Mieko Shiomi’s avant-garde movements in art and music are as elusive as they are influential – defying categorisation while shaping generations of conceptual practice. Her career began with Group Ongaku, a pioneering Japanese collective of the early 1960s that embraced improvisation, noise, and everyday objects as instruments. Together, they challenged conventional definitions of music and laid the foundations for Japan’s experimental sound art scene. Shiomi later became a founding member of Fluxus Japan — an offshoot of the international Fluxus movement that fused spirituality and minimalism with an anti-commercial, anti-art ethos — alongside her contemporaries, Shigeko Kubota, Yoko Ono, Takako Saito, and a key participant in the global mail art network. Across these movements, her work dissolves boundaries of time, distance, and authorship through improvised scores and participatory instructions that invite open-ended collaboration. In doing so, Shiomi collapses the distinction between performer and observer, transforming artistic experience into a shared, co-creative act.

Hans Ulrich Obrist: Can you tell us about your beginnings with music?
Mieko Shiomi: When I was in senior high school, I wanted to become a music composer. It was a bad period in Japan, after the war, there was no teacher to train me in counterpoint or harmony. So musical study was the only section I could try, and I passed. To become a music composer, I thought I should learn about many types of contemporary music, and I gravitated towards twelve-tone music, serial music, [I wrote my graduation thesis on] Anton von Webern. Fortunately, in fourth grade, Minao Shibata, the great composer and theorist, came to our university, and we dashed to him! [laughs]

HUO: And what did you learn from Minao Shibata?
MS: I learned the theory of twelve-tone music, and also other European classical music. He was a great teacher, because he not only taught analysis and research of existing pieces, but also to be conscious about what you want to do, to establish your own methodology.

HUO: In my research, I’m often interested in collectives, artist groups, and you were the key figure of a movement called Group Ongaku, formed in 1961. The aim of that group was to reorientate the attention towards more improvisational elements in music; you had the feeling that improvisation had been lost and, in a way, it was about rediscovering the meaning of music.
MS: When I was in the sub-grade of the university, I played [Arnold] Schoenberg’s Pierrot lunaire — I played piano in an ensemble, six people, with flute, clarinet, violin, cello. It was the first time for me to play in an ensemble; I had only been playing solo piano [previously]. I noticed how enjoyable [it was] to play with others and make music together. After we played at the college festival, three of us women wanted to continue playing together, but not a piece of Schoenberg — we wanted to play our own music. So it was a kind of improvisation music. At the same time, I found that three or four male students were playing improvisation music with the violin and cello, they played very nicely. One day I asked them, “We are also doing improvisation music, why don’t we perform together?” It was the beginning of Group Ongaku. Every week we would get together and borrow some instruments from the university office. I mostly played piano, and started playing the inner action. [laughs] Aggressive sounds. We were fascinated with improvisation. In 1961, we had our debut concert at Sōgetsu Art Center. Toshi Ichiyanagi [composer and pianist] and Kuniharu Akiyama – who is a very famous music critic – visited us and they said we were fantastic… Ichiyanagi was supposed to have his own concert at the Sōgetsu Art Center, and he asked us to perform his pieces. We said, “Of course!” The most expressive piece was IBM [IBM – Happening and Musique Concrète, 1961], it’s a kind of action music. He gave us small, black and white rectangular computer punch cards, which said that you should think of two different kind of actions. Then, according to the card, you could set any duration of time. For the two different kinds of action, I was thinking, “What should I choose?” One day, I was at science university. I heard a very interesting sound [makes sci-fi high-pitched noise], so I went into that room and I found there was a small frame with a metal mesh, and someone was moving their fingers in front of it. When he changed the position of his finger, the sound changed drastically. After he left, I asked to play by myself, and after I tried it, I thought, “This is a good action.” I explained to the student how I would like to use this apparatus on the stage of Ichiyanagi’s concert at Sōgetsu Art Center. At first, he was wondering what he should do. [laughs] But I asked him very eagerly, so he finally said, “OK.” I said, “I’ll pay the taxi fee to carry it!” Two students came to set it up, I played, and it was a beautiful sound. Toshi Ichiyanagi was so happy about it. It was the first time [for someone] to use the theremin on stage. For the other action, I chose to blow soap bubbles. [makes bubble noise].

HUO: The group also used ordinary objects, like ashtrays and keys to make sounds.
MS: One day we are performing music with the Group Ongaku members, and one of them came to the university driving his own car, and he put the key on the desk. I grabbed it and instead of playing piano, I tossed it to the ceiling and it made a small, metallic sound. It was the start of me entering into the genre of performance. The sound is very small, but this action — to keep tossing the keys onto the ceiling — made a small metallic sound as an ostinato. It thought it should be a very interesting performance, but at the time I didn’t know the word ‘performance’ in that sense. It put me into a different world, a different dimension was opened up in front of me.

“I wanted to be part of nature, to capture nature. I wanted it to become myself.”

HUO: It’s beautiful. I find it interesting you then went into the idea of listening. You started in ‘61 with Mobile I, Mobile II and Mobile III performances, where performers were off the stage, or behind the stage, and sometimes even outside the performance hall. So you basically spatialised sound. You said in an interview that you wanted to create an awareness of the act of listening.
MS: On the stage, there were some performers, like a cellist and a marimbist, and usually the audience listens to the sound from the stage. But at the same time, I was wearing the Geta [wooden sandal] and came down the stairway, making a very big sound, [makes noises]. Also I asked [Takehisa] Kosugi to perform in a small alley outside the hall, but the sound could be heard inside the hall. I asked him to play the saxophone, and he did. I borrowed a huge metal gong, and asked some of my young university friends to perform behind the stage, so the audience could not see. I hit the gong and I asked them to laugh. Several girls laughed very loudly. I wanted to open up the audience’s ears to listen to the sounds outside of the hall…

HUO: The ambient sound.
MS: Yes, that’s right.

HUO: And then, of course, soon after, you started with the Spatial Poems [1965- 1975, a series of works that invited participants to respond to a written instruction]. I heard that had something to do with the countryside, your return to your family home in Okayama and that the rural surroundings helped you compose the work in sort of non-traditional settings. You even made performances outside in the countryside.
MS: I came back to my parents’ house, and I had a concert. The programme was composed by what I had experienced in Tokyo for five years: it included tape music, the playing of graphic score, and also actual music. I had a good co-performer, a good music friend in Okayama City, and the concert itself was very well done and people had interest in contemporary music. But I found that this was what other people were doing, and I’d done it, so I couldn’t find any reason to continue that same type of music. I wanted to do entirely new things. Maybe for a few months, I could do nothing. It was a very hard time for me, every day was grey. At that time, I saw in a magazine an architect who was 70 years old and he said, “Even at 70 years old, every morning is so fresh!” I felt so envious. My morning is always grey and dull, and I was still thinking about what is the essence of music?! Then one day, I had the feeling that the essence of music should be the perception of duration of time. Then I thought, if it’s a duration or time, it should not only be sound, but also other visual things can be [used] to feel the duration of time. Then I thought about boxes…

HUO: These nested paper boxes, Endless Box [1963–4].
MS: Becoming tinier and tinier. When I was very young girl, one day I was sick and my father brought me a box, and he told me to go open it. Open, ah, another box! Again and again I could find another box – it was so impressive, and I loved it. I thought about that and wanted to make an endless box as an art object. When I was a little girl I loved nature and I would often climb up on the hill and cut dried grass. I lay down on the grass and held it.

HUO: And around that the same time you also created Mirror Piece [1963]. How did that come about?
MS: I wanted to be part of nature, to capture nature. I wanted it to become myself.

HUO: In communion with nature.
MS: But I knew that was impossible. Then I said, why don’t I become a mirror to reflect the beautiful nature? The idea of a mirror came up to my mind. I loved to swim at the beach — I often visited the beach — so one day, I brought a small mirror and I did the Mirror Piece.

HUO: And then you met [George] Maciunas and you started to connect with Nam June Paik.
MS: One day in 1963, one of the Group Ongaku called me and said that there was such and such a concert, why don’t I come? That would be fantastic. It was a new direction, an avant-garde concert. Toshi Ichiyanagi and my friends from Group Ongaku introduced me to Nam June Paik, and we started talking. Paik started asking me what kind of music I was doing. So, I told him about Endless Box, and I said that it’s a visual diminuendo, and that I’m also making an action poem in nature, and Mirror Piece. When I told him, he said, “Oh you are exactly George Maciunas’ type, why don’t you send it to him? He’s an organiser of Fluxus. It was a new word for me. But Paik gave me the address and I sent one of Endless Boxes to him. He immediately sent me a letter saying he loved it. He was making a Fluxkit — an assemblage of Flux members’ works in a trunk — and I put it in the centre of the trunk. He said, please make as many as possible, I’ll buy it $20 per piece! Now it’s $20 for ramen, but at that time, it was 7200 yen. And that time, the annual tuition of Tokyo Gates was 9000 yen.

HUO: It was a lot of money.
MS: Lots of money. It’s almost equivalent to the annual tuition of the National University. So I made about ten, and we exchanged the letter. Paik said, “I want to read your Mirror Piece, please send it to me, and then after I see it, I’ll transcribe it to George Maciunas.” Then Paik sent it to Maciunas, and Maciunas told me, “I love it, please send these kind of pieces as much as possible. I’ll publish it, and let’s do 50/50 percent.” [laughs] It’s the first time for me to do such business talk.

HUO: So there was an economy involved. I wanted to ask about Sōgetsu, what made that place so special?
MS: I performed quite often at Sōgetsu, in ‘67 or ‘68, when I came back from New York and started living with my parents again. Akiyama called me and asked, “Why don’t you compose a piece to perform on the Sōgetsu stage?” At that time, I was thinking about how to develop my simple, early event pieces into more complicated, long- lasting performance pieces on the stage. So I composed Compound View No. 1 and Around Blue Vitriol.

HUO: You didn’t teach there [Sōgetsu]?
MS: I didn’t teach. In the 80s I was again asked to do something on the stage of Sōgetsu, I composed a piece, Compound View No. 3, and performed together with Ay-O. I played piano — the score is an independent card. I played a short passage on the piano, and it was written with some words. I narrated the words, and threw it to the audience. Ay-O built a rainbow belt from the balcony passing over the audience and grand piano to the rear stage. He rolled apples down along the belt. Sometimes they jumped onto the strings of the piano making huge sounds.

HUO: At that time you also created Water Music [1965, a Glass bottle with plastic dropper]. You said, “Give the water still form, or let the water lose it’s still form.” And there are lots of different water musics. You took water from a children’s pool with syringes, you dripped water on a record… Can you tell us what led to these water events, which also increased audience participation?
MS: I wrote an instruction: give water a still form. It’s easy when you put water into the container, in the glass. And the second instruction was: let the water lose its still form. It can be many various kinds of performance, many possibilities of performance.

HUO: With Fluxus, you developed your most famous work, which is the Spatial Poem. You began just before leaving New York in ‘65 and you sent instructions to an address list that Maciunas gave you of Fluxus-friendly individuals, not only members. So, you didn’t send something for people to receive, instead you sent instructions to get responses, and then you created a map. Can you tell us about this invention and these different events?
MS: During my stay, Fluxus people and friends were very kind, very sweet to me. I felt so happy, I felt protected by them, but at the same time I couldn’t figure out… My eyesight was open to the outside of Fluxus, the big city of New York and I wondered, what is Fluxus in New York? What is the value of existence? I couldn’t figure out. And also, what is Fluxus in the world? I wanted to have communication with people not in Fluxus, especially artists in Europe, and artists in Japan. But at that time, I was writing the event pieces, which should be done like do-it-yourself type things. So, it’s a conflicting thing. To co-exist my own style and the communication with many people, what should I do? I was thinking and thinking, then one day I got an image, why don’t I think, “This is us, as one stage,” and ask people to do the same event in their own life, their own place, and ask them to make a report about what they did, and send it to me. Then I edited it on the world map, and I sent it to them. Then people can communicate. I thought, “This is a good idea for me to solve everything.” I went to Maciunas I told him about my idea, the first event was Word Event, a collage of words with many people on the Earth. Maciunas said, “That’s a good idea, why don’t you send your invitations to these kind of people?” He gave me a Fluxus mailing list, then I used that address, and of course my own address in Japan. Many people contributed various words, then they sent it back to me – I enclosed a blank card and said, “Word Event: Write a word (or words) on the enclosed card and place it somewhere. Please tell me the word and the place, which will be edited on the world map.” I got over 70 answers by AirMail; everything was done by AirMail.

“Ay-O built a rainbow belt from the balcony passing over the audience and grand piano to the rear stage. He rolled apples down along the belt. Sometimes they jumped onto the strings of the piano making huge sounds.”

HUO: It’s interesting because I saw the piece at the MOT museum in Tokyo, which entered the collection when Yuko Hasegawa was director there. It had many different flags; many different places. it’s about many centres – every place can be the centre.
MS: Every space can be a centre. I love this idea that every place can be the centre and everyone is living in the centre for them. It’s the fundamental sense of Spatial Poem.

HUO: Beautiful. Do you have an unrealised project? I’m very interested in artists’ unrealised projects, projects which have been dreams, or too big to be realised, too expensive, forgotten projects, censored projects…
MS: For me, my project is endless because if I did something… done. But then, often, the other things which I want to do come up, so it’s an endless trip. It’s my life.

HUO: Beautiful. What would you advise a young artist?
MS: Well, believe in yourself. Believe in your intuition and if you feel relaxed and happy, it’s your own field. I realised that when I struggle and feel uncomfortable, it’s not my field, when I feel relaxed and it can develop naturally without any effort and everything can develop, it’s your field.

HUO: What’s your secret? Because you are so young.
MS: Thank you. [laughs] I think it’s because these kinds of young, excellent friends. I have lots of friends.

HUO: My last question is about Instagram. On my Instagram, we have a movement against the disappearance of handwriting, so every day I post a handwritten sentence, so I was wondering if you could write down a sentence, an instruction, or something in Japanese that we could post on Instagram? It’s about celebrating handwriting; maybe an instruction would be good. We have a nice paper we got in the temple.
MS: Wow. [writes on the piece of paper]

HUO: Beautiful. What does it mean?
MS: “As it were, floating granules.” It’s our existence itself.