M38 Hori Kōsai

Why Are We ‘Artists’? (1969)

By the late 1960s, artists in Japan had shifted away from the material-based ‘anti-art’ (Han-geijutsu) and had begun to embrace the conceptual ‘non-art’ (Hi-geijutsu). Based on the theory of ‘institutional critique’, it questioned the relationship in art between the subject, the object and the place where it was exhibited. Among those most strongly influenced by these ideas were a cluster of radical art and political groups known as Bikyōtō, from the Japanese phrase Bijutsuka Kyōtō Kaigi (literally, ‘Artists’ Joint-Struggle Council’).

Founded in 1969, by students staging a ten-month-long occupation of Tama Art University in Tokyo during a period of profound social activism in Japan against undemocratic policies, Bikyōtō argued that art needed to get out of the museum and become part of everyday life. Their leader, Hori Kōsai (b. 1947), wrote ‘Why Are We “Artists”?’ during the occupation, and distributed it as a flyer on 20 July 1969. An excerpt is printed below.

* * *

Conceptually, the most problematic part [about our name] was the word ‘artist’. To Bikyōtō, this, of course, is not just a matter of a name but involved the most basic theoretical problem. If we understand ourselves through the normative label of ‘artist’, which is a product of the establishment, then we will not be able to initiate any sort of fundamental interrogation. So long as we confine ourselves to the position referred to as ‘artist’, our critique will never go beyond the technical aspect of the ‘how’ or beyond simply reforming individual things around us. This must be our point of departure.

This expression of the ‘how’ threatens to alienate our creative activity. We seem to be living in an age in which we are confined to different individuated places and separate genres, and our inquiries will lead nowhere. Only by pointing toward a change in kind will we achieve liberation of the individual and our own creative expression. Then why are we ‘artists’? For us, this is a question of our battleground. There is no reason for us to remain as artists, since we could put ourselves in any place. And the interrogation has to come from us – that is, before the naming. But can we escape the ‘name’? Living in this world as we do, the only way for us to wage a concrete battle is to use this given name to our advantage. Today, if we are called artists, then that is our battleground. Other basic conditions have been confirmed, including that our battle is staked on this place of ours, which encompasses everything – meaning that this is a battle that cannot be compartmentalized. It is not an art movement or a movement relying on political shock tactics and abstract ideas. Furthermore, this is not a battle where current values are confronted by opposition, but a fight that brings forth something in the abolishing of the present condition and gives rise to our own creative expression.