25 July 2018
INTERVIEW TO RYOSUKE COHEN
Interview by Sandro Bongiani with Ryosuke Cohen on the occasion of the 70th anniversary of the Japanese artist and of the Retrospective Exhibition which will be presented on June 30th in Pontassieve (Florence).
Born in 1948 in Osaka, Japan, Ryosuke Cohen is not the first and only Japanese mail art artist, before him Shozo Shimamoto too had shared Mail Art, however he is certainly the oldest Japanese author and in some ways also more interesting and active than anyone else in the International network for the capillary diffusion of the mail artistic practice. After “Brain Cell” in August 2001, he started a new project called “Fractal Portrait Project”, which began in Italy in order to realize the “Brain Cell” concept more effectively, creating portraits and silhouettes (face and body) of the artist friends that he met in these years all over the world. According to Ryosuke Cohen, Brain Cell is like the structure of a brain seen under the microscope, it appears as a network map with thousands of neurons, gathered and branched just like the Mail Art network. Mail Art, the artist writes “ is dynamic because you can be more of an individual free to create works of art with a new mind, being fragments of the entire network and sharing snippets of many other artists , […]and then “the network spreads from A to B , B to C, from C to D, from D to A ,from C to A and so on, it is like a sole body with a cerebral structure made up of a great number of structured and complex brain cells , set in a non-linear order. That’s why he defined this experience “Brain Cell”. Basically, it is the result of a complex weaving of brain cells, an endless project, adding: “what is born from the Dada, , Fluxus and Mail Art “flux” is the only way to realize the new art of the future”. A marginal art that implies the global collaboration and partecipation of artists as a primal strategy to create the work “. On the occasion of Cohen’s 70 years and his personal exhibition in Pontassieve near Florence (Italy), I tried to interview him about his intense involvement in the world of Mail Art and marginal art and to make a temporary balance of the things he has done in these years.
Sandro Bongiani: As a student you had started your activity with particular interest in Matisse and Cezanne and then in the Dada and Fluxus movement, until you discovered in 1981 the alternative and marginal current of Mail Art. From this, the first Brain Cells were born in 1985 and then in 2001, in Italy, the great Fractal Portrait Project. Would you like to tell us about the beginning of your artistic activity?
Ryosuke Cohen: Around 1980 when I had been working on Conceptual Art, I came to learn the pleasure of Mail Art through Byron Black, Canadian Video Artist. Then I started sending Mail Art, using "fukuwarai", a Japanese traditional game in which a blindfolded person puts the facial features (eyes, nose, mouth and eyebrows) onto a paper face and "C" in the eyesight test chart. No sooner had I really felt the importance of Networking Art in the exchange with Mail Artists, I began to send BRAIN CELL as one of the best way to express such an idea of mine. I had first sent my "Portrait and Body" so as to fortify the concept of BRAIN CELL, and then had done BRAIN CELL ( Mail Artists in Italy, 2001). Since then the project has been going on in many countries in Europe, USA, Canada and so on.
S.B. What kind of cultural atmosphere was there in Japan between the 70 and 80’s, compared to our days?
Ryosuke Cohen: In 1970 when Japan World Expo Osaka was held, Japan had risen on the waves of higher economic growth. In the next year I graduated from a college of education in 1974 and became an Art teacher, I made a good colleague with Sumi Yasuo, a member of Gutai, and then was in contact with other members of Gutai.
S.B. When was AU (Artist Union of Art Unidentified) born and what do you think of the Gutai group?
Ryosuke Cohen: In 1975 they organized themselves into AU (Artist Union) by the appeal of Masunobu Yoshimura, Tokyo. At first AU started with a wide range of career: not only artists but architects, people related to the theater, critics and so on. Later Shozo Shimamoto took over AU. I took part in the organization in 1977, when many (7〜8) 5 Gutai members had already been in AU. I promoted friendly relations with Saburo Murakami, Tsuruko Yamazaki, Yasuo Sumi, except for Shozo Shimamoto.
S.B. For several years you kept in contact and travelled through Europe with the mythical Shozo Shimamoto. What do you think of him?
Ryosuke Cohen: In AU I had done frequent activities with Shozo Shimamoto from 1977 to 1992: wonderful exchanges with many artists in our three-time overseas activities (East Europe in 1985, USA in 1987 and West Europe in 1990). I have many memories about Shozo Shimamoto on our art trip. As He had studied psychology, He was so good a producer of AU events and himself.
S.B. How do you realize a Brain Cell? Which strategy do you use to realize the final work?
Ryosuke Cohen: Concerning BRAIN CELL, i print 150 A3 - sized sheets per one issue, at a pace of one issue per 10 days. There are about 50 participants for every issue. The following work of mine is to send one sheet to each participant, to bind 50 sheets into a book once a year, and to keep the rest for Portrait Project, exhibitions and sending to the art concerned.
S.B. How much do your coworkers contribute to your work?
Ryosuke Cohen: Needless to say, i cannot issue BRAIN CELL without any participants. Brain Cell Network constantly has had more new participation, and continues to move and spread along with the times.
S.B. Would you like to explain better what you mean by “Fractal” and “Soup Orion”? What is the basic philosophy that supports your work?
Ryosuke Cohen: Fractal is the idea of self-similarity proposed by French mathematician, Benoit Mandelbrot. I dislike the terms of "individuality and "originality" in art. I think that I am composed of the accumulation on many artists' idea and art history: that is, I am a collection of many fragments. The reason for the proposal of Orion Soup is that we should argue over not only an activity in our narrow field, but also a free theme unique to the artist, which is the most fundamental theme for humanity: the spread of the universe and mathematical prime number. Orion Soup is the coined word I minted.
S.B. The most interesting and new aspect of nowadays artists is interacting among themselves in a choral participation. This also “occurs” in nature. The interesting feature of these biological systems is that these behaviors are born spontaneously and autonomously and there is cooperation among the individuals, which is the fundamental aspect, instead of competition and supremacy of the strongest, which is usually what happens in the official system of the contemporary art. The birth of great coordinated but spontaneous groups appears to us as a huge swarm, very popular in nature, of insects, as ants, mosquitoes and bees which behave coordinately. It is a gigantic organism with its own mind and a superior intelligence compared to the sum of the single individuals. The study of these systems brings to the development of algorithms, belonging to the class called swarm intelligence. The collective behavior is the result of simple interactions of a single towards the others or towards the environment. In all these cases the group really seems an enormous and efficient organism with its own mind and an intelligence superior to the sum of single individuals. I call this experience “border art”, because it wants to find a place in a “practicable elsewhere”, compared to a worldly mediocrity. Basically, a “planetary lab” made up of several networks scattered all over the world: archives of ideas, experimentation and spontaneous research. Today we see a strange web of communications created by correspondents, able to overcome the geographical distances, involving all nations in an impressive and huge moving puzzle, always changing and mutating. Border art is a consolidated network of relationships among thousands of network artists, who exchange creative messages every day, in the shape of e-mail, letters, envelopes, cards, collages, visual poems, books and even three-dimensional objects. With it visual communication takes planetary dimensions, completely new and unexpected. It is the greatest research laboratory of the Earth (the global Network lab), a great “lung” of free research. If we observe it in its complexity, it looks like a giant prehistoric dinosaur, a swarm intelligence, an amazing being with a great eye that regenerates permanently with the spontaneous contributions of many individual presences. Would you like to tell us something more about your method of work?
Ryosuke Cohen: I have continued to print BRAIN CELL by means of Gokko Print (a Japanese typical simplified small silk-screen printer ) every day. First, I get ready for 16-18 different postcard-sized originals with some Mail Arts, and then make a sensitized postcard-sized version, using each of 16-18 original version. Next, i print different 16-18 copies per one 3A sheets, followed by adding seal and/or stamp. I end up printing 150 BRAIN CELL sheets per one issue. Fractal Portrait is a performance that I actually meet the Mail Artists and draws the outline of the face and body on the spot. After coming back to Japan, I finish each one in Chinese black ink (sumi).
S.B. After Brain Cell, starting from Italy, in 2001, you have arrived at the “Fractal Portrait Project “ of face and body in the several meetings you had in different countries of the world, examining closely the concept of “ Brain Cell”. What do your performances mean and what do you do to accomplish the Fractal Portrait Projects works?
Ryosuke Cohen: The meeting with many overseas Mail Artists makes it possible to know how they engage in a wide variety of arts and to directly feel their passion for art.
S.B. The reading of Fractal Portrait Project includes the performing action that becomes part of the experience of the former Brain Cell, and, in my opinion, it sums up a part of life and real history of Japan; I think of Hiroshima with the tragic atomic bombing. So, Hiroshima as Pompeii, destroyed by Vesuvio in 79 d.c. In Hiroshima, on the 6th of August 1945, the atomic bomb literally projected people against the walls, making of them mere shadows. In the city of Hiroshima images of this kind spread everywhere, almost a sort of macabre reminding. The shadows of Hiroshima have stopped time tragically and, for a moment, the history of Japan too. In your works, too the presence of man becomes silhouette, “presence-essence “of contemporary man. I can see this association in your works?
Ryosuke Cohen: Fractal Portrait is an image that connects from "Now" (the present) to the future. It captures not the idea of shadow, but the living silhouette of the artists. Hiroshima is a sad story. In 1986 or 1987, Bern Porter, American physicist involved in the Manhattan Project came to see me in Japan when he was taking a career around the world. At that time he quitted a physicist career to be a Mail Artist. He had been a participant from No.1 issue of BRAIN CELL. He said, " BRAIN CELL is a symbol of Peace ". I have begun with emphasis on Networking of art in BRAIN CELL, but recently feel strongly the weight of his words for this peace.
S.B. In the contemporary panorama of art two kinds of artists exist: those painters who collaborate with the “commercial “system of art and then the “others “, the snipers, free from obligations and bonds. As regards the official system of art, your positioning is autonomous to fashions and ready-made trends, preferring the activity of the planetary circuit, another way, parallel and convergent, of making free and complete research. Marcel Duchamps said: the great artist must go towards clandestinity and anonymity. Surely, with Marginal Art Duchamps declaration becomes a lucid programme, since in you there is no commercial interest, and it lends itself to this new dimension, for its inner capacity of going beyond critics , art -galleries managers, the market , in a direct relationship between the artist and the other and, above all, in a “ free “ crossing of the most different tendencies of the art of research. What can you tell us?
Ryosuke Cohen: There is no purpose in the artist's activities. It is not something we can do to master it. I think that the Artist’s job is to always think about "What is art?".
S.B. In an interesting interview of 2012, John Held jr. asked you if, after having completed the fractal silhouette, you saved some works for yourself, maybe for a possible and future exhibition. On that occasion you confessed that it was difficult for you to collect all the material to exhibit since every work completed was given to friends as a present. Surely, an exhibition of this kind was considered unthinkable not many years ago, if not impossible, for an artist that works like you. In 2015 with the Spazio Ophen Virtual Art Gallery, the problem has been solved presenting 15 years of work of “Fractal Portrait Object “, visible with a virtual, collective and contemporary vernissage all over the world. As you can see technology and modern means of communication solve problems, apparently considered unsurmountable. What do you think?
Ryosuke Cohen: Never did I expect my record to be reproduced in this way. I was surprised at the sophistication of Spazio Ophen Virtual Art Gallery. I am grateful to the record. I am sure that, due to the spread of SNS, the role will become increasingly important in the future.
S.B. My personal curiosity: as an important contemporary artist, have you got any dreams in the drawer you would like to fulfill as soon as possible?
Ryosuke Cohen: Firstly, I'd like to go abroad as often as I can, in order to keep on Fractal Portrait Project. Currently, I keep all of the Mail Art (35 years or so) at the rental warehouse and my home. Secondly, I will donate it to museums and galleries so as to have it used for research on Mail Art.
(translated from English to Italian by Sandro Bongiani, on the 20th May 2018)
Interview by Sandro Bongiani with Ryosuke Cohen on the occasion of the 70th anniversary of the Japanese artist and of the Retrospective Exhibition which will be presented on June 30th in Pontassieve (Florence).
Born in 1948 in Osaka, Japan, Ryosuke Cohen is not the first and only Japanese mail art artist, before him Shozo Shimamoto too had shared Mail Art, however he is certainly the oldest Japanese author and in some ways also more interesting and active than anyone else in the International network for the capillary diffusion of the mail artistic practice. After “Brain Cell” in August 2001, he started a new project called “Fractal Portrait Project”, which began in Italy in order to realize the “Brain Cell” concept more effectively, creating portraits and silhouettes (face and body) of the artist friends that he met in these years all over the world. According to Ryosuke Cohen, Brain Cell is like the structure of a brain seen under the microscope, it appears as a network map with thousands of neurons, gathered and branched just like the Mail Art network. Mail Art, the artist writes “ is dynamic because you can be more of an individual free to create works of art with a new mind, being fragments of the entire network and sharing snippets of many other artists , […]and then “the network spreads from A to B , B to C, from C to D, from D to A ,from C to A and so on, it is like a sole body with a cerebral structure made up of a great number of structured and complex brain cells , set in a non-linear order. That’s why he defined this experience “Brain Cell”. Basically, it is the result of a complex weaving of brain cells, an endless project, adding: “what is born from the Dada, , Fluxus and Mail Art “flux” is the only way to realize the new art of the future”. A marginal art that implies the global collaboration and partecipation of artists as a primal strategy to create the work “. On the occasion of Cohen’s 70 years and his personal exhibition in Pontassieve near Florence (Italy), I tried to interview him about his intense involvement in the world of Mail Art and marginal art and to make a temporary balance of the things he has done in these years.
Sandro Bongiani: As a student you had started your activity with particular interest in Matisse and Cezanne and then in the Dada and Fluxus movement, until you discovered in 1981 the alternative and marginal current of Mail Art. From this, the first Brain Cells were born in 1985 and then in 2001, in Italy, the great Fractal Portrait Project. Would you like to tell us about the beginning of your artistic activity?
Ryosuke Cohen: Around 1980 when I had been working on Conceptual Art, I came to learn the pleasure of Mail Art through Byron Black, Canadian Video Artist. Then I started sending Mail Art, using "fukuwarai", a Japanese traditional game in which a blindfolded person puts the facial features (eyes, nose, mouth and eyebrows) onto a paper face and "C" in the eyesight test chart. No sooner had I really felt the importance of Networking Art in the exchange with Mail Artists, I began to send BRAIN CELL as one of the best way to express such an idea of mine. I had first sent my "Portrait and Body" so as to fortify the concept of BRAIN CELL, and then had done BRAIN CELL ( Mail Artists in Italy, 2001). Since then the project has been going on in many countries in Europe, USA, Canada and so on.
S.B. What kind of cultural atmosphere was there in Japan between the 70 and 80’s, compared to our days?
Ryosuke Cohen: In 1970 when Japan World Expo Osaka was held, Japan had risen on the waves of higher economic growth. In the next year I graduated from a college of education in 1974 and became an Art teacher, I made a good colleague with Sumi Yasuo, a member of Gutai, and then was in contact with other members of Gutai.
S.B. When was AU (Artist Union of Art Unidentified) born and what do you think of the Gutai group?
Ryosuke Cohen: In 1975 they organized themselves into AU (Artist Union) by the appeal of Masunobu Yoshimura, Tokyo. At first AU started with a wide range of career: not only artists but architects, people related to the theater, critics and so on. Later Shozo Shimamoto took over AU. I took part in the organization in 1977, when many (7〜8) 5 Gutai members had already been in AU. I promoted friendly relations with Saburo Murakami, Tsuruko Yamazaki, Yasuo Sumi, except for Shozo Shimamoto.
S.B. For several years you kept in contact and travelled through Europe with the mythical Shozo Shimamoto. What do you think of him?
Ryosuke Cohen: In AU I had done frequent activities with Shozo Shimamoto from 1977 to 1992: wonderful exchanges with many artists in our three-time overseas activities (East Europe in 1985, USA in 1987 and West Europe in 1990). I have many memories about Shozo Shimamoto on our art trip. As He had studied psychology, He was so good a producer of AU events and himself.
S.B. How do you realize a Brain Cell? Which strategy do you use to realize the final work?
Ryosuke Cohen: Concerning BRAIN CELL, i print 150 A3 - sized sheets per one issue, at a pace of one issue per 10 days. There are about 50 participants for every issue. The following work of mine is to send one sheet to each participant, to bind 50 sheets into a book once a year, and to keep the rest for Portrait Project, exhibitions and sending to the art concerned.
S.B. How much do your coworkers contribute to your work?
Ryosuke Cohen: Needless to say, i cannot issue BRAIN CELL without any participants. Brain Cell Network constantly has had more new participation, and continues to move and spread along with the times.
S.B. Would you like to explain better what you mean by “Fractal” and “Soup Orion”? What is the basic philosophy that supports your work?
Ryosuke Cohen: Fractal is the idea of self-similarity proposed by French mathematician, Benoit Mandelbrot. I dislike the terms of "individuality and "originality" in art. I think that I am composed of the accumulation on many artists' idea and art history: that is, I am a collection of many fragments. The reason for the proposal of Orion Soup is that we should argue over not only an activity in our narrow field, but also a free theme unique to the artist, which is the most fundamental theme for humanity: the spread of the universe and mathematical prime number. Orion Soup is the coined word I minted.
S.B. The most interesting and new aspect of nowadays artists is interacting among themselves in a choral participation. This also “occurs” in nature. The interesting feature of these biological systems is that these behaviors are born spontaneously and autonomously and there is cooperation among the individuals, which is the fundamental aspect, instead of competition and supremacy of the strongest, which is usually what happens in the official system of the contemporary art. The birth of great coordinated but spontaneous groups appears to us as a huge swarm, very popular in nature, of insects, as ants, mosquitoes and bees which behave coordinately. It is a gigantic organism with its own mind and a superior intelligence compared to the sum of the single individuals. The study of these systems brings to the development of algorithms, belonging to the class called swarm intelligence. The collective behavior is the result of simple interactions of a single towards the others or towards the environment. In all these cases the group really seems an enormous and efficient organism with its own mind and an intelligence superior to the sum of single individuals. I call this experience “border art”, because it wants to find a place in a “practicable elsewhere”, compared to a worldly mediocrity. Basically, a “planetary lab” made up of several networks scattered all over the world: archives of ideas, experimentation and spontaneous research. Today we see a strange web of communications created by correspondents, able to overcome the geographical distances, involving all nations in an impressive and huge moving puzzle, always changing and mutating. Border art is a consolidated network of relationships among thousands of network artists, who exchange creative messages every day, in the shape of e-mail, letters, envelopes, cards, collages, visual poems, books and even three-dimensional objects. With it visual communication takes planetary dimensions, completely new and unexpected. It is the greatest research laboratory of the Earth (the global Network lab), a great “lung” of free research. If we observe it in its complexity, it looks like a giant prehistoric dinosaur, a swarm intelligence, an amazing being with a great eye that regenerates permanently with the spontaneous contributions of many individual presences. Would you like to tell us something more about your method of work?
Ryosuke Cohen: I have continued to print BRAIN CELL by means of Gokko Print (a Japanese typical simplified small silk-screen printer ) every day. First, I get ready for 16-18 different postcard-sized originals with some Mail Arts, and then make a sensitized postcard-sized version, using each of 16-18 original version. Next, i print different 16-18 copies per one 3A sheets, followed by adding seal and/or stamp. I end up printing 150 BRAIN CELL sheets per one issue. Fractal Portrait is a performance that I actually meet the Mail Artists and draws the outline of the face and body on the spot. After coming back to Japan, I finish each one in Chinese black ink (sumi).
S.B. After Brain Cell, starting from Italy, in 2001, you have arrived at the “Fractal Portrait Project “ of face and body in the several meetings you had in different countries of the world, examining closely the concept of “ Brain Cell”. What do your performances mean and what do you do to accomplish the Fractal Portrait Projects works?
Ryosuke Cohen: The meeting with many overseas Mail Artists makes it possible to know how they engage in a wide variety of arts and to directly feel their passion for art.
S.B. The reading of Fractal Portrait Project includes the performing action that becomes part of the experience of the former Brain Cell, and, in my opinion, it sums up a part of life and real history of Japan; I think of Hiroshima with the tragic atomic bombing. So, Hiroshima as Pompeii, destroyed by Vesuvio in 79 d.c. In Hiroshima, on the 6th of August 1945, the atomic bomb literally projected people against the walls, making of them mere shadows. In the city of Hiroshima images of this kind spread everywhere, almost a sort of macabre reminding. The shadows of Hiroshima have stopped time tragically and, for a moment, the history of Japan too. In your works, too the presence of man becomes silhouette, “presence-essence “of contemporary man. I can see this association in your works?
Ryosuke Cohen: Fractal Portrait is an image that connects from "Now" (the present) to the future. It captures not the idea of shadow, but the living silhouette of the artists. Hiroshima is a sad story. In 1986 or 1987, Bern Porter, American physicist involved in the Manhattan Project came to see me in Japan when he was taking a career around the world. At that time he quitted a physicist career to be a Mail Artist. He had been a participant from No.1 issue of BRAIN CELL. He said, " BRAIN CELL is a symbol of Peace ". I have begun with emphasis on Networking of art in BRAIN CELL, but recently feel strongly the weight of his words for this peace.
S.B. In the contemporary panorama of art two kinds of artists exist: those painters who collaborate with the “commercial “system of art and then the “others “, the snipers, free from obligations and bonds. As regards the official system of art, your positioning is autonomous to fashions and ready-made trends, preferring the activity of the planetary circuit, another way, parallel and convergent, of making free and complete research. Marcel Duchamps said: the great artist must go towards clandestinity and anonymity. Surely, with Marginal Art Duchamps declaration becomes a lucid programme, since in you there is no commercial interest, and it lends itself to this new dimension, for its inner capacity of going beyond critics , art -galleries managers, the market , in a direct relationship between the artist and the other and, above all, in a “ free “ crossing of the most different tendencies of the art of research. What can you tell us?
Ryosuke Cohen: There is no purpose in the artist's activities. It is not something we can do to master it. I think that the Artist’s job is to always think about "What is art?".
S.B. In an interesting interview of 2012, John Held jr. asked you if, after having completed the fractal silhouette, you saved some works for yourself, maybe for a possible and future exhibition. On that occasion you confessed that it was difficult for you to collect all the material to exhibit since every work completed was given to friends as a present. Surely, an exhibition of this kind was considered unthinkable not many years ago, if not impossible, for an artist that works like you. In 2015 with the Spazio Ophen Virtual Art Gallery, the problem has been solved presenting 15 years of work of “Fractal Portrait Object “, visible with a virtual, collective and contemporary vernissage all over the world. As you can see technology and modern means of communication solve problems, apparently considered unsurmountable. What do you think?
Ryosuke Cohen: Never did I expect my record to be reproduced in this way. I was surprised at the sophistication of Spazio Ophen Virtual Art Gallery. I am grateful to the record. I am sure that, due to the spread of SNS, the role will become increasingly important in the future.
S.B. My personal curiosity: as an important contemporary artist, have you got any dreams in the drawer you would like to fulfill as soon as possible?
Ryosuke Cohen: Firstly, I'd like to go abroad as often as I can, in order to keep on Fractal Portrait Project. Currently, I keep all of the Mail Art (35 years or so) at the rental warehouse and my home. Secondly, I will donate it to museums and galleries so as to have it used for research on Mail Art.
(translated from English to Italian by Sandro Bongiani, on the 20th May 2018)
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