Introducing the Special Series “Rekindled Present: Sound in Japanese Art, 1950s–1970s”

The Japanese artists I am researching—Tanaka Atsuko, Nomura Hitoshi, Murakami Saburō, Hikosaka Naoyoshi, and Imai Norio—are not typically considered “sound artists.” Likewise, the period I’m investigating is the 1950s to the 1970s, before the term sound art came into use. So, these works occupy an exploratory and proto-disciplinary realm. To me, the importance of these artworks is in the sonic encounters they invite independently of provenance, genre, medium, or discipline, and in the implications of those encounters. This is not to discount the complex social, cultural, or historical contexts surrounding these works, but to unveil those contexts through an informed encounter with the materiality of the works themselves. It is an inherently incomplete and subjective study meant to invite others into a little-known realm that deserves a place in contemporary sonic arts discourse, to accumulate a body of information, exchange, and art-making that will allow others to dive further into...