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Hi-Red Center (ハイレッド・センター, Haireddo Sentā) was a Japanese artistic collective, founded in May 1963 and consisting of artists Genpei Akasegawa, Natsuyuki Nakanishi, and Jirō Takamatsu, that organized and performed anti-establishment
happening A happening is a performance, event, or situation art, usually as performance art. The term was first used by Allan Kaprow in 1959 to describe a range of art-related events. History Origins Allan Kaprow first coined the term "happening" i ...
s. Taking the urban environment of
Tokyo Tokyo, officially the Tokyo Metropolis, is the capital of Japan, capital and List of cities in Japan, most populous city in Japan. With a population of over 14 million in the city proper in 2023, it is List of largest cities, one of the most ...
as their canvas, the group sought to create interventions that blurred the lines between art and everyday life and raised questions about centralized authority and the role of the individual in society. Later considered to have been one of the most prominent and influential Japanese art groups of the 1960s, Hi-Red Center never officially disbanded, but their happening ''Cleaning Event'' in October 1964 proved to be their final artistic action.


Formation

Akasegawa had previously participated in the short-lived
Neo-Dada Organizers , sometimes shortened to Neo-Dada Organizers or simply , was a short-lived but influential Japanese Neo-Dadaist art collective formed by Masunobu Yoshimura in 1960. Composed of a small group of young, up-and-coming artists who met periodically a ...
, a similar art collective focused on performance art and happenings. Nakanishi and Takamatsu worked together to stage ''Yamanote Line Incident'' (1962) (detailed below) in October 1962, subsequently participating in the "Signs of Discourse on Direct Action" symposium sponsored by ''Keishō'' art magazine held November that year, with Akasegawa as an interloctor.Faris, Jaimey Hamilton. "Rooms in Alibi: How Akasegawa Genpei Framed Capitalist Reality." ''ARTMargins'' 4, no. 3 (2015): 40-64. The symposium examined the relationship between artistic and political action, and allowed the three artists to reflect on the waning of political activity in Japan. All three artists had begun as painters but would embrace methods of “direct action” in their work with Hi-Red Center, borrowing a term from prewar socialist agitators. With “direct action,” the artists meant to raise to consciousness the absurdities and contradictions of Japanese society. This interest in Art as direct action has been contextualised as rooted in the atmosphere following massive Anpo protests against the U.S.-Japan Security Treaty in 1960. They were united to move toward “events” for an “uneventful” time. These discussions at the symposium led the artists to work together again to present their three-person show, "Fifth Mixer Plan," at the Dai-Ichi Gallery in Shinjunku and thus found the group Hi-Red Center in May 1963. The name "Hi-Red Center" was derived from the first ''
kanji are logographic Chinese characters, adapted from Chinese family of scripts, Chinese script, used in the writing of Japanese language, Japanese. They were made a major part of the Japanese writing system during the time of Old Japanese and are ...
'' characters of their surnames: “高, ''taka”'' (high), “赤, ''aka”'' (red), and “中, ''naka”'' (center).


Collective Practice

Hi-Red Center is known for "breaking away from the urban centrality of the Tokyo art scene and the focus on the museum/gallery as the core location for the production and consumption of art."Pendleton, Mark. "Bringing little things to the surface: intervening into the Japanese post-Bubble impasse on the Yamanote." In ''Japan Forum'', vol. 30, no. 2, pp. 257-276. Routledge, 2018. By staging these events in the public realm, they acted anonymously while breaching the boundary between art and life. Their happenings were not a mere displacement of art to the streets, but inherently reshaped the relationship between objects and performance. Akasegawa in particular questioned the ways in which objects, actions, and environments gained coherence in relationship to each other and how artistic intervention acts could disrupt this. Furthermore, they wished to pronounce how their small gestures and ordinary objects were intertwined with inherent “structures” (as Nakanishi called them) or “systems” (as Akasegawa called them in ''Capitalist Realism''), such as newspapers, currency, commodity circulation, train lines, and public sanitation. Shigeko Kubota and
George Maciunas George Maciunas (; ; November 8, 1931 Kaunas – May 9, 1978 Boston, Massachusetts) was a Lithuanian American artist, art historian, and art organizer who was the founding member and central coordinator of Fluxus, an international community of ...
' edited map sheet ''Bundle of Events'' (1965) represents the corpus of the group's city interventions on a notational cartographic form, implying the confluence of their activities with the urban landscape. While the group is associated with the
Fluxus Fluxus was an international, interdisciplinary community of artists, composers, designers, and poets during the 1960s and 1970s who engaged in experimental performance art, art performances which emphasized the artistic process over the finishe ...
movement (and its Japanese counterparts), art historian Reiko Tomii suggests it would be a mistake to interpret it through the history and confines Euro-American movements.Tomii, Reiko. “Hi Red Center, Great Panorama Exhibition”
016 The Home Guard Special Division 016 (; abbreviated as HV-016) is a former military unit of Norway, that was a part of the Home Guard. It was established after 1985 to "stop terror- or sabotage actions that could weaken or paralyze Norway's abili ...
In Mathieu Copeland and Balthazar Lovau (eds.), ''The Anti-Museum'', 2017, 47-50. London: Koening Books and Fri Art.
Instead, Hi-Red Center's activities can be seen to follow the demise of
Anti-Art Anti-art is a loosely used term applied to an array of concepts and attitudes that reject prior definitions of art and question art in general. Somewhat paradoxically, anti-art tends to conduct this questioning and rejection from the vantage poi ...
(''Han-geijutsu'') in Japan (in the 1960s),Yoshimoto, Midori. "Off Museum! Performance Art That Turned the Street." ''Performance paradigm'' 2 (2006): 108-122. which can be traced to the phenomenon called "
Informel Informalism or Art Informel () is a Painting, pictorial movement from the 1943–1950s, that includes all the Abstract painting, abstract and Action painting, gestural tendencies that developed in France and the rest of Europe during the World W ...
Whirlwind," a Japanese version of gestural abstraction. Hi-Red Center prefigured collaborative collectivism, bridging Anti-Art to Non-Art (''Hi-geijutsu'') movements (in the 1970s),Tomii, Reiko. "After the “Descent to the Everyday”: Japanese Collectivism from Hi Red Center to The Play, 1964–1973." In Collectivism after Modernism: The Art of Social Imagination after 1945, edited by STIMSON BLAKE and SHOLETTE GREGORY, 45-75. University of Minnesota Press, 2007. Accessed March 28, 2021. http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5749/j.ctttv1dg.7 . with Anti-Art collectivism being more viscerally driven and Non-Art collectivism more cerebrally engaged.Tomii, Reiko. ""Art Outside the Box" in 1960s Japan: An Introduction and Commentary." Review of Japanese Culture and Society 17 (2005): 1-11. Accessed March 28, 2021. . These artists' experimentations with form can be characterised as the dematerialization of art, comparable to global developments of conceptual and post-minimalist art. Anti-Art gained popularity in the Japanese vanguard art scene through the annual Yomiuri Indépendant Exhibition (1949-1963), the annual exhibition where Hi-Red Center (and other collectives such as Kyushu-ha, Group Ongaku, Zero Dimension ero Jigen Jikan-ha ime School were active. Artists at the Yomiuri Indépendant Exhibition “advocated making junk art and violent demonstrations to protest the conventional practice of art”, degrading Art's status as rarefied objects to commonplace items. Reiko Tomii notes that Hi-Red Center treated this redefinition of the position of Art more directly, enabling Art to descend to everyday life by making everyday life and spaces the site of their work. The group had suspicions about the constraints of traditional art exhibition spaces—“what is offered to the public, at which venue, by whom, under what circumstances, resulting in what reception?”. Art historian Reiko Tomii argues that the shift from the display of objects in an exhibition format to the installation and organisation of “
Happening A happening is a performance, event, or situation art, usually as performance art. The term was first used by Allan Kaprow in 1959 to describe a range of art-related events. History Origins Allan Kaprow first coined the term "happening" i ...
s” (hapuningu), “events” (ivento), and “rituals” (gishiki) in "extraexhibtion projects" required extensive collaboration inter and intra collectives. Thus, Hi-Red Center's form of Anti-Art practice can also be said to be
postmodern Postmodernism encompasses a variety of artistic, cultural, and philosophical movements that claim to mark a break from modernism. They have in common the conviction that it is no longer possible to rely upon previous ways of depicting the wo ...
, in its questioning of the notions of sole
authorship In legal discourse, an author is the creator of an original work that has been published, whether that work exists in written, graphic, visual, or recorded form. The act of creating such a work is referred to as authorship. Therefore, a sculpt ...
,
individualism Individualism is the moral stance, political philosophy, ideology, and social outlook that emphasizes the intrinsic worth of the individual. Individualists promote realizing one's goals and desires, valuing independence and self-reliance, and a ...
and
originality Originality is the aspect of created or invented works that distinguish them from reproductions, clones, forgeries, or substantially derivative works. The modern idea of originality is according to some scholars tied to Romanticism, by a notion ...
in
modern art Modern art includes artistic work produced during the period extending roughly from the 1860s to the 1970s, and denotes the styles and philosophies of the art produced during that era. The term is usually associated with art in which the tradit ...
. Akasegawa referred to the group's work as "secret art", with no "officially fixed form" and existing "in the form of rumours". This reflected the Happenings event nature of their work, despite requiring prior planning by the group members. However, this quality of secrecy was influenced by the group being consisted of anonymous members that participated in the organisation of events, without being officially credited.Melnikova, Daria. "Body, Camera, Action: Understanding the Metamorphosis of Performance Art in Japan." (2018). Even the group's name was intended to form a was a fictional character called Mr. "Hi Red Center", similar to
Marcel Duchamp Henri-Robert-Marcel Duchamp (, ; ; 28 July 1887 – 2 October 1968) was a French painter, sculptor, chess player, and writer whose work is associated with Cubism, Dada, Futurism and conceptual art. He is commonly regarded, along with Pablo Pica ...
’s Rrose Sélavy.


Events

Other events not detailed below include ''Waseda University Event'' (November 22, 1962),Merewether, Charles, Rika Iezumi Hiro, and Reiko Tomii. ''Art, Anti-Art, Non-Art: Experimentations in the Public Sphere in Postwar Japan, 1950-1970''. Los Angeles: Getty Research Institute, 2007. where the group painted the urinals of a lecture hall at Waseda University’s red, and ''Ropology'' (August 1963).


''Yamanote Line Incident'' (October 18, 1962)

Staged on 18 October 1962, Natsuyuki and Takamatsu boarded a Yamanote loop line train heading counter-clockwise on its route, disrupting the normalcy of passenger's commutes through a series of performative actions. While this event was staged prior to the official formation of the group, it demonstrates the core ethos of their subsequent works from 1963 onwards. Nakanishi positioned himself in the centre of the train carriage, his face painted white and seemingly absorbed in a book. He carried Compact Objects or ''objet''s, transparent forms about the size and shape of an ostrich egg, with sundry or "junk" items such as wristwatches, bits of rope, sunglasses, bottle caps and human hair encased in resin. Nakanishi proceeded to lick his objects, also shining a flashlight upon onlooker’s faces to observe their reactions. Prior to boarding the carriage at
Ueno Station is a major railway station in Tokyo's Taitō ward. It is the station used to reach the Ueno district and Ueno Park—which contains Tokyo National Museum, The National Museum of Western Art, Ueno Zoo, Tokyo University of the Arts and other ...
,Paik, Nam June. “To Catch Up or Not to Catch Up with the West: Hijikata and Hi Red Center.” In ''Japanese Art After 1945: Scream Against the Sky'', edited by Alexandra Munroe, 77–82. New York, New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1994. Takamatsu had unravelled his 3.5 km long Point-string, knotted with similar domestic objects, on the station platform. Later, he stood on the side of the carriage, reading a newspaper with holes in them. Other participants, such as Murata Kiichi, applied white face paint and brought additional objects, including rope, real eggs and a chicken foot. Murai Tokuji documented the happening with photography, depicting the puzzled expressions of commuters watching Nakanishi. Akasegawa was also present as a photographer. William Marotti characterizes this work as an intervention into quietness (or calmness), Nakanishi and Genpei situating the work in the wake of large-scale post-war upheavals (such as the 1960 Anpo US–Japan Security Treaty
protests A protest (also called a demonstration, remonstration, or remonstrance) is a public act of objection, disapproval or dissent against political advantage. Protests can be thought of as acts of cooperation in which numerous people cooperate ...
). They saw the train systems as a "terrain of the everyday", using the individual bodies of the artists to demonstrate how these symbolic events have long-lasting effects on the citizen body, long after public political discourse and dissent wanes. Thus, this quietness or calmness is qualified on the level of public consciousness, rather than a literal silence or emptiness. The choice of staging the event on the Yamanote loop, one of the busiest commuter lines, demonstrates this prioritisation. Their choice of setting can also be attributed to the larger desire for “direct action” (chokusetsu kodo), in the wake of waning public protests post-Anpo. Mark Pendleton argues that this work, and its form of intervention into the everyday, has influenced the ethos of subsequent collectives in the 1970s, such as Video Earth Tokyo. The collective also situated their work in the Tokyo train system, installing a dining table and hosting a meal on a subway carriage in ''Shukutaku ressha/Video Picnic'' (1975).


''Fifth Mixer Plan'' (May 7–12, 1963)

''Fifth Mixer Plan'' was the three person exhibition that led to the founding of the group, and was staged in May 1963 at the Dai-Ichi Gallery in Shinjunku. The three artists presented some of their seminal individual works; Takamatsu exhibited ''String Continue On and On'' and Akasegawa exhibited ''Wrapped Objects.''


''Sixth Mixer Plan'' (May 28–29, 1963)

This event was held on May 28–29 at Gallery Naiqua, inaugurating the space.Yoshimoto, Midori. ''Into performance: Japanese women artists in New York''. Rutgers University Press, 2005. The group (and its members) had frequently worked and exhibited in Naiqua (内科; internal medicine) Gallery, and continued to do so individually after their disbanding. Nakanishi was childhood friends with the owner, Miyata Kunio, and influenced him to open the rental gallery (''kashi garo''). Thus, they did not have to pay any rental fees when they used the space. Presenting what would become one of his most famous works, Nakanishi staged ''Sentaku basal wa kakuhan koi wo shucho suru (Clothes Pegs Assert Churning Action)'',Galliano, Luciana. ''Japan Fluxus''. Rowman & Littlefield, 2018. walking around in the square in front of the Shinbashi rail station, covered with metal clothespins and carrying balloons. These common clothespins were attached en-masse to canvas, clothing and human flesh.Ippolito, Jean M. "The Search for New Media: Early Avant-Garde Momentum for the Digital art Pioneers of Japan." ''Art Inquiry'' 10 (2008): 97-112. The work had previously been staged at the March 1963 Yomiuri Indépendant Exhibition. Nakanishi conceived of the work as interactive, allowing the passerby audience to participate by taking the clothespins off or putting them on. The audience reacted to the work in bemusement, without realising the physical pain Nakanishi had subjected himself to. The group also made suits out of balloons for performers on the streets of Tokyo.


''News Flash! Who is Using the Communication Satellite?'' (April 1964)

The group published a set of leaflets titled ''News Flash! Who is Using the Communication Satellite?'' (''Tokuhō! Tsūshin eisei wa nanimono ni tsukawarete iru ka!'') in April 1964. This project highlights the coincidence between the TV broadcast as well as
the assassination of John F. Kennedy John F. Kennedy, the 35th president of the United States, was assassinated while riding in a presidential motorcade through Dealey Plaza in Dallas, Texas, on November 22, 1963. Kennedy was in the vehicle with his wife Jacqueline Kennedy Onas ...
and an attempted assassination of the U.S. ambassador to Japan
Edwin Reischauer Edwin Oldfather Reischauer ( ; October 15, 1910 – September 1, 1990) was an American diplomat, educator, and professor at Harvard University. Born in Tokyo to American educational missionaries, he became a leading scholar of the history and cu ...
. The leaflets hinted at a possible third assassination of French President
Charles de Gaulle Charles André Joseph Marie de Gaulle (22 November 18909 November 1970) was a French general and statesman who led the Free France, Free French Forces against Nazi Germany in World War II and chaired the Provisional Government of the French Re ...
in light of the upcoming broadcast testing between Japan and Europe. The group was commenting on how the apparatus of media functions in a capitalist society, namely how news reportage preceded the event.


''Imperial Hotel Body: Shelter Plan'' (January 1964)

''Shelter Plan'' was an invite-only event staged at Tokyo’s Imperial Hotel in January 1964. The event was titled to be reminiscent of 1950s bombing drills. 56 guests, including artists such as
Masao Adachi Masao Adachi (足立正生 ''Adachi Masao'', born May 13, 1939) is a Japanese screenwriter, director, actor and former Japanese Red Army member who was most active in the 1960s and 1970s. He was born in Fukuoka Prefecture. Career Best known for ...
, Mieko Shiomi, Kazakura Shō,
Tadanori Yokoo is a Japanese graphic designer, illustrator, printmaker and painter. Yokoo's signature style of psychedelia and pastiche engages a wide span of modern visual and cultural phenomena from Japan and around the world. Career Tadanori Yokoo, bo ...
, Kawani Hiroshi,
Yoko Ono Yoko Ono (, usually spelled in katakana as ; born February 18, 1933) is a Japanese multimedia artist, singer, songwriter, and peace activist. Her work also encompasses performance art and filmmaking. Ono grew up in Tokyo and moved to New York ...
and
Nam June Paik Nam June Paik (; July 20, 1932 – January 29, 2006) was a South Korean artist. He worked with a variety of media and is considered to be the founder of video art. He is credited with the first use (1974) of the term "electronic super highway" ...
, were invited into the Hi-Red Center suite to have their measurements taken, on the pretence of customising one-person nuclear bomb shelters.Sas, Miryam. ''Experimental Arts in Postwar Japan: Moments of Encounter, Engagement, and Imagined Return'', 150. Harvard University Asia Center Publications Program, 2011. The process of inspecting each guest, despite them having received an invitation card and an instruction card, was intended to be alienating and objectifying, as though they had been arrested.Baird, Bruce. ''Hijikata Tatsumi and Butoh: Dancing in a pool of gray grits'', 70. Springer, 2012. The instructions included the following steps: Guests were to enter the hotel through the front door, to wear a tie and gloves, and to bring a bag. They were also asked not to leave any fingerprints in the hotel lobby. Once they were invited upstairs and entered the hotel room, the participants received an HRC stamp—a red exclamation mark—on a 1000-yen note as a passport. The name, date of birth, address, and belongings of each guest were verified, and fingerprints and body measurements were taken. Each participant was photographed from six points of view—face, left profile, right profile, back, top and bottom—to create a custom-sized model of a shelter that could be ordered in four sizes, ranging from life-size to one-tenth of life-size. They then had to be measured for their body volume by being immersed into a bathtub filled with water.Nettleton, Taro. "Hi Red Center’s Shelter Plan (1964): The Uncanny Body in the Imperial Hotel." ''Japanese Studies'' 34, no. 1 (2014): 83-99. The group also prepared five Mystery Cans or as Akasegawa referred to them, "Universe Cans",Akasegawa, Genpei. “A Can of the Universe. 1984” translated by Reiko Tomii, In ''The Anti-Museum: An Anthology'', edited by Mathieu Copeland and Balthazar Lovay, 51–53. Koenig Books, 2017. which were tin cans marked with the group's signature red “!” insignia and filled with unknown contents. Jōnouchi Motoharu’s film ''Shelter Plan'' which documented the even shows that Nakanishi had papered the walls of the suite with images from the ''General Catalogue of Males ’63''. Scholars such as Jessica Santone have read the work as "a critique of Cold War bureaucratic state machines by mimicking their excessive documentation and surveillant control of bodies, while drawing attention to the specificities of the individuals as they differ from normative ideals." Taro Nettleton makes a connection between this event and ''Cleaning Event'', stating that the surveillance of bodies by the government was intended to present a veneer of a physically fit populace. The English Fluxus version of the work was mistranslated as ''Human Box Event'' by Shigeko Kubota, eventually title ''Hotel Event'', and was characterised without the specific Japanese socio-political context.


''The Great Panorama Exhibition'' (aka ''Closing Event'') (May 12–16, 1964)

''The Great Panorama Exhibition'' ran from May 12–16 at the Naiqua Gallery in Tokyo. A questioning of the exhibition format, the group presented an exhibition that was only ever closed and not visible to its audience. They placed an announcement on the door that the space was closed “by the hands of Hi Red Center. When you have free time, please make sure not to visit it."Bilbao Yarto, Ana Edurne. "The closed exhibition: when form needs a break." ''Revista de História Da Arte'' (2019): 126-143. The group made sure to include both Japanese and English renditions of the announcement, conscious of foreigners who might want to enter the gallery. A diagram of the space was produced to indicate the parameters of the exhibition space, namely the closed door. The work was structured by its "opening" and "closing events, which in fact were the inverse, with the sealing of the door at the opening and its unsealing at its closing. At the opening event, the group used hammers and nails to affix the door, with no spectators except for a cockroach trapped in a glass, who was left in sealed gallery space. The closing event was officiated by
Jasper Johns Jasper Johns (born May 15, 1930) is an American painter, sculptor, draftsman, and printmaker. Considered a central figure in the development of American postwar art, he has been variously associated with abstract expressionism, Neo-Dada, and ...
, who pulled out the first nail of the sealed gallery door. This closing event had a sizeable audience, including art critic Takiguchi Shūzō and artists
Yoko Ono Yoko Ono (, usually spelled in katakana as ; born February 18, 1933) is a Japanese multimedia artist, singer, songwriter, and peace activist. Her work also encompasses performance art and filmmaking. Ono grew up in Tokyo and moved to New York ...
and
Sam Francis Samuel Lewis Francis (June 25, 1923 – November 4, 1994) was an American painter and printmaker. Early life Sam Francis was born in San Mateo, California,
. Drinks were served. By subverting the functions and performativity of exhibition openings and closings, the collective wanted to position the space exterior to the gallery space as the work or panorama on display, rather than what is contained within the gallery space. No longer was the artwork form in question—the exhibition format needed to be challenged as well. Naiqua Gallery was an alternative gallery space adjacent to institutional spaces, existing within a broader system of commercial versus rental galleries which were further distinguished by the curatorial direction and rental paid by the artist. Thus, the space is further encoded with the notion that not even this alternative space can contain or host the kind of Art worth exhibiting, providing a deeper impetus to seek Art in the streets.


''Dropping Event'' (October 10, 1964)

In ''Dropping Event'' (October 10, 1964), the group heaved a suitcase and its contents off the building of the Ikenobō Flower-Arranging School’s headquarters (''Ikenobō Kaikan'').Alexandra Munroe, ''Japanese Art After 1945: Scream Against the Sky'' (New York, NY: H.N. Abrams, 1994), 178. After dropping the objects they collected and packed them all into the battered suitcase, placing it in a public locker and sending the key to the locker to someone chosen at random from a phone book. ''Dropping Event'' was documented by photographers Minoru Hirata and Hanaga Mitsutoshi.


''Cleaning Event'' (aka ''Be Clean!'' aka ''Campaign to Promote Cleanliness and Order in the Metropolitan Area'') (October 16, 1964)

The group is most known for this performance work, which took place on the bustling district of
Ginza Ginza ( ; ) is a district of Chūō, Tokyo, Chūō, Tokyo, located south of Yaesu and Kyōbashi, Tokyo, Kyōbashi, west of Tsukiji, east of Yūrakuchō and Uchisaiwaichō, and north of Shinbashi. It is a popular upscale shopping area of Tokyo ...
in Tokyo on Saturday, October 16, 1964. It was intentionally staged during the duration of the 1964 Tokyo Olympic Games, as a criticism of how the Japanese government had hastily beautified and modernised Tokyo to present the city as economically advanced post-World War II. More incisively, these cleaning efforts were specifically targeted against unwanted citizens such as the homeless and ‘thought perverts" (''shisōteki henshitsusha''). The group started cleaning the streets in Ginza with inefficient tools, such as cotton balls with ammonia, dental tools, surgeons sponges, tooth picks, linen napkins or toothbrushes, polishing any metal pieces they could find on the pavement—parodying or emphasising the futility of such cleaning efforts. They also carried billboard signs with "Be Clean!" in English and "''Soji-chu''" (Cleaning now) in Japanese. The three core members and their associates were dressed in outfits used by laboratory technicians during the Olympic Games, paired with an incongruous pair of shades and a red armband with the group’s trademark “!

in white. Despite this deliberate self-identification, passersby did not question their clearly heightened act of cleaning—proving the legitimacy of the group's critique of how extreme or performative prior government cleaning initiatives had been. Leading up to the happening event itself, the group also prepared flyers as an additional parody of bureaucratic organisation. The flyer posed an open call for participation, detailing arbitrary heuristic information under the organisation of the fictional “Metropolitan Environment Hygiene Execution Committee”. The flyer included a list of fictional and actual co-organisers and sponsors, such as the Tokyo’s Olympics Organizing Committee, Fluxus Japanese Section and Group Ongaku, reflecting the collective conception of the work, without full attribution to the group itself. This event was also submitted to
Yasunao Tone was a Japanese multidisciplinary artist born in Tokyo, Japan and working in New York City. He graduated from Chiba University in 1957 with a major in Japanese Literature. An important figure in postwar Japanese art during the 1960s, he was active ...
's "Tone Prize exhibition" (held at Naiqua Gallery in the same month), which critiqued the jury system of salons and competitive exhibitions. ''Cleaning Event'' prefigures later "intercollective networking", being adopted by ''Kyukyoko Hyogen Kenkyujo'' (Final Art Institute) in 1973 and in the
Expo '70 The or Expo '70 was a world's fair held in Suita, Osaka Prefecture, Japan, between 15 March and 13 September 1970. Its theme was "Progress and Harmony for Mankind." In Japanese, Expo '70 is often referred to as . It was the first world's fair ...
Destruction Joint-Struggle Group (''Banpaku Hakai Kyõtõ-ha'') protests in 1969-1970. The Expo '70 protests were directly informed by ''Cleaning Event'', the collective participants being against Japan's rapid urbanisation under the auspices of presenting an illusion of "Progress and Harmony" (Expo '70's theme) at an international event. Both events were documented by photographers Hirata Minoru and Hanaga Mitsutoshi. Through the group's affiliation to Fluxus, ''Cleaning Event'' has been staged out of Japan, though without reference of consideration of the original event's immediate socio-political context. An American edition of the event was organised by
George Maciunas George Maciunas (; ; November 8, 1931 Kaunas – May 9, 1978 Boston, Massachusetts) was a Lithuanian American artist, art historian, and art organizer who was the founding member and central coordinator of Fluxus, an international community of ...
in New York City in 1965 (alongside ''Shelter Plan'') and at the 1966 Fluxfest (performed by the students of Roberts Watts and Geoffery Hendricks at the
Grand Army Plaza Grand Army Plaza, originally known as Prospect Park Plaza, is a public plaza that comprises the northern corner and the main entrance of Prospect Park in the New York City borough of Brooklyn. It consists of concentric oval rings arranged as s ...
). It is said that Maciunas had a deep respect for the group's work.


Documentation

Photographic documentation of the group's ephemeral activities was crucial for the works to be studied and historicised. Operating during the 1960s, there was rarely any form of filmic of video documentation of artistic activity in Japan,''Shelter Plan'' being a rare exception that was documented by film. Most of the group's works was photographed by Hirata Minoru and Hanaga Mitsutoshi. Hirata described his documentation practice as capturing "Art that jumped outside he box (''Tobidashita āto''), which also bears the connotations of art existing outside of the institutional site of exhibitions in Japan. Similarly, Nakanishi has described ''Yamanote Line Incident'' to be a invocation to break out of the box, by stubbornly repeating events that did not belong to the structure (''kozosei'') of this container (''utsuwa''), supplementing events that daily gush forth. Jōnouchi’s film ''Shelter Plan'' exists as a form of documentation of the event itself, but includes images of other events. In the film, we see
Yoko Ono Yoko Ono (, usually spelled in katakana as ; born February 18, 1933) is a Japanese multimedia artist, singer, songwriter, and peace activist. Her work also encompasses performance art and filmmaking. Ono grew up in Tokyo and moved to New York ...
signing a contract and lying on a bed, a still shot of Nakanishi's clothespin performance, the name card of the Hi Red Center group and the Imperial Hotel contract/rental form, Mystery Cans and a man taking a bath. It obfuscates the human body and figure, showing segments of the torso, back, head and toes in various orientations, intercutting as if to trace the process of measurement integral to the piece. This assemblage of fragments from the events question the indexicality of the film document, and its status as capturing the "live" happening. It is also crucial to note that this film work was not conceptualised by Hi-Red Center as an official form of documentation, yet nonetheless provides a document to be studied. Akasegawa himself believed that a document of a performance manifests its power. However, for works such as ''Yamanote Line Incident'', scholars have argued that the group had staged the event with photographic documentation in mind, Daria Melnikova claiming that the event was staged for the camera itself. They go as far as to assert that " he group useddocumentation as an essential part of performance production, and with an even more radical stance of valuing the image more than the live action."


Afterlife

Although Hi-Red Center never officially disbanded, the ''Cleaning Event'' happening proved to be their final artistic act. Akasegawa would later cryptically remark that “after ''Cleaning Event'' there was simply nothing left to do.” In fact, around that time Akasegawa was becoming increasingly preoccupied with his own trial for alleged counterfeiting of 1,000-yen notes, and thus did not have time for further events and happenings with Hi-Red Center. As part of Akasegawa's trial, the members of the group restaged a few of their works (Takamatsu's ''String'' and presenting relics of the ''Shelter Plan'' event) in court in October 1966. Their demonstrations were intended to enlighten the court on the "happenings" nature of Akesagawa's work, yet inevitably substantiated their defense by arguing that the objects used in their performance events ought to be treated with museum-like care, contradicting the principles of their practice. Akesagawa was found guilty, and appealed the verdict to the High and Supreme Courts (in 1970) to no avail.


Exhibitions

There have been a few solo retrospectives dedicated to the activities of Hi-Red Centre, all mainly situated within gallery spaces. * 2013, February 6–March 27. "Hi Red Center", Centre of Contemporary Art (CCA) Glasgow, Scotland. * 2013-14. “Hi-Red Center: The Documents of “Direct Action””. Dedicated to the 50th Anniversary of the group. ** 2013, November 9–December 23. Nagoya City Art Museum,
Nagoya is the largest city in the Chūbu region of Japan. It is the list of cities in Japan, fourth-most populous city in Japan, with a population of 2.3million in 2020, and the principal city of the Chūkyō metropolitan area, which is the List of ...
, Japan. ** 2014, February 11th–March 23. Shoto Museum of Art,
Shibuya is a Special wards of Tokyo, special ward in Tokyo, Japan. A major commercial center, Shibuya houses one of the busiest railway stations in the world, Shibuya Station. As of January 1, 2024, Shibuya Ward has an estimated population of 230,60 ...
, Japan. * 2018, 28 September–28 October. "Jiro Takumatsu 高松次郎 , Hi Red Center , Hirata Minoru 平田実 , Kim Ku Lim 김구림" curated by Victor Wang, 111 Great Titchfield St,
London London is the Capital city, capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of both England and the United Kingdom, with a population of in . London metropolitan area, Its wider metropolitan area is the largest in Wester ...
, Englan

The group has also been featured in the following seminal post-war Japanese art blockbuster exhibitions. * 1994-95. “Japanese Art After 1945: Scream Against the Sky” curated by Alexandra Munroebr>
** 1994, February 5–March 30. Yokohama Museum of Art,
Yokohama is the List of cities in Japan, second-largest city in Japan by population as well as by area, and the country's most populous Municipalities of Japan, municipality. It is the capital and most populous city in Kanagawa Prefecture, with a popu ...
, Japan. ** 1995, September 14, 1994–January 8, 1995. Guggenheim Museum SoHo,
New York City New York, often called New York City (NYC), is the most populous city in the United States, located at the southern tip of New York State on one of the world's largest natural harbors. The city comprises five boroughs, each coextensive w ...
, United States of America. ** 1995, May 31–August 27.
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) is a modern art, modern and contemporary art museum and nonprofit organization located in San Francisco, California. SFMOMA was the first museum on the West Coast devoted solely to 20th-century art ...
and
Yerba Buena Center for the Arts Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (YBCA) is a multi-disciplinary Contemporary art, contemporary arts center in San Francisco, California, United States. Located in Yerba Buena Gardens, YBCA features visual art, performance, and film/video that cel ...
,
San Francisco San Francisco, officially the City and County of San Francisco, is a commercial, Financial District, San Francisco, financial, and Culture of San Francisco, cultural center of Northern California. With a population of 827,526 residents as of ...
, United States of America. * 2012-13, Nov 18, 2012–Feb 25, 2013. "Tokyo 1955–1970: A New Avant-Garde” curated by Doryun Chong,
The Museum of Modern Art The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. MoMA's collection spans the late 19th century to the present, and includes over 200,000 works of arc ...
,
New York City New York, often called New York City (NYC), is the most populous city in the United States, located at the southern tip of New York State on one of the world's largest natural harbors. The city comprises five boroughs, each coextensive w ...
, United States of Americ

Their work has also been shown in the following group shows. * 1999, April 28–August 29. "Global Conceptualism: Points of Origin, 1950s -1980s", curatorial team led by Jane Farver, Luis Camnitzer and Rachel Weiss,
Queens Museum The Queens Museum (formerly the Queens Museum of Art) is an art museum and educational center at Flushing Meadows–Corona Park in Queens, New York City, United States. Established in 1972, the museum includes the '' Panorama of the City of New ...
,
Queens Queens is the largest by area of the Boroughs of New York City, five boroughs of New York City, coextensive with Queens County, in the U.S. state of New York (state), New York. Located near the western end of Long Island, it is bordered by the ...
, United States of America.Morgan, Robert C. "Conceptualism: Reevaluation or Revisionism?" Art Journal 58, no. 3 (1999): 109-11. Accessed March 28, 2021.
* 2013-14, 22 November 2013–9 February 2014. "Great Crescent: Art and Agitation in the 1960s—Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan", curated by Cosmin Costinas, Lesley Ma and Doryun Chong,
Para Site Para Site () is an independent, non-profit art space based in Hong Kong. It was founded in 1996 by artists Patrick Lee, Leung Chi Wo Warren, Leung Chi-wo, Phoebe Man, Phoebe Man Ching-ying, Wong Chi Hang Sara, Sara Wong Chi-hang, Leung Mee Ping, ...
,
Hong Kong Hong Kong)., Legally Hong Kong, China in international treaties and organizations. is a special administrative region of China. With 7.5 million residents in a territory, Hong Kong is the fourth most densely populated region in the wor ...
.


References

{{Authority control Neo-Dada Japanese artist groups and collectives Culture in Tokyo 1963 establishments in Japan 1964 disestablishments in Japan