Takao Kawaguchi Selection: Un Certain Regard
River Lin—Is this Gutai?

Co-producer: Taiwan Contemporary Culture Lab
Concept: River Lin (林人中)
Performance: Eric Tsai (蔡承翰), Chien Shih-Han (簡詩翰), Chang Yun-Chen (張勻甄) and River Lin (林人中)

Taiwanese artist River Lin presents Is this Gutai?, an online performance and lecture about Gutai—a pioneering artist collective and art movement active in Japan during the post-war period—which is followed by a conversation between River and TRU’s artistic director Takao Kawaguchi. In addition, a video documentation of Dancing with Gutai Art Manifesto 1956 presented by C-Lab (Contemporary Culture Lab Taiwan) in 2020 will be shared with viewers.

Artist statement

Gutai, founded by Yoshihara Jiro in Ashiya in 1954, was one of the most remarkable artist collections and art movements of post-war Japan, known for its pioneering, radical, performative and experimental approach to art making. As the Gutai Art Manifesto published in 1956 states: “Gutai Art does not alter the material, but brings it to life”.

Wearing lightbulbs, passing through framed papers, moving on mud, drawing with feet, throwing bottles of pigment and sculpting smoke on stage, the Gutai artists challenged the boundaries of art, choreographing relations between objects and the body, performing conceptual intersections between liveness and visual art.

The ways in which Gutai’s concepts and practice arguably charted the history of performance art and inspired a new lexicon for live art today is the point of departure for River Lin's concept in Dancing with Gutai Art Manifesto 1956.

Transforming the Gutai Art Manifesto into a score, and revisiting selected works by Tanaka Atsuko, Shiraga Kazuo, Murakami Saburo and Shimamoto Shozo among others, this project attempts to replay a series of actions, movements and happenings as expanded choreography—straddling painting, sculpture, installation, participation and performance through a collective research and rehearsal process.

River Lin