Marvin Minsky wrote: "What magical trick makes us intelligent? The trick is that there is no trick. The power of intelligence stems from our vast diversity, not from any single, perfect principle." (...)

As a notice (draft) on art activism by Yoko Ono and John Lennon, to Joseph Nechvatal:

Who was an activist, was John Lennon. Yoko Ono was born in a traditional Japanese group family, which was part of the Japanese imperial group, was an ultra-right and ultra-conservative family. This Japanese symbolic woman Yoko Ono, John Lennon as an English worker-class man had changed her into contra direction through a Love affair (true love) in the post-war, was his most successful action for peace. John Lennon was always a natural person. Many Beatles lyrics can be evaluated literary (social critical-English avant-garde in the post-war). As well as another member of the Beatles, John Lennon was not ideological. Yoko Ono as an artist, I like her experimental film works, which were simple, but she dealt with the subject strongly. After the death of John Lennon in 1980, Yoko Ono did not leave much artwork.

I evaluate John Lennon&Yoko Ono's art activism without violence against violence for peace in a Love affair (true love) in post-war. It was simple and true.

My grand-aunt Hideo&Etsuo were older than Lennon&Yoko Ono, Yoko Ono is Older than my mother. Hideo (1924–2012) was a professor of Japanese Queen Michiko at the University of the Sacred Heart (聖心女子大学, Seishin Joshi Daigaku), as well as Hideko taught at the college of Japanese red cross. At that time, she was also a teacher in the university dormitory where Queen Michiko was staying. After Hideo&Etsuo came back from the research at the Université de Montréal in Canada (Etsuo was in 1957 by the Japanese National Research Funding for two years, and Hideko was in 1958 by the University of the Sacred Heart (聖心女子大学, Seishin Joshi Daigaku) for one year), today's Japanese Queen Michiko had married through a love affair (恋愛結婚/Renai-Kekon, the marriage with free will) in 1958. It was a big sensation in Japan, especially for the ultra-right in Japan. Yoko Ono is her niece of the Generation, and Yoko Ono and Japanese Queen Michiko are the same generations. Hideko and Etsuo had married after their research at the Université de Montréal in Canada, it was before I was born.

Hideo&Etsuo were also true love for peace, that is their ethics ontologically and phenomenologically.

In other words, it was in the context of Christian philosophy before Hildegard von Bingen. Japan can never reject the fact that Japanese emperor Hirohito was/is the authority and the dictator, not the God of Japan.

Yoko Ono's origin is the same group from the Japanese Kaiser Hirohito Period, so she cannot easily receive the cultural Medal in Japan, like a Yayoi Kusama, and probably Yoko Ono would reject the cultural Medal from Japan. I think that her cultural position is in the USA. Yoko Ono, herself, is not an activist like John Lennon (he was a radical activist without violence against violence for peace), I think that she did not learn the avant-garde in Japan, I mean that she did not learn about the employment of workers struggles in Japan. That is her naivity in her artwork and is the critical aspect of the Japanese radical feminist as conceptual art in the 1968's generation. However, the Japanese radical feminist as conceptual art in the 1968's generation. That is a complex generation between tradition and modernity, between the Western culture and Japanese tradition. Most of them could not understand English at all, like Kusama Yayoi. But they have reformed the women's position in Japan objectivity and subjectivity.

In 1989, the Japanese Kaiser Hirohito had died, as well in Spain, Germany and Italy, it was the end of the fascist generation, at the same time, the Soviet Union had collapsed in 1989.

I think that Yoko Ono's and many other artists were depressed about freedom of expression, the death of John Lennon in 1980, that he was killed. It was a very depressing period for everyone in the world.

What is 'freedom of expression? Was the media harassment freedom of expression? or was the manipulated information through the media freedom of expression? From this point of view, John&Yoko's act through the media was the truth as their message, thereby I question 'What is truth democratically?'.

Hideoko&Etsuo had no child, after their death, they donated all of their estates to their mother university, the University of Hiroshima for education. They left to me only their true love, what it was for them.

In 1989, the Japanese Kaiser Hirohito had died, as well in Spain, Germany and Italy, it was the end of the fascist generation, at the same time, the Soviet Union had collapsed in 1989.

Nonviolent activists have been persecuted historically. Kenzaburo Oe, who has received the Nobel Peace Prize, was one of them. He and his family were threatened by the extremists.
Contributing to peace with the theme of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima is not easy.
In some cases it is life-threatening.
I was surprised when former US President Obama announced his visit to Hiroshima, what does the visit of the active US President to Hiroshima Peace Park mean? ...
Nevertheless, like my art project "still/silent", with the change of generations and changes in the world situation, the unusual tension in Hiroshima has been released.
I think the change is peaceful. It is not about building a utopia of peace, but rather about releasing tensions in the situation and balancing the power of the relations. The world is changing at every moment, never stopping.

My art project "still/silent" is fiction from nonfiction and a contribution and work on the subject of peace. I thought about the necessity of changing the fixed historical image, that is, humans were/are obsessed with that image – the Atomic (nuclear) bomb mushroom cloud.

Humanity, as well as mankind, does not exist in a specific image.

Cut piece, Yoko Ono, 1964:

Yoko Ono performance Cut piece in the USA opposed to the position of Hiroshima.–Until the end of the Second World War, the Absolute Imperial Monopoly in Japan was about 97%.

This performance is a public ceremony for her to gain citizenship in the United States or to enter into the United States at the Civil level. Yoko Ono was an artist, was very clever and sharp, already in 1964.

So she became a hippie and she was an art activist of the hippie peace movement with Jon Lennon. That was Non-Western Japanese bourgeoisie and western British proletariat united, was a turning point in the Western culture including Japanese culture.

https://www.dw.com/en/yoko-ono-art-and-protest/g-48159932

Yoko Ono as an artist together with John Lennon in the art and music industry (commercial) was very powerful and iconic as an oriental witch at the time. But at the time, all active women were so-called witches, as well as my Grand-aunt Hideko (Hildegard) and her Colleague Elizabeth Gössman, even if they were academic. In other words, they have educated many women. A daughter of Elizabeth Gössman, after the Tokyo Schule (German school in Japan), her Abitur, she studied Sociology at the University of Munich in Germany. She is a feminist and activist, she is a degreed social worker and care for the girls (German and Immigrant) in the living collective who have abuse from their parents, and cannot live together with their parents. Today, she is a manager of this association in Berlin. When she was a student, she was also one of the student movements in the 1980s, there was a University strike. Therefore, new life was started in West Berlin. Her sister is a German-Japanese academician and doctor-professor.

The end of the war was liberation from the Absolute Imperial Monopoly, that called dictatorship. For many people, it was a starting point of democracy, but from ZERO and the dispositive reality in Hiroshima, after 6th August 1945.

Yoko Ono was on the other side of us. It is the side that is not allowed to resist and is robbed by Allied Forces. The Allies sought to privatize.

Chiharu Shiota's mud-covered performance is also on the other side of the spectrum in Japan's postwar context. Her act was towards the context of imperial Japan, but she was part of about 97% Absolute Imperial Monopoly in her performance. Probably, she is a misread generation in contemporary art, who deal with social themes, but who don't know anything about social construct.– One puts self in the image as imagination
That is a character of contemporary art in the 1990s. But those images are virtual. In the 1990s, in contemporary art in Japan, virtuality was started. Her sponsors in the 2000s were NTT (Telecommunication), Mitsubishi, and so on.

She is one of the mainstream and typical types of Japanese female contemporary artists, and it (One puts self in the image as imagination) was a social phenomenon in Japan between the 1990s–2000s. Art is today a medium of career and a kind of intellectual business for the young generation is a new system since 2014. But at the same time, global economic war became highly competitive, also in the art world and art market.

The virtual images by contemporary artists and their privacy are not the same, are a kind of role-play. It applies to most contemporary artists, as well as Shiota Chiharu and many others.

Art criticism in aesthetics, art history, as well as culture study, how they interpret and judge the art in contemporary art today, is a wonder.

Aesthetic value might be possible a sadistic value also.

Today Hashijima Island is a symbol of Ruins of civilization, however, with civilization, there is a submarine coal mine in the basement of the concrete residential area of that hot and humid artificial island in Nagasaki, and I think that the living conditions of the workers there were hell.
The working conditions of the workers at Miike Colliery in Kyushu were the worst, I have visited there and talked with the workers at that time.

I think rather Auschwitz, not the ruins of civilization.

The working conditions of the workers at Chikuho Colliery and Miike in Kyushu were the worst, I have visited there and talked with the workers at that time, was in 1980 (I met A documentary author Eishin Ueno, Kazue Morinaga, and many others there. They are the poet and one of the Avant-Garde Groups in postwar Literary in Japan. There was the movement together with South Korean Avant-Garde Groups in postwar Literary. They have argued about Korean force workers against the Japanese Imperial.), and I visited Kyushu later in the 2000s.

Just seen from the outside, I cannot say anything.

I think rather Auschwitz, not than the ruins of civilization. I have visited Auschwitz in Poland in 1989.

The third Reich of German Nazis and the Japanese Empire were at the same level of fascism. The difference between Germany and Japan was that Germany was national social democracy, but Japan was a monopoly dictatorship.

It has nothing to do with Chiharu Shiota, but when old German female artists said to me that they appreciated her work's aesthetic value, I thought that their roots were the same as German Nazis in German idealism.

I think that Germans were never persecuted, even they persecuted other people.

My family is on the side of liberation.

On the official visit of former US President Barack Obama to the ceremony at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park in 2016, a survivor shook hands with former US President Barack Obama and said in tears that he was glad that the official visit was realized while he was alive.

History is very complex: Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and Okinawa were the victims of the Japanese Imperial War. Can you trust the 'nation' (in every country)? Look at the Atom bomb test in the USA, Russia, China and Noth Korea, and the nuclear weapon test in the world. That was 'madness' in humankind towards and by fascism in the 20th century. Mankind was crazy.

As a Japanese, I have no idea and no opinion for both performances. That is an individual expression by each artist, not specific interesting in the postwar context of performance in the art world.

How it will be affected, that is changing attention of the subject through imagination as a roll-play, is as a representational theory, is a kind of manipulation. In Germany, it would be called 'transformation' in arts and humanities, but it was a German NAZI philosophical strategy, such as Heidegger's in German Idealism, they were in literary, and not logics. Who was in the oppositional position at the time, was such as Benjamin.

So that I work on logic visually and musically, not on imagination. Surrealism is/was based on a kind of logic in the linguistic context, not an art form in formalism, but rather surrealism has 'no expressional fixed form', because of the logic in the linguistic context.–I don't and my artwork does not 'be involved' in any specific art context– I am 'I' always. The individual Logic in Surrealism is my self-protection.

The issue of Joseph Nechvatal is his position in the art world as an artist and academician, because behind him (his "Immersion Into Noise", but it would be interpreted as immersive noise generally) are following many artists of Marina Abramović's context, and it seems similar to  FLUXUS, nevertheless, both are not the same, but rather two opposed dynamics. Chiharu Shiota is in Marina Abramović's, and Marina Abramović's is so strategic. Marina Abramović's is political and she is against masculine art as well as Duchamp's position, but Chiharu Shiota is 'One puts self in the image as imagination', is a kind of virtuality and globality, as a fact that would an opposed dynamic towards the political movement at the civil level in the reality.
Nechvatal's in arts and humanities is rather a political aspect, not in a literary sense, was Duchamp's.

So, Joseph Nechvatal as an art criticism cares for them (their immersive noise) and will manybe transform them into Immersion Into Noise, who are contemporary artists from the 20th century in the art world in this context mainly. Nevertheless, they don't understand yet, due to habits of contemporary art as well as global cultural identity in the 20th century.

"Immersion Into Noise" is not the same with immersive noise. immersive noise is often so-called in artistic intervention, by the negative use is such as troublemaking, protesting, and so on.

"Immersion Into Noise" is rather philosophical contemplation in post-atomism from the aspect of molecular biology in the 21st century.

The current question for 'noise' is, that is the measures against coronavirus, as well as the measures for the refugee in the situation of the war and conflict, includes against terrorism.

How do we think about 'noise' as a protest against the rules, duty and morals in humanity?

Today's noise is such as hate speech against the new left moral and against anti-racism, as well as against anti-fascism.

We cannot be just naive, but we can naturalise in everyday life, probably, that 'noise' might be possible to be creative essence as a human relationship or communication with others in the environment.

Our breath is also 'noise' in the environment.

The first people have received an experimental mRNA HIV vaccine

2.2.2022

-> This issue is the same with the painting “Open Casket” (2016) by Schutz by the Whitney Biennale, in the USA in 2016 in terms of painting as a democratic attitude. Actually, Schutz did not draw anything on canvas.

When the civil movement communities argued the artwork as a racist attitude, thereby the reason was 'freedom of expression' by the artist on the art institute side.

Today, Art is not a political and political tool, art is entertainment, but rather an economic tool today, however, 'freedom of expression is alive even today.

"still/silent" is, I am the second generation of Hibakusha, and I am Queer–neutral. I never thought "man and woman" attractive. I never found heterosexual femininity attractive. The sexual attraction is important in Western culture, however, traditional Japanese culture was a homosexual culture. The sponsors of the female artists were women, behind of men's culture. There were many communities without men.

I think "grotesque" is also important for art. But the younger generation, including me, is analytical and smart.

Japanese young contemporary art artists symbolized "Atomic Bomb Cloud". Therefore, I created another dimension collectivity. 

The impression of the performance "still/silent", after the performance, even in Venice "it makes me sad."

-> 1 US dollar = 360 yen
In 1958, the average monthly salary of office workers in Japan was 16608 yen (about 46 US dollars). Hideko& Etsuo from Hiroshima (University of Hiroshima) were Japanese office workers, even they were scientists and University professors.

At that time, the financial security for individual travel, visas and stays to the United States, rather than government-sponsored international students, was enormous. Yoko Ono from Tokyo, Japan was younger than Hideo, but she was the family of the Japanese millionaire, and she was a Japanese millionaire, today she is the American-Japanese world millionaire.

At that time, the Japanese family register system was still discriminatory against foreign nationals, so by marrying Yoko, John tackled Japanese feudalism.

I came to Europe with my savings. For a short period of time, I was employed that related to space design (including computer programming) in Tokyo, so I had my own Visa card already. I was 23–24 years old in the 1980s. It was my second application for the company in Tokyo. UdK Berlin was my first application in Europe.

Today, a girl like me is general, but in my generation in Japan, I was an unusual type of girl. I could speak, listen, read and write in English well.

Computer and programming (computer science) have improved the social status of women.

Mathematics has nothing to do with man or woman.

However, I like Fluxus Manifesto (1963) by George Maciunas, how to be radical, break up the conservatism in statistical art, and it is unconventional. My critic for Manifesto (1963) by George Maciunas is a little bit naive, difficult to combine with Duchamp's from my perspective in surrealism. How I explore is, that is not a wrong way of surrealism from the perspective of the 21st century. My critic for Manifesto (1963) by George Maciunas is a little bit naive: I mean that for the countries such as ex fascist countries Japan and Germany the content of his manifesto is too naive. The most historical political issues in fascism were political naivety in both countries, such as moral, duty and good or bad judgement. Everything was naive in the world, even though Maoism. Fairness in Mao communism is "each family can have only one child.", a duty of the nation.– the issue of Manifesto today

In Manifesto (1963) by George Maciunas, he mentions that always fluid and not perfect. It's always lively and dynamic, but in reality it's not that easy. Humans seek stability in everyday life. Once you get used to it, it's hard to start something new. Rather, new things give fear, or on the contrary give hope. So, in this artistic research, I explore 'creativity' in everyday life, which makes sense and fluid more than an art movement in the art world generally.

Germany's left-wing structure and democracy are historically very complex. Former East Germany was a communist democracy whose regime was under Soviet Union supervision.
The regime was Honecker's dictatorship and study. Still, it was Anti-Antisemitism politically, but the international solidarity of the Communists as a nation was a discriminatory vertical social structure. The Soviet Union was antisemitism.

And it is Neonazism that countered it. However, that is not sure, whether Neonazism was the opposition of Honecker's dictatorship. Neonazis are even today Antisemitism.
The Former West-German Red Army was communist on the side of Former East Germany. I don't know well about the communist left movement, but I assume that there were complex because of the development of various ideologies after Marx's theory in each context and connected internationally but in the concept of governance. i.e. Trotsky, Lenin, Stalin, Mao et al. were out of the academy, how they were could be followed? Only from political science is possible. 

However, I would like to introduce a book in Japan, which is a sociologist and radical feminist Professor Emeritus, University of Tokyo Prof. Dr Chizuko Ueno's book "Patriarchy and capitalism–Marxist feminist horizon", Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1990, from the non-western perspective.

The German National Socialism was a democratic social system, not a monarchy social system. One is, there was an error in the French revolution. Even after the French revolution, it was a masculine centred authority social system, i.e. was based on Monadology.

Isn't the problem of the former colonial nations that the old colonial laws, customs and mentality remain? i.e. Authority, Idealism, Hierarchy, etc.

From the perspective of the classical Marxist era, the conflict between the West and the East is like ‘Bourgeois vs. Proletarier‘, is Russia, China, capitalist democracy and communism vs. the United States, Japan, the United Kingdom, and other capitalist social democracy, or capitalist monarchy social democracy (Unitary parliamentary constitutional parliamentary) globaly.

However, I don't see so in the regional context, i.e. due to the corruption in each country, even if the business operators have a great deal of responsibility to their workers in today's capitalist economy.

Rather, I think the problem is the huge amount of Western capital investment.

In every country in the world, I think the relevant theme is the international community and economy. Probably, Afghanistan is a country at the turning point of human history in the 21st century. I think it is natural that there are peoples and nations that resist the global world theory on the earth by the Western countires rather than be integrated. There are many contradictions. It's helpful and it's business internationally, at the same time, there is discrimination and class differences in each countiry.

Economic and International relationships are the main subject of independence in each country. – For the fair business

Thereby, Palestina for ethnic minority issues in the world, in international affairs, Israel is an independent nation, so I think Palestine is the main theme.

Is the problem here that the Palestinians have become "wandering people"?

Realistically, it is necessary for "reconciliation" from the perspective of modern world affairs, not which nation was expelled.

I am two generations later than Yoko&John, and was born in Japan.

Chiharu Shiota is a classic study in fine arts, calls Meisterschüler, and she followed her Masters. I am a new format of Fine arts study in Art Academy/Art university in Germany, due to my study art in context at UdK Berlin (is based on British, There are non-Westen teachers, professors, is oriented to Gender study, Queer study, Black study, Post-colonial study, Disability study, Art history, Philosophy of art, Cultral study, Social science, and Aesthetics. Study is not by the interpreting method but rather the analytic method.). I did not need to follow any art masters for the study of Fine arts. After Meisterschüler, it was only possible to study art in the context in advance for PhD study (Academic degree) in Fine arts.

Meisterschüler is the last station in art academic study in Fine arts. (No Academic degree)

There are two Academic degrees (PhD) in the Arts today, one is an Art Academic degree (PhD) in Fine arts and the second one is a Practice-Based Academic degree (PhD) in Fine arts.

George Kubler and the Biological Metaphor of Art

Bence Nanay (Philosopher in Aesthetics)

George Kubler was one of the most important art historians of the twentieth century who is especially relevant today mainly for shifting the emphasis from high art to what is now known as ‘visual culture’ and for being the first genuinely global art historian. But what he has been most widely known for is the rejection of the biological metaphor of art—the general idea that artistic styles and movements grow, flower and then wither away. I argue that Kubler did not in fact reject the biological metaphor of art but rather replaced a pre-Darwinian biological metaphor with a  post-Darwinian one which bears remarkable similarities to Ernst Mayr’s concept of population thinking, developed at the same time that Kubler wrote The Shape of Time. Importantly, taking Kubler’s post-Darwinian biological metaphor seriously can help us to understand his distinctive art-historical explanatory scheme.

1. Introduction

George Kubler’s The Shape of Time is considered to be one of the most important books of twentieth-century art history. And not just for historical reasons. Of all the art historians of the twentieth century, the one who is most relevant for the present debates in art history is not Wolfflin or Gombrich or Panofsky—it is Kubler.The reason for this is threefold. First, Kubler was the first art historian who consistently broadened the scope of arthistorical research from objects that are or were at some point considered to be art to a much more universal domain that is known today as ‘visual culture’. The general idea is that when it comes to the study of historical changes in style and visual sensibility, we should not restrict our analysis to paintings exhibited in select art museums but also pay attention to objects that are not quite museum materials, including playing cards, commercial advertising or doodles. Kubler very explicitly down-plays ‘art’ in ‘art history’. Art history for him is the history of man-made objects (some of which some people consider art). And this is exactly the attitude of recent studies of ‘visual culture’.¹

(...)

3. Population ThinkingErnst Mayr was one of the founding fathers of modern evolutionary biology. He is one of the main figures of the so-called ‘Modern Evolutionary Synthesis’, the move of combining Darwin’s theory of natural selection with modern genetics. He is also a very philosophical biologist, who wrote articles and even books that are much closer to philosophy of biology than to biology proper.Like Kubler (see his first argument), Mayr took uniqueness to be a very important as-pect of human life. But he argued that uniqueness is just as important in biology. As he says: ‘The more I study evolution, the more I am impressed by the uniqueness, by the unpredictability, and by the unrepeatability of evolutionary events.’¹⁸

Site-Specific

In-situ in the research of science, that is for us human, is a possibility of measurement of thing(s) and its(their) event through time and space in the context of nature phenomenologically.

In the arts, that is rather and often the expression of 'being' or dealing with 'being' metaphysically, not for the measurement. Which is an important recognition for humans ontologically.

Erika Linder and Heather Kemesky 2020 Wedding Gowns Shoot | Emily Coulston-Moon

The contradiction of homosexual relationships (couple) in society is 'birth'. Women have the possibility but Men have no possibility. However, there are opportunities for Men, i.e. adoption.

The world population is growing and growing, so that is no problem for the couple without birth in the society.

Therefore, the important theme is human rights for children. That is the same with heterosexual relationships.

In the early 1990s in Berlin:

My generation was late of 'third sex' generation, I had a steady girlfriend, she was a Venetian and MA student in Germenistic. She had a steady boyfriend, was a german and I had a steady boyfriend an American, we were all students. Who found our love between us, was our boyfriend.


They were the supporters of our lesbian relationship. We did not have a relationship crisis. Because each was own one and independently. Each had each aim of life, as well as dream and wishing.


My girlfriend Kate, who had a car accident in Berlin, has given a deep trauma. Finally, she decided to go back to Venice.

My boyfriend decided to back to the USA.
Which way do I have to go to the USA or Italy?
As well as Kate's boyfriend, he advanced his study.
I could not give up my study at UdK Berlin. I needed to stay and study in Berlin yet.
We would all be alone

We were an official love triangle in our friendships.

Kate is my first girlfriend, for Kate, I was her first girlfriend, it was our first lesbian love.

We all did not our sexuality yet, man or woman? or neither. What is the gap between my social gender identity as a social role and my biological gender?

We were standing between the social identity and our own identity yet.

 Kate had married and had children, and I had married.

Today, in our generation, men are queer also, so we can understand each other.

Understanding about own as the information in the head may be different from the mind and body.

In the 1990s, same-sex marriage as well as the same-sex couple was not allowed in Italy, as well as in Japan.

What is different from the feminist generation of Beauvoir's was that in our generation, the only way to improve discrimination in international marriage relationships in the law was to "marriage".

– The end of the Western student movement (the end of the Western ideological movement) of 1968.

Marvin Minsky wrote: "What magical trick makes us intelligent? The trick is that there is no trick. The power of intelligence stems from our vast diversity, not from any single, perfect principle." (...)