Dutch branch of the peace movement, which organized Bicycle Rides for Peace to air force bases in Volkel (1961) and Soesterberg (1962), and the movement against nuclear armament, which originated in The Hague and made the headlines with sit-down protests that interrupted traffic during the same years. Provo came into being as a fusion of bohemian fringe culture and alternative political protest and throughout its entire existence, from May 1965–May 1967, it combined elements of the two. Provo’s dual basis in art and activism gave it a different outlook from that of regular protest groups. In Holland, there were no spontaneous protests like those sponsored by Zengakuren, in Japan, during the Anti-Anpo struggle in 1959–1960 (see the previous chapter). The legacy bequeathed to Provo by the artistic fringe of the late 1950s and the early 1960s was a symbolic brand of politics (or activism, or engagement) that used conflicting imagery to stimulate critical thought. While just as different from regular protest politics as those used by Zengakuren, it was entirely nonviolent in nature. If Provo was associated with violence, that was only because it used nonviolent provocation to trigger a violent response from the authorities, forcing them to reveal their repressive nature. Its road to provocation was a playful, anarchic attitude toward society, itself, and its goals were to transform reality into an image and use the image to alter reality further via the way it was perceived. Its weapon was what fringe activist/artist Robert Jasper Grootveld labeled “magic,” the power of (apparently) influencing events by using mysterious (unseen) forces. Grootveld’s and Provo’s magic used everyday objects and situations to represent unseen, naturalized, and/or abstract forces and to counteract those forces by imbuing them with different meanings. The result of this strategy was that everything—whether means or goal, tactic or ideal—became an image.

Dancer, Happener, Provo  39 Images were tools, targets, and keys to social change all rolled into one. What were under attack were the concepts of consumerism and authoritarianism, and what these fringe artist-activists held up against them was creativity. Yoshio Nakajima brought two things to Provo, a potential and an image: the potential of non-instrumentalized creativity (creative activity for its own sake) and the image of creative humanity. His happenings drew what Grootveld would have called a “magic circle” in which the normal rules of signification were suspended, and every element became a potential sign. Images of his happenings remained behind in Holland after he himself had left for Belgium to bolster Provo’s (strategic!) visions of a world in which automation had made labor unnecessary, and humankind could live out its creative potential as homo ludens. To unfold this argument, this chapter is broadly divided into two parts, the first of which deals with Nakajima’s time in Holland (1964–1965, the sections on ‘Dancer’ and ‘Happener’) and the second with his afterimage (1965–1966, the section labeled ‘Provo’). The next section describes his reception as a “dancer” and the one which follows covers his transformation into a “happener,” and as such a part of a circle of modern-day magicians. The last section supplies an account of Provo’s tactical use of images in relation to politics and art. It should be noted here that the three faces he presented to Dutch society—as a dancer, a happener, and a Provo—can be construed neither as a logical series nor as three aspects of the same person. Instead, it is argued, with the help of French philosopher Gilles Deleuze’s “method of dramatization,” that all three are the products of a specific conjunction of sensory input and available interpretive tools. They are not considered as images of something but as images that result in something: shapers of reality, similar to the way that Provo construed the world as shaped and capable of being reshaped by images.

Dancer An article that appeared on February 2, 1965, in the newspaper Rotterdamsch Nieuwsblad, describes how a local journalist experienced his first meeting with Nakajima. “It is difficult to establish contact with the Japanese,” he writes. He may be eloquent enough in Japanese or with the drawing pen, but he fails to communicate in any other language. A bit of pidgin English, a bit of macaroni Italian, a couple of words in another Roman language that are garbled beyond distinction, that is all. Not even a tape-recorded conversation between Nakajima and an interpreter could help bridge the gap, he claims, as “the interpreter did not speak Dutch and much of his [Nakajima’s] English was lost as well.”4 The article describes how Nakajima could be seen walking through the Rotterdam suburb of Schiedam, dressed in “jaunty oriental robes” or performing his happenings or “Japanese dances” in local galleries “undressing down to his underclothes and lying down on the floor, wrapped in colorful streamers, wriggling about in a bizarre manner.” To the average resident of Schiedam, Nakajima’s spontaneous happenings consisted of

40  Peter van der Meijden incomprehensible sounds and actions. He was Japanese and an artist, and it is difficult to say which of the two did more to place him outside of the realities of the average Dutchman’s everyday life. Just as his actions are described as happenings and Japanese dancing at the same time, his artistic affiliations are described with reference to both the Netherlands and Japan. On the one hand, the journalist mentions Unbeat, “the unbeaten new guard who first made their presence felt during the signing of the JapaneseAmerican safety pact by means of a noisy protest action.” Unbeat, the journalist writes, “published violent futurist manifestos” and worked with “Dadaist speech and dramatically staged masquerade.” On the other hand, he mentions that Nakajima would make an appearance in a happening organized by Grootveld to mark the opening of an exhibition by graphic artist Aat (Arie) Veldhoen at Galerie Honger in Schiedam on February 13, 1965. Unbeat was unknown, and Futurism and Dadaism might have rung a bell with some people, but everybody knew who Veldhoen and Grootveld were. Grootveld had featured in the national newspapers since 1962 with his anti-smoking campaign—which involved the vandalization of tobacco adverts and public preaching at the K-Temple or Church (“K” stands for “kanker,” or cancer) and on Spui Square, in Amsterdam—while Veldhoen had recently made the headlines because he had been charged with the creation of pornography. There was no material link among Unbeat, Grootveld, and Veldhoen, but the exotic image of a Japanese person/artist in Schiedam combined with the promise of scandal was enough for a local newspaper to devote an article to Nakajima. Nakajima had arrived four months earlier, in September 1964, having hitchhiked all the way from Japan, a journey that, according to his curriculum vitae, took him seven months. The Dutch painter Daan (Daniël) van Golden, who was in Japan at the time, had offered him the use of his studio at Lange Haven 119 in Schiedam, just outside Rotterdam. In Nakajima’s hands, the studio became “Atelier 119” or “Atelier Unbeat,” an informal exhibition and performance space, recognizable from the street because of the signs saying “Unbeat” and “Op Art” that the artist had put up.5 Almost immediately upon his arrival, Nakajima enrolled at the art academy in Rotterdam, in the department of Fine Arts. He also visited the stained-glass workshop of Frits and André Hendricks, where he studied different ways of working with glass and produced a number of pieces of his own, which he called Flits. His visual art production consisted mostly of “suns,” concentric circles in different colors, that constituted his version of Op Art (Figure 2.2). Rotterdamsch Nieuwsblad describes his work as follows: His favorite subject seems to be the rising sun, shortly after it has risen over the horizon. He has an entire portfolio filled with them, all circles within and around each other. He also draws human figures, the heads of which also resemble the rising sun somewhat. Or an apple.6 In retrospect, Nakajima’s ambiguous signs came to stand for the transformation that he was to undergo, from the rising sun representative of Japan to the apple as the sign of the Magic Center Amsterdam.7

Dancer, Happener, Provo  41

Figure 2.2 A page from Yoshio Nakajima’s scrapbook, showing him with some of his visual artwork from the period and a business card for his Galerie Unbeat in Schiedam with the word “Op-Art”. Photographer unknown. Courtesy Yoshio Nakajima Archive, Konstrundan Raus Art Center.

42  Peter van der Meijden He began by showing his work locally, in Schiedam, at Galerie Honger (November 11–29, 1964); Galerie Punt Vier (November 27, 1964–?); Galerie Unbeat (Prisma paint store, December 14, 1964–January 30, 1965); and his own studio (January 15–February 8, 1965). He also sold it on the streets of Rotterdam, Gouda, and Den Haag, according to his close collaborator, the poet and author Thom Jaspers jr., acting as “his own government” by “collecting tax.”8 Wherever he settled down, Jaspers implies, he represented a country of his own and was therefore, as a one-man population-cum-government, entitled to the money he managed to collect; this was a stunning prefiguration of Provo, which also instituted itself as an authority, regardless of the distribution of rights and obligations in the rest of society. Photographs show his displays, row upon row of “suns,” neatly laid out on the pavement. More than with his visual artwork, Nakajima made an impression with his happenings. He performed them spontaneously, in connection with his “street exhibitions,” as well as at galleries and jazz clubs. The first one on record took place during the opening of an exhibition by Dick Bosch in the studio of fellow artist Jan Winter in Vlaardingen, close to Schiedam, on October 15, 1964. Surprised journalists spoke of a “Japanese ritual,”9 a “ceremony,”10 and a “ritual Japanese dance.”11 To the accompaniment of a piece of music by Dvořak, Nakajima wrapped himself in toilet paper, swabbed white paint from a plate onto his face, manipulated a folding ruler, and threw scraps of magazines up in the air. When, at some point during the happening, the fuses blew, his audience thought the show was over, but Nakajima continued by the light of a torch. In their amazement, the few reporters who attended the event forgot to take detailed notes, so it is impossible to reconstruct the precise order of events. The only thing everyone agreed on was how amazing it was that the performer turned out during the following drinks reception to be a quiet but friendly person. Just as Nakajima was at once a population and a government, he was at once a far-out artist and a perfectly normal human being. His next happening took place three weeks later, on November 8, 1964, during the opening of a group show at Galerie Honger in which he also took part. This was the opening show at the gallery, which had been created by Cees Bouw, a fellow student of Nakajima’s at the art academy, in a garage in a high-rise estate in Schiedam-Nieuwland. Showcasing graphic work by academy students, the exhibition was opened by their professor of graphic art, Luuk Scholten. Nakajima’s happening remains undocumented apart from one short review, which reports that he “imitated a hard-working laborer. Shouting hoarsely and scantily dressed, he dragged a wheel across the floor, while he threw small bits of paper at the shocked and amused bystanders as a way of renewing human communication.”12 After the happening, Nakajima gave the audience newspaper scraps with the word “Unbeat” stamped on them. The journalist’s attempt to interpret the happening is uncharacteristic. Most made do with tongue-in-cheek accounts that served to highlight the “absurdity” of such events, but this particular journalist felt obliged to make an attempt because someone—perhaps the gallery owner, perhaps Nakajima himself— told him that Nakajima was “a dancer, mime artist, painter, beatnik and poet,” information that the journalist faithfully passed on to his readers. Perhaps a

Dancer, Happener, Provo  43 happening could do without an interpretation, but pantomime was obviously a different matter. If it is pantomime, it can be understood, so it must be interpreted. More information is available about Nakajima’s third happening in the Netherlands, during the opening night of his exhibition of “Op Art” at Galerie Punt Vier in Schiedam, on November 27, 1964. He was in the habit of collecting statements from people he met, and one of them, unfortunately anonymous, describes the event in detail. The lights went out. The room was lit by lamps and candles. Nakajima handed out candles and most of his clothes to the audience, then wrapped a number of people in the front row in toilet paper. He threw a roll of it through the room, causing it to unroll, and asked everybody to take hold of it. Then he took a Bible, shouted, and handed out boiled potatoes. Dressed in a robe with “UNBEAT” painted on the back in white, he started to dance, crawled through the audience, and then slipped outside. The audience followed him outside and saw him crawling out of a large box that was lying there. He rolled around on the ground, wrapped himself in newspapers and string, crawled over to a nearby bin, and stroked it and beat it with a length of iron. Making imploring gestures, he tried to get up, found his feet; shouted; and showered the audience with pieces of paper and bits of string. Then he went inside again, rolling and dancing; threw some people to the floor; threw some others on top of them; bound them with string; and covered them with potatoes and paper. The happening ended with a dance around and on top of the human mountain thus created. The anonymous reporter does not characterize the event as a whole but mentions the word “dance” a lot. Like the above-mentioned journalist, he also felt compelled to interpret the action. The candles were lit in a “devout” way, and the roll of paper is described as a “ribbon of unity.” Nakajima “prays,” “tries to get up but is pulled down again by the ropes,” “begs for permission to get up,” “emits a shout of joy,” and “performs a dance of joy.” None of the journalists present felt a similar urge to interpret. One of them described the event as a “happening” and suggested that such events are organized only in order to draw attention.13 Another mentioned “happenings” as well but also used the words “display” and “strip-tease.”14 A third spoke of a “Japanese ritual, the importance of which those present undoubtedly completely failed to grasp.”15 All three were more interested in the appearance of the police—a circumstance that Nakajima’s own anonymous chronicler failed to mention—than in the event itself. A single mother who lived next door came to complain that her baby could not sleep, after which the police sent the crowd inside. They reported gleefully that Nakajima, who had stripped down to a pair of swimming trunks, jumped into his cardboard box and then reemerged fully dressed. The owner of the gallery assured the police that Nakajima had never intended to strip completely and had promised to clear away the mess afterwards. During the first months of Nakajima’s stay in Holland, no one there knew what “Unbeat” was. The journalist mentioned earlier in this section who wrote the piece in Rotterdamsch Nieuwsblad was the first to try and find out who this mysterious Japanese artist really was and what had brought him to Schiedam. He informed the newspaper’s readers that Nakajima (whose name is misspelled throughout the article as “Nagajima” or “Najagima”) “represents the Japanese

44  Peter van der Meijden Unbeat-people, the unbeaten new guard who first made their presence felt during the signing of the Japanese-American safety pact by means of a noisy protest action.” He also added that “they founded their own magazine and published violent futurist manifestos. During the last decade, they have, apart from the written word, the Dadaist speech and the dramatic staged masquerade, also used painting to promote their ideas and themselves.”16 However, even accounting for the language barrier that made it difficult for the journalist to understand what Nakajima said, this is very little information to go by. Unbeat material in Nakajima’s possession, such as a manifesto by Tashiro Minoru in Dutch and a text by himself in English entitled “DaDa”, was scarcely more informative. Tashiro’s manifesto took the shape of a letter, addressed to “art lovers and wage slaves.” It stated that Unbeat’s latest activity was “the launch of a human satellite, manned by the best soul,” meaning Nakajima. It also states that the young generation is losing its interest in art. Nakajima is described as a “born painter” but his work as “ad-lib dance” that impresses its meaning on the viewer directly, without the necessity of translation. What the viewer will discover in his dances is, according to Tashiro, “spatial physiological philosophy and cannibalism in capsules.”17 Nakajima’s own text, which is called a “notification” in Dutch, mentions Beat, jazz, painting, Dada, anarchy, and action. The tone is nonsensical: “Dada is a halfboiled happiness,” he writes, and “we Dadaists come from a well-boiled egg of Dada.” However, he also makes it clear that he associates himself with Dada, whether half- or hard-boiled: “The greatest ball of DADA/will be held at the public hall/of the world./Here in a hall,/you can see the strip dance of Nakajima,” he writes. Otherwise, what the document underlines is the intentional meaninglessness of Nakajima’s artistic project. “What is beauty?” he asks “what is ugliness? What is a grown-up? I haven’t the slightest idea at all. I don’t know, I don’t know!! DADA doesn’t feel anything for such kind of things [sic] … nothing, nothing at all.” The last words of the document are “DADA laughs at the all [sic] in the world.”18 To someone familiar with his earlier activities, Nakajima was clearly continuing the line initiated by Unbeat with its “DAM-ACT” actions, which were intended to stop the flow of everyday reality, to make a random mark in time and space. To the Dutchmen he encountered, he was either a mysterious oriental or a cypher of universal creativity. One anonymous statement in one of his scrapbooks describes Nakajima as “born in the East, bows on the doormat of the West.” The painter Louis Looysschelder dedicated a poem to him that mentions nirvana, the bodhisattva, “the emptiness of [Siddhartha] Gautama,” and the yab-yum (father-mother) symbol, while Grootveld simply calls him “an original artist.”19 As described above, journalists were similarly undecided: was it a Japanese ritual they were witnessing, meaningful in a Japanese context but incomprehensible to Westerners, or was it modern art or a happening, incomprehensible by definition? Whatever they chose to believe, Nakajima was by and large successful in his DAM-ACT performances, creating meaningless interpellations in everyday reality that nevertheless caused people to stop and wonder.

Dancer, Happener, Provo  45

Happener This changed when Nakajima met the poet and author Thom Jaspers Jr. Exactly when this took place remains unclear,20 but it was a momentous meeting as it introduced Nakajima to the Dutch happening scene, where his work suddenly acquired a different meaning. Jaspers had been associated with the Gouda-based literary magazine Meander as both an editor and a contributor, but in 1965, he turned to performance and counterculture. Nakajima played a role in this, but so did the happening scene in Amsterdam, within which Jaspers had made contacts prior to his meeting with Nakajima. Jaspers’ development as a “happener” is beautifully illustrated by his collaboration with Nakajima. The first time they performed together was during a Jazz and Poetry evening at the jazz club So What! in Gouda, Jaspers’ hometown, on January 23, 1965. In a short review, Nakajima is introduced as a “dancer” but about his performance we learn no more than that the reviewer considered it to be “extremely bizarre.” Jaspers’ contribution was mainly verbal, consisting of his reading newspaper articles out loud that described “terrible incidents from the past weeks.” On April 19, 1965, they gave a similar performance at the same venue: Jaspers, now more visibly present in a striped shirt and military-issue long johns, read out obituaries from the newspapers, and Nakajima did a happening or a dance which, according to one journalist—who was obviously more interested in jazz— illustrated the atmosphere this generated.21 It appears that an attempt was made to involve the audience, which, as will be shown below, was an important part of Dutch happening culture. The audience was invited to hand pieces of toilet paper from the back of the room down to Nakajima, on stage, but the accounts suggest that they were not particularly collaborative.22 Jaspers’ name also features in a description of an “Op Art exhibition” at the Stedelijk Museum, in Amsterdam, which probably took place on January 20, 1965.23 Nakajima and Jaspers had traveled to Amsterdam for the day and organized a street sale—or “street exhibition,” as the text calls it—of Nakajima’s paintings outside the museum. They arrived at 8 a.m. and were asked to leave by museum personnel at 10:45 a.m., 15 minutes before opening time. By that time, the document claims, Nakajima had handed out scraps of newspaper to about 600 passersby. There is no evidence that Jaspers actively contributed to the happening/ show, but there is a new feel to the documents surrounding Nakajima’s work. The description of the Op Art Exhibition at the Stedelijk Museum, for example, features an announcement for “Panorama” (January 15–February 8, 1965), an exhibition of Nakajima’s work that was held at his own studio.). It speaks of “strip dance,” “op art,” “pol art,” “Dada,” and “pop art” and mentions the circuitous route (a “70.000 km story”) he took from Japan to the Netherlands—via Saigon, India, Egypt, Italy, France, Scotland, Norway, and Germany. Another announcement calls Nakajima a “New Dadaist,” a “happening organizer,” and an “Unbeat painterpoetdancer,” which is more information than any announcement had hitherto given about the artist. It appears that Jaspers, with his literary background, had decided to give Nakajima a hand with his PR, resulting in a shift of focus from painting and dance to avant-garde art forms and happenings.

46  Peter van der Meijden On January 23, the same day that Nakajima and Jaspers performed in Gouda, Schiedam received a visit from Grootveld, Amsterdam’s “anti-smoking magician.” Nakajima and Jaspers do not appear to have been actively involved, but both are visible in the crowd in a photograph that appeared in the local media.24 The venue was Galerie Honger, the same gallery where Nakajima had exhibited a couple of works during the show of graphic work by students at the art academy in Rotterdam in November 1964. The occasion of Grootveld’s appearance was a show by the Amsterdam-based artist Aat Veldhoen, who had become notorious for producing and selling cheap offset prints of an obviously erotic nature in July 1964.25 Grootveld had handed out the prints during his happenings and sold them to passersby in Amsterdam for 3 guilders apiece from a modified delivery bike with a stand displaying 31 prints, which earned him a 25 guilder fine for peddling licentious material in October 1964. Grootveld’s performance at Galerie Honger provided a good introduction to his activities at the time. According to the short review that also featured the abovementioned photograph, he spoke in “incomprehensibly stilted sentences,” using expressions such as “God Average Joe,” “Plastic Man,” and “the powerful Dope Syndicates.”26 From 1961 onwards, Grootveld had developed a performance style that resembled preaching but also flirted with conspiracy theories and riffed on self-coined expressions such as the aforementioned. On the face of it, his target was smoking; the review delightedly pointed out, however, that despite his anti-smoking campaign, Grootveld eagerly smoked every cigarette that he could bum off a member of the audience. However, as Grootveld never tired of pointing out, he did not mean to offer himself as a good example for others but rather to “exhibit” his addiction. Underneath the apparent paranoia of his act, he ran a highly original campaign against 1960s consumer culture. Grootveld, born in Amsterdam in 1932, was a jack-of-all-trades but first and foremost a professional bohemian. During the 1950s, he drew attention to himself by living on a homemade raft on the canals of Amsterdam for a couple of days and organizing strange fashion shows (he was a keen cross-dresser and had tried to get a job as a transvestite performer at Madame Arthur’s, in Paris). In 1961, after serving as a purser on a passenger ship to Africa, he turned to what he called “magic” and began his crusade against smoking. He liked to recount how he had bought a collection of horns and a black box containing stones, feathers, and twigs from a man in the street in the South African port of Durban. When he showed it to the dockers in Durban, they panicked, the sailors on his ship threatened to throw it overboard, and experts he contacted back in the Netherlands wanted nothing to do with it. That, he claimed, was when he realized how magic works, how things can have an irrational hold on the minds of others.27 He realized then that he wanted to campaign against what he started to call the “Cult of the Smoke”; the cigarette held the population in its sway by magical means and therefore had to be combated by magical means. Grootveld started by writing large “K”s for “kanker,” or cancer, on tobacco adverts. The NV Publex, responsible for public advertising in Amsterdam including the billboards that Grootveld targeted, took him to court, and on December 11, 1961, he was sentenced to 60 days in prison. When he came out, he met

Dancer, Happener, Provo  47 Nicolaas Kroese, who later also became a friend of Nakajima. Kroese was the owner of a restaurant chain called “D’vijff vlieghen,” which catered mainly for American tourists. Kroese, immensely successful, had become convinced after the death of his mother that atomic explosions had released lethal cosmic radiation into the atmosphere. To combat it, he started propagating a “messianic mathematics of peace, based on prime numbers,” created a Universal Cosmic Church of Peace, and proposed to create a gold and platinum Faraday Cage across the entire city of Amsterdam. During public performances in which he expounded his theories, he would ask his audience to donate their jewelry toward this end. Obviously, he was also interested in Grootveld’s campaign against cancer, so he offered him the use of a carpenter’s workshop in the center of Amsterdam where he used to have the antiques with which he furnished his restaurants restored. Grootveld used the space to create a “K-Church.” He had thought out the concept while in prison: in his cell, he had used cigarette adverts to create a series of idols that he called “ndugu” (Swahili for “sibling,” a word he had picked up during his trip to Africa and mistakenly associated with a specific kind of ritual). Another inmate had offered him a huge ashtray, several meters in diameter, which he wanted to fill with cigarettes and set alight while a tape-recorder played the word “publicity” over and over again, interspersed with the sound of coughing.28 He never performed this ritual in prison, but ever more baroque versions of it were staged at the K-Church. One journalist described it as “the messiest and most smoky temple on the hemisphere; a chaos of rotted planks, paint tins, fragments of car tires and the desolate remains of cigarette adverts” and noted that “[a] single candle made the cigarette smoke visible.”29 It was Grootveld’s intention to create as much smoke as possible, urging his audience to chain-smoke and burning cigarettes, candles, and bits of wood. Smoke, or steam, also came off “The Miracle,” a lamp on which water dripped due to its placement directly underneath a hole in the roof. The lamp was half-filled with water but occasionally managed to shine, nonetheless. Grootveld appeared dressed like a shaman, in a series of outrageous costumes, his face painted white, black, and red. In some photographs, he is shown wearing a military-issue kepi with a kind of “third eye” on the front from which a pipe protrudes. He claimed in sermons that [a]dvertising columns are the totem poles of our asphalt jungle, raised to the honor of the God Joe. Who is the God Joe? It is Average Joe. But advertising destroys Average Joe… [e]very addiction is opium. And I say to you, the people have fallen victim to it, opium is the religion of the people.30 The audience, whom he called “Conscious Nicotinists,” chanted the “coughcough song,” which involved their making coughing sounds until they started to cough. Another “song” was the Publicity Song: in this the word “publicity” was chanted over and over again, louder and louder, while Grootveld egged the audience on with shouts of “Mooooore publicity!” Finally, they performed the “Ha Ha Song,” pretending to laugh until they were actually gripped by fits of hysterical laughter.

48  Peter van der Meijden Grootveld described smoking as a “mystic act,” “the 20th century equivalent of primeval rituals.” “In ancient times, people set fire to part of the harvest and drugged themselves with incense,” he said, “and now people burn tobaccos [sic], sacrificing up to one tenth of their income.”31 In one of his recorded “sermons,” he said: The problem of smoking is a magical problem. Cigarettes come from Mother Earth. It is a plant that is picked, pounded, fermented and rolled up in the body of the cigarette. Then the Holy Fire is applied: the smoke rises up. That is magic:… Rising smoke has a magical power. Did not the ancient cultures practice smoke sacrifice? This, now, is our smoke sacrifice.32 Amazingly, the press almost always failed to notice the ironic tone of such speeches. Grootveld was habitually portrayed as a madman and often associated/mentioned in association with eccentrics such as Kroese; Ton Haentjes Dekker, the organizer of the Socio-Religious Debate Center, who wrote a thesis on “Knowledge and the Known in relation to Western Man’s Demonism”; and the self-professed prophet Lou de Palingboer (“Lou the Eel Seller”). Compared with theirs, Grootveld’s mysticism is of a totally different kind: a colorful way of challenging Western consumerism, with the consumer fetish as a Golden Calf and the press as its High Priests, brainwashing their audiences. The audiences, in their turns, appear dialectically both as the enslaved masses and also as the God Average Joes who legitimize the whole charade. On April 18, 1962, Grootveld set fire to the K-Church. It remains uncertain whether he did so on purpose, but he had borrowed two fire extinguishers and filled some tubs with water. However, one fire extinguisher would not work, and the other was not enough to extinguish the flames devouring some wood shavings he had heaped up against one of the Church’s wooden walls. The tubs proved too heavy to tip over onto the fire. The fire brigade had to attend, the Church was closed, and Grootveld was tried for arson in mid-June. He would occasionally still conduct a “service” in the church, sneaking in through a hole in the roof, but he increasingly sought other stages for his displays. One such appearance took place during the opening of an exhibition by the photographer Ab Pruis, a good friend of Grootveld and later also of Nakajima. The opening featured appearances by Kroese and Haentjes Dekker, but Grootveld drew the most attention: in a fit of inspiration, he predicted that Amsterdam would become the “Center of the Western Asphalt Jungle,” a “Magic Center of the World” that would attract people by the hundreds of thousands.33 Elsewhere, he added that Amsterdam had to become hospitable to all. Slums would become the haunts of artists and hipsters, there would be parties everywhere, and everybody could come and go as they wanted and sleep wherever they wanted.34 It was a prophecy that came true when Amsterdam, toward the end of the 1960s, became a hippie Mecca, and sleeping on Dam Square or in Vondelpark became the thing to do. Provo, more about which later, appropriated the term “Magic Center” by making it part of its anti-authoritarian campaign.

Dancer, Happener, Provo  49 Grootveld also made speeches at the Socio-Religious Debate Center—during one of which, in October 1963, he introduced another crucial element of his “doctrine,” namely, Klaas. Klaas refers to Saint Nicolas, or Sinterklaas, the saint who became the template for Santa Claus/Father Christmas. In his speech, Grootveld exclaimed: “In the Western Concrete Jungle, people only want another guilder and yet another guilder and yet another hour less to work in. Where is the great savior? Where is the great Klaas?”35 In an interview from April 1964, he explained why Klaas was so important: Klaas could be served. Unlike Father Christmas, Saint Nicolas has a servant called Zwarte Piet (“Black Pete”).36 Grootveld did not want to be a savior or even a prophet: he made sure that he was never connected with one particular Klaas but rather with Black Pete and the act of waiting for a savior in general. He wanted to be not the new messiah but a servant, a believer in the possibility of salvation—a move that is clearly related to his insistence on being an exhibitionist instead of a good example. From this time onwards, he would often appear dressed like Black Pete, wearing a beret and Renaissance-style knickerbockers. From June 1964 onwards, Grootveld made the statue of Het Lieverdje (“The Little Rascal”), on Spui Square, his new signature location. The statue was built on the initiative of the journalist Henry Knap, who had wanted to raise a monument to the anonymous Amsterdam street urchin, a figure regarded as cheeky but loveable. The intention had been to have it funded privately, but when Knap could not raise enough cash, the Hunter Cigarette Company stepped in and donated the necessary funds. A plaque commemorating that fact was placed at the base of the sculpture and was a perfect symbol for Grootveld, who called Het Lieverdje “Tomorrow’s Addicted Consumer.” Hunter, he said, was Klaas; the plaque, a magic formula. More than a real event, the raising of the sculpture was a magical event—a mystical meeting of the press, the Dope Syndicates, and the “Nauseating Retailers.” Journalists, he claimed, were publicity people, the “witch doctors of the Western Asphalt Jungle,” endlessly repeating their magic formulas and images until the God Average Joe started to behave the way they wanted. Het Lieverdje was an “absurd sacrifice.” It remains unclear whether Grootveld and Nakajima had exchanged addresses during the former’s appearance at Galerie Honger on January 23, but Nakajima wrote his on the back of a letter to Grootveld from the student association “Eugeia,” in Wageningen, dated February 26, 1965. He also added, in Japanese, slogans such as “The work of art has lost its raison d’être” and “Freedom without Freedom.” This contact resulted in an invitation for Nakajima to perform during one of Grootveld’s midnight happenings at Het Lieverdje on March 13, 1965: Grootveld felt that it was time that others joined the magical circle he had created around the statue. He produced a pamphlet, a so-called Hipperzweter (Figure 2.3),37 announcing the event: “Tomorrow’s service in honor of Tomorrow’s Addicted Consumer will be led by Yoshio Nakajima,” it reads. Nakajima added, in Japanese, “Art of Nonsense” and “Performance.” Very little is known of his performance other than that he was arrested after ten minutes. A journalist from the newspaper Haagsche Courant was present and wrote that Nakajima “preache[d] a shady religion” and that his performance at Het Lieverdje consisted of “an exciting dance that ended

50  Peter van der Meijden

Figure 2.3 A Hipperzweter by Robert Jasper Grootveld, announcing Yoshio Nakajima’s performance at Het Lieverdje on March 13, 1965. Courtesy Yoshio Nakajima Archive, Konstrundan Raus Art Center.

in a strip-tease act.”38 Photographs by Cor Jaring, who was increasingly replacing Ab Pruis as a chronicler of Grootveld’s happenings and other countercultural events, show Nakajima in his underpants—first wrapped in a long paper ribbon, then with a tangled-up length of string in his hands, and finally with a sheet of plastic over his head (Figure 2.4). On the ground lie his geta sandals, and the crowd behind him is waving the newspaper torches that Grootveld often employed in his

Dancer, Happener, Provo  51

Figure 2.4 Yoshio Nakajima performing at Het Lieverdje in Amsterdam on March 13, 1965. Photo: Cor Jaring (Cor Jaring/Amsterdam City Archives, no. JARA00065000001).

happenings. They also show Nakajima resisting arrest, and the final image is of him next to a policeman in a police van, with members of the audience looking in at them.39 According to statements by Kroese and Grootveld recorded in Nakajima’s scrapbook, hundreds of people followed him to the police station, demonstrating for two hours until he was released (Figure 2.5).40 Under two weeks later, Nakajima was in Amsterdam again, this time to perform during the opening of an exhibition of photos of Sumo wrestlers by Ab Pruis at the Kie-ke-boe club. The invitation announces an opening speech by Nicolaas Kroese on the theme of “gravity” and mentions Nakajima as “an Unbeat missionary”; a journalist took this to mean that he was an “emissary of a Japanese sect.” Among the guests were Grootveld, “semi-doctor” Bart Huges, and “a large number of photographers, artists, poets, antisocial elements and a couple of irresistibly beautiful models,” as one newspaper put it. Nakajima performed in a kimono and a red hood to cover his face, holes cut out for his eyes. Holding an umbrella in one hand and an incense burner in the other, accompanied by the sound of a Japanese record, he performed what the journalist saw as “a ballet that was slowed down three or four times, while helpers handed incense and candles to the audience.” Then he rolled himself in a piece of paper, shouting “Banzai” and “A new world

52  Peter van der Meijden

Figure 2.5 Yoshio Nakajima in a police van after having been arrested during his happening at Het Lieverdje on March 13, 1965. Photo: Cor Jaring (Cor Jaring/Amsterdam City Archives, no. JARA00065000001).

is opening up” (one of the guests was judo champion Jon Bluming, who spoke a bit of Japanese and translated Nakajima’s shouts for a journalist).41 On March 29, 1965, Nakajima was in Amsterdam again to witness the auction of the door to Grootveld’s K-Church, which had been torn down, and on April 3, the crowd from Amsterdam was in Gouda to participate in a happening led by the poet Dop Reida, from Rotterdam (real name: Cornelis van den Berg). This was the first event that was unanimously called a happening, and that was because the organizers called it one: Krak’s Crash High Lipstick Village Happening in the Fresh Air was its title (Figure 2.6). It took place by a fence on the city’s main shopping street where a Roman Catholic church had stood. Because people had started to leave the center for the suburbs, the church no longer had a large enough congregation, and a decision was made to tear it down and build a department store on that spot. The happening was announced by means of leaflets, issued in the name of Krak 65, the literary magazine to which Jaspers contributed (Figure 2.7. The leaflets read: “KRAK. The fence deflowered. Opposite P. Neuteboom., HIGHLIP-STICK-VILLAGE. Do more with cars. Do less with roads. CRASH—arrest. FRESH AIR. Three o’clock, 27-3-65.” One journalist reports having received a telephone call from Jaspers, offering to brief him on the happening, an hour before it started. Upon the former’s arrival, he was told that the happening was no simple protest against the demolition of a church or the building of a shopping center but a protest against the “new religion of prosperity” as well as lack of traffic safety, and air pollution due to the ever-increasing number of cars on the road. Jaspers announced that they were going to

Dancer, Happener, Provo  53

Figure 2.6 A poster announcing Krak’s Crash High Lipstick Village Happening in the Fresh Air in Gouda on March 27, 1965. Courtesy Yoshio Nakajima Archive, Konstrundan Raus Art Center.

54  Peter van der Meijden

Figure 2.7 Johansje Keller, Thom Jaspers and Yoshio Nakajima (from left to right) drawing posters for the happening in Gouda on March 27, 1965. Photographer unknown. Courtesy Yoshio Nakajima Archive, Konstrundan Raus Art Center.

conduct a service for the victims of road traffic. He also showed the journalist a photocopy of his “National Monument for Road Traffic Victims,” the lid of a cardboard box that he had used to prop up the head of the victim of a real traffic accident, some months previous, with traces of blood and grass on it. “Every day, traffic causes five deaths,” he explained. “They are the victims of affluence. People have to be made aware of this.” Reida added: We’re doing that by the fence on the Kleiweg because it is a magic spot. There used to be a church there that had to make way for a department store. Such a department store is a church of the religion of prosperity. Everybody can turn to it with their problems. People congregate around the department store. They used to do that around the church. The people have become the laughingstock of welfare. People have to be confronted with the consequences of affluence.42 During the happening itself, Bart Huges, the “semi-doctor” from Amsterdam who two and a half months earlier had caused a sensation by drilling a hole in his own forehead with a dentist’s drill, drew most attention. From October 1962 until March 1964, Huges and Grootveld had lived in the same building in Amsterdam, named “Hotel Little Lexington” by the latter, and they were often seen together. Huges had a theory that no matter how one acquired a heightened consciousness, it was all due to an increase in what he called “brainblood volume.” Children, he

Dancer, Happener, Provo  55 argued, all have a heightened consciousness, and what sets them apart from adults is the fact that the fontanelles in their skulls have not yet ossified; hence, trepanning is the best way to increase one’s brainblood volume and so to achieve a permanent “high.” Huges sold long scrolls on which he explained his theory, and one of these was pasted onto the fence. It was announced that buyers earned the right to visit Huges in Amsterdam and would receive such highs through his aid although the means for this were not disclosed. Jaspers does not appear to have played a particularly prominent role although several of the participants wore white shirts on which his slogans against automobilism had been written: “Do you drive, I don’t,” “Crash,” “Fresh Air,” etc. It was Reida who led the proceedings, in his role of “anti-preacher” (in Dutch: “predikanti”). He was dressed in a black robe with an image of a pinup girl on his chest and the text “there is always a beautiful girl around,” a reference to advertising tropes. He had even produced a liturgy for the occasion. The “service” started with a meditation on a poetic text by Reida on the theme of churches and department stores. This was followed by a prayer, “only to be said out loud by fully adapted inhabitants of the welfare state”: We forgive ourselves our sins do not tempt us and release us from misery because this is the kingdom of our society because this is the strength of our society because this is the glory of our society I am human for all eternity Amen. The final part of the “service” was an antiphon: Reida chanted “Prosperity is a fact,” and the crowd responded, “We are happy,” over and over again. Meanwhile, Nakajima, dressed in a black robe with the word “Unbeat” painted on it in white, conducted his own happening. Barefoot and with newspapers wrapped around his head with string, he climbed on top of the fence, shouting. A series of photos, taken by Cor Jaring, also show Nakajima unrolling a paper ribbon that several onlookers hold on to and holding a piece of string that he had wrapped around himself. The happening drew a large crowd of onlookers, who blocked the street. This was reason enough for the police to intervene after fifteen minutes, arresting Nakajima, Reida, Jaspers, and Krak 65 associates Johansje Keller and Wil Arts. One newspaper reports that Nakajima walked part of the way to the police station on his hands and feet. While the five were detained, the other participants stood in front of the station, calling for the former’s release. Police reports were filed against Nakajima and the others for causing a breach of the peace, obstructing traffic on a public road, and putting up posters without permission, but they were released after six hours. Johansje Keller wrote a bitter account in Krak 65 of their time at the police station. Amongst other things, she recounts how a contributor to Krak 65 who wanted to take photographs of the arrest had had his camera

56  Peter van der Meijden kicked out of his hands by a police officer.43 The episode was a harbinger of things to come. Grootveld’s and Nakajima’s happenings in public spaces may have been stopped by the police but always in a more or less friendly way. However, when Provo appeared on the scene a couple of months later, all of this changed, much to Grootveld’s dismay. Keller noted that the police “fortunately” had not resorted to using their pistols or truncheons, but only three months later, images of policemen wielding truncheons and even sabers against groups of youngsters dominated the front pages of the major national newspapers. In spring 1965, however, this was still far away. Grootveld, Jaspers, and Nakajima continued their happening tour of the Netherlands with a performance at the students’ association Asker, in Rotterdam, on April 6, 1965. After Grootveld had shown a movie of his activities and explained his anti-smoking campaign, Jaspers took the scene and spoke about traffic. “This is a miserable little country,” he exclaimed. “Every day we sacrifice five people in order to keep traffic going. Follow me to stop it!”—after which everyone climbed out of the window and blocked traffic on the Mathenesserlaan, a major thoroughfare, still shouting Grootveld’s slogans.44 Nakajima’s contribution consisted of handing out some 200 joss sticks to the crowd (of a rather bad quality, someone later noted.)45 In late April and early May 1965, Nakajima performed together with Jaspers during another Jazz and Poetry evening at the Gouda club/venue So What! (see above) and did a number of street performances in Amsterdam and Rotterdam. Of the latter, no descriptions survive. Photographs show Nakajima performing in front of the Cineac cinema on the Lijnbaan and in the main hall of the central station in Rotterdam, with his face painted white and a shirt with words like “Unbeat,” “happening,” “time-art,” and “impossible art” written on it. On the Lijnbaan, he used a heap of sand that happened to be lying there as a kind of podium and crawled around it blowing a whistle or squeaker. At the station, he unfolded his “Three Primate Diagram” and held it up among the passing commuters. In Amsterdam, he walked from the Central Station via Damrak and one of the main shopping streets, the Kalverstraat, to the Maagdenhuis, the main building of the University of Amsterdam, which is on the Spui and close to het Lieverdje. Once again wearing the Unbeat shirt and with his face painted white, he performed on the steps in front of the university building, handling a parcel made out of assorted junk wrapped in plastic and on the pavement, working with string and a metronome. Nakajima’s and Jaspers’ Dutch pièce de résistance, however, was a happening at Galerie Honger, in Schiedam, on May 21, 1965. Performed in a suburb, in a peripheral gallery, it was nevertheless an event that made the headlines—and it created images that attached themselves in publications to the words “happening” and “Provo” for many years to come. It is the main reason why Nakajima and Jaspers feature relatively often in studies of art and protest in the Netherlands during the 1960s. Jaspers reflects on the event in the book Dit hap-hap-happens in Amsterdam (1966).46 On a tour through Schiedam, he recounts, he found the gallery and was offered an exhibition. He spent two months making the objects. The National Monument for Road Traffic Victims, already presented during the happening in

Dancer, Happener, Provo  57 Gouda, took pride of place. As mentioned, it was the lid of a cardboard box, used by Jaspers to prop up the head of a victim of a road accident that he had witnessed sometime during the summer of 1964. The lid was smeared with drops of blood grass stains and bits of grass, and Jaspers had added a newspaper article about the accident. Other works, some of which he demonstrated/displayed during the happening, were called things like “Argus as a Road-Side Tourist”; “Parade of the Saps,”; “Stop,”; “Imago Mortis” (Latin for “image of death”); and “I Too Drive On”.47 A work called “Gear,” for example, consists of the metal tube of a vacuum cleaner, on top of which a bulb horn had been affixed. Jaspers explained that honking the horn made one go faster. Another exhibit consisted of a dressmaker’s dummy with a steering wheel instead of a head. This, Jaspers explained, was the “sap”—in Dutch, the “onnozele hals”—or the “stupid neck” that supported the steering wheel.48 By means of posters, the “world premiere of a Time Art happening” was announced. Motto: “Bram, bram, brum, another CO2 column.” A folder was printed that, as well as announcing the exhibition, spoke of “SafER traffic—do you drive? I don’t—poetry poetry poetry—musique concrete—national monument for road traffic victims—pop art—crash—time art (happening).” Part of the folder was later reprinted in the magazine Provo in connection with the launch of the White Bicycle Plan (see below). Either the police had advised the owner, Cees Bouw, to keep the gallery shut, as some of the reviews suggest, or he himself had had second thoughts; in any case, Jaspers and Nakajima found the door closed.49 Dressed in a lab coat and wearing goggles and a sterile mask, Jaspers denounced Bouw. While the crowd was standing in front of it, the door was opened; the newspapers tried to blame this on Nakajima, but, according to Jaspers, there was a demolition man in the crowd who knew about doors. Inside, there was a wreck of a car, which was now rolled outside. The gallery floor clear, Jaspers started to demonstrate the various exhibits. Nakajima interfered, first smashing an egg on a plastic car with a skull on top, then crawling underneath the table it stood on. When Jaspers started speaking about the Onnozele Hals, or “stupid neck,” Nakajima pulled it out of his hands. Both fell on the floor and started to wrestle each other while Grootveld, who was also present, shouted his slogans (“Nurse! Nurse! If I had a cigarette, I wouldn’t be so much trouble!”). Nakajima smashed the work and took off his shirt, revealing a ladies’ swimsuit underneath. He ran outside, violently attacked the car, and crawled around all over it. The car was pulled back inside, and Jaspers held up an empty bottle. He shouted: “Look, a bottle. It goes with the car. First a nice drink and then out for a drive. Nice and fast. That costs nine lives a day.” Nakajima emptied a bag containing 50 liters of red liquid over himself and the car while Jaspers explained that it symbolized the blood of the 255 children who had been “sacrificed to the Holy Cow” (the car) in the year 1964. Nakajima took off the swimsuit, revealing a minuscule black loincloth underneath, and attacked the car with renewed vigor. Meanwhile, Bouw had been trying to get hold of the police. At first, they refused to come, saying that they did not have the personnel and that they were too busy dealing with boisterous youngsters elsewhere,50 but after a number of

58  Peter van der Meijden calls, they came. Nakajima had by now moved on down to the Idenburgstraat, where the gallery was located, and Jaspers ended the happening by handing out traffic safety posters. He then walked up to Bouw and asked for his Monument. Jaspers and Nakajima walked away, the former with the cardboard lid under his arm, and the police told the crowd to leave, which they did. The happening had no consequences, but the one in Gouda on April 3 did. On January 12, 1966, Arts and Keller were tried for causing a disturbance of the peace, obstructing traffic, and handing out bills. Reida had come to a settlement with the police, Nakajima never showed up, and Jaspers failed to respond to the summons but attended the trial as a member of the audience. He offered to appear as a witness, but the judge shut him up. All were given modest fines, Nakajima 25 guilders.51 It has been suggested that this trial was the reason why Nakajima left the Netherlands, but this does not appear to have been the case. It seems much more likely that the expiry of his residency permit caused him to move on to Belgium. On February 1, 1965, Hans Paalman, the director of the Stedelijk Museum in Schiedam, wrote a statement to the effect that Nakajima had actively participated in the cultural life of the city, that his work was getting better, and that his future as an artist looked bright, but there is no sign that his permit was renewed. Several documents in his archive suggest that the plan was to travel to Morocco. A text by Jaspers announces Nakajima’s journey from Schiedam to Amsterdam Central Station as a work of “time art” and a “farewell to the Netherlands.” Everyone was welcome at every station along the way, but the text does not mention dates or times, nor is it certain that the happening ever took place. What is certain is that Nakajima left, leaving behind images and stories interwoven with the history of art and activism in the Netherlands in the mid-1960s.

Provo Thanks to these images and anecdotes, the story of Nakajima and Holland does not stop with his move to Belgium. His image continued to play a role, notably in the reception of Provo, the countercultural movement52 that hit the country with such incredible force in the summer of 1965. Photographs of his happenings featured not only on the front page of Ego magazine but also in many of the publications to appear in the mid-1960s that tried to make sense of Provo’s incredible impact on Dutch society.53 To give but two examples, he has two pages of photographs in the section on Jaspers in the book Dit hap-hap-happens in Amsterdam,54 and in a special issue of the magazine Randstad on “Manifestos and Manifestations 1916–1966,” he is represented with a photograph of the action at Het Lieverdje sandwiched between his summons to appear in court in connection with the happening in Gouda on April 3, 1965 and the poet Simon Vinkenoog’s witness statement regarding it.55 His appearances are striking for two reasons: they are clearly amongst the most expressive, and they are almost completely without contextual information. The paradox—silent but expressive—is typical of Provo’s politics of the image. The following section deals with this politics of the image: not just images in the strict sense or their use by the press but a special way of working with images.

Dancer, Happener, Provo  59 Provo’s politics were, to use a Deleuzian term, a dramatized politics—a politics that took shape in the world and shaped the world by means of images. One is confronted with the role of the image and the dramatized nature of Provo’s politics straight away when one begins to ask what Provo really was. It started its life as a magazine but became a countercultural phenomenon and a political force. The name was derived from criminologist Wouter Buikhuisen’s doctoral dissertation on “nozem” (beatnik or Teddy-boy) behavior,56 but Provo used it to describe a young generation who intuitively or consciously realized that they had to rebel to regain the right to define their own lives and world. It claimed that it wanted to renew anarchism but ended up pioneering a new way of doing politics instead. The idea originated with a group of young activists who had been engaged in the socialist youth movement and/or anti-nuclear armaments protest, but it could never have become the force it was if they had not hooked up with the circle around Grootveld at Het Lieverdje. Provo was known for its White Plans—a white bicycle plan, a white housing plan, a white cop plan, a white women’s plan, a white chimney plan, etc.—but none of these were realized. Provo’s most tangible results were regular riots, culminating in the disruption of the wedding of Crown Princess Beatrix and the German nobleman Claus von Amsberg on March 10, 1966; the municipal elections in Amsterdam on June 1, 1966, where Provo won a seat; and the dismissals of Chief of Police Van der Molen in November 1966 and Mayor Van Hall in May 1967. It was, in short, highly visible but almost impossible to pin down—that is, expressive but elusive. In a particularly perceptive article—published in the magazine Vrij Nederland in April 1966, shortly after the wedding riots—journalist Renate Rubinstein describes Provo simply as “something completely new for a change.” She continues by saying “The strange thing about the Provos is that they act on the basis of contemporary experience, apparently before the theory for their actions has been formulated.” Provo, she says, cannot be understood based on the content of their publications alone. One needs to take the tone and the wording into account as well, not to mention the style of the happenings, which have something idiotic about them that estranges many people. They are part of Provo’s cultural program, a practical suggestion for the creative use of leisure time that the PvdA [the social democratic party] still hopes to bring about by means of the fretsaw.57 As Rubinstein saw it, what was hap-hap-happening in the Netherlands was not planned or defined beforehand, so one had to experience it to get the picture. It is much easier to deal with the “how,” “where,” “when,” and “who” of Provo than with the “what.” Provo published broadsides and magazines, engaged in happenings and protest rallies, and issued White Plans that addressed issues such as pollution, congestion, and police violence. It started in Amsterdam and was most successful there but soon spread to other cities in the Netherlands and abroad. It first made itself heard in May 1965 and dissolved itself in May 1967. Among the most visible Provos were—apart from Grootveld, who had had a fair measure of exposure before the group formed—the small circle of activists who started the

60  Peter van der Meijden movement (Roel van Duyn, Rob Stolk, Olaf Stoop, Hans Metz, Garmt Kroeze, and a few others); the ones who wrote (Van Duyn, Martijn Lindt, Hans Tuynman, Duco van Weerlee); the ones who promoted White Plans (first and foremost Luud Schimmelpenninck and his White Bicycle Plan); and the ones who made the headlines (Tuynman as the Provo who spent most time in prison, Bernard de Vries as the one who filled Provo’s seat in the city council, Koosje Koster as the one who was arrested merely for handing out currants to passers-by and who was unjustly treated by the police afterwards…). However, this information on the how, where, when, and who does very little to explain what it was. Furthermore, including Nakajima complicates the seeming straightforwardness of such Provo rosters, as he is seldom noted by name and yet is highly visible in Provo’s images. It was the very elusiveness of Provo, combined with its high visibility, that caused so many journalists, scholars, and specialists to write about it. Provo was first and foremost an image; it was an image, moreover, that drove everyone who encountered it to take a stand because of its very elusiveness. Provo presented reality as an image and used the image to change reality. In his afterword to Dit hap-hap-happens in Amsterdam, photographer Cor Jaring used a quote from Harry Mulisch to argue the point: As Harry Mulisch … put it: “Writing speaks of something that has happened, [but] writing is something that happens: on paper, during the process of writing. It is a reality. I do not have a memory, even less a fantasy … It is not the author, but the reader who must have fantasy. The reader is not the viewer of a play, but the actor who acts out all the parts. What he reads is his very own creation” … This goes–mutatis mutandis–for photographs as well.”58 To Mulisch and Jaring, a report becomes much more than a simple registration of an event when it hits the reader/viewer in the right way. What they describe is a theater where the audience no longer sits passively in the auditorium but becomes a co-producer. Dramatization means exactly that: understanding the image as something that is created many times over instead of something the essence of which can be known. Mulisch’s and Jaring’s take on the role of the image closely resembles Provo’s. All three can, from their own points of view, agree that a mere report can shape the future if it hits the mind of the reader/viewer in the right way. What decides the matter is whether it functions as an image. Looking back on the period 1965–1967, Roel van Duyn wrote that Provo was made possible by two things: “the magic of the Amsterdam locations, worked especially by Robert Jasper Grootveld”59 and the images of photographer Cor Jaring, who “made Provo big because Provo was one of the very few movements that communicated via images.” He adds that “Cor knew how to fix those images like no-one else and he made sure, already back then, that they reached the entire world. Without Cor, Provo would not have been itself.”60 Provo, Van Duyn says, worked thanks to magic and images—both frequently including the elusive, evocative figure of Nakajima and circulating him after his departure from the country. In an autobiography published in 1968, Jaring describes his approach to photography as “clear and honest registration. Occurrences: what is going on at a

Dancer, Happener, Provo  61 particular moment.”61 After having met Grootveld at a café in or around 1963,62 he became the happening scene’s prime photographer—registering, amongst other things, the drilling of Huges’ “third eye” and Nakajima’s happening at Het Lieverdje. When Grootveld joined forces with Provo, he documented their activities, also, and became internationally known when he sold his photographs of the Provo riots during the wedding of Beatrix and Claus on March 10, 1966 to international magazines such as the German Quick and the French France Dimanche, among others. About his contacts with the happening scene and Provo, Jaring says: “[T]hose guys thought it was great… They were not shy of a bit of publicity… I always liked running around with them. There was always something strange happening. And I made money.”63 Initially, these strange activities baffled him, but during the happening Stoned in the Streets—on January 11, 1965—he was struck by a sudden realization: Everything is a happening, all of life. Everybody who finds himself in a particular situation is part of a happening. For himself this does not happen until he participates in the situation in a particularly conscious way. If you feel involved and you become conscious of your place in the entirety of the situation, you become an active happener.64 Because he participated as a photojournalist, taking photographs was his contribution. This was what made him different from all the other photojournalists: as he wrote, “I always capture the other side of events, I make photographs that nobody else will ever be able to make.”65 What he describes is a different approach toward photojournalism—not merely registering but co-creating. Instead of standing on the outside looking in, Jaring stood on the inside looking out. This makes his photographs of Nakajima’s actions at Het Lieverdje markedly different from the others. In stark black and white, he captures the power of Nakajima as a performer. Most reports in the press presented happenings as the work of madmen, small news items to amuse the audience, but Jaring’s photographs manage to convey his subject’s/subjects’ immense expressivity. If the others captured him as someone who merely broke the rules of normal communication, Jaring shows him as someone who did communicate, but differently. However, despite what Van Duyn says, photographs such as Jaring’s are only a relatively small cog in the machinery that made Provo tick. Much more important are Provo’s attitude toward the press and especially its use of the image in a more general sense. “Image” was one of Provo’s most often used words or slogans. It stems from Grootveld’s conceptual toolkit, as per which it stands for a kind of magic, more or less synonymous with “publicity.” To Grootveld, the image is “a totem, it is a pyramid, it is a cathedral, it is an absurd offering by the public, in the hope that it will testify to a truth. A truth that bears witness across the ages.” Images are created by “today’s witch-doctors,” “the medicine men of the Western asphalt jungle”—journalists, advertising agents, and public relations p­ rofessionals— chanting magic formulas and displaying magic images and repeating them over and over to influence the behavior of the God Average Joe. Het Lieverdje was the ultimate image: created at the initiative of a journalist and financed by a cigarette

62  Peter van der Meijden company, it illustrates how capitalists and the media get together to serve up the world in a form that suits them.66 Grootveld—and after him, Provo—understood the image as a way of shaping the world by shaping people’s perception of it. Here too we can likewise see a role for the chanting, audience-engaging rituals of Nakajima in helping to prepare the way for such countermagics to finally register. This extensive use of the magic of the image makes Provo difficult to define. Cultural psychologist Jos van der Lans, for example, points out the impossibility of describing what the different Provos had in common without losing “[t]he–often bizarre creativity and the adolescent humor that are likely to have contributed significantly to Provo’s success.”67 Historian Niek Pas notes that the image of Provo had worldwide resonance but that its tactics turned out to be difficult to apply anywhere but in Amsterdam. Provo, he writes, “had strong ties to a particular area, Amsterdam, yet also possessed an element of universality.”68 The message of Provo lay as much in its form as in its content, and its effectiveness lay in the context within which it deployed its tactics at least as much as in those tactics themselves. The main reason for Provo’s international appeal is its active use of the media, at a time when television had started to overtake newspapers, magazines, and radio as Western society’s main source of information, and the young had become a target group in their own right.69 However, while media attention certainly explains why knowledge about Provo and its tactics spread so quickly, there is more to its paradoxical combination of tools and goals, tactics and circumstances than its media history can explain. What the contemporary world wanted was a single simple explanation, but what it had to construe was a whole chain of explanations. To explain how and why society was changing, Provo had to be explained, and to explain Provo, happenings had to be explained. The reasoning seems impeccable: after all, Provo called its activities “happenings,” so explaining the nature of the happening entails explaining the nature of Provo and vice versa. Tracing it back to its origins seemed to many to be the obvious thing to do, but that meant tracing it back to the constellation outlined in the previous section, with its myriad links to art; politics; religion (the Socio-Religious Debating Centre); and medicine ( in its discussion of the relationship between smoking and cancer, the benefits of cannabis, and the possibility of reaching a natural high by trepanning). History, therefore, did not offer a definition or an explanation but instead a sea of images, amongst them one of Nakajima performing his “magic,” that offered themselves to interpretation. At the heart of all speculation about Provo lay the intuition that it must be regarded as inherently but not conventionally political. Some of its activities were political in the narrow sense of the word. Provo took part in the 1966 city council elections and won a seat, which rotating representatives occupied even after the movement’s official dissolution, in May 1967. The group also seems to have been convinced right from the start that it could negotiate with the authorities on equal terms, as its members did when they initiated talks with the Chief of Police and the Mayor of Amsterdam “to alleviate the tension” in August 1965. These examples, however, fail to explain the lingering feeling most authors on the subject seemed—and seem—to have, that Provo was political in all its aspects.

Dancer, Happener, Provo  63 Mulisch wrote in 1966 that Provo did not need an ideology “in the same way as classical Greek did not have a word for ‘culture.’”70 Program, propaganda, and tactics were indistinguishable from one another, and ideology permeated everything. However, the opposite can be argued as well: if the tactics of Provo were political, its politics were tactical. Mulisch calls this the “semantic problem” on which Provo thrived. It was never entirely clear what it said: when the police heard “Liever revolutie!” (“We prefer revolution!”), others might hear “Lieve revolutie!” (“Friendly revolution!”) or “Liever evolutie!” (“We prefer evolution!”). In the actual situation, in the press of the crowd and the heat of the conflict, there was simply no way of telling. Understanding Provo, then, does not mean understanding what it said but how it said it—and Provo’s speech was, above all, ambiguous. The tone was set by the very first announcement for Provo, which saw the light of day on May 25, 1965: “PROVO is presented with a choice: desperate resistance or acceptance of decline,” it says. PROVO calls for resistance wherever it can. PROVO acknowledges that it will be the loser in the end but does not want to miss the opportunity to thoroughly provoke this society one last time. PROVO regards anarchism as the source of inspiration for revolt. PROVO wants to renew anarchism and bring it to the young.71 Already in its first publication, Provo’s tone is markedly ironic and paradoxical: why rebel when you have already accepted your defeat? Provo never offered an answer, and the question animated many contemporary inquiries into the nature of the phenomenon. Certainly, Provo was politically active, countercultural, and engaged in the issues of the day. Apart from Grootveld’s magic circle at Het Lieverdje, it had its roots in the No Nukes and socialist youth movements, and it also soon began to play an active role in the Dutch movement against the war in Vietnam. In fact, it engaged itself in nearly all the issues of the day, from decolonialization to gay rights and from women’s liberation to ending the economic exploitation of the Third World. However, these engagements and allegiances do not amount to a coherent program. Apart from being a sincere commitment, each one of them is also a tactical move. Provo played out its politics by means of dramatization. As Mulisch says in the passage appropriated by Jaring and quoted above, Provo initiated a play with only actors, no viewers. “Dramatization” is the key notion in French philosopher Gilles Deleuze’s presentation of “Difference and Repetition” for his doctorat d’etat, on January 28, 1967. The subject of his address was what he considered to be the principal question of Western philosophy, namely, “what is…?” No philosopher, he claimed, had ever managed to answer the question affirmatively and fully.72 He designed his “method of dramatization” as an alternative approach to the problem, not based on the “what,” but on the “vulgar” questions of “how,” “where,” “when,” “who,” “how many,” and “in which case.” The method aims not to define an essence but to visualize the dynamics at work behind a given representation. Deleuze describes it

64  Peter van der Meijden in theatrical terms, as a “strange theater” along the lines of Antonin Artaud’s Theater of Cruelty. Artaud’s and Deleuze’s conception of the theater is based on movement instead of dialogue and focuses on the receiver and the senses rather than the message. What Deleuze proposes is a shift from the absolute to the relative, from order and conventions to sensory experience and amorphous impulse. What makes dramatization especially relevant here is the shift it enables from essences to representations. Understanding Nakajima’s presence in Holland as a representation and coming to grips with his transformation, in the eyes of the Dutch audience, from a dancer to a happener and finally to a Provo means resisting the temptation to try to find a stable concept that can encompass all three and looking instead at the multiple representations involved. This is precisely what is at stake for Deleuze: coming to grips with the inability of representations to “repeat” the concept in order to solve the problem of how to avoid representation. As he writes right at the beginning of Difference and Repetition, it is a question of producing within the work a movement capable of affecting the mind outside of all representation; it is a question of making movement itself a work, without interposition; of substituting direct signs for mediate representations; of inventing vibrations, rotations, whirlings, gravitations, dances or leaps which directly touch the mind.73 It is a matter of “doing” theater instead of theorizing it–and this means addressing theater as a general notion, not the individual play or, in the case of this chapter, addressing Provo as an adjective, a quality that can attach itself to all sorts of things—whether politics, activism, or photographs of spontaneous happenings featuring an unknown young Japanese artist who left the country before Provo had even fully formed. The key to this kind of reading, Deleuze says, is vice-diction.74 Vice-diction of the script involves expressing it by means of multiple performances, i.e., multiple individual descriptions of its effects. It is not to read it but to perform it using the body as well as the mind. It is to perform the characters in the play while reading the script. In vice-diction, there is no longer a distinct subject and object, no longer a reader and a play, but a subject and an object that co-create each other again and again. Such subjects are not universal but specific. They are not determined by the question “What am I?” but by questions such as “What can I be?” and “Where should I go?” These cannot be answered once and for all but only by reference to what one feels about them: what sounds attractive, what sounds wrong, etc. Such questions have no base in the subject or the object but arise in the circumstances in which one happens to find oneself. Mulisch’s account of Provo’s rise to prominence is a near-perfect illustration of the way vice-diction works. Provo, he writes, did not spring from the minds of the proto-Provos who were arrested for putting up posters announcing the publication of their magazine in May 1965, but nor did it come into being when they joined ranks with the “Grootveldians” who gathered at Het Lieverdje every Saturday at midnight. It did not start even when the police decided to crack down on Provo although this was what brought the phenomenon to popular attention. What

Dancer, Happener, Provo  65 happened, Mulisch says, was that the Provos, the Grootveldians, and the police acted upon one another in an “alchemical” reaction “accompanied by bubbling sounds and a vigorous development of heat” that “caused a fusion between issues like Claus [von Amsberg] and Klaas, between the Republic and Gnot [Grootveld’s fusion of God and Welfare], between anarchism and Image, between the atom bomb and oom-pah-pah [“Hoempapa,” a Grootveldian term that combines the sound of a brass band with the concept of paternalism].”75 The police allowed themselves to be provoked and provoked the people at Het Lieverdje in their turn, thereby transforming themselves into Provos. Provo was not a cause or a program but the sudden confrontation with “an unreasonable piece of unfreedom in the system,”76 Every time the police cracked down on a peaceful action or an innocent bit of mischief, more Provos were created. The use of brute force confronted everyone–not just participants but eyewitnesses and those who learned about the events via the media–with the high-handedness of the “regents” that had ruled the country for centuries. It was not Provo’s actions as such that communicated its essence: people were (re)created as Provos while watching the authorities at work within a context dubbed “Provo.” Nakajima, too, was created as a Provo by means of vice-diction. The image he left behind acquired the adjective “Provo,” so his person was read as Provo. But Nakajima and his image afterlives were also essential ingredients in the alchemy that brought it into being. In Deleuze’s world of forces and movements, characterizing something does not mean defining it but highlighting a few of the temporary results that those movements produce, according to the individual’s feelings about him/herself, to the situation s/he finds him/herself in, and to the other individuals (living beings and things) involved. In the same way, Provo—and as a vice-diction of Provo, Nakajima—was never stable but recreated again and again according to sensory input and individual response. Such input could be anything—from information (about Provo’s aims or about the causes to which it subscribed) to experiences (the feelings evoked by watching a happening or demonstration unfold) to images (a photograph of Nakajima next to the word “Provo”). This poses a considerable challenge for a scholar writing about these matters 50+ years after the fact. What is left behind are the representations, not “the movements that affected the minds” of those who saw them—and “inventing vibrations, rotations, whirlings, gravitations, dances or leaps which directly touch the mind” was never part of the academic stock-in-trade. Nevertheless, Deleuze’s method of dramatization offers a way around paradoxes such as those signaled by Van der Lans and Pas. Viewing Provo through the lens of dramatization means understanding it as actualized by every single recipient on his/her own terms, in the context of his/her own life and person. Reading Provo material, reading articles in the news, and/or seeing photographs or watching footage on TV had—and has—its influence on everyone. To some, Provo would have seemed desirable, while to others, it would have seemed reprehensible. Whether Provo’s tactics worked only thanks to the specific sociopolitical constellation in Amsterdam at the time or not is secondary: they were never just tactics but actualized ideology as well, and however Provo took people, they took a stand.

66  Peter van der Meijden Van der Lans’ argument about the impossibility of grasping the logic behind Provo without losing its playfulness and humor is captured by Mulisch in a passage that opposes “play” and “seriousness.” The people who regularly visited Grootveld’s happenings, he says, were “comfortably playing youngsters… who satisfied their sacral needs in a playful manner,”77 “comfortable” because they were interested in politics only in a generalized manner—far from the realities of war, social inequality, and police brutality—and “sacral” because their engagement was primarily symbolic. Grootveld never would have identified “Klaas” as Claus (von Amsberg): “Klaas,” as Grootveld used the term, was a sign that needed to stay empty, a symbol of that which would never come, so it could never refer to a real person. However, the proto-Provos did not call Claus “Klaas,” either: they simply called him “Claus.” For both groups, playfulness and seriousness remained opposing notions, but their meeting produced a fusion. “The Provos play seriousness, which remains serious, but is playful nevertheless,” as Mulisch puts it.78 As it turns out, the semantic problem of lieve/r/evolutie was at work at the level of tactics as well. Seen in this light, Provo is as much the sum of its actions as it is a set of attitudes and ideas. The problem facing anyone who wants to understand it today is that a lot is known about the latter, thanks to the sizable archive Provo left behind, but very little about the former. Not only did Provo’s actions exist only in the here and now, as every action does, but news coverage of the actual goings-on at, for example, Het Lieverdje are scarce because the media refused to describe them on their own terms, reporting only on “disturbances” and “riots” which were met with due firmness by the police. What did Provo look like? How did it sound? What was the feel of their happenings and provocations? A shadow of the sound and feeling of Provo can be experienced in the events surrounding the presentation of the White Bicycle Plan, in August 1965. It shows all of Provo’s tools in action, from the single-sheet Provocations and the magazine Provo to the happenings, the provocations, and—not least—the police. The story starts with a flyer called Provocation no. 5, distributed on July 25, 1965, which proclaimed: The asphalt terror exercised by the motorized bourgeoisie has lasted long enough… PROVO’S BICYCLE PLAN delivers you from the car monster. PROVO launches the WHITE BICICYLE, as PUBLIC PROPERTY. The white bicycle is never locked. The white bicycle is the first free, collectivized form of public transport. The white bicycle is a provocation of capitalist private property, because THE WHITE BICYCLE IS ANARCHIST.79 That the Provocation addresses an issue that affected many is beyond doubt. However, summing it up like this means losing sight of the essential irony of the text, which mixes Grootveld’s symbolism with references to anarchism and a proposal for concrete action but without attempting to make the three compatible. The car was not to be exorcised by means of magic but to be curbed by means of a plan. The bicycle that was offered as a solution was anarchist but white as well. Apart from the word “Provo,” it is the word “white” that seems to gather most of the threads. At this early stage, the plan was white because it promised cleaner air,

Dancer, Happener, Provo  67 but as more white plans were launched, the color became a sign, an image. It stood for the adjective “Provo,” making the plans legible as semi-practical proposals that serve to raise an issue more than to solve one. As the right to do and say what one wanted in public space became the dominant issue, the color came to stand for the blank slate, the carrier of ANY slogan or opinion. No Provocation can ever be equated with its content; it can be understood only as a mix of many different elements that all point in different directions—evocative, and elusive. As far as it is possible to tell after so many years, the same goes for the spectacle presented on the streets. The newspaper Het Parool describes the presentation of the first White Bicycles at Het Lieverdje on July 28 by means of three brief sentences: Grootveld had put his working area around Het Lieverdje, his rousing voice and his rattle at Provo’s disposal. Thom Jaspers contributed with his ‘accusation of murder to all car drivers,’ with ‘Bram, bram, bram’ as the main slogan. The Provos themselves, under the leadership of Roel van Duyn, were quietly painting old bicycles white.80 Different actions by different groups and individuals took place at the same time with only the magic circle around Het Lieverdje to unite them. What the article fails to mention, however, is the role played by the police: the bicycle was instantly confiscated. As Mulisch pointed out, it was the explosive meeting of the Grootveldians, the Provos, and the police that produced the alchemical reaction that produced Provos, and the way things unfolded proves that he had a point. That Saturday, July 31, the weekly happening at Het Lieverdje became the scene of a minor riot. Grootveld failed to show up, but Jaspers was there, and Van Duyn had brought a pot of white paint with which to paint the bicycles: the Provos had agreed that this was what they would do on all Saturday nights. Because entertainment was not forthcoming, a young man started to chant “Image,” and other Grootveldian slogans were shouted, but, according Van Duyn, “the normal feeling of ecstasy [was] missing… due to the lack of someone to give faith and inspiration.” Newspapers were piled up around Het Lieverdje, a bottle of petrol added, and a match applied—by no means a rare occurrence during Grootveld’s midnight happenings. Van Duyn started to paint a bicycle white, but suddenly a police van pulled up, and four policemen jumped out, yelling at the crowd to disperse. The bystanders, however, backed away only a couple of meters and then found themselves in the middle of the road, where they blocked traffic. Cars honked, Provos shouted “Honk, honk, another dead body!” and Provo Olaf Stoop climbed on a car and started jumping from car roof to car roof. Van Duyn was whisked away by his girlfriend but later heard that the crowd had dispersed of its own accord.81 A much larger riot erupted a week later, on August 7. Coverage in the newspaper De Volkskrant mentions Provos’ wanting to paint parked bicycles white, fireworks, arson, and objects thrown at the police, while a photograph shows Het Lieverdje crowned with a bucket or hat carrying the word “Provo” and with white paint splashed all over it. It is likely, however, that the journalist used the press’s usual approach of one-sidedly focusing on the destructive part of the event.

68  Peter van der Meijden Mulisch’s description in the book Bericht aan de rattenkoning is much more positive. As he tells it, the police’s insistence that law and order would be maintained at all costs had served only to attract more spectators. At 11.30 p.m., he writes, the statue was cordoned off by the police, and arrest vans were parked nearby. On the surrounding pavement, around 300 young people were waiting for the action to start while cars drove around slowly, their drivers hoping to catch a glimpse of the spectacle, and as many as 1,000 onlookers craned their necks to see across them. Then it started: At the precise moment when the two hands of the electrical clock covered one another, Grootveld appeared, magically painted, masked and dressed up. In his arms he held a faded bunch of flowers. While the Provos started to chant the Cough-cough song, he tried to reach Het Lieverdje; a strange, anachronistic figure against the background of cars, uniforms and crowd. An officer sent him back with a wave of his arm. The Pope was not admitted to the High Altar at Saint Peter’s: immediately, all the Provos left the pavement, screaming, and spilled around the cars towards Het Lieverdje—at the same moment, the police officers drew their sabers and the charges had started.82 Clearly, Grootveld’s Saturday-night happenings were no longer solo shows. Mulisch’s description of the soundscape as a mix of Grootveldian and Provo-esque slogans offers a good illustration of this fact: it was made up of shouts of “Gnot!” “Publicity!” and “Klaas!” as well as “Republic!” “We’d rather have a revolution!” and “Hakenclaus!” [from “Hakenkreuz,” or swastika]. The magazine Wereldkroniek adds extra color, mentioning burning newspapers at the foot of Het Lieverdje and a young man dancing around the improvised bonfire, carrying a burning torch, “like an Indian from an exciting boys’ novel.”83 According to this account, it was not Grootveld’s failure to reach the statue that sparked the riot but two policemen’s decisions to take their truncheons to the young man with the torch. As the newspaper would have it, more policemen stepped in, extinguished the torch, and manhandled the youth by pushing him into a police car. Then, when the torch caught fire again, one of the policemen picked it up and pushed it into the young man’s face—at which point another theme was added to the soundscape, namely shouts of “Oranje-SS” [Van Oranje is the official name of the Dutch royal house] and “Nazi.” Both Wereldkroniek and Mulisch mention a man in the crowd—who, it was discovered later, had wandered over from a nearby café—being thrown to the ground and dragged over to a police van while being beaten. His wife, who tried to get him released, was treated to several fist blows to the face and had to be led away by bystanders. As Mulisch comments, Every minute, the police… knighted more Provos… The charges and chases continued far into the streets leading out of the square, so countless bystanders got hit and became Provoized. But among those who were not physically hit, too, Provos and crypto-Provos shot out of the ground like mushrooms when they saw two or three policemen beating a boy lying on the street, covering

Dancer, Happener, Provo  69 his head, or when they saw a policeman take a torch from another boy and try to push it into his face.84 According to Mulisch, none of those involved was a Provo, but many became Provos when confronted by wanton police brutality. This is not to say that Provo manifested itself only around Het Lieverdje. Grootveld remained in charge of his magic circle, but Provo also made use of sites such as monuments to the “father of Dutch anarchism,” Ferdinand Domela Nieuwenhuis (1846–1919); the February 1941 strike in response to Germans’ persecution of the Jews; and Van Heutsz. Such monuments were treated in a surprisingly conventional manner: flowers were laid at the feet of the former two, while the latter was occupied and daubed with slogans (“Provo” on one wing of the gigantic structure, “Image” on the other). Provo did not export Grootveld’s magic to other sites but worked its own magic: sites that gained the adjective “Provo” became directly linked to the image of Grootveld and his magic rituals without any conscious effort. The same can be said of Nakajima’s happenings, which came both to partake of and to contribute to Grootveld’s and Provo’s magic by means of association. The story of the White Bicycle Plan, however, does not end there. It was the main theme of Provo 2 as well. The issue, which was published on August 17, 1965, contains a detailed description of the plan, a manifesto by Jaspers, and a richly illustrated report on the riots. The last starts with a two-page spread featuring a photograph of the Provo with the torch trying to fend off a policeman, with the caption “Work-shy W.J.S. [Willem Jan Stevens] defends himself with a torch against Sergeant Lankhaar’s85 truncheon. Alarmed, the latter loses his cap.” The two-page report that follows describes the events from Provo’s point of view. It calls the event a “peaceful tableau” and states that the riots were caused by “beatniks in uniform who seem to have thought that playing cards at the station was not exciting enough.” It concludes that “the police response was a crime against the freedom of speech that the Constitution grants even the likes of us.” “As anarchists,” Provos would “continue to defend the culture of creative individuals (such as R.J. Grootveld),” and if the police did not choose another tack, these/such people would start to rebel against all uniforms and authorities.86 The ironic tone of this report is starkly offset by an article on the Plan, written by Luud Schimmelpenninck. It presents a wealth of data to prove the dangers of automobilism: waste products generated by the production of 300 liters of petrol, harmful gases and particles in exhaust fumes, number of parking spaces required per 100 square meters, use of road space per person per type of vehicle, et cetera. Schimmelpenninck then calculates the economic loss due to congestion (five hundred guilders, or just under 1,250 euros/1,500 US dollars adjusted for inflation, per car per year) and points out that an old bicycle costs only 50 guilders to buy. One million guilders, he writes, ought to be enough to buy the 20,000 bicycles necessary to make the city center of Amsterdam free of cars. He concludes: A CAR is only suited for transport in thinly populated areas or from thinly populated areas to the city. For transport within the city, cars are dangerous

70  Peter van der Meijden and completely unsuited [and] better alternatives are available for transport from city to city…Political indecision and slow and feeble adjustments must now be dropped in favor of a radical solution: NO MOTORIZED TRAFFIC BUT WHITE BICYCLES! Compared with Schimmelpenninck’s data-driven report, Jaspers’ manifesto sounds like an effort to exorcise the car. It also gives a fair indication of what his preaching at Het Lieverdje would have sounded like: “Automobilism—sadism—broom broom broom—worship of the Holy Cow of the West—toot toot—another corpse—broom broom broom” and so on. Treating Provo’s White Bicycle Plan as a plan, then, is to seriously misrepresent it. It is a proposal, certainly, but it is also a provocation and a form of action. It has a dual basis in economic reasoning and in magic. It takes the three-part shape of a plan, a happening and a test of the authorities’ willingness to accept private initiative in the matter. It uses what Van der Lans called Provo’s ironic tone, but it is much more than that. It is what makes it possible for Provo to use its ideals as a means and its tactics as a way to materialize its politics. It shows how Provo represented an object, the White Bicycle Plan, by means of vice-diction. Accounts of how the proto-Provos and the Grootveldians met differ. All those involved agrees on a rough date, May 1965, but Grootveld claimed that the proto-Provos contacted him after having participated in some of his happenings, while Van Duyn wrote that Grootveld put a note in his and Stolk’s letterbox after having seen an announcement for Provo.87 In his later writings on Provo, Van Duyn casts Grootveld in the role of Provo avant-la-lettre: I write about [him] because it was him who made the youth of Amsterdam ripe for Provo, even before he himself or anybody else had heard of the name. His contribution to the Provo movement was the introduction of a new form of street activity, the happening, and a symbolism and a vocabulary that Provo made use of.88 However, he also put a distance between Grootveld and Provo. In an interview in the magazine Ratio in August 1965, for example, he said that Grootveld “stresses Pop Art and his personal image, whereas we are more politically inclined.”89 In the same interview, Van Duyn also distanced himself from Vinkenoog, who represented the public face of the “art” happening. He dismissed Vinkenoog’s happenings as being “based on Christian morals”: they were about love, whereas Provo was about creativity. Christian morals, he said, are the product of a society characterized by poverty in a purely economic sense, where frugality and solidarity can be regarded as virtues. Now that society was becoming “cybernetic” and machines would make human labor unnecessary, the only useful virtue would be creativity.90 Van Duyn’s comments and reminiscences contain several ingredients that are crucial to an understanding of Provo’s image and the role played by Nakajima. Especially the terms “creativity” and “cybernetics” are important. To start with the former, Van Duyn defined creativity in a “Creativist Manifesto” written in 1964,

Dancer, Happener, Provo  71 a year before Provo, as that which sets man apart from all the other animals. To fully realize itself, mankind must exploit its creative potential. Creativity is the last way out of the “hedocentricity” of the times, its fixation on the immediate satisfaction of (artificial) needs. Anarchy, he wrote, offers the best conditions for human creativity because it is the most freedom-loving of all “philosophies of the social.” He concluded: To become free and unburdened, the creative human being will have to effect the deepest possible break with the outside world and society. Never may s/he allow him-/herself to be bound hand and foot by social obligations. The parole for him/her is: Revolutionism, not as a means to create a better standard of living, but as a goal, as a creative force.91 What he describes is not politics in any ordinary sense, but lived politics, life made political. If creativity makes up one half of Provo’s dream of the future, cybernetics makes up the other. It is a reference to Dutch artist Constant Nieuwenhuys, formerly associated with Cobra and the Situationist International and now engaged in designing the architecture that would accommodate the homo ludens of the future.92 Just as Provo embraced anarchism and questioned its realizability at the same time, it did not embrace Nieuwenhuys’ ideas uncritically either. Van Duyn wrote: We [Provo] talk a lot about (…) New Babylon (…) because we see this as the only outcome, the only solution to strive for. And if we say: this counts as a general move towards New Babylon, we say so without believing that New Babylon will ever become a reality. New Babylon is an ideal and an ideal is never realized 100%.93 A text by Constant entitled “New Urbanism” was published in Provo 9 (May 1966).94 In it, the artist criticizes functionalist architecture and town planning as backward-looking. Utilitarianism was on the way out, and a new society was forming in which mankind no longer needed to work. He writes: Recreation is the recovery of energy that has been lost during the work process. As soon as surplus energy is generated and becomes available for other activities than production work, recreation becomes meaningless and creation—creation of our way of living and our living environment—becomes possible. That is why the youth of today feels less need for recreation in the shape of hobbies or clubs and why it seeks thrills via initiatives in a collective setting.95 According to Constant, it is only natural that the young should start organizing happenings and rebelling against society and its norms, because their creativity is hemmed in and seeks a way out. The natural setting for such creative activity is urban space, but unfortunately the cities are swamped by cars (another signature cause of Provo!). To give citizens the possibility to use up the surplus energy that

72  Peter van der Meijden is no longer needed for recreation (restitution after work), urban space has to be redesigned to accommodate play, invention and creation of people’s own living environment. “Utilitarian norms like the ones that underpin the functionalist city, have to make way for the norm of creativity. Not utility, but play will determine how man will live”.96 Play and creativity are mentioned over and over in Provo magazine and other printed material. Provo even made it one of the main points in its campaign for the city council elections. One flyer described Provo as “a Sign that shows that something is going to Happen: the end of humanity in a nuclear war? The coming of the cybernetic paradise New Babylon? Or the descent into a pantodictatorial Brave New World?”97 Typical for Provo, the rhetoric is powered by ambiguity rather than a clear program, but New Babylon is certainly mentioned as one possible outcome of Provo’s activities—and more importantly, it became the horizon for Provo’s plans and was accepted as such by the voters who secured Provo its seat on the city council. Constant saw the happening as spontaneous rebellion against society and its norms and Van Duyn saw it as a foretaste of the future and a provocative tool in the present rolled into one, but what about the artistic connotations of the word? What of the aesthetics of Provo’s politics? Provo certainly did not deny its links to the art world. Van Duyn, for example, dedicates an entire chapter in his book Het witte gevaar (“The White Danger”, 1967) to the link between Provo and Dada.98 Not only was Dada a provocation, he claims, and the Dadaist “an actively rebelling provocateur”, it also shared with Provo “the complex of ideas that is called anarchism”. As movements, the one is as paradoxical as the other: just as the Dadaist worked with art despite not wanting to have anything to do with art, the anarchist “has been known to have made himself guilty of politics” (a reference to Provo’s participation in the 1966 city council elections) despite not wanting to have anything to do with politics. Both the Dadaist and the anarchist opt for unlimited freedom, spontaneity and individualism and rebel against all authorities. Both Dada and Provo were anti-dogmatic, anti-militarist, anti-capitalist, anti-parliamentarian, anti-bourgeois and libertarian. Van Duyn even calls Raoul Hausmann’s and Richard Huelsenbeck’s 1919 manifesto “What Is Dadaism and What Does It Want in Germany” (1919) a “white plan” and equates its call for progressive mechanization to Constant’s vision of a cybernetic society. While these remarks do little to define the happening, they give a good indication of Van Duyn’s take on the relation between aesthetics and politics: either could be authoritarian or nonauthoritarian, and the latter was always to be preferred. Provo Duco van Weerlee, too, links anarchy and art, in his case via a reference to the Dutch magazine i10 (1927–1930), which combined articles on the Russian Revolution, anarchism and anti-militarism with pieces on Dada, Bauhaus and Neo-Plasticism. “Since i10”, Van Weerlee writes in his short book Wat de Provo’s willen (“What the Provos want”, 1966), “this connection has been lost, weakening the revolutionary potential of both [art and politics]”. Provo tries to recreate the connection between “happenings, beat, pop-art and protest songs” and “anarchism, provotariat, anti-militarism and automation”.99 If anti-authoritarianism was paramount to Van Duyn, Van Weerlee hints at a more nuanced back-and-forth.

Dancer, Happener, Provo  73 Revolution, he says, is best achieved by a combination of politics and art, and, in the mid-1960s, that meant a combination of art, youth culture, ideology and activism. Both approaches, however, treat the happening as a given, not as something that needed to be defined. Neither Van Duyn nor Van Weerlee asked what it is, but what it enabled them to be and do. The happening was something they found on their way—but what was it that they found? Since Van Duyn explicitly referred to Grootveld, his use of the happening format seems the obvious place to look. In an interview in the January/February 1965 issue of the magazine Ratio, Grootveld defined the happening as follows: A happening is the unknown occurrence that you have created the foundations for by doing certain things and where you make use of the viewers’ potential, who become part of the process and assume their place in the context of the occurrence: so that it becomes a symbol, a warning. I try to give my happenings the shape of a warning, a not-to-be-misunderstood symbol.100 He added that happenings were part of “the only youth mass movement of the time”, beatnik culture, the other ingredients being jazz, drugs, and what he called “exhibitions”, displays of the “naked self ”, either literally or metaphorically. Happenings are places and times where people engage in exhibitions, and that goes for the organizers as well as for the participants. This is quite different from the definition promoted by the poet Vinkenoog, who, as mentioned, organized the first Dutch happening way back in December 1962. This made him an authority on the subject, which is why he was asked to give a witness statement during the court case against Jaspers, Nakajima, Reida and Keller. In a written statement, he described happenings as “a form of more or less spontaneous, improvised play, contingent upon the circumstances under which it is performed” and “a form of ‘living theater’, with reality functioning as part of the events that are planned by the organizers”.101 In the case of the happening in Gouda that he was asked to give his expert view on, the theme had been traffic and the welfare state. However, he wrote, the statements made about road traffic victims were no different from news reports on people dying from hunger, except that the vehicle, the happening, was not an established medium, but the “intuitive answer of a young generation that does not want to accept that mankind has forgotten how to dance and play”. Therefore, he argued, the happening should be seen as a positive answer to the rigid and stereotyped forms of entertainment and leisure time activity that are dominant and present. The happening lends life the creative impulse, the absence of which dooms a culture to its death.102 At first glance, there was much Vinkenoog and Grootveld could agree on: both described the happening as a form of contingent, but consciously framed action and as a way of bearing witness. However, while Vinkenoog stresses play and spontaneous creativity as that which makes the happening a critical tool, Grootveld

74  Peter van der Meijden talks of symbolism and urgency. Provo managed to wed the two. In an article in Provo 7 (the “happening issue”, published on February 25, 1966), Provo Bart van Heerikhuizen explained that actually, happenings were used across the entire political spectrum and had been used long before the word existed. On the extreme right, he mentions Ku Klux Klan gatherings and the Nazis, while the left, at least until Provo entered the scene, never got any further than Vinkenoog’s happenings. Historically, right-wing happenings tend to serve to persuade people that lies are true and that war and injustice are normal. They can perform this function because they involve the masses directly and physically. Their attraction stems from people’s inner homo ludens waiting to get out and play. Everybody has a desire for creativity and play, and the satisfaction one finds in play is easily mistaken for the values or “truths” of the extreme right or left. Provo, Van Heerikhuizen writes, was the first group to give the happening a truly left-wing content. The Provos took the happening and gave it a political meaning and function, and the left-wing energies released in the happening materialized in Provo. Not surprisingly, Provo had many ways of characterizing a happening, and most often it was impossible to tell irony from seriousness. They called it a “para-religious ceremony”103 and a “magical occurrence”,104 an “important cultural expression”105 and “a demonstration of collectively experienced creativity”.106 When the happenings at Het Lieverdje turned into riots with the launch of the White Bicycle Plan, Provo restyled the weekly happening as a “Stille Omgang” (a silent circumambulation), a ritual that has been practiced by Catholics in Amsterdam ever since processions were prohibited after the Reformation. On the other hand, the ring of spectators around Het Lieverdje was often referred to as a “magic circle”. Was a happening a codified ceremony or a piece of practical magic? And how, for that matter, was it a cultural expression? Provo did not say, and the very fact that it did not do so gives meaning to the word: in the same way that it created its politics, Provo turned the happening into something to judge for oneself and to position oneself in relation to. But in every case, it presumed and promoted involvement, an aspect of happenings developed extensively in Nakajima’s performances. An additional key to Provo’s understanding of the happening is offered in an “Address to the International Provotariat,”, issued on October 16, 1965. The text accuses the authorities of trying to define what is going on and presents the happening as the ideal tool to reclaim the right to decide what reality is.107 What Van Heerikhuizen describes as attempts by political forces, from the extreme right to the extreme left, to determine what is right and natural is here presented even more sweepingly as a concerted effort on the part of the authorities to determine simply what is. It is what Grootveld called “image,” but image wrested from the hands of the “medicine men of the urban jungle” and ascribed to the Authorities. In the hands of Provo, the happening is nothing less than the revolutionary provotariat’s main weapon in the defense of individual creativity—a practice whose parameters and emblematic images owed a debt to Nakajima. Pop Art underwent a similar change at the hands of Provo. Much better known to the general public than happenings, it was on everybody’s lips when Nakajima arrived in Holland, in September 1964. Two big exhibitions during the summer of 1964—American Pop Art, at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, and New

Dancer, Happener, Provo  75 Realists, at the Gemeentemuseum in The Hague—had opened the eyes of the Dutch audience to what popular culture could do when it was appropriated by artists, either aesthetically or critically. With Provo, the Vietnam War became a hotly debated issue, and American popular culture (and American-style consumerism in general), which had been idolized during the first half of the 1960s, now came to be seen as a threat to mankind. Once again, Grootveld offers a good illustration of the way in which the glitzy dream of Pop turned into social critique. In the early days of Provo, Grootveld and Van Duyn fought a minor media battle over the correct way to understand Pop Art and its relation to Provo. Van Duyn linked Grootveld’s happenings to Pop Art in order to distance himself from him. Provo, he said, was much more directly political. Grootveld, on the other hand, tried to absorb Provo in his own understanding of Pop—for example, by describing anarchism as “a new form of Pop Art” to a reporter from the newspaper De Telegraaf.108 In a similar vein, he told the magazine Wereldkroniek that The result of provocation of the authorities is that the authorities unfold themselves entirely. I believe we live in a good country in this respect. It is a Pop Art country, isn’t it? And isn’t Amsterdam a Magic Centre? Can’t we speak freely here?109 Van Duyn wanted to uphold a measure of distance between art and politics while Grootveld tried to merge the two. As both were associated with Provo, it was up to the individual reader to make sense of the resulting conflict. Van Duyn classified Pop Art as artistic individualism, opposed to Provo’s idea of creativity as belonging to everyone. Although he saw Pop as critical, “a cynical attitude towards a materialist culture” and a “mockery of society’s wallowing in matter”, it was produced by individuals who held on to a monopoly on creativity, thus withholding it from the masses. The artist, to him, was a bourgeois fellow-traveler who enjoyed the same luxuries as his masters. In the future, he prophesied, creativity would be a “general luxury”, to be enjoyed by all.110 To Grootveld, on the other hand, the term “Pop Art” did not refer to art at all, but to a specific approach to reality. When he called the Netherlands a “Pop Art country”, he referred to a situation in which reality became an image to be enjoyed as one would enjoy a work of art. Van Duyn spoke from the position of the creator, Grootveld from that of the spectator or the participant. This enabled him to call the famous flea market at the Waterlooplein in Amsterdam “one big Pop Artaffair” in an interview published in the newspaper Het Parool in August 1965, adding: “With the rags and the junk that is on sale, people can dress up. Gigantic tribunes could be built for the masses. Thus, a magical climate can be created in Amsterdam, (…)”.111 Grootveld spoke of consumer society as a spectacle, Van Duyn of bourgeois society as limiting the right to creativity to the privileged few. Art, here, is no longer a matter of producing images, not even if they conjure up the future in the present. It is no longer a matter of representing what is or what might be, but of producing images that can change the world directly, via the way it is perceived. Grootveld, and to an even higher degree Provo, worked on the

76  Peter van der Meijden assumption that changing the image means changing the thing, and they turned out to be right: not in the sense that all of Amsterdam became a stage or a playground, but in the sense that their campaign for individual freedom changed the idea of what politics are, or can be. In the context of Dutch society at the time, with its high degree of denominational segregation, Grootveld’s and Provo’s demands for personal freedom seemed revolutionary, but their revolution really did take place. From 1966 onwards, the authorities started to accept the population’s right to express its opinions in public space and to do so in the way they wanted. City council member for the Social-Democrat party Ed van Tijn successfully presented a bill that removed the demand that protests were to be approved by the authorities beforehand and the government started the so-called Princenhofconferences as a way of involving the younger generation more directly in the formulation of its politics. It was neither New Babylon nor homo ludens’s victory over homo sapiens, but it was a ground-breaking change, nevertheless. Because of the transformative role of the image, the difference between creator and recipient could no longer be upheld. On the strange stage of the mid-1960s happening scene in Holland, familiar binary schemes became temporarily void. This went for the opposition between creator and audience as well as for the ones between past and present and present and future: Dadaists could be Provos avant la lettre and happenings could be a tool in the present and an image of the future at the same time. A third oppositional pair that was temporarily and locally put out of action, was protest vs. creation. In the context of Provo’s all-out attack on the authorities, happenings became both a way of exposing society’s rotten core and an illustration of the essential role played by creativity in the shaping of a better world. “In favor of ” and “against” existed side by side, suspended but suggestive of all sorts of connections and connotations; and it was left up to the individual to decide how to read the signs and which position to choose. Nakajima became part of the change because of the images he left behind, but his image helped to bring it about as well. It is interesting, in this respect, to turn to Jaspers one last time. This is how he describes Nakajima in Dit hap-hap-happens in Amsterdam: Yoshio (…) didn’t talk, but he simply did things, you know. (At the police station: ‘What is your name?’ Yoshio: ‘Yes-yes Hap-hap-happening, kgood, kgood…’. Police: ‘Where do you live?’ Yoshio: ‘Yes-yes Hap-hap-happening, kgood, kgood…’). (…) Yoshio never said much. He never tried to, either. He left Japan without speaking a single word of foreign and he made a trip via Saigon, through Asia he ended in Egypt. Already back then he lived from his street happenings. So in Cairo he earned money from them, from passers-by in the street. But he also got money sent to him by the ‘Unbeat’ movement in Japan…112 The quote packs a considerable number of different identifiers into a few short sentences and juxtaposes them in a meaningful way without ever placing all its bets on one. It features Nakajima the foreigner and Nakajima the happening artist; Nakajima the uprooted and Nakajima the artist who was supported from home;

Dancer, Happener, Provo  77 Nakajima the incomprehensible and Nakajima the instinctively understood. The multiplicity of the image conjures up the passage, quoted above, in which a journalist who witnessed one of his earliest Dutch happenings expressed his amazement at discovering him to be a quiet and friendly young man. Such accounts make it impossible to characterize him once and for all, but that is exactly the point: throughout his transformation from a dancer into a happener and a Provo, his image remained fractured, and it is because of its poly-interpretability that it could acquire a meaning. The theme that emerges, both in an exploration of the Dutch stop in Nakajima’s happening world tour and, more broadly, in that of the strange theatre of the Dutch happening scene, is not so much of a crossing of boundaries as of their activation. What is at work is the same process of signification that powered Provo: an alchemy of conflicting actions, words, behaviors, and codes that creates, with a lot of smoke and fizzing, a radically localized form of meaning. Boundaries, it seems, were neither drawn nor crossed but put into play in the strange theatre of the mid1960s Dutch happening scene. It is because borders were activated instead of drawn or crossed that the difference between creator and interpreter, root and effect, affirmation and destruction could temporarily become void. At work is a strangeness that goes beyond the difficulties encountered by the journalists who witnessed Nakajima’s first happenings in the Netherlands. Their task was simply to decide what he was and to adjust their discussion of what they saw from there. If a journalist chose to exoticize him, he was a Japanese who performed rituals or dances that the Westerner did not have the cultural knowledge to understand, but if he chose to discuss him as a mime, clues had to be found as to the emotions he was expressing. Where these early interpretations go further than that is at the point where the report has to reconcile a far-out happening with a modest young man and fails to do so. From here, the unresolved oppositions multiply, fueled by Nakajima’s introduction to a world that is positively driven by them. As described in earlier, Grootveld’s circle was bohemian, but not equivocally artistic. It had links to the worlds of drugs and jazz, activism and mysticism, it employed means that were both symbolic and real and it pursued ends that were both utopian and rooted in reality. When this world became interlinked with the new type of activism and politics developed by Provo, more unresolved oppositions were added. The difference between means and ends, between art and activism, between opposition and affirmation: all of these became muddled, but in a way that was suggestive of a new world in the making. With Provo, the strange scene could no longer be relegated to the margin but took center stage as a sign of things to come. What was being announced was a shift of power from the political party and the religious denomination to the individual; a shift from doctrine to hand-picked issues, from authoritative plans to bottom-up change and from recognizably framed to wildly innovative politics. As demonstrated in this chapter, politics and aesthetics were sides of the same coin, at least wherever the adjective “Provo” was applied. Aestheticized means could indicate a radical politics without ever putting it into words and, conversely, radical politics worked because they had aesthetics as part of their horizon. Provo’s vision of the future included New Babylon, homo ludens and free, non-instrumentalized

78  Peter van der Meijden creativity, so displays of non-instrumentalized creativity could materialize that vision of the future and the sociopolitical and economic critique it was based on. Add to this the many different means, Provo used to spread its message, and it becomes clear that a photograph of one of Nakajima’s DAM-ACT happenings next to the word “Provo” would almost immediately have been read as an example of Provo’s aesthetic politics and political aesthetics. Provo provided a context that made it possible for Nakajima’s action art to continue to function as it had in Japan, as part-art/part-activism and as spontaneous, yet significant political action. Provo ensured that he did not remain an exotic Japanese or an inhabitant of the “no-man’s land” between marginal art and a marginalized existence but came to play an active role in the redefinition of society and politics we have come to associate with the 1960s. This chapter was made possible by a research grant awarded by the Mondrian Fund.

Notes 1 Ego: maandblad van de humanistische geestelijke verzorging voor militairen, vol. 3, no. 55 (1966). 2 Quoted in Duco van Weerlee, Wat de Provo’s willen (Amsterdam: De Bezige Bij, 1966), 12. 3 In a chapter called “Fascisms Seen and Unseen” (see Julia Adeney Thomas & Geoff Eley, Visualizing Fascism: The Twentieth-Century Rise of the Global Right, Durham (NC): Duke University Press, 2020, pp. 183–210), historian Ethan Mark writes that the monument “became a logical and perennial target of attacks as a symbol of the evils of Dutch imperialism” (190). Provo daubed it with white paint, but it distanced itself from a bomb attack in 1967, and a second attack in 1984 could of course not be associated with Provo at all. 4 “Yoshio Nagajima [sic], Emissary from the Land of the Rising Sun, in Schiedam”, Rotterdamsch Nieuwsblad, February 2, 1965. 5 Meier, Dit hap-hap-happens in Amsterdam, 48. “Op Art” stands for “optical art”. It uses optical illusions to trick the eye and thus to make the viewer aware of his/her faculty of sight as a precondition for art appreciation. Nakajima seems to have used the term in a metaphorical manner, similar to Unbeat’s dam-act: stopping people in their tracks, inserting a piece of non-utilitarian reality in their daily lives to shake them up. 6 Rotterdamsch Nieuwsblad, February 2, 1965, op. cit. 7 Robert Jasper Grootveld’s “gnot” sign: a circle for the city’s rings of canals, a stalk at the top for the river Amstel, and a dot in the middle for Spui square and Het Lieverdje. “Gnot” is Grootveld’s way of spelling “genot,” meaning “enjoyment” or “indulgence”: i.e., the smoker’s enjoyment, which is really only a sign of his addiction, of a cigarette. 8 Meier, op. cit., 49. 9 “‘Japans ritueel’ bij opening expositie, De Rotterdammer, October 17, 1964. 10 “Japanse trance by opening expositie in atelier Jan de Winter,” newspaper and date unknown, Scrapbook, Nakajima’s personal archive. 11 “Exposities in Visbank en atelier De Winter,” newspaper and date unknown, Najakima’s scrapbook. 12 “Galerie Honger absurd geopend,” newspaper and date unknown, Nakajima’s personal archive. 13 “Happening in Schiedam,” newspaper unknown, November 28, 1964, scrapbook, Nakajima’s personal archive. 14 “Japanse striptease bij Punt Vier, Rotterdamsch Nieuwsblad, November 30, 1964.

Dancer, Happener, Provo  79 15 “‘Nakajima’ in ‘Punt Vier,’” newspaper and date unknown, scrapbook, Nakajima’s personal archive. 16 “Yoshio Najagima [sic], afgezant uit het land van de rijzende zon,” Rotterdamsch Nieuwsblad, February 2, 1965. 17 Minoru Tashiro, “DaDa,” letter to Nakajima, October 1964. 18 Yoshio Nakajima, “notification,” unpublished two-page document, undated but marked “1964 arrived in Holland and lives still now,” Nakajima’s personal archive. 19 Statements in scrapbooks, Nakajima’s personal archive. 20 Jaspers claims that he already met Nakajima when the latter had been in the country for no more than three weeks. Meier, Dit hap-hap-happens in Amsterdam, 49. Their names however feature together for the first time in a review dated January 25, 1965. 21 “Henk van Buul speelde in Goudse jazzsoos,” undated, newspaper unknown. Scrapbook, Nakajima’s personal archive. The journalist does not specify what kind of atmosphere, but one imagines it to be sinister. 22 Undated statement by Luc Schamlé, Scrapbook, Nakajima’s personal archive. 23 The document is dated January 31, 1965, but Nakajima’s CV dates the event to January 20, 1965. 24 “Dorst lijden in Galerie Honger,” newspaper clipping, (January 24, 1965?) Nakajima’s personal archive and Archief Robert Jasper Grootveld, Internationaal Instituut voor Sociale Geschiedenis, archive no. 2863. 25 They were commonly known as “rotaprints” because of the German producer of the printing presses, Rotaprint. 26 In Dutch: “God Jan Publiek,” “de afschuwelijke plasticmens” and “de Dope-syndicaten”. 27 Igor Cornelissen, “Robert Jasper contra het rokertje,” Vrij Nederland, June 27, 1964, 5, 8. 28 Henk de Mari, “Uche, uche, uche,” Panorama, January 27, 1962. 29 Wim Zaal, “Heimwee achter de fopneus,” Elseviers Weekblad, August 18, 1962, 24. 30 Zaal, op. cit. 31 Cor Dokter, “Zij willen de wereld verbeteren,” Eva: weekblad voor vrouw en gezin, April 1962, 4–12. 32 Hans Verhagen, “K-Kapel van Robert Jasper: ‘Vreemd vermaak in de bijt van het Plein,’” Algemeen Dagblad, March 31, 1962. 33 E. Duivenvoorden, Magiër van een nieuwe tijd: Het leven van Robert Jasper Grootveld (Amsterdam: Arbeiderspers, 2008), 212. 34 Henk J. Meier, “Heer, geef mij één cigaret,” Ratio 3 (April 1964), 7–10. 35 Anonymous, “Waar blijft klaas,” newspaper unknown, date unknown. Internationaal Instituut voor Sociale Geschiedenis, Archief Provo, collection ID 02030. 36 Meier, “Sigaret,” 9. Igor Conrnelissen, “Robert Jasper contra het rokertje,” Vrij Nederland, June 27, 1964, 5, 8. 37 “Hipperzweter” is a garbled version of the term “hidden persuader,” a reference to Vance Packard’s book The Hidden Persuaders (1957), about the advertising industry. However, it also contains the words “hip” and “zweet” (“sweat”), making it sound countercultural and corporeal in a slightly unpleasant way. 38 “Openbare happenings in strijd tegen het ‘DOPE-SYNDICAAT,’” Haagsche Courant, May 13, 1965. 39 Photos at the Internationaal Instituut voor Sociale Geschiedenis, Amsterdam. 40 Undated statements by Nicolaas Kroese and Robert Jasper Grootveld in Scrapbook, Nakajima’s personal archive. 41 “Sportieve vleeskolossen in beeld gebracht,” Nieuws van de Dag; R. Kalkhoven, “Foto’s en wilde jongens,” Katholieke Illustratie, undated newspaper clippings in Scrapbook, Nakajima’s personal archive. 42 Ewald Vervugt, “‘Happening’ zet Goudse binnenstad op stelten,” April 5, 1965, newspaper clipping in Scrapbook, Nakajima’s personal archive. 43 Johansje Keller, untitled report, Krak 65, no. 2 (1965), 12–14.

80  Peter van der Meijden 44 “Mathenesserlaan vrij voor de voetgangers,” undated newspaper clipping, Scrapbook, Nakajima’s personal archive. 45 Unbeat memo, Scrapbook, Nakajima’s personal archive: “6 April 1965, happening, introduced with own movie, by R.J. Grootveld in Society Asker in Rotterdam. This happening ended with an anti-traffic demonstration on the street in front. My contribution consisted mainly of handing out 200 sticks of bad quality incense.” 46 Meier, Dit hap-hap-happens in Amsterdam, 50. 47 Work list in Scrapbook, Nakajima’s personal archive. 48 “Hysterische ‘kunstrakkers’ slopen Nieuwlandse galerie,” Rotterdamsch Stadsblad, May 24, 1965, 1. 49 “‘Happening’ viel niet zo in de smaak,” Algemeen Dagblad, May 22, 1965. 50 “Happening voor veilig verkeer in Schiedam,” undated newspaper clipping, Scrapbook, Nakajima’s personal archive. 51 “Deelnemers ‘Happening’ belijden hun vergissing,” Het Vrije Volk, January 13, 1966. 52 In a moment, I will argue that Provo can neither be reduced to counterculture nor called a “movement.” 53 Apart from Jaring’s book, Dick van Reeuwijk’s book Damsterdamse extremisten (Amsterdam: De Bezige Bij, 1965); the following also deserve to be mentioned: Aad de Jongh’s Provo: een jaar Provo-activiteiten (Rotterdam: Uitgeverij Kerco, 1966); F.E. Frenkel’s anthology Provo: Kanttekeningen bij een deelverschijnsel (Amsterdam: Polak & Van Gennep, 1966); and a special issue of the magazine Randstad on “manifestos and manifestations 1916–1966,” edited by Vinkenoog (no. 11–2, 1966). There was also a market for publications by the Provos themselves: Duco van Weerlee’s Wat de Provo’s willen (Amsterdam: De Bezige Bij, 1966); Hans Tuynman’s Full-time Provo (Amsterdam: De Bezige Bij, 1966); and Roel van Duyn’s Het witte gevaar: een vademekum voor Provoos (Amsterdam: Meulenhoff, 1967). 54 Meier, Dit hap-hap-happens in Amsterdam, 50–1. 55 Hugo Claus, et al. (ed.), “Manifesten en manifestaties 1916–1966,” Randstad no. 11–12 (1966): 335. 56 Published as Wouter Buikhuisen, Achtergronden van nozemgedrag (Assen: Van Gorcum, 1966). 57 Tamar, column in Vrij Nederland, April 1966, quoted in Roel van Duyn, Provo. De geschiedenis van de provotarische beweging 1965–1967 (Amsterdam: Meulenhoff, 1985), 130. 58 Meier, Dit hap-hap-happens in Amsterdam. 59 Van Duyn, Provo, 7. 60 Van Duyn, Provo, 8–9. 61 Cor Jaring, Je bent die je bent—en dat ben je (Huizen: Triton Pers, 1968), 86. 62 Jaring is not very precise with his dates. He describes visiting the K-Temple, which burned down in 1963, but also writes that Grootveld, when he met him, had been 35, which makes the year 1967. 63 Jaring, Je bent die je bent, 93. 64 Jaring, Je bent die je bent, 95. 65 Jaring, Je bent die je bent, 136. 66 Robert Jasper Grootveld, “Een warning,” Ratio (January/February 1965): 16–7. 67 Jos van der Lans, “De kultuur van het provoïsme,” Te Elfder Ure no. 35 (December 1983), 730–65: 730. 68 Niek Pas, “Mediatization of the Provos: From a Local Movement to a European Phenomenon,” in Between Prague Spring and French May: Opposition and Revolt in Europe, 1960–1980, ed. Martin Klimke et al. (New York: Berghahn Books, 2011), 157–76: 171–2. 69 See Niek Pas’s books Imaazje! De verbeelding van Provo (1965–1967) (Amsterdam: Wereldbibliotheek, 2003) and Provo! Mediafenomeen (1965–1967) (Amsterdam: Wereldbibliotheek, 2015). In English: Pas, “Mediatization of the Provos,” 157–76. So far, Pas seems to be the only scholar to explore the wealth of media products that dealt with Provo.

Dancer, Happener, Provo  81 70 Hugo Claus, Ivo Michiels, Harry Mulisch and Simon Vinkenoog (eds.), “Manifesten en manifestaties 1916–1966,” Randstad no. 11–12 (1966): 72–3. 71 Provo, announcement dated May 25, 1965, IISG. 72 Gilles Deleuze, “The Method of Dramatisation,” Bulletin de la Société française de Philosophie, LXIII (1967), 89–118; 91. English translation by M.J. MacMahon is available at https://ses.library.usyd.edu.au/bitstream/2123/618/2/adt-NU20051202. 14522707appendices.pdf (accessed March 3, 2016). 73 Gilles Deleuze, Difference and Repetition (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994 [1968]), 8. 74 Deleuze defines his concept of vice-diction in a dialogue with the concept of contradiction as defined by the German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. According to the latter, contradiction is not merely simple contradiction but difference, opposition, reflection, or any other relation. Deleuze goes further than Hegel by lifting contradiction out of the conceptual realm altogether, giving priority to concrete relations of difference, opposition, reflection, etc. instead. 75 Mulisch, “Manifesten en manifestaties 1916–1966,” 71. 76 Mulisch, “Manifesten en manifestaties 1916–1966,” 77. 77 Mulisch, “Manifesten en manifestaties 1916–1966,” 63. 78 Mulisch, “Manifesten en manifestaties 1916–1966,” 106. 79 Pamphlet in the Provo Archive, IISG. 80 “‘Niet op reageren’ lijkt politie beste,” het Parool, July 29, 1965. 81 Roel van Duyn, Het witte gevaar. Een vademekum voor provoos (Amsterdam: Meulenhoff, 1967), 77–9. 82 Mulisch, “Manifesten en manifestaties 1916–1966,” 78–9. 83 “Nachtmerrie rond het Lieverdje,” Wereldkroniek, August 21, 1965. 84 Mulisch, “Manifesten en manifestaties 1916–1966,” 79–80. 85 The policeman’s name was known because of the name tag sewn on his cap. 86 Provo, no. 2 (August 17, 1965), unpaginated, IISG. 87 Van Duyn, Provo, 11. 88 Van Duyn, Provo, 13. 89 Anton Levien Constandse & Harry Mulisch, “Gesprek met Roel van Duyn,” Ratio 11, no. 6 (August 1965): 17–26: 18. 90 Constandse & Mulisch 1965, p. 19. 91 Excerpts of the manifesto quoted in Van Duyn, Provo, 16. 92 Constant borrowed the term homo ludens, Latin for “playing man,” from the Dutch historian Johan Huizinga, whose eponymous book from 1938 described culture as rooted in play. However, if according to Huizinga homo sapiens had been homo ludens since the dawn of civilization, he was a creature of the future to Constant. 93 Constandse & Mulisch, “Gesprek met Roel van Duyn,” 19. 94 Constant, “Nieuw Urbanisme”, Provo 9 (May 1966), 2–6. 95 Constant, “Nieuw Urbanisme,” 3. 96 Constant, “Nieuw Urbanisme,” 5. 97 “Waarom stemmen lastige Amsterdammers Provo?” IISG. 98 Van Duyn, Het witte gevaar, 103–23. 99 Van Weerlee, Wat de Provo’s willen, 21. 100 Robert Jasper Grootveld, “Een warning,” Ratio 11, no. 1–2 (January–February 1965), 16–7: 17. 101 Claus et al. (eds.), “Manifesten en manifestaties 1916–1966,” 336. 102 Ibid. 103 Provo, press statement, August 9, 1965, IISG. 104 “Getergde politie weer slaags met provo’s,” De Volkskrant, (August 16, 1965). 105 Provo, press statement, August 15, 1965, IISG. 106 “Provo–een zelfportret,” Materiaal Methodiek Mededelingen voor Jeugdwerk en Volwassenen (July 1966), 12–20: 3. 107 “Oproep aan het internationale provotariaat,” October 16, 1965, IISG.

82  Peter van der Meijden 108 Conny Sluysmans, “Anarchisme een nieuwe vorm van pop-art: Acht provo’s stellen zich voor,” De Telegraaf, July 24, 1965. 109 Anton Kothuys, “Provo’s uit en thuis,” Werelkroniek 71, no. 3 (August 7, 1965): 16–19: 19. 110 Constandse and Mulisch, “Gesprek met Roel van Duyn,” 24. 111 Aad van der Mijn, “De magiër van het Lieverdje,” Het Parool, August 24, 1965, 7. 112 Meier, Dit hap-hap-happens in Amsterdam.

3 Yoshio Nakajima and the Interplay of Art and Activism during the Mid-Sixties in Belgium Stefan Wouters

Introduction In this chapter, I explore Yoshio Nakajima’s momentous contributions to the art and political scene during his residence in Belgium in the mid-1960s. I begin with a short overview of the socioeconomic context and artistic situation in Belgium. To explore, describe, and analyze Yoshio Nakajima’s innovative contributions to the Belgian Live Art scene, I then examine what national and international scholars and artists mean when they refer to a “happening” as a form of Live Art before detailing Nakajima’s specific interventions. Finally, I detail the major impact he had on the emergence of the Provo counterculture in Belgium. This analysis is based on a combination and comparison of different sources ranging from oral histories, pictures, film footage, notes, and ephemera to contemporaneous newspaper articles and police reports.

The Socioeconomic Situation in Belgium The year 1958 is commonly regarded as “the beginning of the sixties” in Belgium, a year above all associated with a world fair organized in Brussels that displayed and embraced the arrival of a new, modern time. Not merely did the fair showcase the latest technological and cultural achievements from around the world: the prospect of this international event inspired a group of Antwerp visual artists to unite themselves under the banner of G 58 to attract the attention of many visitors. I would like to add that the term “the sixties” is akin to being a semiological “slippery sign.” On a social level, writer Willem Houbrechts detected at least three categories of people. The first consisted of those for whom the sixties were quasi-indistinguishable from the periods that preceded or followed them; the epoch exerted merely a small and direct impact on their daily lives. The second category encompassed a smaller group who experienced the sixties as a period of material comfort and abundance. The third category included those, mainly young people, for whom the sixties was a turbulent time—an era of upheaval, conflict, and revolution.1 Focusing on the town where Nakajima would be based, Antwerp, one of its peculiarities was that its center housed a considerable number of abandoned properties. Many artists benefited from this situation by renting studios at very low prices or squatting together in houses. In particular, the neighborhoods around the DOI: 10.4324/9781003149149-4

84  Stefan Wouters Vleeshuis (once a 16th-century butcher’s house, now a museum) and the Schipperskwartier (the Red Light District) offered many opportunities to do so.2 Even better, these places were situated in the vicinity of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts. Writer and historian Ferdinand van der Auwera explained the abandonment of properties by pointing out that during World War II, a V-1 flying bomb had hit the Lange Doornikstraat, a street near the Vleeshuis. Although some of the buildings had been rebuilt or restored after the war, many houses had not. Consequently, the government declared many of these premises to be uninhabitable, so often people were forced to leave their houses.3 Another important cause of property abandonment was a gradual relocation, away from the city center, of the port and its industrial activities. This shift was a direct consequence of the economic boom that had occurred in many parts of the world and required many workers and their families to move. The port, particularly due to its central location in Europe, attracted foreign multinationals because it was an ideal place to distribute their products. In a region like Flanders—the Dutch-speaking part of Belgium, where the port of Antwerp is located—which before the sixties could be classified as mainly agrarian with a stress on artisanal production, this rapid change entailed a sharp improvement in standard of living. These structural and economic changes also formed an important basis for many social, cultural, and political activities. Compared with other European ports, Antwerp had a few advantages to attract foreign investors. First, there were sufficient numbers of laborers living in Antwerp, men as well as women. Employing women involved an increase in disposable income, which in turn acted as a catalyst for a new wave of feminism. Second, the wages in Antwerp were lower than the average ones in Belgium. Third, the unions in Belgium were hardly up in arms. The reason for this situation was twofold. Belgium can claim a long history and culture of deliberation and compromise. Tensions were often resolved by giving strikers financial or material advantages. It was only in sectors with extremely harsh conditions, such as the mining industry in both the province of Limburg and the region of Wallonia, that the situation was considerably more problematic. There, working conditions led to an obstinate left-wing resistance and even triggered the awakening of a Walloon nationalism—a development that, in the region of Flanders, was suspiciously observed and, in turn, stimulated Flemish nationalism. Flemish nationalist groups such as the Vlaamse Militantenorde and Were Di, who had never hidden their xenophobia or dismissed their fascist ideas, returned to the fore. On an economic level, foreign investors could rely on the support of local bourgeoisie as well as on that of democratic parties. Noteworthy within this process is the role of the Christelijke Volkspartij (CVP, Christian People’s Party, 1945–2001). At this time many supporters of the CVP embraced the idea that the government would put all its efforts into industrialization, and one of the measures taken included subsidizing foreign investors. The CVP was backed by the banking sector, which was equally prepared to invest in industrial development. Expansion of the port and its activities also required development of adequate infrastructure—an economic investment that was supported not merely by the CVP but every political coalition because they had common interests. As a result, in Antwerp, maritime trade doubled over a period of ten years. Rapid industrialization

Yoshio Nakajima and the Interplay of Art  85 also entailed a considerable redistribution of economic power from Antwerp’s French-speaking bourgeoisie to the Flemish-speaking community.4 However, this increasing prosperity did not substantially enhance social equality. Half of all trade stayed firmly in the hands of just 0.5% of the population. Furthermore, despite the relocation of some economic activity to the harbor, the city center still housed many pubs and bars, with a considerable amount of income from prostitution as well as food and drink establishments. These types of small independent businesses were less mobile. The tough environment did, however, democratize the remaining social structure. Van der Auwera wrote that there were no divisions or exclusions among people of different races, backgrounds, ages, or moral codes.5 Though his statement is likely exaggerated by a degree of nostalgia, it contains an essence of truth that has been confirmed by others. In an interview, visual artist and musician Willy (Wannes) van de Velde, who grew up in the city center, described the atmosphere similarly, as one of social cohesion.6

The Artistic Situation in Belgium Art historian Paul Ilegems declared that for emerging visual avant-garde artists, it was very hard to find appropriate galleries to represent their work. Most of the galleries—such as Breckpot, Dorekens, Zaal Wynen, C.A.W., Campo, De Kunstkamer, and Galerij Standaard—did not show much unconventional work. Institutional accommodation for Live Art was likewise almost nonexistent. Artists compensated for this lack of professional support and contemporary facilities by staging many spontaneous, amateurish displays of avant-garde visual art in pubs and of Live Art in the streets. Belgium can nonetheless claim a rich history of postwar Live Art. Early highlights include the exhibition Vision in Motion/Motion in Vision (Antwerp, Hessenhuis 1959), where Daniel Spoerri confronted the public with his Autothéâtre, and Yves Klein offered Zones de Sensibilité Picturale Immatérielle for sale. A few years later, the experimental group The Living Theatre were seen in Belgium with its landmark productions The Connection (Antwerp, International Theatre Festival; Brussels, Centre for Fine Arts 1962) and The Apple (Brussels, Centre for Fine Arts 1962). They even lived for a while in a farmhouse near the Belgian seaside resort Knokke (1964–1965). I would also like to mention the Antwerp underground artist Ludo Mich. As of 1963, Mich started to experiment with street performances, Body Art, and electronic music. This was also the year when the Dutch artist Robert Jasper Grootveld conducted Marihuette Game in the cultural organization Celbeton in Dendermonde, a city in the Flemish province of East Flanders.7 It is interesting to note that, despite all these Live Art practices, the use of the term “happening” to describe a specific form of Live Art was applied relatively late in Belgium, at least in comparison with New York, Japan, France, Germany, and the Netherlands. Research has shown that Marcel Broodthaers (1924–1976) was probably the first Belgian artist to adopt the term “happening,” on an announcement flyer for a Live Art performance (Brussels, Galerie Smith, Sophisticated Happening, 1964).8 The late usage of the term is even more striking when one

86  Stefan Wouters considers that certain international publications covering the happening phenomenon were readily available in Belgium9 and that artists such as Hugo Heyrman and Wout Vercammen often travelled to the Netherlands to witness happenings.10 The real breakthrough for using the word “happening” on a regular basis, in spoken as well as written form, was triggered by the arrival of the Japanese traveling artist Yoshio Nakajima in Belgium. Nakajima was also a key figure in allying art with countercultural activities, an aspect of his work that often has been overlooked due to his avant-garde and peripatetic practices.

Terminology Agreeing with visual artist Allan Kaprow’s almost-prophetic words from 1967, that “future critics will find it useful to identify as nearly as possible the kind of work they are talking about,”11 I will start by providing an arsenal of art historical terms related to happenings in order to approach this particular performative phenomenon. A well-known precursor to happenings is John Cage’s (1912–1992) Untitled Event (Black Mountain College, North Carolina). Near the end of the summer of 1952, Cage devised a theater performance in which each artist could freely choose what to perform during a certain time bracket. He decided to work without a script, rehearsal, or costumes.12 Kaprow, who in 1957–1958 had attended one of Cage’s classes (at the New School for Social Research, New York), used the term “happening” to pinpoint similar events within an art historical context.13 Kaprow would later also employ the term to entitle his most famous performance: 18 Happenings in 6 Parts (Reuben Gallery, New York 1959).14 His aim was to conduct several events simultaneously that were as neutral as possible, meaning without any reference to an artistic practice or context, and executed by members of the public as well as artists.15 In 1961, Kaprow described happenings as follows: Happenings are events that, put simply, happen. Though the best of them have a decided impact—that is, we feel ‘here is something important’—they appear to go nowhere and do not make any particular literary point.16 Kaprow’s statement—self-referential and excluding other similar, contemporary forms of theater devised and/or executed by visual artists—is reflective of many artists’ perceptions of their own work. For instance, Robert Whitman called his performances theater pieces, and Wolf Vostell opted for décollage events. Art critics, mainly Michael Kirby (1931–1997), unified the performative work of these artists under the banner of “happenings.” In his book Happenings, Kirby defined a happening as a consciously constructed form of undetermined theater in which different elements with a nonliterary format and without logic or a matrix of time, space, or character are organized in a nonrational compartmental structure without beginning, middle, or end.17 Kirby’s analysis is perfectly applicable to Kaprow’s 18 Happenings in 6 Parts and offers the reader some interesting insights into performances of the early sixties. However, soon after the publication of his book, Kirby

Yoshio Nakajima and the Interplay of Art  87 declared, “I think at the time I made the definition I was thinking of another category of Chance Theater. I’ve changed my opinion somewhat since then.”18 Nonetheless, the problem of pinpointing happenings was not resolved by adapting or broadening certain insights—as, for instance, writer and critic Darko Suvin did in 1970 when he stated “Happenings are a genre of theater spectacle, using various types of signs and media organized around the action of human performers in a homogeneous and thematically unified way, and a non-diegetic structuring of time and space.”19 Nor did the adaptation of nomenclature or subdivision of the phenomenon into different styles resolve the problem of the term’s lacking a clear definition. For instance, Kirby started to use the term “New Theater” to describe the work of artists with like-minded ideas.20 However, Kaprow decided to stick to the term “happening,” but as an all-encompassing term and suggested the following taxonomy: “night club/cock fights/pocket drama,” “extravaganzas,” “events,” “guided tours/pied pipers,” “idea art/literary suggestions,” and “activities.”21 Suvin subdivided happenings into fewer categories, choosing to describe them with the terms “events,” “aleatoric scenes,” “[H]appenings proper,” and “action theatre.”22 Richard Kostelanetz combined both types of suggestions for tackling the definition problem, opting for the term “Theater of Mixed Means” and dividing it into different subcategories: “pure [H]appening,” “staged [H]appening,” “kinetic environment,” and “staged performance.” Renaming or subdividing happenings provided a more diversified stratum of what a happening can be, similar to Jean-Jacques Lebel’s comparing a happening with a language: “Le happening, comme la musique ou le cinéma, est un langage auquel chacun apporte un contenu différent” (“A happening, like music or cinema, is a language to which everyone brings a different content”).23 The core problem of defining a happening lies in the fact that the form and function of happenings changes over time. An early happening of Kaprow’s is very different from a happening organized by, for instance, the Provo movement. Thus, each attempt at definition needs to be considered within its sociopolitical and artistic context. Therefore, Kirby’s earlier definition of the term remains as valid as his later ones. In the seventies Belgian writers Albert Dusar and Albert Smeets proposed an interesting analysis regarding happenings. The authors managed to formulate a compact description that synthesizes the various happening phenomena of the previous decade: A happening is an event, staged or improvised, that is scripted by an artist who may employ all types of media and forms of art (film, theater, projections, etc.). The public can stay passive or can be incited to participate actively. The execution of a happening can take place in a museum or in the streets, in a park, on a private property, or anywhere else. The happening wants to be art but converges with everyday life. Instead of chasing a particular theme, creating a mind-expanding situation is quintessential.24 As we have seen, Kaprow and Suvin both used the term “event” to describe a type of happening.25 Kaprow considered events to be short performances or prolonged

88  Stefan Wouters actions that were conducted in a theater space where the public was often seated. The aim of these events was to heighten public awareness by displaying a short or futile action that also could occur in daily life.26 Events were non-matrixed performances that show merely one action, like one compartmental structure of a classic happening as devised by Kaprow. To avoid misunderstandings, I will use the term “event” as any planned occasion, activity, or Fluxus-related performance. The Lithuanian American artist George Maciunas used the Latin word “fluxus” in 1961 to denote a movement of performance artists who were opposed to the uniqueness of an artwork and to the institutionalizing of art. It is interesting to note that with “performance art”—a term introduced in Belgium, presumably by the American sculptor and performance artist James Lee Byars (1932–1997), in 196927—the focus of attention shifts toward the artist’s own body (for instance in Carolee Schneemann’s Eye Body 1963, Yoko Ono’s Bag Piece 1964, and Shigeko Kubota’s Vagina Painting 1965). This practice would further evolve into “Body Art” (for instance, Viennese Actionism ca. 1965, Chris Burden Shoot 1971, and Marina Abramović Rhythm O 1974). The term “performance,” in contrast, I will employ in the broadest sense of the word to denote any human activity executed in an artistic environment. Given this dynamic among genres, I agree with Kaprow’s statement that happenings are radical prototypes of performance art.28 Happenings are impossible to grasp from a single viewpoint. Consequently, they are fragmentarily documented and have radical potential to resist the mechanisms of the art market—at least in theory. Because it is impossible to define happenings as conceptually monolithic, I would like to mention some of their recurring characteristics of them: historically, they were conceived with primitive means and looked amateurish to the regular theatergoer. The use of cheap materials and even garbage found in the streets was necessitated by a lack of financial funding. However, happenings also stemmed from an anti-bourgeois tradition that goes back to Dada (c. 1915-mid1920s). In the second half of the 1950s, Dada reemerged forcefully in a phenomenon known as Neo-Dadaism—a term popularized by Barbara Rose—that included artists like Kaprow and Oldenburg. These artists also reused their NeoDadaist objects as props for their happenings. Kaprow conceived, for instance, Rearrangeable Panels (1957), a three-dimensional work made of found objects that shortly afterwards he used for his most famous happening, 18 Happenings in Three Parts (Reuben Gallery, 1959). Oldenburg roamed the streets of New York to find material he could transform into art objects, and he then used them during performances such as Snapshots from the City (Judson Memorial Church, 1961). From a traditional theater perspective, regarding scenography, these props enhanced the amateurish feel that had been established by participants who had little or no background in theater. Initially, happenings were conducted mainly in small spaces such as shops, lofts, or galleries. Later, many happenings were also conducted outside and executed simultaneously in different locations and over longer timespans. The spontaneous nature of these events allowed for failure and humor.

Yoshio Nakajima and the Interplay of Art  89

Figure 3.1 Wout Vercammen, Poster for the first Antwerp happening, blue ink on paper, 29 × 18.5 cm, 1965. Archive Stefan Wouters.

Toward the First Antwerp Happening It was the Dutch artist Daan van Golden who advised Nakajima to study at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts, in Antwerp.29 As soon as Nakajima and his wife, Fumiko Hino, arrived at the old center of Antwerp, he met photographer and film-maker John Huybreghts, who was a well-known and respected figure in the local underground art scene and introduced Nakajima to Wout Vercammen—a meeting that would turn out to be quintessential to the development of Live Art in Belgium. Vercammen was a well-established local visual artist with many international contacts.30 For instance, five years earlier, Vercammen had held a solo exhibition with CoBrA-like31 work at Galerij Dorekens, in Antwerp. This exhibition space, run by Guy Dorekens, was usually not considered an avant-garde gallery; however, some unconventional art, such as the work of Hsiao Chin and Yayoi Kusama, had been displayed. Vercammen also produced work for the Grenchen art dealer Hans Liechti, participated in a Zero group exhibition in Frankfurt am Main (1963), and exhibited his work at the Galerie La Parete, in Milan (1964). I would also like to mention some of his interdisciplinary collaborations, such as contributing a linocut to a 1963 New Year’s card by the poet Tony

90  Stefan Wouters Rombouts; illustrating Stella Magnola, a book of poetry32; and co-staging some performances I previously described as “prehappenings,” which he conducted with Henri Van Herwegen (known by the pseudonym Panamarenko) and Hugo Heyrman.33 The latter artists were a few years younger than Vercammen and, in consequence, had less experience with the art world, but they were—according to Anny De Decker, an art historian and cofounder of the Wide White Space Gallery (Antwerp, 1966–1976)—more in tune with the rapidly changing times.34 By combining art and science, especially in his search for alternative and poetic modes of transportation, Panamarenko would become, as of the 1970s, one of Belgium’s leading artists. His fellow artist Heyrman, who can be regarded as a pioneering media and video artist and is known for his research on the digital transformation of art, often collaborated with Panamarenko as a duo during the 1960s. Heyrman’s reputation as an artist has been overshadowed by the spectacular aspects of Panamarenko’s work. Nonetheless, during the first official Antwerp happening (July 9, 1965), NOW HAPPENING! of an Occupied City III, we will see that Heyrman’s youthful courage and interplay with Nakajima was essential and contributed to the legacy of the event. This happening took place two days after Nakajima had met Vercammen in Antwerp,35 which implies that the preparation time for it was quite restricted. The main reason for the restricted preparation time was that Vercammen and Heyrman had planned an indoor poetry reading for this date (Archive and Museum for Flemish Cultural life, AMVC). Linking a poetry reading with a happening was

Figure 3.2  Yoshio Nakajima and Wout Vercammen during the beginning of the first Antwerp happening on the Groenplaats, 1965. Photographer unknown. Courtesy Yoshio Nakajima Archive, Konstrundan Raus Art Center.

Yoshio Nakajima and the Interplay of Art  91 probably a strategy—which proved to be successful since the joint event could reliably attract many local and national journalists36—to generate extra publicity for the reading. Even a television team from Zoeklicht, a documentary program that focused mainly on Belgian culture, came to Antwerp to report on this “new” phenomenon. The resultant report was considered newsworthy; hence, its relatively quick airing on the Belgian Radio and Television broadcast (BRT). Directing the spotlight on the happening, this coverage overshadowed the indoor event. I will first zoom in on the physical aspects of this happening to discuss Nakajima’s political positions in the next section. The happening started at around 7:30 p.m. Vercammen initiated the event by leading Nakajima with a long rope from his artist’s studio (Blindestraat 18) toward the Groenplaats, a large car-free square in the center of Antwerp.37 Nakajima wore a dark kimono with geta, traditional Japanese sandals, an outfit that he had used during other happenings.38 He also had a mask over his mouth and a transparent veil covering his head. After having been released by Vercammen, Nakajima showed a poster for the happening to the potential audience of passersby39 and pulled a small toy car on a string until it fell over on its side. Nakajima reacted to this accident by stretching his arms to the sky while emitting a loud and intense cry.40 The toy car and the mask over his mouth were clearly symbols of the omnipresent dangers of cars and air pollution. Therefore, this part of the event connects with Nakajima’s earlier happenings—for instance, with Traffic in Town (Schiedam, Netherlands, May 21, 1965)—and reminds us of Jim Dine’s Car Crash happening in the Reuben Gallery (November 1960).41 The theme of Car Crash, a car accident, was not based merely on Dine’s personal experience; it also reflected a broader socioeconomic transformation to which many artists reacted. Since the fifties, the rise in car sales in the West had led to a considerable increase in deadly accidents. Singer Paul Hampton even scored a number-one hit in America with his song “Two Hour Honeymoon” (1960), which deals with a tragic car accident. The “Prince of Pop Art,” Andy Warhol, was equally attracted to this theme (as manifested, for instance, in “Car Crash,” from the Death and Disaster series 1963). This other side of the “golden sixties” coin was clearly less shiny, one that conjured a huge amount of fear deeply rooted in all strata of society and should be considered an integral part of the zeitgeist. The news media was already covering many small-scale dramatic incidents in combination with important events ranging from car accidents, death sentences, the death of Marilyn Monroe, the assassination of John F. Kennedy, and civil rights demonstrations to the threat of a nuclear war, the war in Korea, and later that in Vietnam. After having enacted a car crash, Nakajima removed his kimono and geta, revealing a white shirt with “Unbeat” (the artist collective of which he was a member) written on it and a poster for the happening attached to it. Now barefoot, he began to wrap himself in paper festoons and colorful ribbons while jumping, squatting, lying down, standing up, imitating the sails of a mill, dancing, and walking.42 During this active performance, Heyrman, dressed in a military jacket, appeared on “stage” while a member of the public wrote “Atom” as well as “Kelder” (“Cellar”) on the ground.43 These words referred to the spatial context specific to that situation, when the Groenplaats still housed an air-raid shelter.44 Nakajima

92  Stefan Wouters

Figure 3.3 Hugo Heyrman and Yoshio Nakajima performing on the Groenplaats during the first Antwerp happening, 1965. Photographer Frans Neels, Archive Stefan Wouters.

noticed Heyrman’s “military” presence and reacted by pulling vehemently on his army jacket, which he eventually tore. After this “battle,” Nakajima bound Heyrman with a rope around his chest and feet. The former also wrapped some long, lightweight, and slightly transparent tissue around the latter’s head, covering his face. Heyrman was now lying on the ground; but shortly afterward, however, he rose suddenly, took some binoculars out, and then looked through the bondage material into them.45 The “battle,” a display of playful aggression, calmed down when Nakajima covered Heyrman with a Japanese flag, which had the same words written on it as Vercammen’s poster.46 After this “funeral scene,” Nakajima offered some candles and incense, lit by Vercammen, to the public.47 For this ceremony, Nakajima had colored his face yellow,48 symbolic of spirituality. By introducing a ceremonial aspect to the happening, Nakajima made the public participate. The odor of the candles and incense added an extrasensory dimension to the performance. Shortly afterward, Nakajima placed bread on the shoulder of a “resurrected” Heyrman, who had kneeled in front of him. The ritual ended when Nakajima covered Heyrman with an abundance of toilet paper.49 This final image reminds us of a three-dimensional elaboration of an abstract expressionist work performed live, which can be seen as an extension of Nakajima’s work as a painter.

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Nakajima’s Political Position during the NOW HAPPENING! of an Occupied City III The key phrase on Vercammen’s poster for the first Antwerp happening, “bezette stad” (“occupied city”), was chosen in reference to a well-known expressionist typographical work of the Belgian poet Paul van Ostaijen (1896–1928).50 Military occupation of a city entails aggression, a theme that Nakajima and Heyrman visualized through their performances during the happening. According to one of the event’s participants, Koen Calliauw, the happening was not only a theatrical display of aggression but a manifestation of brutality that implicitly criticizes brutality.51 In other words, the public was confronted with a form of theatrical subversive affirmation. There are also many indications that the happening was, more specifically, denouncing the Vietnam War (1957–1975). An important indication of this implicit criticism is notable in the introduction to the Zoeklicht documentary, which features a drawing inspired by the well-known image of the Buddhist monk, Thích Quảng Đứ c, who had publicly immolated himself in 1963 in protest of the anti-Buddhist policies of the Diệm regime.52 Nakajima had even travelled to Saigon, a fact that makes the happening’s correlation with condemnation of the Vietnam War quite personal. It is rather surprising that artistic and social reactions to the Vietnam War occurred relatively late, e.g., Automatic Welsh Salad with Yogurt (September 24, 1965), as part of the Cardiff Happening, 1965), which included the French artist and political activist Jean-Jacques Lebel among others53; the group performance Snows (January 1966) by visual artist Carolee Schneemann54; and Peter Brook’s experimental play US, executed by the Royal Shakespeare Company (as of December 25, 1965). Within the field of contemporaneous songwriting, one might note Donovan’s seminal “The War Drags On” (1965) as a pioneering protest song against the Vietnam War.55 The visualization of the Vietnam War during the first Antwerp happening was, however, not an exclusive theme; rather, it was complemented by representations of and references to deadly car accidents, air pollution, and nuclear war, which allowed this happening to address multiple sociopolitical problems. The writing of “nuclear shelter” reminds us of protests against nuclear weapons exemplified by the Aldermaston marches in England (as of 1958), which attracted tens of thousands of participants. This form of protest became very popular in Belgium, too. In April 1960, the youth divisions of the Belgian Socialist and Communist Parties, in concert with the Socialist Union, organized an anti-nuclear march in Mol, a municipality located in the Belgian province of Antwerp, and in March 1963, another march took place in Brussels that attracted nearly ten thousand demonstrators. This type of extra-parliamentary opposition grew in scope until 1966. Afterward, a stagnation took place and eventually a decline.56 In 1965, anti-nuclear demonstrations transformed into protests against events that happened at the time—for instance, the Vietnam War. According to the authors Peter Stansill and David Zane Mairowitz, this transition was also characterized by a change in mood—from a bitter, serious way of thinking toward a creative madness.57 Due to the combined sociopolitical criticisms during the first Antwerp happening, the spectator was left with what one might call a form of conceptual confusion.

94  Stefan Wouters

Countercultural and Artistic Impact The first Antwerp happening is important not merely for introducing the happening format to a wider audience, its artistic merits, or bringing political issues into the open air but also for its countercultural impact and artistic influence. The event opened the door to the emergence of a local offshoot of the Provo movement, a subculture that shortly before (May 1965) had originated in the Netherlands and can be regarded as playfully provocative criticism of the austerity and conservatism that characterized Dutch society at the time. Similarly, the Provo movement in Antwerp consisted of a group of young people from various backgrounds who shared an apathy toward the mores and values of the “old world.” It was Koen Calliauw, a theater man with communist sympathies, who could express these feelings most adequately; consequently, he soon was represented by the media as the spokesman of the local Provo movement. Calliauw saw the critical potential, similar to that of “street theater,” in the first Antwerp happening and would adopt its format when, in order to demonstrate his political convictions, he organized his own happenings under the banner of the Provo movement. One of his most renowned happenings was the Blote Voeten Plan (Barefoot Plan, July 2, 1966). The idea was to gather with other provos every Saturday at 3 o’clock p.m. and to walk around the Groenplaats barefoot for two hours to protest symbolically against the narrow-mindedness of the masses and the hypocrisy in capitalist societies. Nakajima’s performance, and by extension the first Antwerp happening itself, clearly inspired the decision to walk barefoot at that time of day and in that location, thereby implicitly sending a political message. It is also interesting to note that, in Antwerp, several Provo groups developed independently, having little or no contact with one another. Within the context of this chapter, I would like to mention George Tuffin and John Lockley, Provos who conducted an untitled happening on the Groenplaats (July 9, 1966). They threw a few self-made smoke bombs consisting of film rolls and covered the statue of Rubens—for no clear reason except to provoke—with abundant amounts of toilet paper. The choice of location and latter act were distinctly reminiscent of Nakajima’s performance, which was not a coincidence since the person behind this happening was the author and short-term morality teacher Rudy Witse. He knew the content and visual aspects of the first Antwerp happening58 but could not participate openly in Provo happenings due to his position as a teacher. As well as other Provo actions, all indirectly influenced by Nakajima’s performance, turned the Groenplaats into a place of contestation. The performative and provocative events that occurred there developed into a tradition that would stretch into the 1970s and early 1980s with the rise of the punk movement. We even notice a flare-up of this tradition in more recent times with the occurrence of “Occupy Antwerp” (as of October 22, 2011 at 3 p.m.).59 Another local happening of the mid-sixties that was clearly indebted to the legacy of Nakajima and to the first Antwerp happening was an untitled event held at a well-attended marketplace open only once a week (Vogelenmarkt, ca. 1966/67). The Vogelenmarkt was an open-air live-animal and vegetable market, situated not far from the Bourla Theater. John Huybreghts conceived this

Yoshio Nakajima and the Interplay of Art  95

Figure 3.4 Jules Maes en Wim Meeuwissen, Anti-Vietnam War Happening in Antwerp, ca. 1966–1967. Photographer Guy Bellemans. Archive Stefan Wouters.

happening, and graphic designer Jules Maes, illustrator Ron Van Riet, and theater actor Wim Meeuwissen executed it. Maes had been covered in bandages and carried a banner belonging to Huybreghts that contained images of insects. On top of the banner was an open umbrella. Van Riet wore a lampshade over his head, which reminds us of a Nón lá (conical Vietnamese hat), and Meeuwissen had painted a target on his back60 at which a group of children were aiming their toy guns. They had also painted their faces white, a reference to Japanese Kabuki theater. Meeuwissen testified that the aim of the happening was to protest against the Vietnam War and that their act was influenced by Nakajima’s performance on the Groenplaats.61

“Part II” of the NOW HAPPENING! of an Occupied City III According to Vercammen’s poster, the energetic happening on the Groenplaats served as the first part of the event. The second part took place at the Archive and Museum of Flemish Cultural Life (AMVC) and included a poetry reading62 as well as a slide projection of poems.63 Rather unexpectedly, Nakajima started the event with a solo performance in front of a blackboard,64 a position that reminds us of

96  Stefan Wouters Jim Dine’s drawing cars with chalk on a blackboard in his happening Car Crash (1960).65 Nakajima’s outfit, composed entirely of pieces of tinfoil paper strung together, also parallels Dine’s silver costume for the aforementioned performance. A picture shows Nakajima pouring water from one glass into another.66 The Groenplaats happening can be categorized as an expressionist event as conceived by Claes Oldenburg or Carolee Schneemann, whereas the AMVC performance is a more serene one that rather reminds us of a Fluxus event, in particular a work of Tomas Schmit during which he poured water from one receptacle into another. These receptacles were placed in a circle, and the aim was for the water to evaporate during the act.67 Events like these are not only interesting from a visual and conceptual point of view but remarkable for their auditory aspect, which John Cage had pointed out in one of his scores (1952).68 After Nakajima’s opening event, local writers Rudy Witse, Tony Rombouts, Lucienne Stassaert, and Frans Neels recited some poems while Panamarenko projected some color slides of poems that had been inscribed in public spaces in Antwerp. He also projected Polaroid photos he had taken on site during the event itself. The result was that the performers and audience could almost instantly watch themselves participating in and attending the event, respectively.

Figure 3.5 Wout Vercammen, Poster for a happening in Ostend, 28 × 44 cm, Black ink on pink paper, 1965. Archive Stefan Wouters.

KYRPWWAWAX Happening in a Brave New City IV A month after the first Antwerp happening and the poetry event at the AMVC, Nakajima, Panamarenko, Heyrman, and Vercammen organized a second happening in Ostend (August 6, 1965). It was Vercammen once again who designed the

Yoshio Nakajima and the Interplay of Art  97 poster for this event and advertised it as a Happening in een heerlijke nieuwe stad IV (Happening in a Brave New City IV), KYRPWWAWAX. The last word did not have, according to Panamarenko and Vercammen, any specific meaning.69 With a Roman numeral added to its title, the happening acquired the official status of a sequel to the one in Antwerp. What’s more, when we compare titles, we notice that Happening in a Brave New City shared a thematic affinity with Occupied City III. It seems that the underlying narrative was that the artists involved had fled an occupied city, moving to a more joyous one, which paralleled the structure of Paul van Ostaijen’s book of poetry entitled Occupied City. Since Heyrman admired the work of Aldous Huxley equally, the title Happening in a Brave New City probably references that author’s famous novel Brave New World, which gave the title for this happening a bittersweet touch. The happening took place on a sea dike in front of the Ostend Casino. Nakajima was dressed in jeans and a white shirt, like his attire during the staged struggle between Heyrman and him at the previous happening. He also wore red sunglasses. Visual artist Eddy Ausloos remembers that the “Happeners” drew a circle with chalk on the ground and floated some paper boats on the sea.70 The circle as a representation for a tire can be interpreted as a symbolic continuation of Nakajima’s concern about the dangers of traffic and air pollution. The form of a circle can also be linked to the cosmos. This association appears especially apt since Panamarenko performed during this happening in a “space suit.” In contrast with

Figure 3.6  Yoshio Nakajima and Panamarenko, happening in Ostend, 1965. Photographer unknown. Courtesy Yoshio Nakajima Archive, Konstrundan Raus Art Center.

98  Stefan Wouters

Figure 3.7  Yoshio Nakajima during a happening in Ostend, 1965. Photographer unknown. Courtesy Yoshio Nakajima Archive, Konstrundan Raus Art Center.

Figure 3.8  Yoshio Nakajima during a happening in Ostend, 1965. Photographer unknown. Courtesy Yoshio Nakajima Archive, Konstrundan Raus Art Center.

Yoshio Nakajima and the Interplay of Art  99 the previous happening’s dynamics, it was mainly Panamarenko who interacted with Nakajima. The former, standing on little red chairs, recited an English text through a megaphone71 while the latter made movements with a red ribbon and played a trumpet, afterward climbing on top of a statue of Atlas and shouting “hap-hap-hap-happening.”72 The use of red chairs during a happening reminds us of Red Grooms, an important international happening artist who, in 1959, employed similar chairs during The Walking Man.73 Belgian Happeners knew the work of Grooms from available literature on happenings; therefore, it is very likely that they appropriated this prop for their own performance. However, an important difference between the work of Grooms and that of the Belgian Happeners was the latter party’s creation of an illusionary mini environment. The small red chairs; Panamarenko’s “space suit”; Nakajima’s position on top of the statue; and especially a picture, taken at ground level, that was reproduced in the first issue of the magazine Happening News—gave the impression that they were leaving Planet Earth and that their habitat seemed to be shrinking in scale. The narrative of traveling into space was reinforced by an alternative title the artists gave to this event, in Happening News: Happening on the Moon.74 It is interesting to note that Panamarenko’s cool and collected pose contrasted sharply with Nakajima’s energetic performance. The former’s look, including a “space suit” and bright green basketball shoes, which he colored himself, can be regarded as a living Pop Art sculpture—unsurprisingly since Panamarenko declared that he embraced Pop Art and felt it was the art form of their times.75 His presentation strikingly differed with Nakajima’s movements and visuals, which are more linked to Abstract Expressionism. As a result, two forms of art—clearly defined and often described as oppositional—were juxtaposed during the same performance. According to the critic Michael Kirby, an essential characteristic of a happening is not to refer to a period or to a specific moment76; however, this principle was here under challenge because the spectator was confronted with an art historical consciousness. Rather surprisingly, and in contrast with the media attention attracted by the previous happening, at the time, no magazine or newspaper seems to have reported on this event. The Happeners must also have noticed this lack of publicity, as suggested by their creation, in the form of a word collage, of an artificial newspaper clipping that they published in the first issue of Happening News. The collage was assembled using the words “Happening deed Oostends kursaal op grondvesten trillen” (“Happening Made the Casino of Ostend Shake on its Foundations”) and combined with a short article about a happening in Galerie Honger, a Dutch exhibition space (Schiedam, January 23, 1965).

Behind the Ostend Curtain: “La Fotografia come Azione e non come Contemplazione” In Ostend, the Happeners performed not only outdoors but in a Photomaton booth, which parallels once more Red Grooms’ happening Sound Booth. The first page of the first issue of Happening News features a Photomaton session with images showing Heyrman playfully posing with cigarettes and Nakajima fiddling around with a string. In another session, Nakajima crumples a poster for the Ostend

100  Stefan Wouters happening. Since the latter session was used for constructing a collage that refers to the happening in Ostend, we may assume that the Happeners took these pictures in Ostend themselves.77 Also, Nakajima is wearing the same sunglasses in these pictures as he did during the Ostend happening, which reaffirms our assumption. Within an art historical context, Andy Warhol is especially well known for using a Photomaton to create works of art. One of his most famous Photomaton artworks, which appeared on the front cover of Time magazine (January 29, 1965), is a composition of pictures showing seven teenagers and is likely to have inspired the Belgian Happeners’ cover for Happening News. Another possible source of inspiration can be found within Surrealism. A year after the invention of the Photomaton (1928), many surrealists considered this machine a photographic equivalent to their automatic writing. Interestingly, there is a striking resemblance between a Photomaton picture showing André Breton holding his glasses with both hands and a picture of Nakajima at Ostend in the same “unnatural” pose. What’s more, a photomontage in the last issue of the magazine La Révolution Surréaliste78 even resembles the aforementioned front page of

Figure 3.9 Wout Vercammen, Poster for a happening in Antwerp, ink on paper, 29 × 18.5 cm, 1965. Archive Stefan Wouters.

Yoshio Nakajima and the Interplay of Art  101 Happening News. However, there is a subtle difference between the surrealists’ intentions and those of the Happeners: the latter group not only posed in the Photomaton booth, but they also tried to document a happening in it. In the seminal book Derrière le rideau, l’esthétique Photomaton (Behind the Curtain, the Esthetics of the Photomaton), we read: A partir de la fin des années 1960, les mouvements d’avant-garde (artistes, écrivains, réalisateurs) développent une pratique photographique plus conceptuelle et utilisent le médium pour enregistrer leurs performances artistiques [As of the end of the 1960s, avant-garde movements (artists, writers, directors) developed a photographic practice that was more conceptual and used this medium to document their artistic practices].79 One of these artists was Arnulf Rainer. In the Photomaton booth, Rainer took pictures of some physical expressions that were generally not tolerated by society, a practice Franco Vaccari would describe in 1973 as “La fotografia come azione e non come contemplazione” (“Photography as action, not contemplation”).80 Vaccari’s observation is equally applicable to the Photomaton artworks of Nakajima and Heyrman, as referenced above, thereby showing that these artists were more than three years ahead of their time. Happening 6 The title of the next happening, as indicated on a poster also designed by Vercammen, alludes to the existence of a previous happening (Happening 5). However, Happening 5 seems never to have taken place. By way of explanation, Panamarenko declared that sometimes happenings that had been planned had not been executed.81 During Happening 6 (September 25, 1965), Bernd Lohaus, a German-born artist and former pupil of Joseph Beuys, as well as the Dutch provo activist Thom Jaspers, joined the happening quartet—which, coincidentally or not, brought the number of official participants in the event to the same referenced in its title. The happening took place in Antwerp, on the Meir, a busy shopping street. For the first time, the Happeners had asked local authorities for permission to conduct a happening, an event that they had officially presented as a “meeting.” Although permission for this “meeting” had been refused,82 they decided to execute their plan. Interestingly, the poster advertised Hugo Heyrman as a “happy-space-maker.” Indeed, the artists used an actual or conceptual city as a subject for this happening, as they had for the previous two, but transformed the theme into the exploration and making of a “happy” space. Every single poster for this happening was unique as Nakajima randomly stamped Japanese characters onto each poster. In English, these characters mean “Yoshio Nakajima,” “Yoshio Nakajima’s exhibition,” and “Yoshio Nakajima and Saitama Kawamoto Honda Sugihara 2017,” the last five words being the address of Nakajima’s parents. The arbitrary way in which these stamps were applied reminds us again of Nakajima’s background in Abstract Expressionism, an artistic movement in which chance plays an important role.

102  Stefan Wouters

What Happened during Happening 6 In 1965, Thom Jaspers intended to travel to Portugal. He chose Antwerp, a city that had gained a reputation for being a countercultural hotspot, as one of his in-between stops.83 The fact that Jaspers knew Nakajima from the latter’s stay in the Netherlands also must have encouraged this choice. Jaspers started Happening 6 by walking with a few friends from the apartment where he was staying (on Korte Noordstraat) to the former royal palace on the Meir. He carried a self-made paper Esso Tiger. When he and his friends arrived at the palace, 60 to 80 spectators would gather quickly around him.84 There, he poured fuel on the tiger and lit the puppet on fire.85 Jaspers also threw breadcrumbs on the ground and shouted “Bread for the birds!”86 The fire was perceived as quite substantial and dangerous, as evidenced by the immediate arrival of the fire brigade and the police.87 According to Ludo Mich, they instantly became part of the happening,88 a situation that reminds us of the role the Dutch police unintentionally played during the early Provo happenings. Apparently, the day before the event and probably at Dutch artist Jeroen Henneman’s request,89 the Happeners had thrown some aniline on the pavement in front of the palace, and due to the chemical reaction between this substance and water thrown on it by the fire brigade, the surface had turned blue. Jaspers’ performance was a reaction to the car industry and particularly the deadly

Figure 3.10 Hugo Heyrman, Yoshio Nakajima and Panamarenko with his yellow Cadillac in front of the Carolus Borromeus church in Antwerp, 1965. Photographer unknown. Courtesy Yoshio Nakajima Archive, Konstrundan Raus Art Center.

Yoshio Nakajima and the Interplay of Art  103 dangers involved in driving.90 The German artist Wolf Vostell, a prolific European happening pioneer, would use a similar theme half a year later, in New York,91 for his happening Put a Tiger in Your Tank.92 Whether Jaspers’ performance served as an inspiration for Vostell’s happening remains unclear. However, we do know that Panamarenko had contact with Vostell during this period and that, a week after Happening 6, the former gave the latter’s address to Nakajima.93 Panamarenko, Heyrman, and Nakajima arrived in a bright yellow Cadillac during Jaspers’ performance.94 They probably thought that their attendance at Jaspers’ happening would serve as an ideal means through which to sell the first issue of Happening News. However, due to police intervention, they decided to join Vercammen on the Groenplaats. There, Nakajima and Vercammen produced, with spray cans, an agitprop artwork on a big sheet of paper that had been unrolled on the ground.95 Other artists such as Rurik Uleman, Bernd Lohaus, Ludo Mich, and Ann Salens joined the Happeners, too. However, in order to stop the performance, the police immediately arrested Nakajima, Vercammen, Uleman, Lohaus, Mich, and Salens though96 Panamarenko and Heyrman managed to escape. For Mich, the best part of the event occurred at the police station where they were questioned. They declared that their leader was Paul van Ostaijen (who had been dead for more than 35 years). The police also had to call on an interpreter since Nakajima could reply to their questions only in Japanese. Uleman was beaten up by the officers for imitating them.97 Shortly afterward, Panamarenko and Heyrman also were arrested on the Grote Markt, in Antwerp, but they displayed less resistance. It is interesting to note that Thom Jaspers’ performance was radically more violent and arguably less artistic in nature than Nakajima’s earlier performances in Belgium. However, both artists were judged by the authorities as part of the same counterculture and were therefore expelled from Belgium. The newspaper Volksgazet described Nakajima as a danger to public safety.98 Consequently, he was unable to participate in the following happening, Godsdienst, Vorst en Staat (Religion, King, and Fatherland, October 2, 1965) although the poster for the event still featured his name. This performance once again points to a poem by Van Ostaijen that was included in Bezette Stad.

Conclusion In this chapter, we have seen that Panamarenko, who is generally considered to be a happening pioneer in Belgium, played a minor role during part one of the first Antwerp happening: he was present but mainly as a spectator who took pictures. Panamarenko’s role and involvement would grow, however, during the following happenings, an evolution that would pave the way for the fame he achieved later in his career. We have also noticed that Nakajima played a key role in the participation, development, and propagation of happenings in Belgium. His energy, visuals, and spontaneous interaction with other artists such as Heyrman, Vercammen, and Panamarenko were unique in Belgium at the time and generated considerable media attention, which in turn led to an augmented public awareness of this form

104  Stefan Wouters of Live Art. Nakajima’s artistic style and practice influenced several local yet independent Provo groups. This catalyzed what one might call a local tradition of performative provocation. Even today, the Groenplaats, the site of the first Antwerp happening, functions as a meeting place for like-minded people who share extreme leftist political and anarchist convictions.

Notes 1 Willem Houbrechts, “Enkele stellingen omtrent de jaren zestig,” in Antwerpen: de jaren zestig: 60, ed. Bobb Bern et al. (Antwerpen: Hadewijch, 1988), 17. 2 Johan Pas, Een andere avant-garde: documenten uit het archief van de galerie De Zwarte Panter (1968–2008) (Tielt: Lannoo, 2008), 21. 3 A few of these houses were rebuilt in the open-air museum of Bokrijk. 4 Els Witte, “Het sociale en politieke klimaat,” in Antwerpen: de jaren zestig: 60, 37–42. 5 Fernand Auwera et al., Rondom het Vleeshuis, geschiedenis van een verdwenen buurt (Antwerpen: Pandora, 2004), 5, 33. 6 Wannes van de Velde, interview, Wannes Van de Welde (television program), Histories (documentary series) (Belgium: Canvas TV Channel, Vlaamse Radio- en Televisieomroeporganisatie, 1999). 7 For more information on this subject, see Thomas Crombez and Stefan Wouters, comps. and eds., Belgium is Happening (online database hosted by the University of Antwerp and the Royal Academy of Fine Arts Antwerp), https://sites.google.com/ site/belgiumishappening/home 8 For more information on the “happenings” of Marcel Broodthaers, see Catherine David and Véronique Dabin, Marcel Broodthaers, catalogue of an eponymous exhibition held at the Galerie Nationale du Jeu de Paume, in Paris, from December 17, 1991, through March 1, 1992 (Paris: Ed. du jeu de paume, 1991), 66. 9 For instance, in 1962, the Dutch-Belgian magazine het Toneel published a translation, though a slightly shorter version, of Jill Johnston’s article “On the Happenings—New York Scene,” first published in Encore (September/October 1962). 10 Wout Vercammen, interview by Stefan Wouters, at the Museum of Contemporary Art Antwerp (M HKA), December 11, 2014. 11 Allan Kaprow, “Pinpointing Happenings,” [1967] in Essays on The Blurring of Art and Life, ed. Jeff Kelley (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), 85. 12 RoseLee Goldberg, Performance Art: From Futurism to the Present [rev. ed. of: Performance: Live Art 1909 to the Present] (London: Thames and Hudson, 1988) [1979], 126–7. 13 Kaprow used the word “happening” in 1957 during a picnic on George Segal’s chicken farm. See Christopher W. Bigsby, A Critical Introduction to Twentieth-Century American Drama, vol. 3, Beyond Broadway (Cambridge University Press, 1985) 45. During the same period, the term also appeared in the literary magazine Anthologist of Rutgers University. See Joan Marter, ed., Off Limits: Rutgers University and the Avant-Garde 1957–1963, catalogue of an exhibition that took place in the Newark Museum between February 18 and May 16, 1999 (New Jersey: Newark Museum, 1999), 10. A year later, “happening” was employed by Allan Kaprow in “The Legacy of Jackson Pollock” [1958] in Essays, 1–9. The original manuscript dates from 1956; thus, it is likely that the year 1956 is the starting point for its use. 14 For a description of this happening, see for instance, Kaprow and Kelley, Childsplay, 29–42. 15 Sometimes, the participants were actors from The Living Theatre. Mildred L. Glimcher, Happenings New York 1958–1963 (New York: The Monacelli Press, 2012), 45. Glimcher does not know which specific actors were involved. Mildred Glimcher, email message to Stefan Wouters, June 21, 2012. Kaprow, however, was disappointed that the actors wanted to act instead of just doing things. Judith F. Rodenbeck, Radical Prototypes: Allan

Yoshio Nakajima and the Interplay of Art  105 Kaprow and the Invention of Happenings (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2011), 160. However, artists involved with happenings, Kaprow included, often worked temporarily together with artists engaged in other disciplines, such as poetry and music. 16 Allan Kaprow, “Happenings in the New York Scene,” [1961] in Essays on The Blurring of Art and Life, 16. 17 Michael Kirby, ed., Happenings: An Illustrated Anthology (New York: Dutton, 1965). 18 Michael Kirby and Richard Schechner, “An Interview with John Cage,” in Happenings and Other Acts, ed. Mariellen R. Sandford (New York: Routledge, 1995), 68. 19 Darko Suvin, “Reflections on Happenings,” in Happenings and Other Acts, 294–5. 20 Michael Kirby, “The New Theatre,” in The Art of Time: Essays on the Avant-garde (New York: Dutton, 1969), 75–98. 21 For further explanation of these terms, see Kaprow, “Pinpointing Happenings,” 85–7. 22 Suvin, “Reflections on Happenings,” 294–5. 23 Jean-Jacques Lebel, Le Happening (Paris: Denoël, 1966), 26. 24 Albert Dusar and Albert Smeets, Lexicon van de actuele kunst (Tielt: Lannoo, 1971), 72–3. 25 Fluxus artist Ben Vautier (born in 1935) equally considers an event as a type of happening, see Charles Dreyfus, Happenings & Fluxus, catalogue of an exhibition held June 7–July 29, 1989, at Galerie 1900–2000 (Paris: Galerie 1900–2000, 1989), 178. 26 Kaprow, “Pinpointing Happenings,” 86. 27 Anny De Decker, interview by Stefan Wouters, Belgium is Happening, October 14, 2010, https://sites.google.com/site/belgiumishappening/home/interviews/anny-dedecker-wouters-2010 28 Rodenbeck, Radical Prototypes. Kaprow considered a happening and an environment as the active and passive side of the same coin. Allan Kaprow, Assemblage, Environments, & Happenings (New York: Abrams, 1966), 184. 29 Yoshio Nakajima, interview by Stefan Wouters, Belgium is Happening, October 5, 2010, https://sites.google.com/site/belgiumishappening/home/interviews/yoshio-nakajimawouters-2010 30 De Decker, interview by Wouters, October 14, 2010. 31 CoBrA was a European avant-garde movement active from 1948 to 1951. The name was coined in 1948 by Christian Dotremont using the initials of the members’ home countries’ capital cities: Copenhagen, Brussels, and Amsterdam. 32 Tony Rombouts and Wout Vercammen, Stella Magnola: Gedichten (Antwerp: Stuip, 1963). 33 For further information on “prehappenings,” see Stefan Wouters, Vluchtigheid en verzet: Sporen van het internationaal Happeninggebeuren in België (Brussel: VUB-Press, 2016), 47–52. 34 De Decker, interview by Wouters, October 14, 2010. 35 Wout Vercammen, interview, Happening op de Groenplaats (television program) in Zoeklicht (documentary television series), Belgische Radio en Televisie (BRT), July 14, 1965. 36 At least nine articles were published on the first Antwerp happening. 37 Wout Vercammen, interview by Stefan Wouters, Belgium is Happening, February 25, 2011.https://sites.google.com/site/belgiumishappening/home/interviews/wout-vercammens-wouters-2011 38 For instance, see the picture of a happening around the Het Lieverdje statue taken by Cor Jaring in Amsterdam, on the Spui, on June 13, 1964, in Wim A.L. Beeren, Actie, werkelijkheid en fictie in de kunst van de jaren ‘60 in Nederland, catalogue of an eponymous exhibition held from November 9, 1979 until January 6, 1980, at Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen (Rotterdam: ‘s-Gravenhage Staatsuitgeverij, 1979), 81. 39 According to Gazet van Antwerpen, circa 100 spectators attended the apotheosis of the happening. “Happening of grappening te Antwerpen,” Gazet van Antwerpen, July 10–11, 1965. Zoeklicht confirms this estimation.

106  Stefan Wouters 40 Vercammen, interview, Zoeklicht, July 14, 1965; Vercammen, interview by Wouters, February 25, 2011. 41 In 1960–1961, the Reuben Gallery, which had just been moved to a small store on East Third Street, focused almost entirely on happenings. The gallery even held workshops for artists who wanted to work with this new medium. Jim Dine started the workshops with five performances of his Car Crash happening, for which he affixed red, white, and silver crosses made of cardboard to the wall. 42 Julien Weverbergh, “Everybody happy. Kunst-gebeuren op de Antwerpse straat,” De Groene Amsterdammer, May 2, 1966, 7. 43 Photographs by Frans Neels, Stefan Wouters’s personal archive. 44 As of 1954–1955, 99 air-raid shelters were constructed in the port of Antwerp. Many of these have been demolished over the years, and those that are still there are empty. About 40% of the shelters were for groups of fewer than ten, but the rest had capacities of 62 persons, and six were able to accommodate 126. See Albert Himler, “De 99 schuilbunkers in de Antwerpse haven, 1954–1955,” Antwerpsche tydinghen IX: 4 (1988): 131–3. 45 See image in Lucius Grisebach, Paul Hefting et al. Panamarenko: Nationalgalerie Berlin, Staatliche Museen preussischer Kulturbesitz, 18. Mai–30. Juli 1978; Rijksmuseum KröllerMüller, Otterlo, 27 augustus-15 oktober 1978, exhibition catalogue (Berlin: Nationalgalerie, 1978), 34. 46 Happening op de Groenplaats in Zoeklicht (television series), Belgische Radio en Televisie (BRT), July 14, 1965. 47 Weverbergh, “Everybody Happy,” 7. 48 “‘Unbeat’ International Yoshio Nakajima te Antwerpen,” ABC no. 30 (July 24, 1965): 55. 49 Happening op de Groenplaats in Zoeklicht, BRT, July 14, 1965. 50 Paul van Ostaijen, Oscar Jespers, René Victor, and F. Casie, Bezette stad (Antwerp: Sienjaal, 1921). 51 Koen Calliauw, interview, Zoeklicht, BRT, July 14, 1965. 52 Two pictures of this extreme form of protest are also compiled in a book on happenings. See Jürgen Becker and Wolf Vostell, eds., Happenings. Fluxus. Pop Art. Nouveau Réalisme. Eine Dokumentation. (Reinbek b. Hamburg: Rowohlt Verlag, 1965). 53 See Jean-Jacques Lebel, “Welsh Automative Salad with Yogurt,” in Happenings de JeanJacques Lebel ou l’Insoumission radicale, eds. Jean-Jacques Lebel and Michaël Androula (Paris: Éditions Hazan, 2009), 172–5. 54 See Mariellen R. Sandford, “Preface,” in Happenings and Other Acts, XXII. 55 Donovan, “The War Drags On,” audio, track 10 on Universal Soldier, LP, Marble Arch Records, 1965. 56 See Patrick Stouthuysen, “Oud en nieuw in één. De vredesbeweging als atypische nieuwe sociale beweging” [Old and New in One. The Peace Movement as an Atypical New Social Movement] Journal of Belgian History [Belgisch Tijdschrift voor Nieuwste Geschiedenis] XXXIV: 3 (2004): 401–4. 57 Peter Stansill and David Zane Mairowitz, eds., BAMN (By Any Means Necessary): Outlaw Manifestos and Ephemera, 1965–70 (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1971), 13. 58 George Tuffin, personal communication, September 11, 2013. 59 “Occupy Antwerp” was inspired by “Occupy Wall Street.” 60 Guy Bellemans, interview by Stefan Wouters, January 13, 2015. 61 Wim Meeuwissen, interview by Stefan Wouters, December 18, 2014; Koen Huybreghts, Stephan Peleman, and Ron Van Riet, personal communication, December 2014. 62 Participating poets included Rudy Witse, Tony Rombouts, Lucienne Stassaert, and Frans Neels. “Happening of grappening te Antwerpen,” Gazet van Antwerpen, July 10–11, 1965. 63 Tony Rombouts, “Literatuur: contestatie & manifestatie,” in Bern et al., Antwerpen: de jaren zestig, 174.

Yoshio Nakajima and the Interplay of Art  107 64 Wout Vercammen, interview by Stefan Wouters, Belgium is Happening, February 25, 2011. https://sites.google.com/site/belgiumishappening/home/interviews/wout-vercammen-swouters-2011 65 The work of Jim Dine is often categorized under the term “happening.” Dine himself preferred to associate happenings with the work of Allan Kaprow. Rodenbeck, Radical Prototypes, 175–177. 66 Rombouts, “Literatuur: contestatie & manifestatie,” 175. 67 Al Hansen, A Primer of Happenings & Time/Space Art (New York: Something Else Press, 1965), 73. 68 See Eva Meyer-Hermann, Andrew Perchuk, and Stephanie Rosenthal, eds., Allan Kaprow—Art as Life (London: Thames and Hudson, 2008), 9. In 1962, Nakajima saw Cage performing at the Meiji Gakuin University. Yoshio Nakajima and Totte Wiberg, Yoshio Nakajima: en japansk gigant: a Japanese Giant (Sävedalen: Warne, 2000), 280. 69 Grisebach et al., Panamarenko; Vercammen, interview by Wouters, Belgium is Happening, February 25, 2011; Panamarenko, interview by Stefan Wouters, Belgium is Happening, October 11, 2010. https://sites.google.com/site/belgiumishappening/home/interviews/ panamarenko-2010 70 Eddy Ausloos, interview by Annelien Leenders, May 18, 2012. 71 Grisebach et al., Panamarenko; Panamarenko, interview by Wouters, February 25, 2011. 72 Grisebach, et al., Panamarenko, 35. The setting and action remind us of the type of happenings executed by Robert Jasper Grootveld around the Het Lievertje statue in Amsterdam (Spui, June 13, 1964), in which Nakajima, together with many Dutch provos, had participated. 73 Glimcher, Happenings New York 1958–1963, 31. 74 Panamarenko, Hugo Heyrman, Wout Vercammen, and Yoshio Nakajima, Happening News no. 1 (Antwerp: 1965). 75 Jan Van Hove, “Antwerps gerechtshof blikt terug op roerige jaren zestig,” De Standaard, December 12, 2001. 76 See Kirby, Happenings. 77 Panamarenko et al., Happening News no. 1. 78 “Enquête [sur l’ amour],” La Révolution surréaliste no. 12 (December 15, 1929), 73. 79 Clément Chéroux and Sam Stourdzé, eds., Derrière le rideau, l’esthétique Photomaton (Arles: Editions Photosynthèses, 2012), 118. 80 Franco Vaccari and Renato Barilli, Esposizione in Tempo Reale=Exposition en temps reel=Ausstellung in wirklicher Zeit=Exhibition in real time. Franco Vaccari: la fotografia come azione e non come contemplazione. (Pollenza: La Nuova Foglio, 1973). 81 Panamarenko, interview by Wouters, Belgium is Happening, October 11, 2010. 82 Police report no. 9532, Antwerp, September 27, 1965. 83 Thom Jaspers, personal communication, June 9, 2011. 84 Police report, no. 9532, Antwerp, September 27, 1965. 85 Diana Van Strijdonck, “Happenings–Antwerpen jaren ‘60–Panamarenko, Hugo Heyrman, Wout Vercammen,” (unpublished student paper, Instituut Sint-Maria, 1987), 14. 86 Grisebach et al., Panamarenko, 35. 87 Police report no. 9532, Antwerp, September 27, 1965. 88 Ludo Mich, interview by Stefan Wouters, Belgium is Happening, February 25, 2010. 89 Guy Van Deuren, “Botsingen: Happenings, events en performances in Vlaanderen 1963–1982,” (PhD diss., University of Antwerp, 2002), 20. 90 Nicolaas Gerardus Pas, Imaazje! De verbeelding van Provo (1965–1967) (Amsterdam: Wereldbibliotheek, 2003), 111. 91 Günter Berghaus, “Happenings in Europe,” in Happenings and Other Acts, edited by Sandford, 263–328: 324. 92 The title is a reference to a slogan used widely by Esso at the time. 93 Nakajima, interview by Wouters, Belgium is Happening, October 5, 2010. 94 See police report no. 3977, Antwerp, September 25, 1965.

108  Stefan Wouters 95 Thom Jaspers, personal communication, June 9–14, 2011. 96 See police report no. 9532, Antwerp, September 27, 1965. 97 Ludo Mich, personal communication, February 3, 2013. 98 “Nieuwe happening verwacht te Antwerpen. Japanner Yoshio Nakajima als staatsgevaarlijk uit het land gewezen,” Volksgazet (Antwerp) October 2–3, 1965.

4 Yoshio Nakajima A Japanese Artist from Sweden Tania Ørum

For a traveling artist living outside his native country, networks become more important than ever. During his first years in Europe, Yoshio Nakajima made use of his networks to move from one place to another. When he was expelled from the Netherlands and Belgium in 1965 because his street performances were seen as dangerous Provo activities (see the previous two chapters), his original plan was to proceed to the USA, as so many other Japanese artists had done. But in 1964, through his Rotterdam network, he had met the Danish artist Asger Jorn, himself a great networker, and the art historian-cum-artist Jens Jørgen Thorsen, who had both recommended the Nordic countries as good places for an artist to stay. Nakajima got on well with Asger Jorn—whose transnational practice; spontaneous creation in many media; and frequent cooperative work, often involving children—resonated with Nakajima’s background.1 Both Jorn and Thorsen had also mentioned Jorn’s

Figure 4.1 Drakabygget Jørgen Nash’s farm in southern Sweden. The sign says: “Drakabygget (the Dragon’s Lair) Freedom workshop. Only visit by appointment. Please respect our work.”

DOI: 10.4324/9781003149149-5

110  Tania Ørum

Figure 4.2  Poster advertising Nakajima’s return to Sweden. Courtesy Yoshio Nakajima Archive, Konstrundan Raus Art Center.

“crazy brother,” Jørgen Nash, then residing at the artists’ commune in southern Sweden Drakabygget (Dragon’s Lair), which Nakajima visited for the first time in 1967. Nash could be described as a Provo version of his older brother, Asger Jorn, who disliked Nash’s provocative public events. Nash’s Situationist network, also called the Bauhaus Situationiste, became an important context for Nakajima’s work and life when he decided to stay in Sweden. As a member of this situationist network, Nakajima came to be seen as almost a native of Sweden, so much so that he was welcomed home in 1977 when he returned from a longer stay in Japan. Even though Nakajima kept in touch with the Japanese art scene, and although in Sweden and other European countries where he performed and exhibited his work, he and his art were always perceived as distinctly Japanese, he became a transnational hybrid and was introduced as a “Japanese artist from Sweden.” Thus, he maintained a global identity at a time when the “globalization of art” had not yet been recognized by art history.2

Transnational Art and Art History In a short history of his artists’ center, Drakabygget, Jørgen Nash complained that it never received official art subsidies because Swedish cultural policy was designed to provide for Swedish art and artists only, and Nash and the rest of the international artists at Drakabygget were not considered native artists, even though they had lived in Sweden for most of their lives.3 Nakajima has voiced a similar complaint about official hostility toward rather than support for the Ubbeboda Center and the Skånska Konstakademien (Scanian Art Academy), both of which he organized in southern Sweden. This lack of economic support can be interpreted as confirmation of the controversial and subversive character of the art activities that took place within the network of the Bauhaus Situationiste in southern Sweden, as argued by the Drakabygget spokesmen Jørgen Nash and Jens Jørgen Thorsen. It can also be

Yoshio Nakajima  111 interpreted as a result of the artists’ remaining in a provincial area, far from the cultural center of Stockholm, where cultural capital, professional art critics, and supportive structures are located. In a marginal country like Sweden, a marginal area has little chance of gaining the attention of the professional art critics and art historians who are instrumental in securing public economic support and recognition in art history. As the Polish art historian Piotr Piotrowski has suggested, artists in neighboring countries outside the centers of Europe generally know very little of one another and relate their local art and culture mainly to that of the international centers.4 Piotrowski was talking of the relations between artists in East and Central Europe and those in Western Europe. But his observations apply equally well to artists in the Nordic countries, who were not cut off by the Iron Curtain but still do not belong in the center of “Euramerica”5 and thus have remained marginal, and even self-marginalizing, in their constant focus on national art in relation to that of the international centers. Nordic art historians generally know surprisingly little about the art of neighboring countries within the region—much less than they do about art in Paris or New York, for example—even though there have been periods of extensive cooperation among Nordic artists, for example in the 1960s and 1990s. This “law” of provincialist blindness that Piotrowski described also applies within the individual Nordic countries. While art historians and museum curators have looked increasingly toward New York and the international festivals that have become the centers of the art world since the 1960s, they have remained uninterested in the equally international activities taking place in provincial areas of their own countries, especially the self-organized ones initiated by artists and relying on artists’ networks.

Figure 4.3  (a) Ubbeboda Symposium, 1974. (b) Poster for the Ubbeboda Symposium, 1974. Courtesy Yoshio Nakajima Archive, Konstrundan Raus Art Center.(Continued)

112  Tania Ørum

Figure 4.3  (Continued) (b) Poster for the Ubbeboda Symposium, 1974. Courtesy Yoshio Nakajima Archive, Konstrundan Raus Art Center.

Swedish art historians have largely ignored what went on in the southern provinces, so the Bauhaus Situationiste has never been included in Swedish art history. Danish critics were aware of the Danish artists participating in the Bauhaus Situationiste in Sweden, but have taken very little notice of artists from other

Yoshio Nakajima  113 countries who were involved in Drakabygget. Until very recently, little has been written by Danish art historians about the situationist activities in southern Sweden. A further problem is related to the transnational currents of art in the twentieth century. Even very active and influential international artists who have chosen to make their homes in other countries apparently have found it difficult to be included in their chosen countries’ art histories. For example, the Swiss artist Dieter Roth’s year-long stay in Iceland,6 and the German artist Arthur Köpcke’s postwar life and very influential international art gallery in Copenhagen,7 have gone relatively unnoticed by local art historians until very recently. Although art has become increasingly transnational throughout the twentieth century, art history seems to be somewhat behind the times, and truly transnational studies have begun to appear only within the last two decades. Thus, nothing substantial has been written about Nakajima’s activities in Sweden. Most Swedish and Danish art historians seem to be entirely ignorant of his role in southern Sweden’s art scene and in the Bauhaus Situationiste network. He is mentioned briefly in Jens Jørgen Thorsen’s Modernisme i dansk malerkunst (Modernism in Danish Painting)8—which, like other art histories, takes a narrow nationalist view by including what went on at Drakabygget and in its surroundings in a context focused entirely on Danish art and artists. Yet Yoshio Nakajima was the main force behind what was probably the longest self-organized art festival in Sweden—the Ubbeboda Symposium, in 1974, which created lively interaction among local and international artists who worked together for more than 100 days to make the tiny village of Ubbeboda a nodal point in a large artists’ network that continued to convene and exchange ideas for several years after the event.

A Global Art Student before Globalization Nakajima and his wife had planned to stay in Sweden for only a short time, but in the end the Japanese couple decided to remain there, when she gave birth to a son who was given the Swedish name of Anders that is hard to pronounce in Japanese. In 1966, Nakajima enrolled in the Valand Art Academy, at the University of Gothenburg (Göteborg) as its first-ever foreign student. He spent six years there (1966–1971), thus ending up in provincial Sweden. As Jorn and Thorsen had said, it proved to be a good place to live. From Göteborg, Nakajima could still keep up his contact with people in Japan and with the European artists whose acquaintances he had made in the Netherlands and Belgium; with the institutional backing of the academy he could invite artists from all over the world to participate in conferences and projects; and he also took part in local exhibitions, festivals, and other activities as well as exhibiting and performing his work in other parts of Europe and in Japan. Although he spoke, and still speaks, very little Swedish or English, he was a very active organizer who started projects, groups, and other activities everywhere he went. In 1967, he turned his studio into the Landala Modern Art Gallery, where he hosted exhibitions and events in collaboration with, among others, the Japanese conceptual artist Matsuzawa Yutaka (under the name of “Nirvana Fluxus Scandinavia”); the Japanese artist Kudō Tetsumi; the Belgian artists Panamarenko and Hugo Heyrman; the Danish artists Jørgen Nash

114  Tania Ørum and Jens Jørgen Thorsen; the Swedish painter Hardy Strid; and others belonging to the Bauhaus Situationiste network. As a “Japanese artist from Sweden” Nakajima drew a large audience for his performance at the Street Theater Festival in Braunschweig, West Germany, in June 1971, as reported in the national newspaper Die Welt.9 In another German newspaper, a journalist among the audience has described the very persuasive street theater he got involved in at the 1st International Art Fair in Kiel, West Germany, 1971. This happening included red bloodlike fluid running from Nakajima’s mouth; gestures evoking ritual suicide; dead fish and pink toilet paper thrown at spectators; and the willing and fascinated participation of members of the audience, who were asked to wear masks, sing, and lie down on the ground.10 The “involuntary, convulsive, and manic gestures” described as typical of his early actions in Japan (see Shimada) seem to have characterized his performances in Europe as well during the early 1970s. In 1972, he staged the first happening ever performed at the Art Center of the provincial Swedish town Allingsås. The local paper described him as a wellknown event organizer who entered in a blue kimono, carrying a white teddy bear on his back, and proceeded to pour flour and soap suds over himself (much in the Fluxus spirit of Nam June Paik); drape the audience in toilet paper; and show his naked behind, to the delight of the young public—much in the style of his Dutch former associate, the Provo Robert Jasper Grootveld (see van der Meijden), who often exposed himself in similar fashion.11 The Danish Provo Ole Grünbaum, whose political manifesto Provokér (Provoke 1967) was largely copied from the Dutch Provo manifestos, later described how he was inspired by Grootveld to form a Danish Provo movement and how he, in turn, inspired Grootveld to strip in public.12

Figure 4.4  Grootveld washing American cars in Copenhagen, February 1967.

Yoshio Nakajima  115 The Japanese conceptual artist Matsuzawa Yukata planned a “PSI Mandala” and invited Nakajima to perform it at the 1972 Documenta 5 Exhibition in Kassel, West Germany.13 Although Nakajima had apparently planned to take part in the official Documenta exhibition, he also joined the Alternative Documenta staged by his Swedish friends from the Bauhaus Situationiste group, who built a large garbage sculpture outside the main entrance to the exhibition area and invited the citizens of the town to participate actively in building the sculpture rather than merely looking passively at the official exhibition.14 The Alternative Documenta was sufficiently important to be included as a major event in the “Documenta. Politics and Art” exhibition at the Deutsches Historisches Museum in Berlin June 18, 2021–January 9, 2022, documenting the cultural politics of Documenta and its importance in the promotion of modern Western art, not least during the Cold War. Nakajima was thus an active member of the Bauhaus Situationiste network in southern Sweden. He did not live in the artists’ commune Drakabygget but stayed there occasionally after he left Valand Art Academy. Mostly, he lived with his family in the small provincial towns of rural southern Sweden, in buildings that

Figure 4.5 The garbage sculpture built by the Situationist group outside the main entrance to Documenta 5 1972.

116  Tania Ørum often served also as his studio, gallery, and self-organized art school. From this rural location, which was considered irrelevant by those involved in the Swedish centers of art and cultural politics in Stockholm, he managed to orchestrate what was probably the longest-running self-organized international art festival in Sweden.

Figure 4.6 The poster of the Situationist intervention at the Documenta 5 1972 shown at the “Documenta. Politics and Art” exhibition at the Deutsches Historisches Museum in Berlin June 18, 2021–January 9, 2022.

Yoshio Nakajima  117

The Bauhaus Situationiste The Bauhaus Situationiste,15 or Second Situationist International, was a dissident branch of the International Situationist movement (SI) and thus had a prestigious and global history, but after the mid-1960s, it gradually lost artistic momentum and impact, becoming a more local artists’ center. However, the Bauhaus Situationists tried to exert an international impact at Documenta 5, in 1972, as well as during the Venice Biennale in 1968 when they joined the protesting local students and invaded the Swedish Pavilion. Nakajima (under his alias of “Unbeat Organizers– Tokyo–Göteborg”) was one of the signatories of the “Declaration on the New International Solidarity among Artists, Venice, June 1968,” which stated: The opponents of commercialization of the arts are supporting the actions against the Venice Biennale. They are against the principles of national representation and authorization of art by which the process of international artistic activation is suppressed. We must break through the aesthetic isolation in order to protest against the manipulation and monopolisation within cultural life.16 The ever-restless Danish artist Asger Jorn,17 who was one of the founding and leading members of the CoBrA group—the acronym combined the first letters of Copenhagen, Brussels, and Amsterdam—moved on to found the Situationist International with Guy Debord, in 1957. The founding members of the SI were Jorn; the French Lettrist International (Guy Debord and Michèle Bernstein); and the British London Psychogeographical Committee (represented by Ralph Rumney). Later members, mostly from Jorn’s artistic network, included the German group of artists Gruppe SPUR; the Dutch artist Jacqueline de Jong; Jorn’s younger brother, the poet and painter Jørgen Nash and members of Nash’s Swedish group. From 1959, Nash was the spokesman for the Nordic section of SI, and in 1961, he was made a member of the controlling editorial committee of the SI, until he was excluded from the SI by Debord, in February 1962, along with the Gruppe SPUR. The goal of the Situationist movement was to practice an artistic and theoretical critique of the modern society of consumption and spectacle, thereby liberating art from its commercial role in bourgeois society by turning it into a free, expressive, and collective practice. The movement’s adherents sought to achieve this goal by setting up playful “situations” in order to transform people’s everyday roles from those of passive spectators to those of active and creative participants in life. Asger Jorn withdrew from the Situationist International in 1961, both because his commercial career had accelerated and might have been an embarrassment to the anti-commercial Situationist ethos and because he did not agree with Debord’s view that art was unimportant. However, the Situationists kept up a small Danish branch managed by a one-man committee, the painter J.V. Martin, who acted under the orders of Guy Debord throughout the 1960s and 1970s. The dissident branch of the Situationists, known as the Bauhaus Situationiste or Second Situationist International, was founded by Jørgen Nash in 1962 as a protest against

118  Tania Ørum

Figure 4.7  Bauhaus Situationist poster indicating affiliations with other avant-garde movements.

Debord’s exclusion of the Gruppe SPUR from the SI at the very moment when that collective was being prosecuted for blasphemy and pornography in Germany.18 Gruppe SPUR took refuge in Jørgen Nash’s farm in Sweden, and Jacqueline de Jong decided to join them and leave the Situationist International, taking with her the English-language journal The Situationist Times that she edited (which

Yoshio Nakajima  119 published six issues between May 1962 and December 1964). Jorn continued to provide economic support for both the Situationist International and the Bauhaus Situationiste at Drakabygget and occasionally figured under the pseudonym George Keller in their publications.19 The Scandinavian branch of SI emphasized the value of free, spontaneous artistic expression as practiced by Jorn while the French branch, led by Guy Debord, focused on political and theoretical issues and increasingly doubted the subversive potential of art. However, the relationship between Asger Jorn and his brother Jørgen Nash soon ruptured, so, after 1962, the Drakabygget project must be seen as largely unrelated to both the Paris-based branch of Situationist International and to Jorn. The 1962 manifesto of the Second Situationist International, or Bauhaus Situationiste, explicitly proclaimed that the new movement was based on voluntary cooperation among self-regulating groups—in opposition to the hierarchical organization of the branch of the Situationist movement ruled by Debord. This loosely associated group organized a series of film festivals,20 published journals, and created a very fertile artists’ center, Drakabygget, which was located in Örkelljunga, Sweden and attracted many international visitors. In the 1960s, they also organized a number of street actions, which they called Co-Ritus in order to stress both the ritual element of art and the active involvement of audiences in events seen as both urban festivities and creative guerilla activities. A number of these provocative actions resulted in police intervention and plenty of press attention.21 The Co-Ritus mixture of ritual elements and audience participation was also characteristic of Nakajima’s performative events during the 1960s and 1970s (see the chapters on Japan, the Netherlands, and Belgium), which often employed distinctly Japanese features such as harakiri and kimonos.

Figure 4.8 First Co-Ritus Action in Copenhagen 1962. The text says: “2 The culture industry misleads people to imagine they take part in cultural life.”

120  Tania Ørum The Drakabygget has been described by some of the artists who worked there in the early 1960s as a very chaotic and anarchic place basically owned and run by Nash, but since Nash was generous, many artists lived there for shorter or longer periods, often lending a hand in practical household and agricultural work. Several Danish artists, as well as the art critic Jens Jørgen Thorsen, bought cheap properties at that time in southern Sweden to avoid the high cost of housing in nearby Copenhagen. As the British painter Gordon Fazakerley explained, “they would have a bit of antique dealing, or kept a few sheep, etc., etc. And it was a very precarious way” of surviving.22 Nash scraped by on various subsidies and by various kinds of hustling and by selling art (his own paintings as well as works by artists staying at Drakabygget and even counterfeit paintings bearing Jorn’s name). Often, he did not share the money from these sales with the artists whose works he sold, but on the other hand, he let people stay at Drakabygget on very easy terms.23 Gordon Fazakerley had been attracted originally to the idea of a Situationist Bauhaus as “something along the lines of Black Mountain College, in America. A kind of experimental school” but noted that “it didn’t turn out that way. Drakabygget was, it became, it was a madhouse, it was a lunatic asylum, run by the inmates.”24 The first years of Drakabygget were dominated by spontaneous-expressive painters. Fazakerley arrived there partly by accident but stayed on because he enjoyed painting as well as the Swedish landscape and the collective’s sexual liberation,25 which some of its women have later described in less positive terms as the predatory habits of very macho artists.26 Jacqueline de Jong described Drakabygget as: … a place where a bunch of exiled artists or displaced persons could get together and experiment … [W]hen all these people came, it became a sort of artistic commune. … Nash was very generous, and so was his wife, Katja

Figure 4.9  Photo of Jørgen Nash and Jens Jørgen Thorsen laughing outside Drakabygget.

Yoshio Nakajima  121 Lindell … so everyone was welcome … it was a complete confusion all the time through. But the good thing was that people could just show up and do whatever they wanted to. [Gruppe] SPUR came, and this kind of cooperation and working together started.27 As de Jong put it, in short, “it was not a paradise,” but it was nonetheless a welcoming and productive place. The influential Swedish art historian Folke Edwards, who in the 1960s was a director of the prominent art museum in the southern Swedish town of Lund, described Jørgen Nash as a “charismatic leader of Drakabygget” who was “probably more influential as a catalyst than as a poet and painter,” adding that “[a]s a painter … he has, measured with my eyes, never done something really good.”28 The openness of the Drakabygget circle, which allowed everyone to join in and organize cooperative events, made it an ideal context for Nakajima, who could participate in Bauhaus Situationiste events, for example in Venice and Kassel; organize his own activities; and draw on Drakabygget artists for cooperation and participation both at the Landala Modern Art Gallery during his time at Valand Art Academy and for later activities in southern Sweden. The principles of spontaneous expression at the heart of Drakabygget were compatible with the spontaneous painting and improvisational performance that Nakajima had engaged in since his early days in Japan and continued to practice during his time in the Netherlands and Belgium. From around 1963, when Nash’s cooperation with the art critic-cum-artist Jens Jørgen Thorsen began to increase, their activities focused more and more on publicity and media stunts.29 The most notorious of their actions was Jørgen Nash’s 1966 media détournement of the decapitation of the statue of The Little Mermaid at the harbor front in Copenhagen. This mediocre statue, representing the mermaid in a tale by Hans Christian Andersen, has become a tourist attraction. Nash led the media on a wild goose chase by alternately insinuating and loudly denying that he had cut off the head or at least knew who had done it or where it might be found, thus attracting immediate suspicion from the police and attention from the press.30 The Nash and Thorsen version of expressive art tended toward the romanticanarchic-nostalgic concept of the avant-garde as a group of anti-bourgeois bohemians whose lifestyle involved free sex, drink, drugs and creative self-expression.31 Embodying the apparent opposite of bourgeois culture, both Nash and Thorsen were very popular in the media and society world of Denmark and were celebrated by popular newspapers and prominent journalists for their unconventional lifestyle.32 They represented what Luc Boltanski and Eve Chiapello term the “artistic critique” of capitalism, rooted in the invention of a bohemian lifestyle. This critique foregrounds the loss of meaning and the loss of “the sense of what is beautiful and valuable” brought on by “standardisation and generalised commodification, affecting not only everyday objects but also artworks” and human beings. To the capitalist regimentation and domination of human beings, this type of critique “counterposes the freedom of the artist, their rejection of any contamination of aesthetics by ethics, their refusal of any form of subjection in time and space, and, in its extreme form, any kind of work.”33

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Figure 4.10  Nash (left) and Thorsen (dressed as a woman) on their way to court.

Yoshio Nakajima certainly saw art as free and playful activity outside capitalist regimentation, but he never participated fully in the bohemian lifestyle of Nash and Thorsen, preferring instead to instill the spirit of cooperation and free expression in his audiences as well as in the pupils, often children, at his self-organized art schools. Neither Nash and Thorsen nor Nakajima saw politics as “a contamination of aesthetics by ethics,” as Boltanski and Chiapello would have it, but on the contrary often used art to protest against official art institutions, nuclear armament, racism in South Africa, the American war in Vietnam, and other political problems of the time. Indeed, since his early days in Japan, Nakajima had performed his street actions, some of them bearing clearly political titles such as “Cuba 62,” as unauthorized parts of political protest movements of the 1960s (see Shimada’s chapter in this volume). Nakajima carried on this kind of spontaneous activism in his happenings in the Netherlands and Belgium (see the chapters by van der Meijden and Wouters). And in the Bauhaus Situationiste group he continued the anti-hierarchical structure, individual expression, and anarchist spirit he had established in his Unbeat group in Japan (see Shimada’s chapter in this volume). So it is perhaps not surprising to find Nakajima as one of the signatories of the “Draft Manifesto of Antinational Situationist,” written by Jens Jørgen Thorsen and published in the leaflet Antinational Situationist no. 1 (1974), apparently in the hope of launching a new Situationist movement—which, unlike the S(ituationist) I(nternational), was to be anti-national rather than international.

Yoshio Nakajima  123 The draft envisages a “coming world peace” that would cement existing power structures and crush “The Situationist World”—a global term applied not only to the Bauhaus Situationiste and artists in general but extended to include Kurdish resistance movements, the Black Panthers, and students and workers worldwide: On the military level all powers freed through the balance of powers will be used to destroy Situationist manifestations from the Kurds to the Black Panthers, from the artists and the students to the striking workers. On the economic level a growing economic censorship will try breaking all those who have exchanged a private or a state capitalism in favour of a Situationist economy of life. On the creative level all popular and free art will be suppressed in favour of state-authorised internationalistic elite art which is meant to pretend being the new culture. All research in nature or in the metaphysics will be limited to projects enforced by the economics of the politicians. All productive work will be forced towards standardising more rigidly than ever. As a weapon against this global development, the manifesto suggests creating a secret society based on Bakunin’s anarchist model of “free correspondence between autonomous groups and individuals.” Thorsen raises the question, “Why did the Situationist fight so rapidly turn into the fight about Situationism?” According to him, the answer is to be found in the international tendency within the Situationist movement. Each fraction of the movement developed into a nationalism in Situationist disguise. This developed into a fight on the international level with each fraction fighting to get the ridiculous position of chief-ideologist. In order to avoid such power struggles, the Situationist Antinational will be based on actions in everyday life unmediated by an organizational structure or central committee: “divided we stand,” the manifesto concludes. Toeing the line of the central committee will do no good; the point is to build a network that is based on differences and heterogeneity and allows its members to take independent action. The printed text claims to be “recommended by Jorgen Nash, J.V. Martin, Patrick O’Brien, Tom Krojer, Ambrosius Fjord, Andres King, Yoshio Nakajima, Liza Menue, Heimrad Prem, Mette Aarre, Heinz Frietag, Liz Zwick, Novi Margni, and Helmut Sturm.”34 In spite of its wide network of friends and contacts and its visions of secret subversive societies, Drakabygget remained a provincial place in southern Sweden surrounded by other small and temporary collectives and a loose network of individual artists living in the neighborhood. One such collective was the Ubbeboda Art Center, an artists’ commune in southern Sweden, initially run by the Swedish artist Hjalmar Råstorp and later, from 1974–1979, by Yoshio Nakajima, the Danish artist Mette Aarre, and others.35

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Ubbeboda In 1973, Nakajima moved with his family to the tiny village of Ubbeboda, whose chief attraction was the nearby quarry of diabase, a particularly high-quality black granite found only in this location, which led Nakajima to begin sculpting in stone. He was hired to teach painting at the abandoned school in Ubbeboda that had been rented by the sculptor Hjalmar Råstorp for the token sum of 50 Swedish kronor per month and turned into a local cultural center and exhibition space. Råstorp successfully organized exhibitions of Swedish wood carving that drew large audiences and were praised by critics and very popular among the local population. And Nakajima made use of his networks to arrange for the wood carving to go on tour to Japan.36 Based on Råstorp’s statements and the practice pursued at Ubbeboda, it seems the aim of the school was to fuse local traditions of folk art and handicraft with an art school for local children and adults and with international art exhibitions and events. Nakajima also included drawings by his six years old son in exhibitions of his own at Ubbeboda.37 In 1974, Råstorp, Nakajima, and the local artists Sven Malvin and Kenneth Johansson formed the ambitious plan to organize the 100-days’ international sculpture festival in Ubbeboda.38 While Malvin applied for permission from local authorities as well as for regional and national sources of support, Yoshio Nakajima sent out international invitations. He was a great asset to this group of largely unknown local artists because he had many international contacts, several of whom responded to the invitation.39 Thanks to the efforts of two of Nakajima’s friends, the art critic Yoshida Yoshie and the artist Matsuzawa Yutaka, six Japanese artists came, some of whom stayed in Sweden after the symposium. No wonder that Jørgen Nash (always prone to hyperbole) called Nakajima “the Japanese Giant.” The local authorities responded positively at first, promising a little money for the “One Hundred Days’ Symposium,” but after an administrative reform in Sweden merged the small Ubbeboda municipality with the larger neighboring one of Osby, this support was withdrawn. Even though the municipal art committee had recommended support for the symposium and the art center, the Osby municipal authorities refused to pay the small sum promised, deciding to withhold it until after the symposium had ended. In the end, the money was never paid. The 15 permanent participants, out of a total of around 40 visiting artists40 during the 100 days of the symposium—which took place from April 16 to July 27 of 1974— had to pay their own fares and were accommodated and fed privately. The letter of invitation, signed by Yoshio Nakajima, says: The symposium will be going on for a hundred days, starting the 16th of April ending in the middle of July 1974. Ubbeboda Center will provide the black stone and necessary working equipment for 15–20 artists free of charge. The center will also provide accommodation (beds) as well as cooking facilities free of charge and see to it that food is provided at self-cost price. […]

Yoshio Nakajima  125 The symposium does not depend upon any financial support from the Swedish government. The success of the symposium will depend largely upon the ideas and work of the participating artists. (Letter in Nakajima’s archive)

Figure 4.11  Nakajima’s letter of invitation to the Ubbeboda Symposium. Courtesy Yoshio Nakajima Archive, Konstrundan Raus Art Center.

126  Tania Ørum Nakajima’s invitation was met with enthusiastic responses. He received more than 600 inquiries, manifestos, and proposals from artists all over the world, many of whom were members of global mail art networks—among them those of Nakajima himself and of Matsuzawa Yukata, whose mail art project “World Uprising” created global interaction in 1971 and 72 that included European, North and South American, and Japanese artists. The exchange of mail art was one of the few opportunities for artists in then-communist Eastern Europe to interact across the Iron Curtain with Western colleagues, and for this occasion, a couple of artists even received permission to travel from Poland to Sweden to attend the event. There were plans to turn the disused quarry into a sculpture park since all participants were expected to leave their sculptural works behind as part of a permanent exhibition. The Japanese sculptors had plans for large sculptural projects, and the disused quarry had heaps of available stone, but since the organizers were unable to secure even minimal financial support for the unusual project, the proper equipment and machinery was beyond their means, so it proved largely impossible to actually work the stone. Many of the Japanese participants saw the symposium as an opportunity to enter the European art world, and were disappointed about the poor working and living conditions and unprepared for collaboration with artists from other countries. In the end, the quarry was used mainly for conceptual land art such as Takahashi Naraha’s arrangements of stone heaps and displaced pyramids of stones and Fukiko Nakabayashi’s lines of white wire across a shaft in the rock. Only Goro Suzuki managed to create larger sculptures centered on the theme of “the

Figure 4.12 Ubbeboda Symposium: The Danish artist Mette Aare on top of Dadakan Unbeat inscription.

Yoshio Nakajima  127 hole.”41 Since most of the sculptural work proved impossible, the art festival turned into an experimental commune where artists from several countries lived and worked together. Instead of sculptural work, Ubbeboda offered a broad range of activities from “filmmaking, information & documentation, meetings, art congress, international mixed media, theater experiment” to “photo-art, movement-language/poetry,” “[J]apanese–[E]uropean school,” and “technical experiments.”42 The Japanese artists gradually warmed to the idea of a collaborative symposium and began to participate in events with other artists. The artworks created during the Ubbeboda Symposium were mostly ephemeral installations, performances and film, many of which were created collectively. Municipal hostility, largely driven by one man, escalated prior to, during, and after the symposium. In the early spring of 1974, Hjalmar Råstorp offered to buy both the building he had rented and a second building containing two apartments. The offer was turned down by the municipal authorities, who forbade the organizers even to use the empty apartment in the second building to house the symposium’s participants, who had to share the small upper level of the school building and its two toilets while the rest slept in tents. Because April in Sweden is too cold for sleeping in tents, many participants had to wait until summer to join the symposium. A few local residents complained to municipal authorities that the symposium had ruined their idyllic rural sites, but others helped collect food for the visiting artists. In support of the Ubbeboda symposium, Jørgen Nash organized “Three Days to Shock the World,” a protest action that included several Swedish, Danish, and international artists and was held May 17–19 at Drakabygget. One of the “shocking” happenings during these three days was Nakajima’s performance of a Japanese harakiri ritual, intended to demonstrate the pain of this kind of suicidal action. In June, Nakajima and six other artists from the Ubbeboda Symposium participated in the 5th Göttinger Kunstmarkt and Kunstkongress (June 13–16) and brought the German artist Thomas Niggl back with them to Ubbeboda. In spite of the protest action, international support, and local interest, it proved impossible to raise money for the symposium. Nakajima’s wife and son had to return to Japan to escape the physical hardship and the mounting pressure on the center. And even one of the original organizers, Hjalmar Råstorp, gave up and left Ubbeboda at the end of June—in fact, several members of the political parties represented in the Osby municipality mentioned the large statue of Lenin created by Råstorp as a reason for their antipathy toward the Ubbeboda Center. In spite of the difficult conditions, the symposium managed to keep going for 100 days and to have a grand finale at the end of July in which local schoolchildren participated. Many of the artists who had spent the summer at Ubbeboda even decided to stay on after the official ending of the symposium. During the symposium, the young Polish artist Teresa Murak,43 a member of the 1970s neo-avant-garde in Poland, created a piece of land art in the former schoolyard. This work, called Równowaga balansu (Equilibrium of Balance), is now considered the most important work of her early career and was the first in her series of “sculptures for the Earth.”44 The Equilibrium of Balance was a so-called “parallel displacement” consisting of a shallow circle dug into the ground next to a similar

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Figure 4.13 Poster advertising Nash’s protest action “Three Days to Shock the World” at Drakabygget.

circular mound of earth, sown with cress seeds that gradually turned the sculpture green and gave it a soft look. In August, after the symposium had officially ended, municipal authorities took this sculpture as their excuse to accuse the artists of vandalizing public space since the artwork was situated in the former schoolyard, next to the abandoned school

Yoshio Nakajima  129

Figure 4.14  Yoshio Nakajima and Teresa Murak at her work Równowaga balansu (Equilibrium of Balance). Courtesy Yoshio Nakajima Archive, Konstrundan Raus Art Center.

buildings rented by the artists. The authorities sent an excavator, backed by police, to demolish the sculpture although the artist desperately tried to protect her work by shielding it with her own body.45 Although the Ubbeboda Symposium had been ignored by members of the Swedish art world centered in Stockholm and denied support by the cultural institutions also located in the capital, this demolition generated more international attention than most other art events in Sweden at the time. The municipal art attack created quite a stir in the Swedish and international press, which published photographs of the weeping artist and her friend, Malga Kubiak, trying to protect the sculpture but being dragged away by policemen. The popular Swedish newspaper Expressen showed a dramatic picture accompanied by the headline “No, this picture is not from Moscow: The police in Osby attack art with an excavator!”46 It was even rumored that the incident provided a welcome precedent for Soviet authorities to remove unwanted art in their country a week later, in September 1974, when they demolished an unofficial open-air exhibition in Belyayevo, subsequently known as the “Bulldozer Exhibition,” and arrested the artists who had created it.47 In the national Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter, the prominent art critic Torsten Bergmark commented: “The incident in Ubbeboda is smaller in scale than what took place in Moscow. But in principle there is no difference.”48

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Figure 4.15 The excavator approaching Murak’s work while two policemen try to drag Murak and her friend away.

Figure 4.16 The popular Swedish newspaper Expressen showed a dramatic picture accompanied by the headline “No, this picture is not from Moscow: The police in Osby attack art with an excavator!” Nakajima scrapbook. Courtesy Yoshio Nakajima Archive, Konstrundan Raus Art Center.

Yoshio Nakajima  131 On the one-year anniversary of the destruction of Murak’s work, the artists remaining in Ubbeboda answered the municipal attacks with an event in the town square of the new municipal center, Lönsboda, “to clean the air.” During this event, they swept the square with a broom decorated with the Swedish flag (resulting in charges of disrespect of national symbols) while Nakajima performed a happening in what looks like traditional Japanese style but without his earlier “manic gestures,” and the Danish artist Mette Aare constructed a small replica of the flattened piece of land art. The eight-millimeter film shot as documentation of the event shows peaceful interaction with bystanders.49 The artists met with considerable sympathy and interest from local citizens, but the municipal authorities remained hostile. When Nakajima went to Japan “for a period of time” to join his family, later in 1974, he announced that Mette Aare would take care of “U.C. activities like exhibitions, the Art School, meetings, film festivals, information, etc.” and that a symposium was planned for 1975 on the theme of “Wood-Cutting.”50 A number of artists stayed on after the first symposium and turned the school in Ubbeboda into an artists’ commune, which remained in the school building until March 1979 in spite of several attempts to have its members evicted. Despite municipal hostility, the resident artists kept up a series of activities such as the Stone Symposium, the Film Symposium, and the International Free School, which attracted a large number of participants and continued until 1976, when Nakajima again left for a longer stay in Japan. In recognition of the work Nakajima had done at Ubbeboda, Jørgen Nash named him Professor of Ubbeboda, a title that Nakajima accepted and subsequently used in many documents. On her website, the Polish artist Malga Kubiak, who remained in Sweden, describes her education as composed of studies at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw, the “Yoshio Nakajima Performance School at Ubbeboda Center,” and Valand Art Academy as well as at Göteborg Film Centrum.51 Several of the Japanese artists also decided to stay in Ubbeboda, and many of those who returned to Japan came back to visit several times. Nobuhiro Aihara, for example, who became one of the leading animation film artists in Japan and a professor at Kyoto Zokei University of Art and Design, returned to Ubbeboda almost yearly to give animation film workshops.52 Many events in Ubbeboda included international exchanges among artists, and many had political profiles— for instance “the International Swedish-and-Chile Film Festival,” September 26–28, 1975, during which “Ubbeboda people [took] part in the demonstrations against the fascistic junta in Chile. Chilemanifestations in Båstad 19–21. September.”53 In 1978, Jørgen Nash and the artist Sven Malvin published a large book called The Murder of Ubbeboda Center, made up primarily of photocopies of documents, images, and press clippings criticizing Swedish cultural policy. Nakajima made a large diabase sculpture of a “Freedom Bird” as a monument to the political victimization of the free artists at Ubbeboda. The bird was placed outside the Malmö City Museum in 1984. Nakajima has remained unmistakably Japanese, but after many active years in Sweden, he is also seen as based in Sweden. When he returned to Sweden in 1977,

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Figure 4.17 (a) and (b) Ubbeboda artists perform event in Lönsboda “to clean the air” after the municipal attack on Murak’s work.

Yoshio Nakajima  133

Figure 4.18  Nakajima with Jorgen Nash at Drakabygget, 1977. Photographer unknown. Courtesy Yoshio Nakajima Archive, Rausstenkärlsfabrik and Yoshio Nakajima Art Hall.

after a period in Japan, it was seen as a homecoming: he was welcomed home to Sweden by Jørgen Nash and invited to stay at Drakabygget for three months. There, he created a large multimedia exhibition, Home to Sweden, in May 1977.54 After his return, Nakajima settled with his family in the disused school in Humlarp, outside the small town of Åstorp in southern Sweden. Here, the “art missionary” Nakajima organized Skånska Konstakademien (The Scanian Art Academy, named after the southernmost part of Sweden and also called The “Free University Creative Center”) in collaboration with Jørgen Nash and other artists from the Drakabygget circle. Among its many activities were film festivals, the free school for painters, film and art seminars, intermedia performances, and Saturday activities for children. The creative center’s five-year anniversary occurred just as the buildings were being demolished. And since local politicians had negative attitudes toward this project as well, its activities eventually had to be discontinued. Since 1980, Nakajima has been increasingly recognized in Sweden, exhibiting his work locally and in a Drakabygget group exhibition in Copenhagen (1982) as well as in the rest of Europe and in Japan, and the artist has divided his time between his studios in Sweden and Japan. A small 2014 exhibition—Ubbeboda lever (Ubbeboda Lives), held on July 12–27 2014—celebrated the anniversary of the “One Hundred Days’ Symposium” at Ubbeboda and was organized by Anders Nakajima at his father’s present gallery and studio in Helsingborg. The event showed that the artists who had worked together at Ubbeboda in 1974, including several Japanese, are still a close-knit group who have remained in touch and still live and work in southern Sweden. As Nakajima had hoped,

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Figure 4.19  Participation by the “Ubbeboda Congress” in Documenta 6, 1977. Courtesy Yoshio Nakajima Archive, Konstrundan Raus Art Center.

Yoshio Nakajima  135 Ubbeboda had become a “station” where artists from all over the world met and exchanged ideas. And the worldwide artists’ network created in Ubbeboda has continued to be active for many years after the event.55

Notes 1 For Jorn, see Karen Kurczynski, The Art and Politics of Asger Jorn: The Avant-Garde Won’t Give Up (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2014). For Nakajima’s early work with children in Japan, see Yoshiko Shimada, “DAM ACT: Yoshio Nakajima in Japan 1957–1964,” in this volume. Like Jorn, Nakajima did not distinguish “between adults and children or teacher and students” but preferred to collaborate freely on spontaneous paintings. Shimada, “DAM ACT,” 9. 2 Throughout the 20th century, many artists in fact worked and communicated globally and lived outside their native countries, often traveling to centers such as Paris and New York to take part in avant-garde movements, attend art schools, etc., but the curatorial attention to globalization and transnational art had not yet begun by the 1960s and 70s. 3 Jørgen Nash, Springkniven: Tekster fra kulturrevolutionen (Copenhagen: Hernov, 1976), 202–3. 4 Piotr Piotrowski, “Toward a Horizontal History of the European Avant-Garde,” in Europa! Europa?: The Avant-Garde, Modernism and the Fate of a Continent, eds. Sascha Bru et al. (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2009), 49–58. 5 Piotrowski borrowed the term “Euramerica” from John Clark’s study Modern Asian Art (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1998). 6 See Anna Jóhannsdóttir, “Exile, Correspondence, Rebellion—Tracing the Interactive Relationship Between Iceland and Dieter Roth,” in A Cultural History of the AvantGarde in the Nordic Countries 1950–1975, eds. Tania Ørum and Jesper Olsson (Leiden: Brill Rodopi, 2016), 239–50. 7 See Anneli Fuchs, “Galerie Køpcke—An Artist-Run Gallery in Copenhagen,” in Avant-Garde in the Nordic Countries 1950–1975, eds. Ørum and Olsson, 251–8. 8 Jens Jørgen Thorsen, Modernisme i dansk malerkunst, 2nd ed. (Copenhagen: Kunstbogklubben, 1991) [Copenhagen: Fogtdal, 1987], 215, 219–20. 9 Die Welt, June 10, 1971. 10 Untitled photocopy (Yoshio Nakajima’s private collection), 1971 11 Untitled photocopy (Yoshio Nakajima’s private collection), February 14, 1972. 12 A press photo shows the naked Grootveld cleaning an American car during a Vietnam antiwar demonstration in Copenhagen in February 1967. Grünbaum quotes the central elements of Grootveld’s speech to the students in 1967 as follows: Klaas [the Dutch version of Santa Claus] will come. I don’t know how and when, but he will come and everybody will be happy. There is too much hate, it is so easy to hate, but love is needed… Our love will change the world. What is Provo? Provo is an image. Provo is not a movement. It is an image, what is a happening? A happening is a happening is a happening is a happening. Grünbaum felt that this was an image anyone could step into and use. He saw provocation and happening as a “form uniting theatre and politics” and figured it was a political tool whereby even a minority of young people without a union or a political party to back them up could make their voices heard by the media, as had been the case in the Netherlands. See Van der Meijden in this volume. Ole Grünbaum, Du skal ud [Drop Out] (Copenhagen: Gyldendal, 1988), 23–31. 13 In a photocopy from Nakajima’s personal archive, the PSI Mandala in the 1972 documenta 5 is described as “Projected by Yutaka MATSUZAVA & EXECUTED by Yoshio Nakajima” and involving the following timeline: “1972 The Documenta end. 1999 Japan collapse. 2000 I die. 2109 Cat die out. 2122 The emperor disappear. 2199 Fish is no longer eatable. 2220 Oxygen want. 2222 The human beings collapse.” The program

136  Tania Ørum and poster for this event are also included in Jørgen Nash and Sven Malvin, eds., Mordet på Ubbeboda Center [The Murder of Ubbeboda Centre] (Örkelljunga: Editions Bauhaus Situationiste, 1978) [tr. 1982]. However, neither Matsuzawa nor Nakajima appears on the list of the 222 artists taking part in the 1972 documenta 5. Retrospective webpage accessed September 8, 2020. https://www.documenta.de/en/retrospective/ documenta_5# 14 Thorsen, Modernisme i dansk malerkunst, 217. Many artists, including both participants and nonparticipants in the exhibition, expressed severe criticism of documenta 5 as an “exhibition of an exhibition” that aimed to anoint itself as a work of art and exploited art for that purpose. In a sharply worded letter, Robert Morris forbade the exhibition of his works, which were selected and presented without his approval—misused, he wrote, for the purpose of “illustrating misguided sociological principles and categories of art history.” Along with Carl Andre, Hans Haacke, Donald Judd, Barry Le Va, Sol LeWitt, Dorothea Rockburne, Fred Sandback, Richard Serra, and Robert Smithson, he signed a declaration in opposition to documenta, which was published in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung on May 12, 1972. Except for Andre, Judd, Morris, and Sandback, all those who signed were represented at documenta, however. 1972 documenta 5 (website), accessed September 8, 2020, https://www.documenta.de/ en/retrospective/documenta_5# 15 The name “Bauhaus Situationiste” sprang from Asger Jorn’s disagreement with Max Bill about the postwar reconstruction of the Bauhaus as the Hochschule für Gestaltung in Ulm. Bill wanted “objective art” whereas Jorn wanted “self-expression” and the inclusion of painting at the school, so in opposition to the constructivism and functionalism at Ulm, he formed the Mouvement Internationale pour un Bauhaus Imaginiste. See Kurczynski, The Art and Politics of Asger Jorn, 108, 110–11. 16 Internationale Situationniste, Gruppe Geflecht, Kommune I, and Black Mask, Declaration on the New International Solidarity among Artists, Venice, June 1968: The Opponents of Commercialisation of the Arts Are Supporting the Actions against the Venice Biennale (Venice, 1968), accessed in Yoshio Nakajima’s private collection. See also Thorsen, Modernisme i dansk malerkunst, 217. In his retrospective account, Jens Jørgen Thorsen described the student rebellion in Venice as largely created by the Bauhaus Situationiste—just as Guy Debord claimed to have orchestrated the 1968 uprising in Paris. 17 See Kurczynski, The Art and Politics of Asger Jorn and Dorthe Aagesen, Helle Brøns, et al., Asger Jorn: Restless Rebel (Copenhagen: Statens Museum for Kunst, 2014), exhibition catalog. 18 There are different accounts of who actually signed the manifesto of the Second Situationist International since some names were added without the knowledge of their bearers, some names were pseudonyms, and one signatory was perhaps Jørgen Nash’s horse. See, e.g., Mikkel Bolt-Rasmussen and Jakob Jakobsen, eds., Expect Anything Fear Nothing: The Situationist Movement in Scandinavia and Elsewhere (Copenhagen: Nebula, 2011), 252–4. 19 See Jacqueline de Jong and Karen Kurczynski, “A Maximum of Openness: Jacqueline de Jong in Conversation with Karen Kurczynski,” in Expect Anything Fear Nothing, eds. Bolt-Rasmussen and Jakobsen, 183–204: 192. 20 See Carl Nørrested, “The Drakabygget Films,” in Expect Anything Fear Nothing, eds. Bolt-Rasmussen and Jakobsen, 29–45. 21 The initial Co-Ritus action, performed by the Bauhaus Situationiste group and Gruppe SPUR, took place outside Galleri Jensen, in Copenhagen, in December 1962. The artists painted slogans and images on a privately owned fence. See Thorsen, Modernisme i dansk malerkunst and Anneli Fuchs, “New Phenomena: Danish Art and the Danish Art World 1960–72,” in The Nordic ‘60s: 1960–1972—Upheaval and Confrontation

Yoshio Nakajima  137 (exhibition catalogue), eds. Birgitta Lönnell and Halldór Björn Runolfsson, (Helsinki: Nordic Arts Centre, 1991), 109–14. 22 See Gordon Fazakerley, Jacqueline de Jong, and Jakob Jakobsen, “Drakabygget: A Situationist Utopia or Meeting Place for Displaced Persons. Gordon Fazakerley and Jacqueline de Jong in Conversation with Jakob Jakobsen,” in Expect Anything Fear Nothing, eds. Bolt-Rasmussen and Jakobsen (Copenhagen: Nebula, 2011), 117. 23 See Fazakerley et al., “Drakabygget: A Situationist Utopia,” (interview) 118–19. 24 Ibid., 115–16. 25 Ibid., 128. 26 See e.g., de Jong and Kurczynski, “A Maximum of Openness,” 187–8; and Aagesen, Brøns, et al., Asger Jorn: Restless Rebel. 27 See Fazakerley et al., “Drakabygget: A Situationist Utopia,” 117–18. 28 Folke Edwards, “It is never too late…” in Jørgen Nash, Lis Zwick og Drakabygget: frihedens vaerksted [Jørgen Nash, Lis Zwick and Drakabygget - The Workshop of Freedom] edited by Iben From (exhibition catalogue) (Silkeborg KunstCentret, 2000), 12. 29 Bolt-Rasmussen and Jakobsen, eds., Expect Anything Fear Nothing, 114–28. The referenced pages include an image of them dressed up for appearance in court.] 30 Nash, Springkniven, 148–50. 31 For the relation between the avant-garde and the concept of the bohemian, see Jerrold E. Seigel, Bohemian Paris: Culture, Politics, and the Boundaries of Bourgeois Life, 1830–1930 (Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin Books, 1987) and David Cottington, The Avant-Garde: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013). 32 See, for instance, the celebratory volume on Thorsen by the former editor of the populist daily Ekstra-Bladet, Bent Falbert, Provo: Jens Jørgen Thorsen (Copenhagen: Politiken, 2006). 33 Luc Boltanski and Ève Chiapello, The New Spirit of Capitalism, transl. Gregory Elliott (London: Verso, 2007), 38. 34 Antinational Situationist no. 1 (1974). 35 Thorsen, Modernisme i dansk malerkunst, 215, 259–60. 36 The local press reported on the wood carver Oscar Carlsson from the village of Hultaberg who at the age of 87 had his international debut in Tokyo. Undated press clipping in Mordet på Ubbeboda Center, eds. Nash and Malvin. 37 Nash and Malvin, eds., Mordet på Ubbeboda Center. 38 The “100-days festival” was parallel to the concept of documenta as a “100-Day Event,” that in 1970 had replaced the earlier idea of a “Museum of 100 Days.” This indicates the level of ambition. 39 Nash and Malvin reproduce an answer from the French Fluxus artist Ben Vautier instructing Nakajima on how to install his work at Ubbeboda, and both John Cage and Yoko Ono are mentioned as possible visitors. Nash and Malvin, eds., Mordet på Ubbeboda Center (unpaginated). 40 Japanese participants included the male sculptors Takehiro Teada, Masaru Takahashi, Gorō Suzuki, Takashi Naraha, Kazuo Kadonaga, Mukata Takamura, Keikyō Nakajima, and Keisuke Yamashita; the female sculptor Fukiko Nakabayashi; and the filmmaker Nobuhiro Aihara. From Greece came Jannis Coulianos; from Finland, Alpo Siikava; from Poland, Teresa Murak and Malgorzata (Malga) Kubiak; from West Germany, Jürgen Blum, Rafael Reinsberg, Bara (Barbara) Schulz, and Thomas Niggl. 41 Some of these works can be seen in the documentation of “the first fifty days’ action,” included in Mordet på Ubbeboda Center, eds. Nash and Malvin, while some are still visible in the abandoned quarry. Among the Japanese participants, Kadonaga and Naraha were experienced artists who had participated in the Kii-Nagahama sculpture symposium in Japan in 1973, where they learned about the Ubbeboda Symposium. Aihara was an up-and-coming animation film artist. Suzuki was a friend of Matsuzawa’s, while Takamura was a student of Matsuzawa’s at the Bigakkō art school in Tokyo. The art critic Yoshida Yoshie was in South America for an exhibition project at the time of the symposium, but he enthusiastically supported the Ubbeboda Symposium. The large number of

138  Tania Ørum Japanese participants was due to his and Matsuzawa’s recruitment efforts. Yoshiko Shimada, ed., Nakajima Yoshio Syndrome: Art is Always the Next Possibility (exhibition catalogue) (Tokyo: Nakajima Yoshio Ten Jikkō Iinkai and Atsukobaruo, 2015), 76. 42 See the front page of the documentation of “the first fifty days’ action” in Mordet på Ubbeboda Center, eds. Nash and Malvin. 43 Teresa Murak (b. 1949) is now considered one of the most important Polish female artists and precursors of performance art, land art and feminist art. She works with landscape using natural materials: germinating seeds creating their own organic architecture, growing bread leaven, clay, river sludge. The key for her is the place, body, time, life cycle energy, leading from the sensual dimension to the spiritual and religious planes. The personal, bodily scale develops by building relations with others, the organic growth of the community ‘with openness to all reciprocity,’ as it says in the presentation on the website of the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw. https://artmuseum.pl/en/kolekcja/artysci/teresa-murak, accessed. Consulted in September 2020. 44 Artist profile, Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw Collection webpage, https:// artmuseum.pl/en/kolekcja/artysci/teresa-murak, accessed September 18, 2020. A photograph of the work, bearing the legend “UBBEBODA” next to a small photo of tanks and soldiers at the top, from an exhibition at the Galleri S:t Petri, in Lund, Sweden, is prominently displayed on the museum’s website. And a photo of police entering the schoolyard while Murak stands protectively between the hole in the ground and the mound of earth figures as her entry in the announcement of an exhibition at the Persons Projects in Berlin in November 2020 https://www.personsprojects. com/artists/teresa-murak?x=exhibitions (website). 45 See document from the Osby municipality dated August 13, 1974 that mentions the risk of accidents as the reason for “restoring the school yard to its original state” in Mordet på Ubbeboda Center, eds. Nash and Malvin. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Bulldozer_Exhibition (website), accessed September 24, 2020. 46 Nash and Malvin, eds., Mordet på Ubbeboda Center. 47 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bulldozer_Exhibition (website), accessed September 24, 2020. 48 Undated press clippings in Mordet på Ubbeboda Center, eds. Nash and Malvin (unpaginated). Tania Ørum, “Yoshio Nakajima: A Japanese Artist from Sweden” in Nakajima Yoshio Syndrome, ed. Shimada, 28–36. 49 Film in Nakajima’s archive. 50 Letter in Nakajima’s archive. 51 https://old.filmbasen.se/filmare/malga-kubiak (website), accessed September 29, 2020. 52 Aihara’s animation film Stone (1974) was made in Ubbeboda and is included in the Nihon āto animēshon eiga senshū [Anthology of Japanese Art Animation Films], DVD collection (Tokyo: Kinokuniya Shoten and Eizō Bunka Seisakusha Renmei, 2004). 53 Ubbeboda festival leaflet in Nakajima’s archive. 54 Image and poster are reproduced in the exhibition catalogue, published by Københavns Kunsthandel in 1978. The poster is in Nakajima’s archive. 55 In September 1975, Ubbeboda Film Festival was held in the Sweden Film Center in Stockholm, and Ubbeboda Meeting was organized at Labyrinth Gallery in Poland. Ubbeboda Antitheater was held at the Niew Reform Galerie in Aalst, Belgium, in October 1975, and at the Köln Art Fair in November 1975. From May 17 through July 8, 1976, Sven Malvin organized an Ubbeboda Symposium on a Boat on a sailing boat on a lake. Teresa Murak, Thomas Niggl, Kenny Johannson, and Mette Aarre participated. In Japan, Takamura organized an Ubbeboda Symposium in Iruma, Saitama. See Shimada, ed., Nakajima Yoshio Syndrome: Art is Always the Next Possibility.

5 When Art Grabs You Grasping Art and Politics in the Global 1960s with Yoshio Nakajima William Marotti

Art as Possibility: Framing Nakajima It is a commonplace in writing history to locate phenomena within broader enabling contexts, within connections and flows of information, within structures, within constellations of larger forces. The urge to contextualize in order to explain is a basic one, but it runs the risk of explaining away what might be new or transformative in a situation, reducing it to other, prior phenomena and dispersing agency and eventfulness into some already existing set of structures. This problem is compounded when the situation itself is one characterized by transformative eventfulness, by the mass rejection of social roles as given, and by the finding of common cause and solidarities across far-flung locations—precisely the case with the 1960s. It is the challenge, that is, of recognizing a historical moment whose character is precisely that of transformations in practice and understandings, and of discontinuous solidarities—a situation, that is, comprised of ruptures and of new connections. This challenge intensifies in dealing with art, understood broadly, and especially in dealing with its role in such eventfulness. This is the dimension of art epitomized by Yoshio Nakajima’s phrase “Art is always the next possibility.” That is, if art is understood within a static notion of its context, in which it merely brings together that which currently exists, then from where might such new possibilities originate, if they exist at all? By playing on the borders of perception, by departing from the normalized and conventional, art might present the possibility of seeing and experiencing the world differently. Conversely, as a mode available without precondition to all, young and old alike, without distinction, without borders, art can be a means of asserting equality within multiplicity. Or, as Anthony Appiah puts it, One connection—the one neglected in talk of cultural patrimony—is the connection not through identity but despite difference. We can respond to art that is not ours; indeed, we can fully respond to ‘our’ art only if we move beyond thinking of it as ours and start to respond to it as art. … The connection through a local identity is as imaginary as the connection through humanity.1 DOI: 10.4324/9781003149149-6

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Figure 5.1 Nakajima with his declaration, part of his Skånska Konstakademien project circa 1977. Seated is Kenneth Johansson, Ubbeboda organizer; standing, Danish artist Henrik Pryds Beck. Photographer unknown. Courtesy Yoshio Nakajima Archive, Konstrundan Raus Art Center.

As the preceding chapters have detailed, Yoshio Nakajima’s career has continuously instantiated his commitment to this ideal. Time and again, his unconventional and even untimely activities can be seen as drawn into or even precipitating substantial shifts in perception and action, a collaborative “Unbeat” out of sync with conventions of normativity, locality, and avant-gardism alike. And yet, time and again, his vital role in such transformations has dropped out of accounts of both art and politics. This history of activity and its nonrecognition thus points to the challenge of conceiving how such possibility arises in and through work that breaks with conventional categories of understanding. Accounting for this actuality runs contrary to some commonplace notions of historical context and calls attention to the limits of such frames. As Jacques Rancière argues, There is history insofar as men do not “resemble” their time, insofar as they act in breach of “their” time, in breach of the line of temporality that puts them in their place by obliging them to “use” their time in some way or other. This rupture is itself only possible because of the possibility to connect this

When Art Grabs You  141 line of temporality with others and because of the multiplicity of lines of temporality present in any “one” time.2 The drive to reduce events to prior structures and determinations in the name of “context”—the antihistorical “submission of existence to the possible” in the second epigraph above—thus fundamentally nullifies history itself as a record of non-identity and of difference, conflict, and change. Nor is it adequate to simply add multiplicity to an existing narrative as transformative practices reveal exclusions and wrongs within normative categories that demand redress and falsify “the mainstream fiction of the police order … as the real.”3 Nakajima’s work therefore provides us with an exemplary opportunity to test the adequacy of our accounts of art, politics, and possibility with the actions of a strangely present, even pivotal, yet overlooked figure. Such challenges are compounded further by the fact that much of Nakajima’s work—like many of the forms of eventfulness in the 1960s—has comprised an inherently evanescent, improvisational form of performance. Nakajima’s own improbably extensive practices of documentation, however, retained despite years of poverty, travel, and serial expulsions, fortunately supply abundant evidence of the breadth of his actions and the wide range of their enthusiastic reception, and, as exemplified in the preceding chapters, give scope in turn for a reassessment of each of these scenes in light of his evocative, elusive engagements and their afterlives. Our task therefore demands attention to the evanescent, to the untimely, and to eventfulness as the very essence of historical transformation and human possibility. It is to relate seemingly small things to a changeable “context” that is actually a dynamic multiplicity, one open to lines of temporal connection and rupture. Nakajima’s late-1950s performance work in the oddly unstructured, expanding spaces of commuting through trains, stations, and streets, for example, predates similar and better-known explorations by avant-gardists in Tokyo and beyond.4 His chanting, free-form, often collaborative public performances across Europe likewise demand consideration within the broader contemporaneous explorations of ritual, ceremony, and bodily possibility in art in the 1960s—and indeed occasion a reassessment of the specific interrelations and productively unclear borders of art, performance, and politics. Again and again, Nakajima seems to have played a role in jump-starting local spaces of possibility, from Tokyo to Ubbeboda, from Spui Square and the Dutch Provos to Antwerp and Sweden. In a sense, he appears as a paradoxically untimely figure of timely intervention. And yet, to reduce his work to such effects and presume a clear intentionality from such results is to mistake the ways in which such possibilities might become realized through art. Jacques Rancière argues that the very capacity of art to transform perception is predicated upon the unpredictability of its results—and, in this sense, we might celebrate Nakajima’s experimentalism for itself, in its unbounded and exuberant productivity, and, through it, an example of how such work might give rise to unforeseeable results and new practices alike. Rather than a simple relation of work and context, we have in Nakajima’s example a dialogical relation between planning and surprise, between engagement and transformation, between form and recognition. Each singular performance brought a spatiality5 of its own

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Figure 5.2  Street performance in Ginza, Tokyo, circa 1961. Photographer unknown. Courtesy Yoshio Nakajima Archive, Konstrundan Raus Art Center.

that, in turn, could engender further acts and energize other performers and scenes. These were “happenings,” a term that, as art historian Judith Rodenbeck notes—and as the previous chapters have documented—“was just one name for an emergent set of art practices being explored at the same moment by artists in the United States, Europe, and Japan … [and whose] form had been instantiated well before it had been named.”6 Following this promising approach, we might consider Nakajima’s paradoxical and provocative singularity within the globally emergent practices of what Rodenbeck calls “radical prototypes” (borrowing the term from a remark by Allan Kaprow). In what follows, I will consider Nakajima along these lines: first, in relation to art and politics in Japan in the late 1950s and early 1960s; then, in relation to the 1960s as a global moment. Finally, I will draw these themes together through examining the evolving understandings of Nakajima’s contemporary, the critic and participant Yoshida Yoshie. Looking back from 1972—and thus over a period corresponding with much of our study—Yoshida recognized a method to Nakajima’s strategic madness and through it rethought the relations of art, politics, and violence in the 1960s and the very possibilities of art, a challenge that we might likewise take up in the present. While singular, Nakajima is in one sense readily and broadly locatable within a hard-to-describe phenomenon: the explosion of radical art practices in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Artists in Japan, in particular, inaugurated an intense local dynamism and explosive experimentalism even as they manifested diverse uptakes of circulating information and unknowing synchronicities within this global

When Art Grabs You  143 moment.7 On one level, he fits within this dynamism, too—but as an oddity, both prescient and out of sync with an artistic and activist community that was itself out of sync with more mainstream developments in both art and politics. These artistic practices developed in close relation to the yearly exhibition, the Yomiuri Indépendant, a yearly, unjuried exhibition held at the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum with the sponsorship of the Yomiuri Newspaper Co.8 Nakajima attended the exhibition regularly from 1955 until its final year, in 1963, though he would formally exhibit there only once, in 1960, six years after his first visit; his participation in various unauthorized, guerrilla performances was another matter.9 A few words on this exhibition and the practices it incubated are thus helpful in situating Nakajima’s early work, both by association and by contrast. Its origins go back to the last years of the American Occupation of Japan, and the troubled question of freedom and art. Nakajima’s own presence within this dynamism also reveals a bit about its conventional framing. The person at the Yomiuri Newspaper Co. primarily responsible for the newspaper’s inaugurating (in 1949) and sustaining this annual exhibition was Kaidō Hideo. Kaidō had originally conceived of the need for a new Indépendant as a space for the rise of a democratic art, one freed from the conformism of the gadan art establishment (anchored by the Nitten exhibition and patronage networks). It was also to be a haven from the perceived limitations of the existing oppositional art groups, from conformist art groups in general, and from the party politics of the rival (and first) Nihon Indépendant; a space for “art revolution” [bijutsu kakumei].10 Both Kaidō and his friend and neighbor, the prominent Surrealist artist and critic Takiguchi Shūzō, had despaired of its ever realizing this aspiration, but in 1955, Kaidō saw signs of promising change—the very year that Nakajima first attended the exhibition. By the 1956 exhibition, this shift was clearly in view—though what precisely was coming into focus there remained elusive.11 Many commentators spoke of its energy or of the influence of contemporaneous movements such as Art Informel; Takiguchi himself was notably more reticent to indulge in the reductiveness of such labels, instead favoring an alternative vocabulary of expectation and anxiety. Takiguchi’s rhetoric anticipates continuing developments from these already vigorous transformations as a direct result of their departure from formalist expectations and categorizability.12 The timing for these developments corresponded with momentous transformations that would have major effects upon the perceptual politics of art and the everyday world. American covert and strategic support underlay both the 1955 advent of the new conservative coalition—the newly created Liberal Democratic Party (LDP)—and the contemporaneous economic recovery and subsequent boom years in Japan. Both developments were increasingly ideologically united in an LDP that took credit for the economic expansion and, from Prime Minister Ikeda Hayato onward, explicitly grounded its legitimacy in promises of high growth and income doubling.13 This effectively made the everyday world the site of both a depoliticizing ideology of consumption and conformism and, potentially, a critical politicization.

144  William Marotti Conversely, the 1955 reappearance of the Japan Communist Party (JCP) from its years of underground armed struggle saw a constriction of modes of Socialist Realist expression and a retreat from earlier art-popularizing efforts as the resurgent party sought to impose greater central control over its grass-roots cultural strategies.14 And while some fell into line with the party’s cultural politics, others such as Nakamura Hiroshi, an artist who had been pursuing a broader strategy of experimentally representational reportage, pushed back against such formal and political narrowness. In his first published essay, written in 1956 and published the next year, Nakamura famously defended the inherent openness of the medium with his declaration of art’s irreducible independence. While Nakamura remained intensely political, he rejected the reduction of art to political utility: “the tableau negates direct political effectiveness.”15 It was in part in response to such pressures that artists previously engaged with the rival Nihon Indépendant of the Japan Art Association (closely associated with the politics of the JCP) began to migrate to the Yomiuri. At the Yomiuri Indépendant, artists moved in a different direction, departing from the pictorial surface to explore the potentials of an ever-intensifying junk art.16 From the mid-1950s to the exhibition’s canceling, the Yomiuri served as the site for concentrating the interactions of a mostly younger collection of avantgarde artists—nurturing a playful atmosphere of experimentation, mutual stimulation, and one-upmanship, and promoting a rich, non-verbal discourse of ever-more provocative forms. During these years, the exhibition’s participants and patrons came to refer to this confluence with a new colloquialism for the event, “Yomiuri Anpan,” a name lightening its reference from a claim of democratic independence to the humble ubiquity of the eponymous bean-paste buns punned by this tongue-in-cheek abbreviation, anpan. Yet as Anpan, the exhibition had indeed come to host an art that in a sense realized the original “Indépendant” intentions of its founders in an unexpected form, mediated by humble and quotidian materials.17 In the years prior to the exhibition’s cancellation in January 1964 (just weeks before its scheduled opening), this art had gradually come to constitute a critical discourse on the everyday world through a diverse, objet-centered art practice incorporating assemblage, installation, and performance elements to intimate hidden structures and to figure unexamined interactions and potentials. And further, it had brought its augmented perspective out from the galleries and museum into the transforming spaces of everyday life to inject its radical forms of critical attention and dramatization into that quotidian world directly. This dynamism contrasted markedly with more commonly recognized forms of oppositional politics, which were in retreat from political defeats, from rightist violence, and from their vulnerability to the depoliticizing effects of an ongoing economic expansion—and promises of quotidian ease and comfort—upon which the ruling party had staked its legitimacy. Though built through wartime procurements, tech transfers, favorable exchange rates, and positionings within American Cold War policy (and its associated hot wars), the fruits of these strategic relations—refrigerators, televisions, salary increases, housing projects, and the like—provided a means to distract and demobilize political opposition to these very relationships. In a time of

When Art Grabs You  145 apparent political quiescence, it was this art that took the lead in drawing attention to the everyday world as the very locus of hidden domination. Nakajima’s late-1950s performance practice is on the leading edge of much of this development. His action painting on a long “scroll” of shōji paper on the floor of a national rail train circa 1957–1958, for example, is of a piece with the action painting of contemporaries such as Kudō Tetsumi likewise drawn to broadening the artwork to foreground its process, incorporating performance and the action of its creation. Judith Rodenbeck observes that in his 1958 essay Kaprow identified Pollock’s “legacy as action, not painting”; in the essay, Kaprow also gave this new kind of “concrete art” an equally new name: “happening,” chosen, according to Rodenbeck, to resonate with more popular events like sports or rallies (and not with theatrical stagings). In this, Kaprow declared, art after Pollock would pay intensified attention to the “unheard” and “ignored” within everyday life, creating “alchemies” for the coming decade: Pollock, as I see him, left us at the point where we must become preoccupied with and even dazzled by the space and objects of our everyday life, either our bodies, clothes, rooms, or, if need be, the vastness of Forty-second Street. Not satisfied with the suggestion through paint of our other senses, we shall utilize the specific substances of sight, sound, movements, people, odors, touch. Objects of every sort are materials for the new art: paint, chairs, food, electric and neon lights, smoke, water, old socks, a dog, movies, a thousand other things that will be discovered by the present generation of artists. Not only will these bold creators show us, as if for the first time, the world we have always had about us but ignored, but they will disclose entirely unheard- of happenings and events, found in garbage cans, police files, hotel lobbies; seen in store windows and on the streets; and sensed in dreams and horrible accidents. … All will become materials for this new concrete art. … The young artist of today need no longer say “I am a painter” or “a poet” or “a dancer.” He is simply an “artist.” All of life will be open to him. He will discover out of the ordinary things the meaning of ordinariness. He will not try to make them extraordinary. Only their real meaning will be stated. But out of nothing he will devise the extraordinary and then maybe nothingness as well. People will be delighted or horrified, critics will be confused or amused, but these, I am sure, will be the alchemies of the 1960s.18 As action or as happenings, this “new concrete art” would crucially attend to eventfulness in realms not only excluded from art, but also from eventfulness itself: the “spaces and objects of our everyday life.” Kudō and Nakajima’s contemporaneous embrace of action might well feature as examples of the international practices that Rodenbeck argues “instantiated [this form of art] well before it had been named.”19 We could thus conceivably speak generally of Nakajima’s having taken part, while still in high school, in the reception of this broad practice—or better, in his participating in it—contemporaneously with its aggressive publicization by major figures from both America and France. As Shimada notes in her chapter, Nakajima himself speaks of having been

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Figure 5.3 From Nakajima’s scrapbooks: a collage work featuring a modified photo of Nakajima’s action painting on shōji paper, on the floor of a national rail train circa 1957-1958, with a portion excised by the artist; the small sideways portrait element is of Itoi Kanji, a.k.a. Dadakan. Traces remain of pasted diagonal additions subsequently removed by Nakajima. Such overlays and excisions give substance to the kind of fractures Nakajima hoped to effect in daily life through his happenings. Itoi’s image literalizes Nakajima’s sense of his orthogonal contribution to such work. Photographers unknown. Courtesy Yoshio Nakajima Archive, Konstrundan Raus Art Center.

deeply impressed by the Tokyo “action” performance in September of 1957 by Georges Mathieu, who was visiting with Michel Tapié to promote the gestural abstraction of Art Informel—impressed, but confident that he could “do better.”20 We might thus consider Nakajima’s use of the scroll-like shōji paper, bringing the humble construction material into relation with the commuting space of the train and with action art, as refining Mathieu’s kitschy citation of Japanese premodern history, while eschewing Mathieu’s Orientalizing samurai pose and auteurship. The train’s growing importance as a space of a transforming daily life went hand in hand with expanding commute times, a consequence of state investments in danchi public housing to promote nuclear families, worker mobility, and dispersed living patterns in structures denser than those of older-style housing forms featuring shōji paper screens.21 Nakajima would energetically expand on such cues to action— painting directly on streets and objects and incorporating himself directly via

When Art Grabs You  147 painting on his own body—but this, too, is consonant with the broader engaged uptake of the practice in Japan.22 Such experiments with action spoke to a broader international awareness of developments in art, one that has often been eclipsed by a narrative focused excessively on the contemporaneous “Informel whirlwind.” The very source of its alleged watershed moment, the Art of Today’s World (Sekai: konnichi no bijutsu) exhibition of November 1956, featured Informel works only as a portion of the total works exhibited, as organizer Segi Shin’ichi pointed out in 2009.23 In fact, Nakajima’s contemporaneous (and subsequent) painting practice might reflect his interest in the palettes and abstractly figurative approaches of some of the other participants in the 1956 exhibition, including Karel Appel (1921–2006), formerly of CoBrA. Such interests may date even earlier, to 1955, the year Nakajima first attended the Yomiuri Indépendant. That year featured a handful of French painters, most invited through artist and writer Okamoto Tarō’s personal connections; they included the Algerian-born artist Jean Michel Atlan (1913–1960).24 Atlan’s pieces were twice featured as standout works in the Yomiuri Shinbun’s coverage of the exhibition; these exhibited works, Kagami ni mukau tōyō no onna (Oriental Woman in the Mirror), and Ban’ō (Barbarian King), evidenced some of the later developments of what Willemijn Stokvis called the “CoBrA language” in its ambiguous mix of abstraction and figurative primitivism, subdued earth tones, and flashes of color, like a memory of the better-known CoBrA preference for primary colors set off by black borders.25 On a personal and somewhat less ostentatious level, Nakajima’s recollection of filling sketchbook after sketchbook with pages so replete with energetic sketching details they were nearly black (see Shimada’s chapter) likewise testifies to his constant intake of all that he saw and equally constant need to process it through art. Yet, as is often typical with Nakajima, his distinctive approach seems also provocatively untimely, anticipating others’ attention to trains and the strange space of commuting by several years, if we consider the October 1962 “Yamanote Event” of Nakanishi Natsuyuki, Takamatsu Jirō, Kawani Hiroshi, and others, or Zero Jigen’s later rituals on the Tōden line.26 It likewise anticipates Nakajima’s later related work collaborating in anti-car performances in 1964 and 1965 in Belgium and the Netherlands with Thom Jaspers, Hugo Heyrman, Wout Vercammen, and others, as discussed in the chapters by Stefan Wouters and Peter van der Meijden— including the May 21, 1965 Galerie Honger event. As Van der Meijden documents, Nakajima and others’ intense provocations cleared a degree of conceptual space for “white” measures such as the WHITE BICYCLE and other plans against what the Provos called the “car monster”—even as the Provos themselves adopted similarly interventionist, traffic-disrupting tactics. Temporal lines, converging into rupture. Nakajima was not alone in his attention to trains and other transformations in daily lives, though his performance strategies of hazardous interruption brought a directness and intensity that fit uneasily within norms of art and protest. Art historian Namiko Kunimoto speculates how the work of Tanaka Atsuko of the Gutai group may have likewise encompassed aspects of newspaper reporting on the alarming incidence of young women’s suicide by train in Osaka—a point

148  William Marotti overlooked in most accounts of Tanaka’s work. As Kunimoto notes, at the Gutai exhibition in Ashiya Park, Outdoor Exhibition to Challenge the Midsummer Sun (1956), Tanaka sequenced the lights illuminating her installation work, Stage Clothes, to the light and sound of Kanayama Akira’s Alarm, an actual railway crossing signal. Kunimoto considers the literalization of the freighting of women’s bodies with the burdens of the booming electronics industry—an industry utterly dependent upon the labor of young women—in Tanaka’s famous performance of her Electric Dress work, featuring the artist, clad in vinyl, inside the heavy, hot cluster of brightly lit bulbs and ominously humming electrical connections. The contemporaneous promise of a “bright life” relied upon exploiting women’s labor and household finances in ways unfigured by celebrations of domesticity, one of manifold “fractures” Kunimoto associates with Tanaka’s works. Commuting spaces were marked by such connections—and could be terminal points for those stresses, as well.27 If we examine Nakajima’s train-stopping action at Ochanomizu Station, in 1957, revealed in Yoshiko Shimada’s chapter as a mix of careful planning and spontaneity, we might also note its anticipation of activist tactics of disruption the following year, when on November 5, 1958, students and railway workers blocked trains at Akabane and Ueno stations, part of a 4,000,000-person series of national strikes and actions against the draconian proposed Police Bill.28 Such examples allow us to consider the paradoxical role of untimely actions in the very form of 1960s art and politics, a point to which I now turn.

Nakajima and the Global 1960s There is perhaps no better evidence for the persistent relevance of the 1960s to the world at large than its liminal status, where it figures as either meaningless or as the font from which all vices flow. As an exemplary case of the latter, in April of 2019, Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI blamed the pedophile scandals of the Catholic Church upon the “Revolution of ’68” and its obliteration of all norms.29 Conversely, assertions of the irrelevance of the 1960s, of its decline and failure, lean on narratives of declension predominant in scholarship and popular culture by the 1980s.30 These accusations of insignificance, of decay, and of failure all redeploy the same frameworks of understanding originally targeted by political and creative action, and thus effectively demand proofs under the very terms these movements rejected from the outset. Kristin Ross thus names these as “confiscations,” a huge “nothing to see here” directed at an incredible array of creative work and mobilizations in the service of transforming existing social arrangements, practices, institutions, and perceptions.31 But what analytical framework might reach beyond such bad-faith interpretations to grasp this multiplicity adequately—and to relate work within it to this mobile context? The global moment of the 1960s was energized by the radical transformations wrought by decolonization and postwar capitalist expansion, both of which refigured lives and perceptions throughout the world on multiple scales, upending prior norms and understandings, and supporting a sense and even expectation of

When Art Grabs You  149 eventfulness and connection. As Franz Fanon observed, “For once, they [the colonized] are in tune with their time. … The colonized, [so-called] underdeveloped man is today a political creature in the most global sense of the term.” Anticolonial struggles entailed a practical undoing of violent, racialized minoritization: these struggles created a kind of grudging acknowledgment of equality by counterposing force to force.32 Likewise, the convergence of diverse scenes of politics upon the importance of examining one’s own daily life for its connection to forms of domination served to articulate and reimagine connections between the global and local. Perhaps the best example of this dynamic is the figure of the Vietnam War as a reference point across diverse political scenes. Demonstrating a chain of associations between this war and one’s daily life was an ultimate proof of its complicity; breaking such connections through new collective practices, in turn, could make the personal a site of effective political action. While such an approach might seem obvious enough in the United States and even in Japan with its myriad connections supporting the war, one can equally note its importance in places of far less obvious connection such as Mexico33 and in France, where such considerations often seemed oddly innocent of knowledge of their prior war against the anti-colonial struggle.34 Nakajima, we should note, comes from a point of multiple convergences: a Japan whose economic resurgence was predicated upon direct and indirect ties to the Korean and Vietnam Wars and the postwar restoration of links to its wartime economic periphery and former colonies. This created the conditions for a decade of record-high growth that became the basis of the ruling party’s claims of legitimacy, even as its tumult yielded the detritus that became materials for an objet-centric art of junk, installations, and happenings exploring this transforming everyday world. If “the 1960s” has come to condense a broader set of transformations, the iconic year 1968 stands in for their specific intensification and distillation. Kristin Ross argues that the very form of a “1968 politics” consists first in a “flight from social determinations.”35 It begins, that is, with dissensus, Jacques Rancière’s term for a departure from or refusal of given categories of social belonging and practice in favor of recognizing a novel set of speakers proposing a different configuration of the social. Dissensus is a transformation in the perceptual world in favor of demands arising from a new place or group, one that cannot be identified within the given but that claims its right to equality without prior authorization. It thus begins as noise, as unrecognized demands by an unrecognized constituency—and for this very reason, it is preemptively excluded by sociologically informed analyses that follow the very normative categories this politics rejects in its first stirrings. Though it may end up in large-scale movements and mobilizations, such politics necessarily arises out of small breakthroughs or transformations that generate, on a microscale, new ways of understanding the social. It also necessarily encounters resistance to such nonconformity—a resistance that Rancière terms police, considered not as state agents (the “empirical police”) but rather as a broad practice of political facilitation and silencing, a defense against new demands and practices that asserts the completeness and adequacy of the given categories of the social.36

150  William Marotti Beyond intentional opposition, the inertia of the given can itself function effectively to obscure such politics: as I have argued elsewhere, precisely because the most powerfully transformative examples depart from social categories as their very mode of activism, politics itself departs from conventionally identifiable forms and becomes unrecognizable to an analysis keyed to such formalism. In short, as politics, it precisely did not look like what might commonly be recognized as “political.”37 Crucially, because this politics doesn’t follow recognized categories for belonging and action, including political action, its very politicality appears in uncanny, ambiguous forms.38 The proliferation of such ambiguous figures both marked and enabled the advent of a generalized radical politics manifested in multiple, parallel forms. Understood this way, we can think of the 1960s as a moment of intensifying and proliferating scenes of political dissensus, of assertions of equality and demands for an end to myriad forms of domination. If such possibilities are thus not simply the singular features of this past historical moment, then the memory and history of such moments remain as contentious legacies—and their dismissals become part of the stakes of politics in the present. Such a dissensual history of 1968 in Japan, and of 1968 in general, presents exemplary but non-unique cases of this form of politics. In Rancière’s analysis, the flight from social determinations that characterizes dissensus is the very form of politics itself—and thus 1968 may inform, and be informed by, other historical examples while also speaking to the stakes of historical analyses in general.39 This very theorization is itself part of this politics and its afterlives.40 If we take 1968, and the 1960s, as an iconic moment of proliferating scenes of dissensus, of politics, we can make sense of the ways in which actions within seemingly discrete and localized circumstances occasioned frequent unknowing parallels, and—when far-flung, distant scenes became visible within media networks—mutual recognitions and stimulations despite such apparent differences. Such dissensual eruptions occasioned far-flung solidarities, mutual support, and inspiration. This global 1968 was realized not as modular diffusion from some iconic, governing form, but rather as an expanding set of overlapping instances of political activation, all contributing to a perceived “eventfulness,” a sense that “something’s happening.” Such perceptions were in fact an essential part of this politics, facilitating new ways of viewing and engaging the world as a part of an inchoate but real transformation. This was the form of a politics of 1968 at any scale, one that extended discontinuously across local, national, transnational, and global levels, in struggles that demonstrated both essential similarities and profound gaps. The diversity of these scenes of struggle intimated a sense of shared eventfulness even, or because of, their apparent differences: politics as a demand for equal human worth and an end to domination could face myriad forms of oppression yet be recognizable in its universality.41 In this sense, each struggle manifested this perceptible dimension of universality, a global dimension of politics immanent in, and not

When Art Grabs You  151 external to, each particular scene—and in excess of local intentions, controls, and conditions. Rancière contrasts such an approach to descriptions positing an “inventory” of positions immanent to an immediate context, part of the “interpretive machine” of the logic of consensus into which “the very possibility of a specific conflict disappears without remainder.”42 As Kristin Ross has argued, the original opposition to dissensual politics by a police assertion of uneventfulness becomes redoubled in retrospective assessments that “confiscate” this politics through modes that render it imperceptible. Ross discusses two modes in chief: the biographical—which denies collective becoming and subjectivation; and the sociological—which erases novel claims by redeploying police categories of social normalcy.43 The dimension of “universality,” by contrast, relates to the possibilities of politics, possibilities in excess of any accounting of positions. It was in evidence at the time in the mutual recognitions of kindred scenes of struggle across apparently incomparable situations, and practically, through parallels such as the happening, a technique combining performance, involvement, and intensified forms of attention. In such a moment of connection, difference, and eventfulness, art in all of its forms flourished; not just “movement art” intended to spur identifiable politics but also, and perhaps more crucially, art and performance exploring the very borders of these perceptual transformations—and their own limits as modes of thought and action—for unforeseen ends. It is here that Nakajima’s remarkable commitment to the possibilities of art came to play such an unpredictable yet seminal role. In his self-authorized improvisational happenings, Nakajima brought a distinctive eventfulness transforming possibilities of art and politics alike, contributing his untimely practice to a global moment of discontinuous solidarities and “radical prototypes.” By consistently outpacing conventional categories, Nakajima’s work provides an exemplary case of the essence of this global moment. Yet equally because of that lack of fit, it proved difficult to grasp, even for those usually predisposed to appreciating such efforts. To better explicate this dimension of Nakajima’s work, I will examine the evolving contemporaneous reflections by Yoshida Yoshie, one of the few Japanese critics to have taken Nakajima’s art seriously.

At the gates of art, politics, and violence: Nakajima and the Yomiuri Indépendant In front of the Tokyo metropolitan art museum, venue for the fifteenth Yomiuri Indépendant exhibition, there was a violent lunatic. Raving. His face painted white, dragging an objet around. Nearby quietly towered the emperor of destruction, Itoi Kanji or Dadakan, who yanked and split the youth’s shirt. His compatriot, now half naked, suddenly drawing near, flew at me as I stood like an onlooker (yajiumazen). Angered, I tried grappling with him. A museum worker ran down the stairs. We could hear patrol car sirens. The Yomiuri Indépendant exhibition met its end that year and was suspended. That was nine years ago.44

152  William Marotti With this recollection of a sudden, shocking attack in March of 1963, art critic Yoshida Yoshie commences an introduction prefacing his interview with Yoshio Nakajima in the August 1972 issue of Film Criticism. Yoshida’s personalized narrative of Nakajima’s career begins with this first direct encounter with Nakajima, going on to document Nakajima’s travels and actions, both celebrated and unknown, together with Yoshida’s own evolving perspectives—including his perspective on the art world following this final year of the Yomiuri Indépendant exhibition. The piece thus moves from an affront to appreciation and dialogue and invites its readers to make a similar journey themselves in order to grasp the potentials of an inherently difficult-to-grasp, and even off-putting, practice of radically transformative art and performance within the context of the preceding decade.45 It is thus a fitting place to begin my related reflections on Nakajima’s place in the long 1960s and beyond as framed by the detailed arguments by my colleagues in the preceding chapters. Yoshida had been among the earliest and most attentive appreciators of the explosively unruly art and performance practices of the late 1950s and early 1960s. Centered on the “crucible” of the Yomiuri Indépendant exhibition, these practices— including objets and installations as well as increasingly provocative happenings— energetically crossed genre boundaries and transgressed the limits of what was perceived as art—or legal. The exhibition’s cancellation had followed the crescendo of these practices in evidence at the final exhibition, in 1963, having at last exceeded what the newspaper and museum were willing to support.46 While such practices provoked consternation and confusion among some observers and critics, Yoshida had been particularly drawn to them—as witness, occasional participant, and even organizer—and had thus come to the attention of Nakajima and Itoi. As Shimada notes in her chapter, Nakajima and Itoi, along with fellow Unbeat member Tashiro Minoru, had previously attended a particularly intense happening organized by Yoshida, the August 15, 1962 “Art Minus Art (In Commemoration of the Defeat in the War),”47 featuring artists and performers from the former Neo-Dada group (Akasegawa Genpei, Yoshimura Masanobu, Yoshino Tatsumi, Shinohara Ushio, Masuzawa Kinpei,48 and Kazakura Sho); the Music group (Tone Yasunao and Kosugi Takehisa); Hirokawa Harufumi49; and butoh dance founder Hijikata Tatsumi. The title parodied the euphemistic commemorations for “war’s end,” instead ostensibly celebrating its loss.50 The event was one of a number attended by Nakajima, bringing both his enthusiasm and his critical eye. Looking back to it, one might note a point of divergence between his and Yoshida’s approaches and perceptions. Arriving at Kunitachi Civic Hall, the audience, having purchased tickets to a lavish commemorative “dinner,” found themselves instead observing the artists, seated about a table, eating a meal on their own in a hall denuded of chairs. After much of the audience had left, the artists began a series of improvised performances ranging from Kosugi’s Anima I string-winding “music” and Tone’s mapguided chance operation performance, in which he dropped erasers on an upended piano, to Yoshimura’s standing atop the banquet table, brushing his teeth until his mouth streamed blood; Kazakura’s performing his falling from a chair happening; and Hijikata, first performing a nude improvised dance, splashing himself with

When Art Grabs You  153

Figure 5.4 From Nakajima’s scrapbooks: A collage work featuring a photo of Itoi Kanji a.k.a. Dadakan and Nakajima on their way to Art Minus Art (in commemoration of the defeat in the war), a performance event organized by Yoshida Yoshie, August 15, 1962. Again, Nakajima has made an excision diagonally through the photo, interrupting the scene with its slashed gap in this otherwise conventional documentation. Photographer unknown. Courtesy Yoshio Nakajima Archive, Konstrundan Raus Art Center.

water from the sink tap and then, with Akasegawa assisting, using a hot iron to brand Kazakura’s chest for the latter’s Execution of [Marquis de] Sade’s Last Will and Testament.51 Yoshida’s role in the event had chiefly been to gather this broad selection of performers—but even this spoke to his extensive connections and appreciation of the artist communities, as well as his disregard for genre conventions. Yoshida had also been a trusted confidant as well for these artists as they considered increasingly radical interventions into art and politics, at one point listening attentively to a serious discussion among members of the Neo-Dada group over possible plans to blow up the Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum.52 It was perhaps for this perceived level of connectedness and attunement that Tashiro suggested to Nakajima that he accost Yoshida on that museum’s steps—an ironic shifting of roles in effect, from co-conspirator to onlooker pressed suddenly into involvement. While Yoshida’s appreciation for radical action had been substantial, this incident still marked a

154  William Marotti

Figure 5.5 Yoshida Yoshie at his Modern Art Center of Japan ca. 1965, the first artist-run and collectively-financed art center in Japan. The burn hole in the photo over Yoshida’s heart resembles the burn hole made by Nakanishi Natsuyuki in his invitation to the Yamanote event of 1962. Courtesy of Yoshida Yoshie Papers, UCLA.

limit within his perception of happenings—a limit bounding the physical transgression of his own personal space. That evolving appreciation had been shaped by incidents well outside Tokyo. In November of 1962, Yoshida had traveled to Fukuoka with Tone, Kosugi, and Kazakura in response to an advertised call to join a “Grand Meeting of Heroes,” an event hosted by members of the Kyushu-ha art group, including Sakurai Takami, Ōyama Uichi, Tabe Mitsuko, Obata Hidesuke, Hataraki Tadashi, and Miyazaki Junnosuke, joined by Chō Yoriko and others. Itoi Kanji also participated, journeying from Ichikawa City (on the eastern edge of Tokyo, in Chiba prefecture); he commenced the event by handing out small assemblage works to the participants.53 The site was an empty, rainy beach and a deserted two-story dressing room structure, and the event a last-ditch attempt by Sakurai to revive the Kyushu-ha group after a series of setbacks. Sakurai felt a particular urgency out of his aspiration to foment art-based “revolution”54—but the event was also of a piece with the group’s collective practical struggles, which combined a trenchant assertion of their right to create despite their humble backgrounds and lack of formal training, together with a practice that stretched the bounds of what might be recognized as art.55 The event comprised a number of genre-pushing and intentionally extreme acts, including Obata Hidesuke’s performance featuring a climax in which he killed two chickens with a scalpel, covering one with black paint atop a white canvas and crucifying another with nails over a black canvas.56 Yoshida’s

When Art Grabs You  155 assessment, published the following summer, found much of this to be nonetheless constrained in its potentials by its predetermined, scripted framing and results. Yoshida noted that most of the Kyushu-ha group’s actions, however destructive, were conceived as unfolding within a constructed “stage” or “venue” as a kind of didactic theater, framing a relationship with the audience that was passive and prefigured.57 To Yoshida, Obata’s work was prolonged and minutely overdetailed; likewise, Ōyama Uichi’s Symbol for Old Art, a tower crammed full of gold-lacquered whiskey bottles that he elaborately destroyed, dragged to the beach, burned, and rolled about in its debris, looked “awfully sentimental.”58 All of these acts were, in Yoshida’s view, under the control of either anticipated results or the dramaturgy of a climactic resolution and thus, regardless of their oppositional intent, ended up remaining within those boundaries.59 Yoshida’s essential distinction is not between capitol and locality—he even reframes the question of “peripheral art” as a universal problem, the “localized situation of art”—but rather, between thinking which remains within preexisting bounds and predetermines its results, versus practices that incorporate chance or unscripted elements that might lead to “discoveries”—that is, new practices and new perceptions. While many local groups might celebrate camaraderie, commitment, or oppositional stances (Yoshida calls them nakayoshi gurūpu, or “chummy groups”), they create a kind of preserve, a “‘conceptually exhausted’ space”60 in which the group members are bent upon remaining within what they already know and thereby close themselves off from possibilities—the art effectively affirming the predetermined posture instead of providing a space for something new to arise. Yoshida conceives of such art as didactic and effectively conformist within a self-conception of preconceived oppositionality—and thus insulated from practices that might yield discoveries through art itself.61 Yoshida himself had had a long experience with the tensions among encounters with art, expectations, and pedagogical intent in diverse settings. It was in no small part thanks to Yoshida’s efforts between 1950 and 1954 that Maruki Iri and Toshi’s62 remarkable Hiroshima Panels series came to public notice: carrying the works as scrolls, he had toured all around Japan, putting on exhibitions and holding discussions at over 300 locations. He also acutely felt the problem of the expanding capital and its massive centralization of institutional authority and had journeyed to Kyushu (and elsewhere) in the hope of finding and supporting expression stifled within the center. For Yoshida, the central problem was the challenge of escaping from the monstrosities (bakemono) of capital and periphery alike and their tendency to devour all forms of deviation from their norms.63 Yoshida contrasts such planning and didacticism with the practice of “happenings,” offering a description reminiscent of the minimally organized and unplanned performances at the earlier Dinner Party: What is discovered from happenings is in general the almost complete rejection of any feeling of solidarity. It is sufficient for each person to discover signs from within their various disordered, chance acts, and to arrange them with

156  William Marotti other sign equivalents. Breaking the chummy group thought into atoms, they discover what we might perhaps call changed signification, or communication of true meanings.64 Yoshida celebrates such “discoveries” as instances when art breaks with preexisting perceptions and thoughts, finding them to arise from a quality of attention unbounded by dramaturgy, expectations, habits, traditions, intentions, declarations of political intent, or any other prefigurements. He points to an array of such practices that manage to break free and thereby avoid being “devoured by monsters,” the fate of art bound to repetition and the extant. Yoshida’s other examples of such transformative, discovery-producing works include that of people working within traditional arts as well as those of other contemporary artists. Yoshida specifically commends Kyushu-ha member Miyazaki Junnosuke65 as worthy of the “hero” moniker from the event’s title for his action digging huge holes in the beach in the dark of the night for hours without ostensible purpose.66 Yoshida compares it with Ferdinand Cheval’s slow but momentous work, collecting stones with his cart and painstakingly assembling his palace,67 even though Miyazaki’s results would be far less visible and permanent—the point’s being not about creating a persisting work but rather about maintaining a brave commitment without assurance of its outcome, about taking a leap in the dark. For Yoshida, the very self-assurance of a predictable result betrays the way in which a work or action might be trapped within preexisting understandings and knowledge and thereby prey to monstrosity.68 In his essay, Yoshida introduces the term “happening” to characterize the performances that night by the two members from the Music group, Kosugi and Tone, “done with an approach, in [John] Cage’s words, of ‘not performing, but rather, doing what we are doing right now, with exactitude.’”69 This understanding of “happening” was linked to such events having a different relation to time: rather than a scripted unfolding of a prefigured narrative, the artists were to pay close attention to their acts and to be alert for something new, out of sync with conventional expectations—in a word, the untimely. Improvisational approaches might combine with objets to yield new perceptions and practices. The Music group had previously written some two years prior about their combination of improvisation with sonic objets. Tone had described their momentous “discovery” May of 1960 of “an absolutely new music … an improvisational work of musique concrète done collectively,” bringing improvisatory action into the predeterminations of the latter. Its first presentation in combination with dance had been hailed by the group as a new form of automatism, a possible route out of restrictive determinations and toward an unknowable, liberatory future. Their sense of having made broad, even world-changing discoveries underlay their decision to call themselves the “Music” group, staking a claim to a total critique and reconstruction akin to that of the proto-Surrealist/Dada journal, Littérature, as explicated by Maurice Blanchot (in an essay translated by Tone).70 In other words, their name laid claim to a radical equality, a rethinking of music itself as an authentic, immanent universalism. While Yoshida quotes Cage, the Music group’s approach in fact was much broader, combining chance and improvisation with the contemporaneous practice of objets out

When Art Grabs You  157 of the Yomiuri Indépendant exhibitions—and without the detours through Zen Buddhism.71 Their practice demanded a transformed, focused attention upon works composed of transformed everyday objects under radical scrutiny.72 Yoshida’s assessment of the Kyushu event was published the following summer, nearly half a year later. His endorsement of happenings, impromptu performances, and encounters with the unfamiliar was written after the final Yomiuri Indépendant in 1963, and thus after his encounter with Nakajima on the steps outside the very exhibition that stood for the very struggle between discovery and constraint, between new practices and the policing of prior norms. While neither the exhibition nor the encounter figures directly in Yoshida’s 1963 essay or its centering of happenings and discoveries, the two are directly combined in his 1972 account from the perspective of a further nine years of experience—nine years in which Yoshida has come to reappraise Nakajima’s approach and significance.73 Yoshida’s reaction to Nakajima’s March 1963 attack on the steps of the museum, as he recounts in 1972, thus measures a number of distances beyond the gap between his expectations and Nakajima’s surprise assault. The space of the steps itself densely signified both openings and closures. The openings ranged from the promise of this Indépendant as a means for unjuried access to the institutional space74 and to the practices thereby engendered by this crucible for independent work,75 practices that were then exceeding this institutional limit, metaphorically and literally. Multiple incursions into the museum galleries employed limit-transgressing guerrilla strategies for unauthorized performance—sometimes stealthily, carefully planned and smoothly accomplished without being apprehended, as in the case of a performance by Zero Dimension (Zero jigen) joined by Kishimoto Sayoko (formerly of Neo-Dada) and Nakajima. Zero Dimension’s Katō Yoshihiro had submitted a set of wall and floor objets/installation works with ambiguous titles, effectively readying a performance space for the artists to recline atop.76 Kazakura entered himself as a sculpture, but his subsequent pantless performance was interrupted by museum staff.77 Exhibition practices were also literally as well as figuratively expanding beyond the museum’s bounds. Takamatsu Jirō’s Cord (Himo) objet work, for example, featuring a wall-hung white curtain from which a ten-meter black plastic cord, lumpy with various embedded quotidian objects, descended to meander across the floor and into the next gallery. Fellow artists extended the logic of the piece by attaching a string to its end and running it through the museum, down the steps, and all the way to the park entrance to Ueno Station, a key commuting point over a kilometer away.78 Contemporaneous street performances by groups energized by the yearly exhibition ranged widely and included an event in 1962 involving Takamatsu himself (along with Nakanishi Natsuyuki and other artists) on the circular Yamanote train line and platforms, one which had ended at Ueno Station.79 This event, together with Yoshida’s Dinner Party and a failed plan to erect a guillotine in the Imperial Plaza, gave rise in discussions to a commitment to a practice of direct action, through and beyond art—with participants conceptualizing their own practice as “a new source of political energies and critical revelations within the routines of an ‘eventless’ daily world” even as other forms of political opposition had dwindled to a point of apparent quiescence.80

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Figure 5.6  Kazakura Shō performing Stuff Comes from Somewhere and Goes Somewhere [Jibutsu wa doko kara kite doko e iku], at the 15th Yomiuri Indépendant exhibition (1963). Visible behind Kazakura is Kosugi Takehisa, performing Chamber Music/Anima 2 inside one of his two zipper-laden cloth bag submissions to the exhibition, both entitled Cheironomy/Instrument, and submitted as “sculpture” (as was Kazakura’s work). Courtesy Hashimoto Toshiko.

The discussions also paved the way for the formation of Hi-Red Center (the name a portentous acronym formed by the first characters in the principal artist’s surnames—Takamatsu, Akasegawa, and Nakanishi), an amorphous group of artists committed to exploring work beyond both art and politics as conventionally understood. Their acts and writings assiduously avoided any reference to art itself while employing strategies to either overformalize familiar conventions or to interrupt casual reception.81 Conversely, the museum steps also marked closures: immediately, that of the closure of the museum space against works violating the six arbitrary rules against various forms of “offense”82 which were put in place following the 1962 Yomiuri Indépendant. Artists also experienced a looming sense that the exhibition itself had exceeded multiple institutional limits and might well be terminated—a premonition expressed graphically by artist and critic Imaizumi Yoshihiko’s painting shisu (death) onto the exhibition banner hanging by the museum steps, thereby

When Art Grabs You  159 transforming it into an obituary announcement, the “death of the 15th Yomiuri Indépendant.”83 The steps thus marked not just the prohibitions against specific works but moreover the imminent exclusion of the exhibition itself, and the entirety of its unruly art, from these institutional spaces.84 The steps were in this sense a border on multiple levels, points of struggle between the policing of norms of art and decorum against an art that exceeded those bounds and spaces. Standing on the steps, Yoshida’s position on all of this was clear—squarely on the side of an art expanding beyond all bounds, including those of art itself, to take on new significations and meanings. Yet despite his manifold involvements and receptive attitude, Yoshida found himself entirely unprepared for the experience of Nakajima’s “attack” (in Tashiro’s words, as Shimada documents). In a slightly more subdued account in another essay from 1972, Yoshida intimates again that his experience included a kind of violence: Among the charged events unfolding inside and outside of the museum, Dadakan, Tashiro, and Nakajima … did a mad dance on the stairs in front of the museum. Nakajima as always did his “moving objet”85 approach for involving the audience actively, but those involuntary, convulsive and manic gestures had become ever-more precise and well-executed in the six-year interval from the “Ochanomizu incident.”86 An awkward situation in which, having suffered the violent assault of this “moving objet”87 in front of the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum, I would long-remember the boisterous physical existence, whether I would or no.88 Looking back from 1972, Yoshida finds that this gap in many ways measured the potentials of art in the world in ways he had not yet grasped in 1963. Key to this is Yoshida’s account of the transformation he experienced in the attack: “[Nakajima] flew at me as I stood like an onlooker (yajiumazen). Angered, I tried grappling with him…” Yoshida here employs a term for a liminal figure, one central to contentions in the late 1960s: the gawking onlooker, or yajiuma, an ambiguous personage on the very border between activism and passivity, one who might be drawn into direct participation. In police accounts, yajiuma would figure as sketchy opportunists; their inclusion could provide the means by which to taint activism with implications ranging from frivolity to criminality, effectively following the logic of the police itself—that is, of the inherent wrongness of opposition to authority itself. Artist Akasegawa Genpei, by contrast, treated the yajiuma as the perceptual border traversed by art and politics itself, a figure he featured in a variety of recurring visual pun characters literalized as horses (the “uma” of “yajiuma”).89 With the benefit of hindsight, Yoshida was thus implicating himself in 1963 in such a liminal state of observation, one in which his own immediate experience of Nakajima’s intervention as violence indicated something inadequate in his own comfortable comportment. The “feigned madness” of Nakajima thus masked a “ever-more precise and well-executed” approach capable of impinging itself upon Yoshida’s consciousness in a productive manner. It was an intervention worthy of the name “moving objet”: while any number of artists at the Yomiuri Indépendant had gone so far as to insert themselves into the objet space of works (or simply enter

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Figure 5.7 Nakajima embraced by artist Matsuzawa Yutaka at Nakajima’s photo exhibition at Sebastian, the basement café space run by Nakajima’s high school art compatriot, Masayuki Kagami. The space was a favorite of Yoshida Yoshie’s. Shinjuku, 1972, photographer unknown. Courtesy Yoshio Nakajima Archive, Konstrundan Raus Art Center.

themselves as the work, in the case of Kazakura90), Nakajima is here credited effectively by Yoshida for mobilizing some aspect of objet-consciousness to become a perceptually transformative, moving objet—or, as Yoshida phrases it in the title of the piece, a “happenist.” What in fact immediately ensued were police sirens, and Nakajima’s arrest. Once again, the police followed in close proximity to Nakajima’s action.91 As Yoshida also recalls, it was Akasegawa who sidled up to Nakajima when he returned to the exhibition site after being released from the police station, encouraging the newly freed Nakajima: “you ought to do more of that.”92 The cancellation of the upcoming 1964 Yomiuri Indépendant was announced in January, the same month in which police visited Akasegawa’s home, beginning a long investigation of and prosecution for the crime of money imitation, or mōzō, for his monochrome, one-sided prints of the B-series 1,000-yen note.93 Yoshida’s rather cinematic depiction of Nakajima’s February departure from Japan in the wake of these events combines violent imagery with a description of a kind of heroism reminiscent of closing scenes from samurai films: I’ve written extensively on the circumstances of this 15th [Yomiuri Indépendant] … and can’t get into them here, but while our ears still resounded with the terrible sound of this precipitously sinking ship, this youth who had wrestled with me set off for Europe. Neither an unexpected departure, nor a despair in

When Art Grabs You  161 Japan (like Arakawa Shūsaku’s), but rather, leaving with sword in hand, dangling, still dripping blood.94 Yoshida’s imagery does capture something of the heroic, yet ephemeral nature of Nakajima’s actions set against a backdrop of constrained possibilities.95 As Shimada notes, Nakajima’s approach to performance yielded no “artworks” per se nor publicity for contemporaneous exhibitions, nor any of the other uses to which many similar events were put. His early association with the very icon for untimely, radical performance, Itōi Kanji, a.k.a. Dadakan, and his subsequent acts of experimental disruption both with and apart from Dadakan all testify to Nakajima’s prescient, untimely engagement in eventful action—practices he would refine in subsequent years, leading him to convergences with similar-minded provocateurs in Europe. Dadakan would be again arrested during the Unbeat Organizers’ performance in Osaka in December of 1963.96 Dadakan’s subsequent Ginza performance in October of 1964 (the very month of the Tokyo Olympics) triggered a harsher response. With a red cloth in his hand in the manner of a Olympic torchbearer, his head wrapped in a white loincloth, Dadakan ran through the Ginza, his actual loincloth slipping away until he was fully nude.97 As Shimada notes in her chapter, Nakajima received word from Dadakan of his arrest and months of incarceration in a mental institution sometime in early 1965—a period of intensifying performance actions by Nakajima in multiple cities, including Gouda, Delft, Amsterdam, Rotterdam, and Schiedam. Paraphrasing her interview with Nakajima, Shimada records his recollection that “because Itoi’s action was beyond explanation, it had all the more power as an artistic and political statement.” Itoi’s potent refusal to provide an account for his actions made a deep impression on Nakajima. In performance, and indeed in his self-authorized inclusion into an expansive nexus of practices, Nakajima would demonstrate an exemplary case of the eventful untimeliness that Rancière, Akasegawa, and others would read as an essential potential in artistic work, one that gives art its political power to intervene in perception and generate dissensual disruptions of the soft tyranny of the naturalized, common-sense world.98 Such readings of art’s potentials were themselves informed by the practices of this moment, reformulating transformative notions of art to address the unbounded, limit-defying aspects of these practices on the edge of art and politics. Within this dynamic field, Nakajima’s work again and again stands out from among that of contemporaneous artists as an untimely practice within an untimely art—even in Nakajima’s capacity to be swiftly drawn into similarly untimely practices. To the extent that such work, and such a career, challenges our comfortable accounts of art within history, we can thereby reexamine the adequacy of our accounts of an art and a politics that similarly eludes our descriptions, narratives, and teleology. Yoshida’s account does precisely this, crediting Nakajima for something Yoshida had immediately experienced as an attack. Yoshida’s later perceptual transition would parallel this traversal from outrage to engagement, acknowledging the fundamental experience of being shaken out of his comportment. Yoshida’s

162  William Marotti appreciation for Nakajima’s work closely associates his approach with that of the Provos (which he glosses as an abbreviation for “provocateurs” and as Holland’s analogous “Beat Tribe”)—his abbreviated synopsis for these years charts escalating police interventions into the youth art gatherings at the late-night “Magic Hall,” with Nakajima arrested some 13 times. Nakajima apparently sent Yoshida pamphlets at the time, stating in an accompanying letter that “my nine months in Holland were literally a struggle of blood and tears.”99 In the interview, Yoshida thanks Nakajima for sending him a copy of the 1966 Dit hap-hap-happens in Amsterdam, a documentary photobook that featured Nakajima by name in text and in Cor Jaring’s photos, including those from the seminal May 21, 1965 event at Galerie Honger (as discussed in Peter van der Meijden’s chapter). While the Dutch text may have posed challenges for Yoshida, Nakajima’s importance would have been readily graspable—including in the photo layout documenting his intense performance before a rapt crowd at Galerie Honger both inside the gallery and atop the car the artists had dragged outside (possibly before Nakajima poured the 50 liters of red liquid over himself and the car).100 Nakajima speaks of the gathering crowds at nightly, all-night performances at the Magic Center101 in Amsterdam—where one night might feature a concert, the next, a happening by Yoshio Nakajima. It started as a gathering of artists, but in about a week, political types showed up, and it quickly ex… ex… expanded, going out into the streets, becoming demonstrations… The po… police banned happenings, saying that there were becoming riots [bōdō], and the incidents ju… just expanded further.”102 Yoshida’s interview text here and elsewhere phonetically records Nakajima’s stutter, a feature of his speech included in the piece’s very title, proclaiming Nakajima as a “hap hap Happenist.” Rather than making an ableist mockery of Nakajima’s speech, with such details Yoshida puts the fractures in Nakajima’s wordflow into his account of the latter’s practice itself, suggesting a link between Nakajima’s distinctive, interrupted utterances and his propensity to interrupt an otherwise apparently seamless everyday. And, in fact, the stuttering speech in the title of the photobook itself rather resembles the “Hap-Hap-Hap-Happening” slogan shouted atop the statue of Atlas by Nakajima during the August 1965 event with Panamarenko, Heyrman, and Vercammen in Ostend, as documented by Wouters103—making Yoshida’s title not merely an echo of but a doubled reference to Nakajima’s key role within this scene. While present and imaged, however, Nakajima’s own precise role in events remains occluded in the photobook. It is unclear if Yoshida or even Nakajima was directly aware of this connection, though the reference to the earlier 1966 photobook is almost certainly intentional as it features pivotally in the interview. Yoshida’s other term for Nakajima’s actions equally points to their violation of norms and to the altered state that might provoke it: madness—or rather, “feigned, strategic madness,” yōkyō. The question of how feigned it might be lingers at times during the interview as transcribed. Yoshida asks Nakajima about seeing provocative photos of him in Leningrad and in Moscow, walking around with a

When Art Grabs You  163 pornographic picture attached to his head. Yoshida jokingly asks if he wasn’t afraid of being sent to Siberia: NAKAJIMA: 

Between 1965 and 1968 I went [to the USSR] about three times, e… each for about a month. The f… first time I was nabbed and detained for two hours. I was released with the assistance of a friend. As mad (“he’s nuts”). So I went again and did it. Looking like h… h… Hitler, with a little mustache. (laughs). YOSHIDA:  You really are crazy, aren’t you?104 Yoshida documents Nakajima’s elusive recourse in his frequent police interactions to different categories for nontypical behavior. Presented with such plausible explanations, authorities then allow him to continue his perplexing actions. In the USSR, Nakajima and his friends allude to some variety of lunacy; elsewhere, in England and Germany, he claims to be engaged in some esoteric traditional ritual. Nakajima is clear that these are all ploys: asked if his work might include some aspect of a formal ceremony (keishikiteki na seremonī), he responds, “I always start from a state of me… me… meaninglessness. Without any set time frame, as time is nonstop. I don’t much decide what my goal or image might be, right up to the point when I begin.”105 Such fungible, ready-made explanations were provided

Figure 5.8 (a and b) Nakajima performs Homage to Dadakan at the Kunstzone exhibition, Munich, 1971. Note the “Hap – Happenn” label on his back. Photographer unknown. Courtesy Yoshio Nakajima Archive, Konstrundan Raus Art Center.

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Figure 5.8 (Continued)

after the fact whenever Nakajima was apprehended by authorities, or—as the preceding chapters document—were gratuitously and dismissively appended to his acts by journalists. But as Nakajima observed of Itoi, it was the awesome, unexplained quality of his disruptions that might give such improvised work its power— power enough to surprise and shock even himself. By comparison, when Nakanishi Natsuyuki joined fellow artists (including Takamatsu Jirō, Imaizumi Yoshihiko, Kubota Noboru, and Kawani Hiroshi) to carry out the aforementioned part-planned, part-improvised action on the circular Yamanote train line, in 1962, he found the experience inwardly transformative to a surprising, even shocking degree.106 Though it had been preplanned as his own cue to commence, when his compatriot, Murata Kiichi, walked over to him inside the train and covered Nakanishi’s face in white greasepaint, Nakanishi found himself suddenly and radically altered, as if he were suddenly able to peep out of the order of the everyday.107 The experience was overwhelming: he had difficulty taking in all of the actions he participated in inside the trains and on station platforms, and in the end completely lost it, shouting “Let’s get out of here!” and running out of the station and into Ueno Park—out of the very exit to which a string would later extend from Takamatsu’s 1963 Yomiuri Indépendant entry, Rope (attached possibly by Nakanishi himself).108 Again, it was reflection upon such experiences—including Yoshida’s Dinner Party—that brought a set of artists, including Nakanishi, Takamatsu, and Akasegawa, to commit to an approach to direct action through art in early 1963 and to form their aforementioned group, Hi-Red Center.109 That is, their experiences surprised and agitated the performers themselves, leading them to transform both

When Art Grabs You  165

Figure 5.9 Nakanishi Natsuyuki, in white grease paint, illuminating the contents within his Portable Objet on board the train during the Yamanote event in 1962. Photo by Murai Tokuji, courtesy of Murai Hidemi.

their practice and their understandings in further pursuit of work that might prove similarly corrosive to a constraining quotidian life concealing forms of domination.110 For Nakajima, however, such revelations had been a matter of his daily experience since the late 1950s, part of his practice as a “happenist” avant la lettre of never-repeated improvisation and encounter. As Shimada details in her chapter, Nakajima had witnessed and rejected many of the celebrated art actions of the time, finding that they accorded too well with the audience’s art expectations by remaining within set bounds—and for this reason had disciplined himself to perform daily, unplanned, unrepeated actions out in the streets. As Yoshida phrases it, “[Nakajima] intuitively and physically understood the space brought about by the antiquotidian act and the possibility of an alternative communication. Of course, the term, ‘happening,’ didn’t yet exist.”111 And as Shimada documents in her research and in her interviews with the artist, Nakajima found himself as shocked as the witnesses to his actions, effectively making him another recipient of their violence upon his perceptions. This is not to say that Nakajima’s work was without purpose—far from it. It was simply a practice that included a radical degree of non-repetition and openness,112 thereby inviting surprises and new ways of seeing from observers and participants alike—the very ground for politics in Rancière’s sense. Not surprisingly, Nakajima struggles to find the right words to describe it. “My business is ‘meaninglessness’; revolution is a bit political and a problem, but I might say that I love meaningless revolution.”113

166  William Marotti Nakajima’s vocabulary is marked by his multiple encounters with police at varying levels of inquiry and hostility, as well as by the general back and forth between force and the developing political scene in Amsterdam and elsewhere; it reveals his strong opposition to police suppressions. In the interview with Yoshida, he speaks of the Mishima [Yukio]-like figure of Simon Vinkenoog, in whom he had “great faith”; Vinkenoog, he notes, “was a guy who did PR for marijuana and gave a real shock to the conservative class in Holland; he spent some eight months in the pig’s jail [butabako].”114 Nakajima’s frequent encounters with police, from Ochanomizu in 1957 to Ueno in 1963, and then a long series of inquiries, arrests, and expulsions throughout his travels in Europe and beyond all mark his repeated traversing of the porous boundary between the police sensibility, meaning the soft tyranny of the normalized everyday world and its partitions of social roles and relations, and state intervention in the form of police forces, ranging from occasional intervention to mass deployments, strategic stagings, and the full range of ostensibly legitimated state violence.115 While Rancière’s analysis of the police sensibility focuses on its facilitated forms of perception—and its silences and invisibilities not as direct repression but as categorical exclusions—that sensibility was nonetheless bordered by violence and even lethal consequences, as analyzed by Fanon above.116 Yoshida’s final assessment at the close of his interview and essay is that Nakajima’s cheerful approach to revolution wouldn’t have been possible in Japan: “Listen, this kind of revolution you blithely [yōki ni] consider is something unthinkable in this archipelago. You’re not ‘feigning madness’ as the ‘art missionary’ or whatever; you’re ‘cheerfully feigning madness.’”117 Yoshida here returns to the title of his essay and its play with two possible kanji combinations for writing this word, yōkyō, both meaning “feigned madness.” While largely indistinguishable in practice, the second echoes the first character, yō, from yōki ni—meaning blithely, merrily, or light-heartedly—intimating a trajectory marked by Nakajima’s ebullient sense of play and possibility.118 In the nine years since his “attack,” and since the end of the Yomiuri Indépendant, Yoshida had come to appreciate both the potentials and the spirit of Nakajima’s ebullient approach to the world. In a sense, the necessity of such reappraisals was built into the kind of practices in which Nakajima and his collaborators were engaged. That is—as acts that transformed the very coordinates of perception, and the boundaries of the categories for art and politics—their proper recognition would demand a later reappraisal if they were to be perceived at all. As an extraordinarily productive example of such work, Nakajima’s actions provide an effective test of the adequacy and limits of our own analyses. Noting in contemporary accounts where such work drops out, one can also grasp the ways in which such transgressions resulted in exclusions. For example, the art critic Hariu Ichirō was commissioner for Japan at the 1968 Venice Biennale; he invited a number of artists, including Miki Tomio, Takamatsu Jirō, Sugai Kumi, and Yamaguchi Katsuhiro. While he likely knew of Nakajima, Hariu’s report on the Biennale mentions neither him nor the Bauhaus Situationiste (discussed by Tania Ørum in her chapter) nor the multiple groups performing protest actions and signing the “Declaration on the new

When Art Grabs You  167 international solidarity among artists”—including “Unbeat Organizers-TokyoGöteborg.”119 The signatories declared that: They are against the principle of national representation and authorization of art by which the process of international artistic activation is suppressed. We must break through the aesthetic isolation in order to protest against the manipulation and monopolization within cultural life. This process is the basis of every new creative expansion. Here in Venice it was necessary to protect the so-called cultural treasures through massive and brutal police intervention. This reaction against international protest-actions is a symptom of the latent fascistic powers in the statal governments of today in east and in west.120 Nakajima’s invisibility in Hariu’s report seems to follow from Hariu’s primary focus as commissioner on national representation.121 Nakajima’s signature here (as Unbeat Organizers) objecting to nationalized limits also presages his name’s appearing in the 1974 “Draft Manifesto of Antinational Situationist” (see Ørum) and its commitment to a specifically antinational internationalism—and nicely anticipates his practice’s opening the Ubbeboda Symposium that same year.

Figures 5.10 (a and b) En route to the Venice Biennale, Nakajima and a member of the Bauhaus Situationiste perform outside the Musée National d’Art Moderne, Quai de Tokio, Paris 1968. Photographer unknown. Courtesy Yoshio Nakajima Archive, Konstrundan Raus Art Center.

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Figure 5.10 (Continued)

As Tania Ørum discusses in her chapter, Nakajima participated in Documenta 5 in 1972, both officially—with the PSI Mandala, “Projected by Yutaka MATSUZAVA & EXECUTED by Yoshio Nakajima”—and unofficially, as part of the Alternative Documenta staged by the Bauhaus Situationiste group. Yet again, the report (this time by sculptor Iida Yoshikuni) in the widely circulating art journal Bijutsu Techō fails to mention either Nakajima or Matsuzawa.122 As Ørum notes, while Nakajima was a member of the Bauhaus Situationiste, his role in their activities is likewise occluded or ignored in most accounts—likely for failing to conform to easy national identifications.123 Such gaps also point to the problems in works that seek to redress American and Eurocentric biases in an expansive consideration of the actuality of global engagements and practices yet which undercut that goal by retaining a reductive national focus. Reiko Tomii’s recent book, for example, repeatedly slides into narrating a singular national experience in the course of situating a wide range of distinctive and provocative art practices: “… the construction of ‘international contemporaneity’ and ‘contemporary art’ are fundamentally geohistorical, reflecting Japan’s self-conscious assessment of its place vis-à-vis the external world (primarily Euro-America) and in the history of art.”124 Such reductions undercut Tomii’s analyses—and homogenize the art—in favor of nationalist claims such as “1960s Japan was ‘the becoming minor of Theory.’”125 By contrast, we might follow Geeta Kapur’s supposition that art and art-related discourse might, as a “subverting aesthetic,” play a varied role within a local “conjunctural dynamic” as well as manifesting a “spontaneous communicability across and beyond

When Art Grabs You  169 communitarian and national boundaries.”126 Practices such as Nakajima’s again and again demonstrate an extraordinary communicability and untimely attunement with their times. I have repeatedly drawn upon the work of Jacques Rancière in elucidating the peculiar nature of Nakajima’s work within the practical transformations of the long 1960s. My colleagues have offered other formulations as well; the cogency of such approaches can ultimately be judged by what they illuminate of this life and career of extraordinary activity and puzzling invisibility. My argument, however, also has a second point: both Nakajima and Rancière’s work need themselves to be understood as part of the political and artistic practices centered on the global 1960s, practices that exploded commonplace understandings of both art and politics and their interrelation. These transforming practices occasioned new approaches to knowledge that sought to grasp the possibilities they manifested and to address the inadequacies of the pre-existing conceptual frames they revealed. Artist Akasegawa Genpei’s engagement with radical art practices and state prosecution, for example, led him to formulate notions of aesthetic effectiveness, objet-consciousness, and the indissociability of aesthetic and social emancipation, all of which predate Rancière’s later, similar formulations on art and politics.127 Both are attuned to the possibilities made graspable by new practices in the collision they stage with extant norms and institutions. Such insights into art and politics are of a piece with this global moment and its afterlives. Some were contemporaneous with it, such as the above examples from Nakajima, Akasegawa, Nakamura, Yoshida, and others, but all sought to grasp these transformations in practice and by redrawing their conceptualizations of those practices to better fit their actuality sought to effectively extend their possibilities. It is thus no coincidence that work from this moment, such as Nakajima’s, requires such insights in order to be adequately grasped—both for itself and as a part of what made this moment global. Our retrospective assessments must therefore take into account the emergent quality of work like Nakajima’s and of all such practices. Nakajima’s work presented a realized actuality of transformative, unbounded practices that, despite or because of their imperfect intelligibility, allowed others to see and experience the world differently. Following that elusive actuality, in turn, reveals the potential of such art and politics to emerge at any time—unpredictably, beyond intention or design; untimely but perhaps made more graspable by a bit of openness, by attention to the unusual. With attention to the modest yet frequently outrageous figure of Nakajima, we might verify the validity of his assertion, “art is the next possibility.”

Notes

1 Anthony Appiah, Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2006), 135, emphasis original. 2 Jacques Rancière, The Concept of Anachronism and the Historian’s Truth, trans. Noel Fitzpatrick and Tim Stott (Dublin Institute of Technology, 2016), 46. 3 Jacques Rancière, “The Paradoxes of Political Art,” in Dissensus: On Politics and Aesthetics, trans. Steve Corcoran (London: Continuum, 2010), 148, emphasis mine.

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For some readily graspable examples, movements for decolonization, feminism, LGBTQ+ rights, and Black lives demand fundamental reexamination of assumptions and practices revealed to reproduce anti-blackness, methodological nationalism, misogyny, and other forms of inequality. The recognition of such wrongs demands a reconfiguration of social practices and categories framed by such exclusions. As will be discussed below, the assertion that the extant, unreconstructed categories are comprehensive and in need of no such restructuring is part of what Rancière terms the police, italicized herein to distinguish this concept from simple reference to police personnel. 4 These included the “Yamanote Event” of Nakanishi Natsuyuki, Takamatsu Jirō, Kawani Hiroshi, and others; the Tōden Line performances of Zero Dimension; and street performances in traffic by Neo-Dada and Hi-Red Center. See William Marotti, Money, Trains, and Guillotines: Art and Revolution in 1960s Japan (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2013), 195–99, 220–38, 268, 310–13, https://doi. org/10.1215/9780822393993; KuroDalaiJee, Nikutai no anākizumu: 1960-nendai Nihon no bijutsu ni okeru pafōamnsu no chika suimyaku [Anarchy of the Body: Undercurrents of Performance Art in 1960s Japan] (Tokyo: Guramu Bukkusu, 2010). 5 Henri Lefebvre characterizes non-verbal forms, or “sets,” as inherently encompassing spaces “irreducible to the mental realm.” Henri Lefebvre, The Production of Space, trans. Donald Nicholson-Smith (Oxford, UK: Blackwell Publishing, 1991), 62. 6 Judith Rodenbeck, Radical Prototypes: Allan Kaprow and the Invention of Happenings (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2011), xi. 7 Andrew Sartori distinguishes “global” from “globalization” and its implications of convergence, arguing for a Marxian approach to the “global” in relating thick lifeworlds to practices of capitalist social interdependency. Andrew Sartori, “Global Intellectual History and the History of Political Economy,” in Global Intellectual History, ed. Samuel Moyn and Andrew Sartori (New York: Columbia University Press, 2013), 110–33. http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.7312/moyn16048.8 8 For an extensive account of this exhibition and the manifold practices it incubated, see Marotti, Money, Trains, and Guillotines, 111–99. 9 Nakajima’s sole registered entry for the Yomiuri Anpan was his 1960 submission, “Wakamono no negai.” Segi Shin‘ichi, Nihon andepandan ten: Zenkiroku 1949–1963 (Tokyo: Sōbisha, 1993), 220. 10 Marotti, Money, Trains, and Guillotines, 140. Indeed, the Yomiuri Newspaper’s sponsored exhibition competed directly for use of this very title, calling itself the Nihon Indépendant until 1956, and disregarding its rival in announcing itself as “our country’s first” Indépendant. Ibid., 140–1. 11 Murakami Kimiko, Senryōki no fukushi seisaku (Tokyo: Keisō Shobō, 1987), 403. Fellow Yomiuri Anpan artist Akasegawa Genpei also retrospectively noted 1955 as the year in which a number of seminal artists of a younger generation, like himself, began displaying at the exhibition—though his list (Yoshimura Masunobu, Shinohara Ushio, Tanaka Fuji, Sawada Shigetaka) omits Itoi Kanji, a.k.a. Dadakan. Akasegawa Genpei, Ima ya akushon aru nomi! “Yomiuri andependan” to iu genshō (Tokyo: Chikuma Shobō, 1985), 67. 12 Takiguchi Shūzō, “Ugoku wakai sedai no chikara” in Segi, Shin’ichi, Nihon andepandan, 228–9. 13 See Marotti, Money, Trains, and Guillotines, 138–9 on Ikeda’s “income-doubling” plan and “low posture.” 14 Justin Jesty, Art and Engagement in Early Postwar Japan (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2018), 81–7. 15 Nakamura Hiroshi, “Kaiga sengen,” in Kaigasha: 1957–2002 (Tokyo: Bijutsu Shuppansha, 2003), 21. Namiko Kunimoto locates Nakamura’s intervention against calls for an art dictated by the author’s subjective intent. Kunimoto underlines that “rather than a disjointed two-part process whereby the artist is the source of production and the viewer the site of received meaning, [Nakamura] understood the

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generation of meaning to take place through the painting. In this way, art offered a transformative experience for both the artist’s and the viewer’s sense of political selfhood.” Namiko Kunimoto, The Stakes of Exposure: Anxious Bodies in Postwar Japanese Art (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2017), 93; see also Jesty, Art and Engagement, 86–7, on this and continuing debates over realism circa 1960. Nakamura’s formulation predates Jacques Rancière’s similar argument: “The images of art do not supply weapons for battles. They help sketch new configurations of what can be seen, what can be said and what can be thought and, consequently, a new landscape of the possible. But they do so on condition that their meaning or effect is not anticipated.” Jacques Rancière, The Emancipated Spectator, trans. Gregory Elliott (London: Verso, 2009), 103. 16 Akasegawa Genpei describes this evolution to objet as a kind of organic extrusion of materials from the pictorial surface, falling on the floor as buppinrui, or various kinds of articles. Akasegawa Genpei, “Jikai shita kaiga no uchigawa,” in Geijutsu genron (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1991), 153–4. 17 See Marotti, Money, Trains, and Guillotines, 143–4 for the details of this artist-driven transformation. 18 Allan Kaprow, “The Legacy of Jackson Pollock,” ARTnews 57, no. 6 (October 1958): 24–60; reprinted online: https://www.artnews.com/art-news/retrospective/ archives-allan-kaprow-legacy-jackson-pollock-1958-9768, accessed April 18, 2022. On the broader art engagements with action and the everyday in Japan, see Marotti, Money, Trains, and Guillotines, 113–99, including Tone Yasunao’s complaint about the unbearably staid nature of experiments in music “in the age of Pollock,” 181. 19 Rodenbeck, Radical Prototypes, xi, 9. Kudō’s concept of action famously included a call to political action, also untimely (for his rallying cry to “akushon,” see Shimada in this volume and Marotti, Money, Trains, and Guillotines, 190). 20 Hiroko Ikegami details the origins and complex reception of these rather naked promotional efforts in The Great Migrator: Robert Rauschenberg and the Global Rise of American Art (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2010), especially 160–2. 21 For more on this project of the social engineering of a favored select population through housing, and its consequences, see John Leisure, “Instant Communities, Machines for Living: Danchi Apartments and the Production of Public Housing in Postwar Japan” (PhD diss., UCLA, 2021). 22 See Marotti, Money, Trains, and Guillotines, and Ikegami, The Great Migrator. 23 Segi, Shin’ichi, interview by Adachi Gen and Miyata Tetsuya, February 24, 2009, Sugamo, Tokyo, Oral History Archives of Japanese Art, http://www.oralarthistory. org, accessed April 6, 2022. 24 Okamoto claimed to know Atlan from his days as a philosophy star at the Sorbonne. Atlan’s painting began only in 1941, though interrupted by his wartime arrest for resistance activities and subsequent institutionalization for insanity (a ploy to escape the Nazis). Asger Jorn would join him in his studio space in 1946, a meeting place for many young artists; such associations would lead to his later joining CoBrA. Willemijn Stokvis, Cobra: The Last Avant-Garde Movement of the Twentieth Century (Aldershot: Lund Humphries, 2004), 143, 149. According to Okamoto, in an article in the Yomiuri Shinbun, most French invitees had come through Okamoto’s direct contacts. See Segi, Nihon andepandan, 137. In Atlan’s case, Okamoto had met with him in Paris in 1954, just as Atlan’s painting career was taking off. 25 Stokvis, Cobra, 239–40. The works are identifiable by their photos in articles in the Yomiuri Shinbun on March 2 and 7, 1955; reprinted in Segi, Nihon andepandan, 135, 137. They are featured in Derrida, Jacques, and Jean-Michel Atlan, Atlan, grand format: de la couleur à la lettre (Paris: Gallimard, 2001), 42–4; Derrida’s introduction to the latter gives extensive consideration to Atlan’s works and their combination of color and form in “letters,” with (according to Derrida) force beyond form. Atlan’s works appear to have been slightly retitled for the Yomiuri Indépendant: the title of the former, Les Miroirs de l’Asie, or Mirrors of Asia, reformulated to imply a female subject in a

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traditional portraiture pose; the latter, Le Samouraï, or The Samurai, loses its on-thenose referentiality in favor of a more generic and exoticized reference. 26 On the former, see Marotti, Money, Trains, and Guillotines, chap. six. Nakajima’s action painting inside a train still retains the artwork, even if it borders on a “happening,” but its innovation lies in its engaging the emptiness and unstructured appeal of the train, just as extended commuting was expanding for many city dwellers as they relocated to more distant danchi housing developments. On danchi public housing, commuting, daily life, and governmentality, see John Leisure, “Instant Communities, Machines for Living.” 27 See Kunimoto, The Stakes of Exposure, 125, 142–4. For artist Nakamura Hiroshi’s later attention to steam trains and monstrous schoolgirl figures, see Kunimoto, Ibid., 109, 122–4. 28 “Rōso, isseini kōgi tōsō sanka yonhyakuman zenesuto no yōsō keishokuhō kaisei hantai,” Asahi Shinbun, November 5, 1958; “4 Million Workers Strike,” Japan Times, November 6, 1958; George R. Packard, Protest in Tokyo: The Security Treaty Crisis of 1960 (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1978), 101–2. 29 “Among the freedoms that the Revolution of 1968 sought to fight for was this all-out sexual freedom, one which no longer conceded any norms… Part of the physiognomy of the Revolution of ‘68 was that pedophilia was then also diagnosed as allowed and appropriate.” “Full Text of Benedict XVI essay, ‘The Church and the scandal of sexual abuse,’” accessed May 19, 2021, www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/41013/ full-text-of-benedict-xvi-essay-the-church-and-the-scandal-of-sexual-abuse 30 For the variants of these converging narratives in the USA, see Rick Perlstein, “Who Owns the Sixties? The opening of a scholarly generation gap,” Lingua Franca: The Review of Academic Life 6, no. 4 (May/June 1996), http://linguafranca.mirror.theinfo. org/9605/sixties.html. Accessed May 19, 2021; Nick Witham, “Life Writing, Protest and The Idea of 1968,” in Reframing 1968: American Politics, Protest and Identity, ed. Martin Halliwell and Nick Witham, (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2018), 81–104. As Simon Hall notes, the last two decades have witnessed a surge of work directed at the lacunae left by these narratives, finding a completely different picture through focusing upon forgotten and grass-roots actors instead of canonical leaders (largely male) and their biographical perspectives. Simon Hall, “Framing the American 1960s: A historiographical review,” European Journal of American Culture 31, no.1 (April 2012): 6–7, https://doi.org/10.1386/ejac.31.1.5_1. A similar benefit has followed from investigations of noncanonical sites and points of exclusion. For a sampling of perspectives related to Japan, see Gavin Walker, ed., The Red Years: Theory, Politics, and Aesthetics in the Japanese ‘68 (London: Verso, 2020); Chelsea Szendi Schieder, Co-Ed Revolution: The Female Student in the Japanese New Left, (Asia-Pacific: Culture, Politics, and Society. Durham: Duke University Press, 2021). On the “general conspiracy of silence against the most radical elements of the black freedom movement” and its global dimensions, see Robin D.G. Kelley, “‘Roaring from the East’: Third World Dreaming” in Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination (Boston: Beacon Press, 2002), 62; on its continuing consequences, see Elizabeth Kai Hinton, America on Fire: The Untold History of Police Violence and Black Rebellion Since the 1960s (New York: Liveright Publishing Co., 2021). On the formation of “Asian American” as a product of 1960s struggles and its myriad connections and consequences, see Karen L. Ishizuka, Serve the People: Making Asian America in the Long Sixties (London: Verso, 2018). For a consideration of 1968 and its afterlives in and through Mexico, see Susana Draper, 1968 Mexico: Constellations of Freedom and Democracy. Radical Américas (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2018). 31 Ross discusses these phenomena in France and their relation to Rancière’s category of “the police” in her chapter on “The Police Conception of History” in Kristin Ross, May ‘68 and its Afterlives (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004), 19–64. 32 Frantz Fanon, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Homi K. Bhabha, The Wretched of the Earth, trans. Richard Philcox (New York: Grove Press, 2004), 40, 51. As the Algerian-born

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Rancière notes, the original meaning of the word, emancipation, is “emergence from a state of minority.” Jacques Rancière, The Emancipated Spectator, 42. 33 Paco Ignacio Taibo II credits the experience of the Vietnam solidarity demonstrations for giving birth to brigadismo, the mobile action brigades designed to agitate suddenly then rapidly flee, a strategy to counteract violent state repression he himself experienced. Paco Ignacio Taibo II, ‘68 : The Mexican Autumn of the Tlatelolco Massacre, trans. Donald Nicholson-Smith (New York: Seven Stories Press, 2018), 28, 31; see also Elena Poniatowska, Massacre in Mexico, trans. Helen R. Lane (Columbia, Missouri: University of Missouri Press, 1984), 9–10. 34 Kristin Ross argues that the “Vietnamese fighter provided the transitional figure, the relay between the ‘intimate’ colonial other, the Algerian of the early 1960s, and the French worker during ‘68,” allowing striking workers “to affirm… that ‘Vietnam is in our factories.’” Ross, May ‘68, 81. Such affirmations required a displacement: “France’s own colonial history in Vietnam is—surprisingly—not evoked; instead, contemporary American imperialism makes ‘comrades’ of the French and the Vietnamese. Ibid., 89. See also Alain Schnapp and Pierre Vidal-Naquet, The French Student Uprising, November 1967—June 1968: An Analytical Record (Boston: Beacon Press, 1971), 69–79, 190–1, for evidence of the rhetorical slippage to “imperialists” and then “American imperialists.” Tariq Ali notes that it was the arrest of five students for Vietnam protests that energized the occupation of the Nanterre University administration offices, thus precipitating the March 22 Movement. Tariq Ali and Susan Watkins, 1968: Marching in the Streets (London: Bloomsbury, 1998), 64–5. 35 Kristin Ross, May ‘68, 2. 36 On the police sensibility as a dispositif, a device for the “production of relational arrangements” (28), and as decorum, “synonymous with proper fit and with a concordance for ordering actions according to a system of correspondences of space, place, time, and way of doing” (42), see Davide Panagia, Rancière′s Sentiments (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2018), 40–62. OA DOI: 10.1215/9780822372165. 37 William Marotti, “The Perception of Violence, the Violence of Perception, and the Origins of Japan’s 1968,” in The Red Years: Theory, Politics, and Aesthetics in the Japanese ‘68, ed. Gavin Walker, (London: Verso, 2020), 67. 38 For example, I analyze the figure of the nonpoli in “Japan 1968,” a category that strangely moves across the boundaries of apoliticality, non-politicality, and action in defiance of its ostensible meaning as “nonpolitical.” Other similarly uncanny forms in Japan likewise mark overlapping instances of such emergent politics, from figures of media alarm (the wastrel fūten youth layabouts or the feckless yajiuma onlookers at the margins of demonstrations), to “non-sect” political action and the ippangakusei or “typical student,” and art and performance cultures exploring duplicity, “acting,” and other paradoxical means of staging connection via dissensual cultural insurgency. See William Marotti, “Japan 1968: The Performance of Violence and the Theater of Protest,” The American Historical Review 114, no. 1 (February 2009): 97–135, https:// doi.org/10.1086/ahr.114.1.97. 39 See for example Kristin Ross, Communal Luxury: The Political Imaginary of the Paris Commune (London: Verso, 2015); Fabio Lanza, Behind the Gate: Inventing Students in Beijing (New York: Columbia University Press, 2010); Bruno Bosteels, “The Mexican Commune” in Shannon Brincat, Communism in the 21st Century (Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger, 2014); Jacques Rancière, Proletarian Nights: The Workers’ Dream in NineteenthCentury France (London: Verso Books, 2012). 40 Ross argues that Rancière’s conception of the police bears “the trace of May [1968] and its aftermath.” Ross, May ‘68, 24. In “The Art of the Everyday,” I address the striking parallels with Rancière’s formulations in the late-1960s work of Akasegawa Genpei: insights that for Rancière would unfold over the next decades were articulated contemporaneously by Akasegawa, an artist whose engagement with the state and questions of representation and the real arose from his and other artists’ prior focus of their practice on unconscious forms of domination in the everyday world and the

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possibilities for radical transformation in a time of apparent political quiescence. See William Marotti, “The Art of the Everyday, as Crisis: Objets, Installations, Weapons, and the Origin of Politics,” boundary 2 42, no. 3 (August 2015): 79–96, https://doi. org/10.1215/01903659-2919513; see also Marotti, Money, Trains, and Guillotines. 41 Jacques Rancière considers the possibilities for decolonial solidarity without reductive appropriation in “The Cause of the Other,” Parallax 4, no. 2 (1998): 25–33, https:// doi.org/10.1080/135346498250217. 42 Jacques Rancière, Chronicles of Consensual Times, trans. Steven Corcoran (London: Continuum, 2010), ix–x. 43 Ross, May ‘68, 4. 44 Yoshida Yoshie, “Yōkyō kara yōkyō ni byōjō akka shita: Ha, ha, hapunisuto Nakajima Yoshio.” 45 Yoshida Yoshie, “Yōkyō kara yōkyō ni byōjō akka shita: Ha, ha, hapunisuto Nakajima Yoshio,” Eiga hyōron (July 1972): 65–71. 46 On the closure of the exhibition announced in January of 1964, see the contemporaneous reflection by critic Tōno Yoshiaki, “Yomiuri Independent,” trans. Andrew Maerkle, Bunka-cho Art Platform Japan website, posted on March 15, 2021, artplatform.go.jp/resources/readings/202004. The exhibition is also central to my own book on art and politics in this period; on the history of the exhibition from conception to closure, see in particular William Marotti, Money, Trains, and Guillotines, 114–99. 47 On the event, see KuroDalaiJee, Nikutai, 175–6. As KuroDalaiJee (a.k.a. Kuroda Raiji) notes, while the event had become remembered under the name “Dinner Party Commemorating Defeat in the War” [Haisen Kinen Bansankai], this was the original title—in Japanese, “Geijutsu mainasu geijutsu (Haisen o kinen shite).” Kuroda, Nikutai, 175. 48 Shinohara and Masuzawa were initially in the audience, as was art critic Nakahara Yūsuke. KuroDalaiJee, Nikutai, 175. 49 Hirokawa was an artist and one of twenty-one defendants arrested during the Anpo protests in 1960; his 1962 Yomiuri Indépendant work, “I Suppose I Should Get Going,” featuring a paper mâché dummy dressed as a shabby burglar—emerging from a small bathtub, knife in hand—had been removed by museum staff for its real knife; see Akasegawa Genpei, Ima ya akushon aru nomi! “Yomiuri andependan” to iu genshō.­(Tokyo: ­Chikuma­Shobō, 1985), 172–4. 50 Artist Nam June Paik notes how the “Defeat” celebration drew implicit contrasts with the rather different commemorations for Hiroshima/Nagasaki (centering victimhood) and with the August 15 celebrations for “Liberation Day” in Korea, Japan’s former colony. Nam June Paik, “To Catch Up or Not Catch Up with the West: Hijikata and Hi Red Center,” in Japanese Art after 1945: Scream Against the Sky, ed. Alexandra Munroe (New York: H.N. Abrams, 1994), 80. 51 Akasegawa, Ima ya, 1985, 180–2; KuroDalaiJee, Nikutai, 175–6. KuroDalaiJee, a.k.a. Kuroda Raiji, argues that Kazakura’s original version of the chair happening (and not the Gutai collective) “achieved the first performance work in Japan.” At a Kyushu cultural festival in 1957, he sat in a chair on stage and repeatedly, violently fell sideways with it until forced to stop by staff. KuroDalaiJee, “Performance Collectives in 1960s Japan: With a Focus on the ‘Ritual School,’” positions: asia critique 21, no. 2 (2013): 422. muse.jhu.edu/article/509111. On Neo-Dada, see also Kuroda Raiji, “A Flash of Neo Dada: Cheerful Destroyers in Tokyo,” trans. Reiko Tomii and Justin Jesty, Review of Japanese Culture and Society 17 (2005): 51–71, http://www.jstor.org/stable/42801111; and Marotti, Money, Trains, and Guillotines. 52 This was, as Yoshida observed, part of a complex and evolving indirect flirtation with politics and direct action. Marotti, Money, Trains, and Guillotines, 177. 53 Justin Jesty analyzes this event, and Yoshida’s account, in terms of the tumultuous history of the Kyushu-ha group and its fraught interactions with an unreceptive, Tokyo-centric art critical establishment. Jesty, Art and Engagement, 191–7; for the most

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detailed compilation of accounts of the event and its broader significance, see KuroDalaiJee, Nikutai, 176–80, 422–4; and Kuroda Raiji, “Kyūshu-ha as a Movement: Descending to the Undersides of Art,” trans. Reiko Tomii, Review of Japanese Culture and Society 17 (2005): 12–35. The advertisement was in Bijutsu techō, according to KuroDalaiJee (422). 54 Jesty notes that Sakurai was criticized for his rushed approach by other group members. Jesty, Art and Engagement, 227. 55 See Jesty, Art and Engagement, 191–7, 211–9. 56 KuroDalaiJee, Nikutai, 179; Jesty, Art and Engagement, 192. KuroDalaiJee’s account differs somewhat from Jesty’s here. 57 Contemporaneous with Yoshida’s reflections, Umberto Eco’s 1962 essay “The Open Work” likewise analyzes the move to present something “unfinished.” This theorization, Rodenbeck argues, emerged from “Eco’s consideration of music and literature and the visual arts.” Rodenbeck quotes Eco’s description of such open works: they “reject the definitive, concluded message and multiply the formal possibilities of the distribution of their elements. They appeal to the initiative of the individual performer, and hence they offer themselves not as finite works which prescribe specific repetition along given structural coordinates but as ‘open’ works, which are brought to their conclusion by the performer at the same time as he experiences them on an aesthetic plane.” As Rodenbeck notes, such “incomplete knowledge is a structural principle of the open work.” Rodenbeck, Radical Prototypes, 249; Rodenbeck relates this analysis to Rancière’s consideration of the “emancipated spectator.” Ibid., 248n16. 58 Yoshida quotes the Kyushu-ha account itself for its use of terms such as “an extremely well-defined space” (hijō ni meikaku na kūkan); “stage-making” (butai zukuri) and “venue-making” (kaijō zukuri). Yoshida Yoshie, “Eiyū izuko ni owasu: nippon seiiki no hantotachi,” Sansai (July 1963): 60–1. 59 Yoshida, “Eiyū izuko ni owasu,” 61. Yoshida includes Itoi’s act as well in this assessment, misidentifying him as coming from Oita in Kyushu despite his having already moved to Ichikawa City (61). 60 Yoshida borrows this term from a letter by another Kyushu-based artist, Shiga Kenzō; Shiga originally directed this term to Tokyoites but Yoshida found it equally applicable to Shiga’s own dogmatic, underexamined oppositional stance Yoshida, “Eiyū izuko ni owasu,” 61. 61 Yoshida in fact asserts that the very intensification of a group’s anti-Tokyo, anti-art-establishment posture might bind them even closer to such a constraining conceptual framework. Yoshida, “Eiyū izuko ni owasu,” 62. 62 Charlotte Eubanks recent study notes that though known widely in scholarship as “Maruki Toshi,” her actual name, never changed, was Akamatsu Toshiko; the artist most commonly went by “Toshi.” Charlotte Eubanks, The Art of Persistence: Akamatsu Toshiko and the Visual Cultures of Transwar Japan, (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2020), xvii. Eubanks discusses Toshi’s account of their tumultuous revolutionary creation as a “crucible,” or, quoting Yoshida, as “mutual warfare.” Eubanks, Art of Persistence, 199–200. 63 Yoshida, “Eiyū izuko ni owasu,” 60. 64 Yoshida, “Eiyū izuko ni owasu,” 62. 65 Yoshida forgets his name but identifies his actions clearly. Yoshida, “Eiyū izuko ni owasu,” 62. 66 Bert Winther-Tamaki considers the possible link between Miyazaki’s action and Tanigawa Gan’s poetics, as perhaps “a ritual enactment of Tanigawa’s moving down into the depths of the feminized earth, the ‘mother of all things,’ yearning to reconnect with the ‘origin of being’ and obtain a sense of ‘primal energy.’” Bert WintherTamaki, Tsuchi: Earthy Materials in Contemporary Japanese Art (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2022), 113. 67 Cheval’s Le Palais Idéal, resplendent in intricate detail, was created using stones collected along the postman’s mail route, a project precipitated by a chance event—his

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tripping over an interesting rock one day. See https://www.facteurcheval.com/ histoire (visited January 21, 2022). Yoshida likewise speaks of being deeply impressed by the Kyushu-ha group’s sudden withdrawal of works from the previous Yomiuri Indépendant. Yoshida, “Eiyū izuko ni owasu,” 63. 68 Yoshida by contrast notes an echo of wartime rhetoric in Kyushu-ha’s language of heroism and exhortation. Yoshida, “Eiyū izuko ni owasu,” 62. 69 Yoshida, “Eiyū izuko ni owasu,” 62. Jesty takes this citation of Cage’s language (an apparent paraphrase from “Experimental Music”) by Yoshida as broadly indicative “that the toned down, non-climax oriented Happening was one more element in the emerging consensus that direct political confrontation was doomed to failure” (Jesty, Art and Engagement, 195). While I concur with Jesty’s analysis of the importance of the legacy of Kyushu-ha, I disagree with the way he associates happening practices with imported fashions and the explanatory power of a “John Cage shock” (Jesty, Art and Engagement, 194–5, 250)—and with an over-tidy contrast between practices and locations. On the “Cage shock” and its multilayered misrepresentations of the work of the Music group (Gurūpu ongaku, often and reductively rendered as “Group Ongaku”), as well as the diversity of theorizations among the members, see William Marotti, “Challenge to Music: The Music Group’s Sonic Politics,” in Tomorrow Is the Question: New Directions in Experimental Music Studies, ed. Benjamin Piekut (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2014), 109–38. Cage had experienced a performance by Kosugi and Tone in October of 1962 at Hijikata Tatsumi’s studio; Cage backhandedly noted Tone’s piece for somehow anticipating “a composition which I have not yet written,” while giving himself credit for all such new directions in Japan. Marotti, “Challenge to Music,” 129–30). 70 See Marotti, “Challenge to Music,” 116–7, 123. 71 Cage’s “Experimental Music” for example describes a “purposeless play” as “an affirmation of life… simply a way of waking up to the very life we’re living, which is so excellent once one gets one’s mind and one’s desires out of its way and lets it act of its own accord.” John Cage, “Experimental Music,” in Silence: Lectures and Writings (Cambridge, MA: M.I.T. Press, 1967), 12, emphasis added. On the complex engagements and authenticity of such exchanges in relation to Buddhist art, see Gregory Levine, “Two (Or More) Truths: Reconsidering Zen Art in the West,” in Awakenings: Zen Figure Paintings from Medieval Japan, ed. Gregory Levine and Yukio Lippit (New York: Japan Society and Yale University Press, 2007). 72 “At the Yomiuri Indépendant, objet became shorthand not for something aestheticized but rather for an object that, first of all, was put under a kind of radical scrutiny. There was an expectation that the artist’s gesture of setting forth the object implied a kind of suspicion; whether it was a specially assembled art construction or an everyday item sitting there with little or no embellishment or reconfiguration, it was to be interrogated like a criminal for a yet unknown crime. Encouraged and legitimated in turn by a contemporary new critical appreciation of Dada and of the ready-mades of Marcel Duchamp, artists expanded their practice in this huge potential field of action and investigation.” Marotti, Money, Trains, and Guillotines, 153. 73 Yoshida had himself in fact organized Nakajima’s 1972 solo exhibition, Ecology in Tokyo, at the Satō Gallery. 74 The two postwar Indépendant exhibitions gave access to institutional spaces dominated by patronage networks and safely non-confrontational forms of art congenial to the state—in hopes of supporting a democratized artistic space. See Marotti, Money, Trains, and Guillotines, 127–32 for the complex politics behind these contentions. 75 The term is originally Nakanishi Natsuyuki’s from his invitation to the 1962 group action on the Yamanote train line; Akasegawa Genpei adopts it years later to describe the role of the Yomiuri Indépendant itself. Such recourse to scientific vocabularies marked their sense of the inadequacies of existing political and artistic discourse. See Marotti, Money, Trains, and Guillotines, 118–20, 221, 377n.29. 76 See Marotti, Money, Trains, and Guillotines, 167–8.

When Art Grabs You  177









77 See Shimada’s chapter and Marotti, Money, Trains, and Guillotines, 168, 173. 78 Marotti, Money, Trains, and Guillotines, 193. 79 A panicking Nakanishi had in fact run out of that very park side exit. 80 Marotti, Money, Trains, and Guillotines, 205. On this pivotal discussion, see ibid., 204–44. 81 Marotti, Money, Trains, and Guillotines, 245–83. 82 See Tōno Yoshiaki, “Yomiuri Independent,” for a summary and discussion of the rules, which he likens to the deadening restrictions by which Marcel Duchamp (as R. Mutt)’s Fountain was kept from display in 1917. For Tōno, their arbitrary, censorious implementation left the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum denuded of potential, nothing but a “filthy boneyard.” Works had been censored in advance of the restrictions, such as Hirokawa’s (discussed above) and Itoi’s 1962 submissions—the first, allegedly for its knife and the second for obscenity (see Shimada’s chapter). One might also read the closure more broadly, such as in Jesty’s reflections on the Tokyo critical establishment’s reactions to the Kyushu-ha group and its attempt to provincialize the capital (see Jesty, Art and Engagement, 196, 217–9), or in the restrictive gender assumptions limiting the participation of women, leading Yoko Ono into a nervous breakdown and institutionalization in 1962 and Tanaka Atsuko of Gutai to a breakdown in 1965. See Midori Yoshimoto, Into Performance: Japanese Women Artists in New York (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2005), 22, 95; Kunimoto, The Stakes of Exposure, 140–1. Other artists pushed their own bodies to physical limits in the pursuit of their genre-breaking works. See for example Marotti, Money, Trains, and Guilllotines, 284, 345n.44. 83 Marotti, Money, Trains, and Guillotines, 195. 84 As in fact happened in January of 1964. See Tōno, “Yomiuri Independent.” 85 Ugoku buttai, thus glossed by Yoshida. 86 Yoshida reminds his readers that during his train-stopping event and arrest at Ochanomizu, in 1957, Nakajima had only been 17 years old. Yoshida Yoshie, “Kokkyō o tokashi toshi o name,” Bijutsu techō (August/September 1972), 193. 87 Ugoku obuje. 88 Yoshida Yoshie, “Kokkyō o tokashi toshi o name,” 194. 89 For Akasegawa’s radical politics from the late 1960s, see Mizunuma Hirokazu, “Akasegawa Genpei: 1968–1974,” in Akasegawa Genpei, Chiba Art Museum, and Oita Art Museum, Akasegawa Genpei no geijutsu genron ten: 1960-nendai kara genzai made [The Principles of Art by Akasegawa Genpei: From the 1960s to the Present] (Chiba: Chibashi bijutsukan, 2014). On yajiuma, aesthetics, and politics and the particular take of the artist Akasegawa Genpei, see Marotti; “The Art of the Everyday as Crisis.” 90 Nakajima tells Yoshida that Tashiro, also uninvited, did an solo performance action at the exhibition, a “Damact” without paying the fee (unlike Kazakura). Yoshida Yoshie, “Kokkyō o tokashi toshi,” 194. 91 In Yoshida’s accounts, there seem to be two actions bringing the police: in one, a policeman’s following the extension of Takamatsu’s Rope back from Ueno Station; in the other, the museum employee summoning them in response to the action on the steps. Yoshida, “Yōkyō kara yōkyō ni,” 65; Yoshida, “Kokkyō o tokashi toshi,” 195. 92 Yoshida, “Kokkyō o tokashi,” 195. 93 See Marotti, Money, Trains, and Guillotines, 9–109. 94 Yoshida Yoshie, “Yōkyō kara yōkyō ni,” 65. The announcement for Nakajima’s farewell exhibition, in February 1964, quotes Allen Ginsberg’s “Howl”: “I saw the best minds of my generation naked …searching the ghetto ‘for marijuana,’” a paraphrased and possibly intentional mistranslation of the original heroin reference (“an angry fix”), as the 1961 translation makes no such error. Allen Ginsberg, Hōkō: Shishū, trans. Furusawa Yasujirō (Tokyo: Nasu Shobō, 1961). 95 See also Yoshida, “Kokkyō o tokashi toshi,” 195, noting other artists’ contemporaneous departures as well.

178  William Marotti 96 Asahi Shinbun, December 4, 1963 (evening edition). 97 KuroDalaiJee, Nikutai, 199. 98 Jacques Rancière, The Emancipated Spectator, trans. Gregory Elliott (London: Verso, 2011), 48–9; Akasegawa Genpei, “The Intent of the Act Based on the Intent of the Act,” trans. William Marotti, in From Postwar to Postmodern, Art in Japan 1945–1989: Primary Documents, edited by Doryun Chong, Michio Hayashi, Fumihiko Sumitomo, and Kenji Kajiya (New York: MoMA Publications, 2012), 187–91; Akasegawa Genpei, “The Objet after Stalin,” trans. and with an introduction by Pedro Erber, ARTMargins 2015 4:3: 115–18, doi: https://doi.org/10.1162/ARTM_a_00126. 99 Yoshida, “Kokkyō o tokashi toshi,” 196. The slight misattribution of the Magic Center—which Nakajima correctly identifies in the interview—gives a sense of Yoshida’s secondhand but closely followed information. 100 The following page shows the photo of a screaming Nakajima later featured as a cover for Ego magazine, as described by Van der Meijden at the beginning of his chapter in this volume—a photo also likely from the May event at Galerie Honger. As Van der Meijden notes in his chapter, the visuals and notoriety from the event were the chief reasons for both Jaspers and Nakajima and “happenings” to be prominently featured in Provo-associated materials. Van der Meijden also notes that Dit hap-hap-happens in Amsterdam quotes Jaspers as claiming to have first met Nakajima just three weeks after Nakajima entered the country. Henk J. Meier and Jacques Teljeur, Dit hap-hap-happens in Amsterdam: een boodschap uit het magisch centrum Amsterdam (Amsterdam: De Arbeiderspers, 1966), unpaginated. 101 Nakajima credits (Robert) Jasper Grootveld as the leader in this, speaking particularly of his charisma. Yoshida, “Yōkyō kara yōkyō ni,” 70. 102 Yoshida, “Yōkyō kara yōkyō ni,” 70. 103 Wouters too notes the parallels between this event (with Nakajima climbing a statue of Atlas and shouting) and those around the Het Lievertje statue in Amsterdam’s Spui Square in June. 104 Yoshida, “Yōkyō kara yōkyō ni,” 69. 105 Yoshida, “Yōkyō kara yōkyō ni,” 68–9. Shimada points out how this openness informs Nakajima’s approach to education as well. 106 Tone Yasunao and Kosugi Takehisa joined separately, though their connection with the main group was aborted in the end. Marotti, Money, Trains, and Guillotines, 238. 107 Marotti, Money, Trains, and Guillotines, 230–1. 108 Marotti, Money, Trains, and Guillotines, 237. 109 The discussions also considered the write-up of an unperformed project by Nakanishi and Imaizumi involving erecting a guillotine in the Imperial Plaza. For an extended consideration of these discussions, see Marotti, Money, Trains, and Guillotines, 207–44. These are the discussions discussed by Shimada in reference to Imaizumi’s separate endorsement (in the same issue of the journal) for radical action as communication: “Nothing communicates better than a dagger suddenly attacking you from behind a door in the street.” Nagara Tō [Imaizumi Yoshihiko], “Karera no sore wa shisō dentatsu no gu tarieruka?” Keishō 8 (June 1963): 35–6, cited by Shimada herein. 110 For the afterlives of some of these interventions, see Mark Pendleton, “Bringing little things to the surface: intervening into the Japanese post-Bubble impasse on the Yamanote,” Japan Forum 30, no. 2 (2018): 257–76, DOI: 10.1080/09555803.2017. 1353536. 111 Yoshida, “Kokkyō o tokashi toshi,” 193. 112 See Rodenbeck’s analysis of Eco’s 1962 essay “open work” above. 113 Yoshida, “Yōkyō kara yōkyō ni,”69. Nakajima even briefly considers the “horrific meaninglessness” of the ‘Red’ Army’s blasting away in Tel Aviv—not an endorsement of massacre but rather an extreme comparison, in line with other contemporaneous rejections of the line between terrorist murder and wartime murder. For more on the latter, Tatiana Sulovska will have work forthcoming on Terayama Shuji’s essays on

When Art Grabs You  179 Okamoto Kōzō and Mori Tsuneo and on the cancellation of the cultural festival following the Black September incident at the 1972 Olympics. 114 Yoshida, “Yōkyō kara yōkyō ni,”70. Vinkenoog’s description of happenings, his attribution of them to sites all over the world and to groups including Fluxus and Nam June Paik, is quoted at length by Meier and Telieur in Dit hap-hap-happens in Amsterdam (unpaginated). See Van der Meijden’s chapter in this volume for the debates over Vinkenoog’s definition. 115 On the particular relations of protest, violence, performance, policing and the everyday in 1960s contentions, see also Marotti, “The Performance of Police and the Theatre of Protest,” Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism 35, no. 2 (Spring 2021): 117–23. 116 For a particularly fraught yet instructive example from the 1960s, Michael Sawyer observes the fatal (mis)understanding of Malcolm X’s work: “his non-violent advocacy for the cessation of violence visited upon African-Americans is understood by white supremacist logic as itself violent…It is that non-violent protests do violence to their system of knowing and are therefore necessarily understood as violent to their system of Being”—not merely justifying subsequent reactionary violence, but revealing the essentially violent nature of this dominant sensibility itself. Michael E. Sawyer, Black Minded: The Political Philosophy of Malcolm X (London: Pluto Press, 2020), 120–21. 117 Yoshida, “Yōkyō kara yōkyō ni,”71. 118 Yō is also the character for the yang principle within yin-yang (Ch) or onmyo (J) dualistic cosmology, which combines traits of hardness, positivity, maleness, and brightness. While Yoshida clearly intends to point to Nakajima’s fundamental positivity with this word, it is worth noting how closed art and activist avenues were for women at the time. See Kunimoto and Yoshimoto above on art’s closures and women artists’ resultant mental breakdowns; on women activists’ fraught negotiations with gender norms within the student movement, see Chelsea Szendi Schieder, Co-Ed Revolution; on contemporaneous disputes and their afterlives, see Chelsea Schieder, “‘That’s Really Nonsense!’: The Gendered ‘Common Sense’ of Knowledge Production in Postwar Japan,” Japan Forum 33, no. 4 (2021): 608–32. 119 The other signatories were Gruppe Geflecht; Gruppo Settanta; Bauhaus Situationiste (Nakajima had joined this group, too, making him effectively a doubly represented signatory); 2nd International Situationist; Kommune 1; Black Mask; Revolutionary Architects; Institute of Direct Art; Libertad; and New Amsterdam. “Declaration on the new international solidarity among artists: Venice, June 1968,” accessed February 6, 2022, www.macba.cat/en/aprendre-investigar/arxiu/declaration-new-internationalsolidarity-among-artists-venice-june-1968 120 “Declaration on the new international solidarity among artists,” emphasis original. 121 Hariu Ichirō, “Benichia sōdōki,” Bijutsu techō 302 (September 1968): 114–8. 122 Iida Yoshikuni, Bijutsu Techō 361 (December 1972). By contrast, see From Nirvana to Catastrophe: Matsuzawa Yutaka and his ‘Commune in Imaginary Space’ (exhibition catalog), ed. Yoshiko Shimada (Tokyo: Ota Fine Arts Tokyo, 2017). 123 Peter van der Meijden provides the following additional summary of Nakajima’s occlusion in works examining Holland in the 1960s: “The most complete source on action art in Holland during the 1960s is still the catalogue Actie, werkelijkheid en fictie in de kunst van de jaren ‘60 in Nederland, which appeared in 1979. However, the book only provides data (date, place, title, participants, documentation, short description) and makes no effort to contextualize the works it discusses. Otherwise, if Nakajima is mentioned at all, it is by way of a short reference in a publication focused on the Netherlands or on a particular person. Niek Pas’ book on Provo, Imaazje! De verbeelding van Provo, 1965–1967 (Amsterdam: Wereldbibliotheek, 2003) and Eric Duivenvoorden’s biography of Robert Jasper Grootveld, Magiër van een nieuwe tijd [“Magician of a New Era,”] (Amsterdam: Singel Uitgevers, 2009) mention Nakajima only in passing, as a ‘Japanese Zen artist.’ In fact, Pas writes more about him in

180  William Marotti connection with Belgian Provo than with Dutch Provo, presumably because his actions in Holland took place before Provo had come into being. This is hardly surprising since Pas profiles himself as a Dutch particularist in an article from 2009 on Holland’s place in the global narrative on 1968, stressing the difficulty of matching analyses of networks and individuals with comparisons of national contexts. Niek Pas, “De problematische internationalisering van de Nederlandse jaren zestig.” Bijdragen en mededelingen betreffende de geschiedenis der Nederlanden 124, no. 4 (January 2009): 618–32. 124 Reiko Tomii, Radicalism in the Wilderness: International Contemporaneity and 1960s Art in Japan (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2016), 14, emphasis added. 125 Tomii, Radicalism in the Wilderness, 231n4. 126 Geeta Kapur, “A Cultural Conjuncture in India,” in Antinomies of Art and Culture: Modernity, Postmodernity, Contemporaneity, Terry Smith, Okwui Enwezor, and Nancy Condee, ed. (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2008) 51, 54–5. 127 See William Marotti, “The Art of the Everyday as Crisis,” 79–96.

Selected Chronology

1940 Nakajima is born on December 5 in Fukaya, Saitama prefecture, about 70 kilometers northwest of Tokyo, where his family have been farmers for well over three hundred years. As a third son, Nakajima would not be expected to inherit any of the family’s modest property. 1943 Nakajima has a near-death accident in a stream near his home. His parents see this as a sign that he was to devote his life to religion and become a monk. 1951 With the encouragement of a teacher, Nakajima discovers Vincent van Gogh’s paintings, and decides to become an artist. 1955 After graduating from junior high school, Nakajima moves to Tokyo, part of a mass employment scheme drawing in labor from the countryside. Nakajima first views the unjuried art exhibition, the Yomiuri Indépendant. 1956 Nakajima enters Shōhei High School in April, a night school for laborers and students expelled from other schools; there he starts an art club. 1957 Nakajima meets Itoi Kanji (Dadakan) and starts attending his Contemporary Art Research Center (his house). In September, Nakajima observes Georges Mathieu’s action painting demonstration at the Shirokiya Department Store. Nakajima begins unauthorized participation in the yearly Yomiuri Indépendant exhibitions at the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Art via performances. Nakajima meets an American missionary, O.D. Bixler, and starts to attend Ochanomizu Christian Church. Nakajima’s first public performance: Moving Object at Ochanomizu station, Tokyo. 1958 Along with Tashiro Minoru and Kagami Masayuki, Nakajima starts neardaily action painting, street performance, body painting, and self-objectification. 1959 In April, Nakajima enters Musashino University of Art, but leaves soon after. Nakajima, Tashiro, Kagami, and others stage street actions in various parts of Tokyo, Kyoto, and Osaka. Itoi joins in some of the actions.

182  Selected Chronology

1960

1961

1962

1963

1964

1965

“Dadaist All-night Session” organized by the Shōhei High School art club. Group construction of a Neo-Dada exhibition at the Shōhei High School festival. Nakajima co-organizes Zokei Bijutsu Ikusei (Nurturing Form and Art) Studio, a collective workshop for artists and children in Tokyo. Nakajima and Shōhei High School Art Club organize an exhibition at the 58th Shōhei High School festival. Nakajima meets Dutch artist Daniel van Golden, who urges him to go abroad. Nakajima exhibits formally at the Yomiuri Indépendant, submitting a work, A Wish of the Youth [Wakamono no negai]. Nakajima enters Meijigakuin University Faculty of Sociology and Social Works, followed by Tashiro and Kagami. They form a group: “Unbeat,” in part a riff on the popular press’s reductive overuse of “Beat.” They name their actions “Damact,” a stopping of the flow of the everyday and negation of normalized perceptions. Unbeat organizes “Dada Festival” at Green Hall, Meijigakuin University. Unbeat, along with Itoi, stages actions in Kyoto and Osaka. Nakajima attends John Cage/David Tudor concert at Sōgetsu Art Hall. Unbeat organizes the International Art Festival at Green Hall, Meijigakuin University. Nakajima, Tashiro, and Itoi stage an action at the 15th Yomiuri Indépendant exhibition. Nakajima assaults art critic Yoshida Yoshie as part of the performance; police respond. Unbeat organizes Art plus Anti-Art exhibition at Green Hall, Meijigakuin University. Nakajima decided to accept van Golden’s invitation to study in Rotterdam, and embarks on a trip to Europe. He leaves Kobe port and sails to Hong Kong, then hitchhikes across the entire Asian continent, selling sketches and singing Japanese songs for his daily bread. Nakajima reaches Venice in September, and finds work as a studio assistant for Hundertwasser. Nakajima enters the Rotterdam Academy of Art. Happenings in Vlaardingen and Schiedam and shows at Galerie Honger and Galerie Punt 4 and at an artists’ supplies store in Schiedam. Nakajima meets the Danish artist Asger Jorn, who introduces him to his brother, Jørgen Nash. Nakajima meets Thom Jaspers and Robert Jasper Grootveld. Happenings in Gouda (January 23, March 27 and April 3 and 19), Delft (February 6), Amsterdam (March 13 and 24 and May 5), Rotterdam (April 6 and 30) and Schiedam (May 21). Nakajima fails to get his residence permit renewed and moves to Antwerp where he meets, amongst others, Panamarenko and Hugo Heyrman; together, they begin publishing Happening News. He lives for several months in the Wijngaardstraat, 14, Antwerp.

Selected Chronology  183 Happenings in Belgium (Antwerp, July 9, 1965; Ostend, August 6, 1965, Antwerp, September 25, 1965). Nakajima is expelled again from Belgium, following uncertified performances. Nakajima hitchhikes across West Germany, then to Copenhagen where he finds temporary work as a screen printer. Nakajima’s wife, Fumiko, journeys from Japan to join him via Antwerp. 1966 In January, Nakajima is summoned to court in Rotterdam in connection with a happening in Gouda in April 1965, but fails to appear. Nakajima and Fumiko comes to Sweden to visit artist friends. Fumiko falls ill and was found to be pregnant. Their son, Anders, is born in Sweden. Nakajima is accepted to the Valand Art Academy as the first-ever foreign student. He moves into a studio in Landala, Goteborg. During his six years at Valand (1966–1971), Yoshio organizes the Skratta Society and Overground Movement. 1967 Nakajima turns his studio at Valand Art Academy into the Landala Modern Art Gallery. Nakajima visits the situationist artists’ commune Drakabygget (also called the Bauhaus Situationiste) in southern Sweden for the first time At the Copenhagen jazz club Montmartre, Nakajima, John Tchicai, Roland Kirk, and Tashiro Minoru, then visiting from Japan, jointly perform a happening. Nakajima visits the Soviet Union via Finland with his friends at the Valand Art Academy. 1968 Nakajima joins Bauhaus Situationists with Jørgen Nash, Jens Jørgen Thorsen, Hardy Strid, and others. Nakajima goes to Paris in May, performing in front of the Musée National d’Art Moderne, Quai de Tokio, Paris. Nakajima joins the Bauhaus Situationists protest against the Venice Biennale in Italy and is one of the signatories of the “Declaration on the new international solidarity among artists, Venice June 1968.” 1969 Nakajima moves to Frölunda konstnärsateljé (Yoshio Experimental Laboratory). 1970 Nakajima stages happenings at summer festivals such as Pop-festivalen at Gärdet, Stockholm, and at Folkfesten in Uppsala and also at the Moderna Museet, Stockholm. Nakajima starts to collaborate with Folke Edwards at Hagahuset in Gothenburg, where he invites the Japanese Fluxus artist, Kosugi Takehisa. Collaboration with Folke Edwards continues until 1973. 1971 Nakajima does street performances at the Street Theatre Festival in Braunschweig, Germany, June 1971, at Kunstzone in Munich, Germany, and by invitation at Art Information 71 in Kiel, Germany. 1972 Nakajima stages the first happening ever performed in Allingsås, Sweden.

184  Selected Chronology

1973

1974

1975

1977

Nakajima performs work from the Japanese conceptual artist, Matsuzawa Yutaka’s PSI Mandala, by Matsuzawa’s request, at Documenta 5 in Kassel, Germany (Nakajima was not officially invited). Nakajima joins the Alternative Documenta staged by the Bauhaus Situationiste group in Kassel, Germany. Upon his father’s death in an accident, Nakajima returned to Japan for the first time in eight years. He has solo exhibitions at Nichido Gallery and Sato Gallery, the latter organized by art critic, Yoshida Yoshie, the same person he had “attacked” on the steps of the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum in 1963. Nakajima moves with his family to the village Ubbeboda in southern Sweden where he discovers diabase, a black granite, and begins to sculpt in stone. Nakajima with Hjalmar Åstorp, Sven Malvin and Kenneth Johansen establishes Ubbeboda Art Center. The “One Hundred Days Symposium” takes place at Ubbeboda, Sweden, April 16–August 27, 1974. The International Ubbeboda Symposiums continues until 1979. During these years hundreds of artists participate in various collaborative activities such as the Stone-symposiet, the Film-symposiet and Internationella friskolan (the international open school). In support of the “One Hundred Days’ Symposium” Jørgen Nash organizes “Three Days to Shock the World” at Drakabygget May 17–19, 1974. Here Nakajima performs a kind of Japanese harakiri ritual. Nakajima and six other artists from the Ubbeboda Festival participate in the 5th Göttinger Kunstmarkt und Kunstkongress, June 13–16. In August, the earth art work “Równowaga balansu” (Equilibrium of Balance), by the Polish artist Teresa Murak, is bulldozed by the Swedish police. In September, the Soviet authorities demolish an unofficial open air exhibition in Belyayevo, (subsequently known as the “Bulldozer Exhibition”) and arrest the artists. Nakajima creates the sculpture Freedom bird, a large diabase sculpture, to commemorate this incident. In August, the artists at Ubbeboda perform an event commemorating the removal of Murak’s sculpture in the town square of Lönsboda, Sweden. Nakajima performs a happening. Nakajima is invited for a solo exhibition at Kunststation Kloster in Cornberg, West Germany. The exhibition later moves to the New Reform Centre in Aalst, Belgium; the Kunstmankt Newmankt der Kunstlen in Cologne, West Germany; the Agora Studio Maastricht, Holland; and then to Poland and Japan. Artists from Ubbeboda participate in the “International Swedish-andChile filmfestival” September 19–21 in Båstad, Sweden. The Nakajima family resides in Japan for a while. The Nakajima family returns to Sweden.

Selected Chronology  185

1978 1982 1984 1986

1989 1995

2003

2014

Nakajima is invited to a three-month stay at Drakabygget, where he is allowed the use of Asger Jorn’s old studio. Here he creates a large multimedia exhibition, “Home to Sweden,” in May 1977. In September, the Nakajima family move to the old school at Humlarp outside the small town of Åstorp in southern Sweden. Together with Jørgen Nash, Lis Zwick, Drakabygget and Lars Hård, Nakajima organizes Skånska Konstakademien (The Scanian Art Academy). Among its many activities were film festivals, and film and art seminars, Nakajima participates in Documenta 6 in Kassel as a part of Ubbeboda Congress. Jørgen Nash and Sven Malvin publish the book The Murder of Ubbeboda Centre in Edition Bauhaus Situationiste Drakabygget. Nakajima takes part in a group exhibition with Drakabygget at the Charlottenborg Art Centre in Copenhagen. Freedom Bird, the diabase sculpture from the Ubbeboda Symposium, is finally placed outside Malmö City Museum. Lyrikexpressen Den rullande dikten (the Poetic Express. Poetry on Rails) opens with Nakajima’s harakiri happening at Copenhagen central station. Nakajima is invited to participate in Japon des Avantgardes 1910–1970 at the Pompidou Centre in Paris. In connection with the Situationist exhibition at Pompidou Centre, Nakajima receives the Drakabygget Great Asger Jorn Award. Nakajima contributes works to Art Aid Kobe in support of the victims of the Kobe earthquake. The municipality of Århus, Denmark, invites Nakajima to the Asian Festival in October. Assisted by Danish and Asian artists, Nakajima performs for seven days. The Nakajima family takes over the Raus ceramic studio in Helsingborg, Sweden, and opens Rausstenkarlsfabrik. It now features an art gallery and residence hall for artists, and maintains the Yoshio Nakajima Archive. http://www.rausstenkarlsfabrik.se/en/index.html “Ubbeboda lever” (Ubbeboda Lives), July 12–27. An exhibition celebrating the anniversary of the “One Hundred Days’ Symposium” at Ubbeboda, organized by Anders Nakajima in the present Nakajima gallery and studio in Helsingborg, Sweden.

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Index

Pages in italics refer to figures and pages followed by “n” refer to notes. Aagesen, Dorthe 136n17 Aarre, Mette 123, 126, 138n55 Abramović, Marina 88 Abstract Expressionism 92, 99, 101 Aihara Nobuhiro 131, 137n40, 137n41, 138n52 Akasegawa Genpei 5, 27, 32–4, 152, 159, 169–71, 173–4, 176–8 Andre, Carl 136n14 Antinational Situationist 122, 137n34, 167 Appel, Karel 22, 147 Appiah, Anthony 139, 169n1 Arakawa Shūsaku 161 Archive and Museum for Flemish Cultural life 90 Art Informel 11, 18, 22, 143, 146 Arts, Wil 55 Atelier 119, 40 Atlan, Jean Michel 22, 147 Ausloos, Eddy 97, 107 Auwera, Ferdinand van der 84, 104n5 Barilli, Renato 107n80 Bauhaus Situationiste 2–4, 110, 112–5, 117, 118, 119, 121–3, 136, 166, 167, 179n119 Beck, Henrik Pryds 140 Becker, Jürgen 106n52 Beeren, Wim A.L. 105n38 Bellemans, Guy 95, 106n60 Berg, Cornelis van den 52 Berghaus, Günter 107n91 Bergmark, Torsten 129 Bern, Bobb 104n1 Bernstein, Michèle 117 Beuys, Joseph 101 Bigsby, Christopher W. 104n13

Bill, Max 136n15 Black Mountain College 86, 120 Blanchot, Maurice 156 Blum, Jürgen 137n40 Bokrijk 104n3 Boltanski, Luc 121, 137n33 Bourla Theater 94 Breckpot 85 Breton, André 100 Brøns, Helle 136n17 Broodthaers, Marcel 85, 104 Brook, Peter 93 Bru, Sascha 135n4 Burden, Chris 88 Byars, James Lee 88 C.A.W. 85 Cage, John 17, 24, 86, 96, 105n18, 137n39, 176n69 Calliauw, Koen 93–4, 106n51 Campo 85 Campo 85 Carlsson, Oscar 137n36 Celbeton 85 Centre for Fine Arts 85 Chéroux, Clément 107n79 Cheval, Ferdinand 156, 175n67 Chiapello, Eve 121 Chin Hsiao 89 Chō Yoriko 154 Christelijke Volkspartij 84 Clark, John 135n5 CoBrA 2, 20, 22, 33n24, 71, 89, 105n31, 117, 119, 147, 171 Co-Ritus 119, 136n21 Cottington, David 137n31 Coulianos, Jannis 137n40 Crombez, Thomas 104n7

Index  197 Dabin, Véronique 104n8 Dada 2, 12–3, 16–9, 23–5, 27, 29, 31–3, 44–5, 72, 79, 88, 146, 151–3, 156–7, 159, 161, 163, 170, 174, 176 Dadakan see Itoi Kanji David, Catherine 104n8 De Kunstkamer 85 Debord, Guy 117, 119, 136n16 Decker, Anny De 90, 105 Deleuze, Gilles 39, 63, 81 Dendermonde 85 Deuren, Guy Van 107n89 Dine, Jim 91, 96, 106–7 Documenta 2, 115–7, 134–7, 168 Donovan 93, 106n55 Dorekens 85, 89 Dorekens, Guy 89 Dotremont, Christian 105n31 Drakabygget 109–10, 113, 115, 119–21, 123, 127–8, 133, 136–7 Dreyfus, Charles 105n25 Dusar, Albert 87, 105n24 Duyn, Roel van 60, 67, 80–2 Eco, Umberto 175n57 Edwards, Folke 121, 137n28 Eubanks, Charlotte 175n62 Falbert, Bent 137n32 Fanon, Franz 149, 166, 172n32 Fazakerley, Gordon 120, 137 Fjord, Ambrosius 123 Fluxus 20, 30, 88, 96, 105–6, 113–4, 137n39, 179n114 Frietag, Heinz 123 Fuchs, Anneli 135–6 Fukiko Nakabayashi 126, 137n40 Fumiko Hino 89 Galerie Honger 36, 40, 42, 46, 49, 56, 78n12, 79n24, 99, 147, 162, 178n100 Galerie La Parete 89 Galerie Punt Vier 42–3 Galerie Smith 85 Galerij Dorekens 89 Galerij Standaard 85 Glimcher, Mildred L. 104n15 Goldberg, RoseLee 104n12 Golden, Daniel van 3, 30 Grisebach, Lucius 106n45 Groenplaats 4–5, 90–2, 94–6, 103–6 Grooms, Red 99 Grootveld, Robert Jasper 3, 38, 50, 60, 78–81, 85, 107n72, 114, 179

Grünbaum, Ole 114, 135n12 Gruppe SPUR 117–8, 136 Haacke, Hans 136n14 Hampton, Paul 91 Hansen, Al 107n67 Hariu Ichirō 166, 179n121 Hataraki Tadashi 154 Heerikhuizen, Bart van 74 Hefting, Paul 106n45 Henneman, Jeroen 102 Heyrman, Hugo 1, 4, 86, 90, 92, 101, 102, 107n74, 113, 147 Hi Red Center (Hi-Red Center) 28, 31–2, 34n36, 158, 164, 170n4, 174n50 Hidesuke, Obata 154 Hijikata Tatsumi 32–3, 152, 176n69 Hirokawa Harufumi (Haruji) 27, 152, 174n49, 177n82 Hiroko Ikegami 171n20 Houbrechts, Willem 83, 104n1 Hove, Jan Van 107n75 Huges, Bart 51, 54 Hundertwasser, Friedensreich Regentag Dunkelbunt 3 Huxley, Aldous 97 Huybreghts, John 89, 94 Huybreghts, Koen 106 Iida Yoshikuni 168, 179n122 Ikeda Hayato 143 Ilegems, Paul 85 Imaizumi Yoshihiko 17, 33n15, 158, 164, 178n109 International Theatre Festival 85 Ishizuka, Karen L. 172n30 Itoi Kanji (Dadakan) 13, 17, 18, 31, 33, 126, 146, 151, 153–4, 170n11 Jakobsen, Jakob 136–7 Japan Communist Party 14–5, 144 Jaring, Cor 36, 50–2, 55, 60, 80, 105n38, 162 Jaspers, Thom 4, 36, 42, 45, 54, 67, 101–3, 107–8, 147 Jesty, Justin 170, 170n14 Jóhannsdóttir, Anna 135n6 Johansson, Kenneth 124, 140 Johnston, Jill 104n9 Jong, Jacqueline de 117–8, 120, 136–7 Jorn, Asger 22, 109–10, 117, 119, 135–7, 171n24 Judd, Donald 136n14 Judson Memorial Church 88

198 Index Kadonaga Kazuo 137n40, 137n41 Kagami Masayuki 16, 22, 160 Kaidō Hideo 143 Kanayama Akira 148 Kaprow, Allan 86, 104–5, 107, 142, 170–1 Kapur, Geeta 168, 180 Katō Yoshihiro 32n8, 157 Katsuhiro, Yamaguchi 166 Kawani Hiroshi 147, 164, 170n4 Kazakura Sho 158 K-Church (K-Temple) 40, 47–8, 52, 80n62 Keikyo Nakajima 137n40 Keller, George 119 Keller, Johansje 54, 55, 79 Kelley, Jeff 104 Kennedy, John F. 91 King, Andres 123 Kirby, Michael 86, 99, 105 Kishimoto Sayoko 157 Klein, Yves 85 Köpcke, Arthur 113 Kostelanetz, Richard 87 Koster, Koosje 60 Kosugi Takehisa 30, 32n9, 152, 158, 176n69, 178n106 Kroese, Nicolaas 47, 51, 79 Kroeze, Garmt 60 Krøyer (Krojer), Tom 123 Kubiak, Malgorzata (Malga) 129, 131, 137n40, 138n51 Kubota Noboru 164 Kubota Shigeko 30, 88 Kudō Tetsumi 12, 16, 29, 145 Kunimoto, Namiko 147, 170–1 Kunstkamer 85 Kurczynski, Karen 135–6 KuroDalaiJee 18, 33–4, 170n4, 174–5, 178n97 Kyushu-ha 154–6, 174–7 Landala Modern Art Gallery 113, 121 Le Va, Barry 136n14 Lebel, Jean-Jacques 87, 93, 105–6 Leenders, Annelien 107n70 LeWitt, Sol 136n14 Liechti, Hans 89 Lindt, Martijn 60 Lockley, John 94 Lohaus, Bernd 1, 101, 103 Lönnell, Birgitta 137n21 Maciunas, George 88 Maes, Jules 95

Magic Center 2, 40, 48, 178 Mairowitz, David Zane 93, 106n57 Malvin, Sven 124, 131, 136n13, 138 Margni, Novi 123 Marter, Joan 104n13 Martin, J.V. 117, 123 Maruki Iri 155 Maruki Toshi 175n62 Masuzawa Kinpei 152 Mathieu, Georges 11, 146 Matsuzawa Yutaka 113, 124, 160, 179n122 Meeuwissen, Wim 95, 106n61 Menue, Liza 123 Metz, Hans 60 Meyer-Hermann, Eva 107n68 Mich, Ludo 85, 102–3, 107–8 Miki Tomio 166 Miyazaki Junnosuke 154 Modern Art Center of Japan 154 Monroe, Marilyn 91 Morris, Robert 136n14 Mulisch, Harry 60, 81 Murak, Teresa 4, 127, 129, 130, 137–8 Murata Kiichi 164 Musée National d’Art Moderne 167 Nakajima, Anders 133 Nakamura Hiroshi 144, 169, 170n15, 172n27 Nakanishi Natsuyuki 27, 32n4, 34n36, 147, 154, 157, 164, 165, 170n4, 176n75 Nam June Paik 114, 174n50, 179n114 Nash, Jørgen 109–10, 113, 117–21, 124, 127, 131, 133, 135–7 Neels, Frans 92, 96, 106n43 Neo Dada 12, 32n6, 174 Neo Dada, group (Neo-Dadaism Organizers) 12–3, 16–7, 24, 32n6, 33n19, 152, 157, 170n4, 174n51 Nieuwenhuys, Constant 71 Niggl, Thomas 127, 137–8 Nihon Indépendant 143–4, 170n10 Nitten 143 Nørrested, Carl 136n20 O’Brien, Patrick 123 Occupy Antwerp 94, 106n59 Okamoto Tarō 33n18, 147 Oldenburg, Claes 96 Olsson, Jesper 135 Ono, Yoko 5, 17, 29, 88, 137n39, 177n82 Ostaijen, Paul van 93, 97, 103, 106n50 Ōyama Uichi 154–5

Index  199 Panamarenko (Henri Van Herwegen) 1, 4, 90, 96–7, 97, 99, 101–3, 106–7, 113, 162 Pas, Johan 104n2 Pas, Nicolaas Gerardus 107n90 Peleman, Stephan 106n61 Perchuk, Andrew 107n68 Piotrowski, Piotr 111, 135n5 Pollock, Jackson 104n13, 171n18 Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI 148 Prem, Heimrad 123 Provo 2–5, 35, 37–9, 41–3, 45, 47–9, 51, 53, 55–83, 87, 94, 101–2, 104, 107n90, 109–10, 114, 135n12, 137n32, 141, 147, 162, 178–80 Pruis, Ab 48, 50–1 Punk 94 Rainer, Arnulf 101 Rancière, Jacques 140–41, 149, 169, 171n15, 173–4, 178n98 Rasmussen, Mikkel Bolt 136–7 Råstorp, Hjalmar 123–4, 127 Reida, Dop 52 Reinsberg, Rafael 137n40 Riet, Ron Van 95, 106n61 Rockburne, Dorothea 136n14 Rodenbeck, Judith 104n15, 105n28, 107n65, 142, 145, 170n6, 171n19, 175n57, 178n112 Rombouts, Tony 96, 105–6 Rose, Barbara 88 Rosenthal, Stephanie 107n68 Ross, Kristin 148–9, 151, 172–3 Roth, Dieter 113, 135n6 Rotterdam Art Academy 30 Royal Academy of Fine Arts 84, 89, 104n7 Royal Shakespeare Company 93 Rubens 94 Rumney, Ralph 117 Runolfsson, Halldór Björn 137n21 Sakurai Takami 24, 30, 154 Salens, Ann 103 Sandback, Fred 136n14 Sandford, Mariellen R 105n18, 106n54, 107n91 Schechner, Richard 105n18 Schieder, Chelsea Szendi 32n12, 172, 179n118 Schimmelpenninck, Luud 60, 69 Schneemann, Carolee 88, 96 Schultz, Bara (Barbara) 137n40 Sebastian 160 Segal, George 104n13

Segi Shin’ichi 147, 170n9 Seigel, Jerrold E. 137n31 Serra, Richard 136n14 Shinohara Ushio 13, 18, 32n6, 152, 170n11 Siikava, Alpo 137n40 Skånska Konstakademien 110, 133, 140 Smeets, Albert 87, 105n24 Smithson, Robert 136n14 So What! 45, 56 Spoerri, Daniel 85 Spui Square 2, 5, 40, 49, 78, 141, 178n103 Stansill, Peter 93, 106n57 Stassaert, Lucienne 96, 106n62 Statens Museum for Kunst 136n17 Stolk, Rob 60 Stoop, Olaf 60, 67 Stourdzé, Sam 107n79 Stouthuysen, Patrick 106n56 Stowasser, Friedrich 3 Strid, Hardy 114 Strijdonck, Diana Van 107n85 Sturm, Helmut 123 Sugai Kumi 166 Suvin, Darko 87, 105n22 Suzuki Gorō 126, 137n40 Tabe Mitsuko 154 Taibo II, Paco Ignacio 173n33 Takahashi Masaru 137n40 Takamatsu Jirō 27, 32n4, 34n36, 147, 157, 164, 166, 170n4 Takamura Mukata 137n40 Takashi Naraha 137n40 Takiguchi Shūzō 32n6, 143, 170n12 Tanaka Atsuko 32n11, 147, 177n82 Tanaka Chu’ichi 11 Tapié, Michel 146 Tashiro Minoru 16, 20, 22, 26, 31, 44, 79, 152 Teada Takehiro 137n40 The Apple 40, 85 The Living Theatre 85, 104n15 The Situationist Times 118 Thích Quảng Đứ c 93 Thorsen, Jens Jørgen 109–10, 113–4, 120–2, 135–7 Tokyo Olympics 19, 28–9, 31, 161 Tomii, Reiko 168, 174–5, 180n124, 180n125 Tone Yasunao 32n9, 152, 171n18, 176n69, 178n106 Tōno Yoshiaki 12, 32n10, 174n46, 177n82 Tuffin, George 94, 106n58 Tuynman, Hans 60, 80n53

200 Index Ubbeboda Center 110, 124, 127, 131, 136–8 Ubbeboda Symposium 2, 4, 111–3, 125–7, 129, 137–8, 167 Uleman, Rurik 103 Unbeat 2–3, 7, 15–6, 19–20, 22–8, 31, 33–4, 40–5, 51, 55–6, 76, 78, 80, 91, 106, 117, 122, 126, 140, 152, 161, 167

Weverbergh, Julien 106n42 Whitman, Robert 86 Wiberg, Totte 107n68 Wide White Space Gallery 90 Winther-Tamaki, Bert 175n66 Witse, Rudy 94, 96, 106n62 Witte, Els 104n4

Vaccari, Franco 101, 107n80 Valand Art Academy 2, 4, 113, 115, 121, 131 Vautier, Ben 105n25, 137n39 Velde, Willy (Wannes) van de 85, 104n6 Veldhoen, Aat 46 Vercammen, Wout 1, 4, 86, 89–90, 96, 100, 104–5, 107, 147 Viennese Actionism 88 Vinkenoog, Simon 70, 81n70, 166 Vlaamse Militantenorde 84 Volkspartij, Christelijke 84 Vostell, Wolf 86, 103, 106n52

yajiuma 34n38, 159, 173, 177n89 Yamashita Keisuke 137n40 Yayoi Kusama 21, 29, 33n23, 89 Yomiuri Indépendant 12–3, 17–8, 22, 27–8, 32–3, 143–4, 147, 151–2, 157–60, 164, 166, 170n11, 171n25, 174n46, 176–7 Yomiuri Newspaper Co. 143 Yoshida Yoshie 7, 19, 27, 32, 124, 137n41, 142, 151–4, 160, 174–5, 177 Yoshimoto, Midori 177n82 Yoshimura Masunobu 152, 170n11 Yoshino Tatsumi 152

Walker, Gavin 34n28, 172–3 Warhol, Andy 91, 100 Weerlee, Duco van 60, 72, 78n2, 80n53 Were Di 84

Zaal Wynen 85 Zengakuren 14–5, 38 Zwick, Lis 137n28