Takehisa Kosugi

"Part travelogue, part performance, 100% head-spinning" - Worlds of Cinema Electronic music pioneer Matsuo Ohno's art-film/documentary chronicling the Japanese experimental music ensemble's 1971-1972 worldwide expedition. Led by Fluxus member Takehisa Kosugi, the Taj Maj Mahal Travellers elevate university crowds and concert halls, follow tortoises through the Iranian desert, jam with Don Cherry and his Organic Music Society in a geodesic dome in Stockholm, explore Grecian ruins, improvise on Afghan steppes, serenade the waves at Cape Manazuru Beach, Japan and make the pilgrimage to their ivory-white namesake -- making music anywhere and with anything along the way.

Fluxus artist and composer Takehisa Kosugi assembled a crew of young musicians and hit the road in a VW bus from Rotterdam to the Taj Mahal, playing a series of shows along the way in which the band used traditional instruments run through a series of electronic effects to create long sheets of drone both pulsing and timeless. Filmed by Takehisa Kosugi's mentor Matsu Ohno (perhaps best known in the States for his sound effects/score work on the television series Astro-Boy), the film moves at the same pace as the music itself, a pastoral road movie following a band far more likely to play temples than clubs.

On March 24, 1979, The Kitchen presented a two-part program dedicated to the work of various Fluxus artists. The programming began with the premiere of Alison Knowles’s “Natural Assemblages and the True Crow.” For the piece, Knowles engaged in a dialogue with her own taped voice, which read aloud selections from various natural history books. Simultaneously, violinist Michael Goldstein provided an improvised score while dancer Jessie Higgins executed a number of one-movement phrases by following instructions on index cards. The second part of the night’s programming consisted of forty rapid performances—most sixty seconds or less—by various Fluxus members, including Yoko Ono, George Brecht, La Monte Young, and Nam June Paik. Ken Friedman and Larry Miller coordinated this portion of the event.

This early work belongs in the company of Paik and Yalkut's classic collaborative "video-films," including Video Tape Study No. 3, Beatles Electronique, and Missa of Zen. To the accompaniment of the abrupt sonic interjections of Fluxus-affiliated composer Takehisa Kosugi, Yalkut's black and white film records brief, masked actions: an arm with clenching fist; a pair of faces, visible only about the eyes, which squint, gaze, and rest; Paik eating a slice of bread. Reminiscent of Beckett's theater, as well as the minimal movements of 1960s avant-garde dance, Cinéma Metaphysique is a study in gesture and stillness, noise and silence.

A journey through light and darkness reflected on the city of New York.

Takehisa Kosugi’s first film, made for the first 100 Feet Film Festival organized by Image Forum in 1974.

Seiichi Fujii (b. 1948) was a member of the collective Video Hiroba and created this work in 1970. It shows Takehisa Kosugi at Ōiso Beach.

The early sixteenth-century Japanese garden in the Zen temple of Ryoan-ji, in Kyoto, is considered a masterpiece of the karesansui or "dry landscape" style... In this film, the viewer is invited to experience the garden as an embodiment of ma, a Japanese concept that conveys both time and space... The aesthetic of the film is the message, it has the quality of an experimental film, a conceptual film-an artwork in itself. Good balance of music/visuals/titles. If not as compelling for some viewers as for others, still rated as very effective. Makes one want to visit the actual garden and experience its spiritual energy. – Art on Screen

The early sixteenth-century Japanese garden in the Zen temple of Ryoan-ji, in Kyoto, is considered a masterpiece of the karesansui or "dry landscape" style... In this film, the viewer is invited to experience the garden as an embodiment of ma, a Japanese concept that conveys both time and space... The aesthetic of the film is the message, it has the quality of an experimental film, a conceptual film-an artwork in itself. Good balance of music/visuals/titles. If not as compelling for some viewers as for others, still rated as very effective. Makes one want to visit the actual garden and experience its spiritual energy. – Art on Screen