UNE PARTITION POUR VOIR LE MONDE EN ROUGE DE SHIOMI
A score for seeing the world in red, by Shiomi

UNE PARTITION POUR VOIR LE MONDE EN ROUGE DE SHIOMI
A score for seeing the world in red, by Shiomi

Mieko Shiomi was trained as a musician, graduating from the Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music in 1961. In 1964 she travelled to New York where she met George Maciunas, Dick Higgins, Alison Knowles, Nam June Paik and Ay-O, and participated in Fluxus performance events and concerts.
Water, wind, light and shadows became the material of her scored events, drawing attention to the ordinary flow of events and change in everyday life.
Shiomi's scores characteristically transform the performer's perception of the world rather than asking them to produce a sound or make an object. Her scores resonate with George Brecht's concept of the Event Score, eliciting the spectator to perform mundane tasks of the mind and body. One score, for instance, asks participants to open and shut their eyes at intervals and then look at their hands as the world itself becomes the performance space.
A red transparent filter handed to the recipient as a score for seeing the world in red is entirely consistent with this logic. You hold it up. You look through it. The world turns red. The score is complete. The performer needs no musical training, no special space, no instrument, only eyes. It is simultaneously the score, the instrument, and the performance all in one object, dissolved into a single gesture of perception.

Mieko Shiomi

Related to Shiomi's Events & Games series and her broader Fluxus event score practice

Sheet of red transparent plastic/acetate or theatrical gel filter

Artist multiple; event score; object score