Takehisa Kosugi

"Part travelogue, part performance, 100% head-spinning" - Worlds of Cinema Electronic music pioneer Matsuo Ohno's art-film/documentary chronicling the Japanese experimental music ensemble's 1971-1972 worldwide expedition. Led by Fluxus member Takehisa Kosugi, the Taj Maj Mahal Travellers elevate university crowds and concert halls, follow tortoises through the Iranian desert, jam with Don Cherry and his Organic Music Society in a geodesic dome in Stockholm, explore Grecian ruins, improvise on Afghan steppes, serenade the waves at Cape Manazuru Beach, Japan and make the pilgrimage to their ivory-white namesake -- making music anywhere and with anything along the way.

Fluxus artist and composer Takehisa Kosugi assembled a crew of young musicians and hit the road in a VW bus from Rotterdam to the Taj Mahal, playing a series of shows along the way in which the band used traditional instruments run through a series of electronic effects to create long sheets of drone both pulsing and timeless. Filmed by Takehisa Kosugi's mentor Matsu Ohno (perhaps best known in the States for his sound effects/score work on the television series Astro-Boy), the film moves at the same pace as the music itself, a pastoral road movie following a band far more likely to play temples than clubs.

On March 24, 1979, The Kitchen presented a two-part program dedicated to the work of various Fluxus artists. The programming began with the premiere of Alison Knowles’s “Natural Assemblages and the True Crow.” For the piece, Knowles engaged in a dialogue with her own taped voice, which read aloud selections from various natural history books. Simultaneously, violinist Michael Goldstein provided an improvised score while dancer Jessie Higgins executed a number of one-movement phrases by following instructions on index cards. The second part of the night’s programming consisted of forty rapid performances—most sixty seconds or less—by various Fluxus members, including Yoko Ono, George Brecht, La Monte Young, and Nam June Paik. Ken Friedman and Larry Miller coordinated this portion of the event.