Jikken Kōbō - experimental workshop

Jikken Kōbō - experimental workshop. Source: Artforum

Jikken Kōbō  Ballet Mirai no Eve (Eve Future Ballet), 1955, performance documentation. Source: Frieze

Jikken Kōbō and Takechi Tetsuji, Pierrot Lunaire (tsuki ni tsukareta piero), 1955, stage performance, Sankei International Conference Hall, Tokyo, December 5, 1955 (photograph © Ōtsuji Kiyoji). Source: Artjournal

Jikken Kōbō  (Experimental Workshop) was founded in Tokyo in 1951, against the backdrop of a country traumatized by Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and suffering from postwar austerity measures. This determinedly interdisciplinary group of 14 artists, musicians, choreographers and poets orientated themselves towards the pre-war European and American avant-gardes. Its members, many of whom were self-taught, worked individually or in groups, and their guiding interests included the piano work of John Cage, Martha Graham’s choreography, and the sculpture of Alexander Calder and Isamu Noguchi. Active for about seven years, they operated mostly outside of museum spaces and distanced themselves from the academic discourses around musique concrète and electro-acoustic composition. One of Jikken Kobo’s co-founders, Katsuhiro Yamaguchi, likened the workshop to ‘Bauhaus without a building’. [Excerpt text from Frieze Magazine]

more info: Bétonsalon 

initially spotted: Artforum