CROSS TALK INTERMEDIA
VEXATIONS
THAT MORNING THING
PING
COMMENTARY
REVIEWS

Update 26 November 2024

CROSS TALK ARCHIVE TOKYO 1966-1969

During the late 1960s, supported by the Institute of Current World Affairs, Roger and Karen lived for three years in Tokyo. Our "mission” was to study the language, to participate in Japanese cultural life and to report to the Institute membership through monthly newsletters on any subject. They quickly became aware that nourishing communications between American and Japanese artists would be a productive path. Collaborating with the American Cultural Center there as well as the august Asahi Shinbun (newspaper), we produced three individual concerts, a three-day Festival in Kenzo Tange’s Olympic Gymnasium, and other activities such as a complete 16-hour performance of Eric Satie’s notorious Vexations. Japanese composer Jōji Yuasa and critic Kuniharu Akiyama were their dedicated collaborators. Their three-year engagement opened many metaphoric doors and did, indeed, lead to improved trans-Pacific awareness as well as furthering new personal relationships which had their own lasting impact.

Unanticipated tendrils from their activities in Japan have continued to emerge. When Pauline Oliveros left UC San Diego, Yuasa was recruited, influencing a generation of graduate students as an emissary from his ancient culture and the ways in which graphic representation can enhance creativity. UC Berkeley Professor Mryam Sas spent a day with them in Del Mar, using a portable scanner to copy reams of material from their substantial collection of publications on Japan. Her essay “Feeling Media: Potentiality and the Afterlife of Art,” and another for a MOMA catalog on Experimental Cinema in the 1960s brought new attention to their CROSS TALK activities. And, in 2024, Ann Adachi-Tasch, Executive Director of Collaborative Cataloging Japan, included huge enlargements of Karen's CROSS TALK posters in an exhibition entitled “Community of Images: Japanese Moving Image Artists in the U.S. 1960s – 1970s” at the Philadelphia Art Alliance, along with other documentation.

Toshiro Mayuzumi, Karen Reynolds, Roger Reynolds awaiting the arrival of cameramen to film a television interview for Mayuzumi's afternoon television show, "Concert Without A Name" on New Year's Day 1969. The subject was Satie's Vexations, which had just been performed at the American Cultural Center in Tōkyō as a CROSS TALK extra event. Many of the most adventuresome Japanese musicians, including Toshi Ichiyanagi, Yori-Aki Matsudaira, Yuasa, as well as Karen and Roger participated, introducing this alarming eighteen-hour prank to the Japanese.

This poster coincided with Karen's early incorporation of stenciled letters as a basis for both posters and textual slide projections such as the 160 she prepared for performances of Roger’s 1968 multimedia work, Ping. This explorative multimedial work was based on a challenging text of the same name written by Samuel Beckett. The blocky forcefulness of these letters, strategically placed, created a unique texture consisting only of the interwoven names of all the major festival participants montaged.

The legendary dancer Tatsumi Hijikata

Hijikata played a foundational role in the emergence of the powerfully original Japanese Butoh dance movement ("ancient dance step of utter darkness”) during the 1960s. We invited his participation in the 1969 CROSS TALK INTERMEDIA Festival, and he proposed a work to involve a live giraffe, and an equal number of crows and of elderly women. We secured the participation of the giraffe, but, for unknown reasons, Hijikata withdrew, using the traditional Japanese go-between practice. His personal “master” made the apologies to us formally at a gathering at the apartment of ACC Director Donald Albright.

A quiet moment of bilingual consultation during rehearsals for the CROSS TALK INTERMEDIA festival’s Ping presentation (in Japanese as well as English). Left to right, Joji Yuasa, percussionist Hiroshi Kumagai, Roger and Karen (dressed in a suit designed by Toshi Ichiyanagi’s trend-setting tailor).

Roger conducting an ensemble of Japanese musicians in a performance of Salvatore Martirano’s Ballade, with American service man Autry Rabon as soloist. During the 1960s, innovative composers began to collaborate with individuals in differing fields. Invested in the experience of inter-personal collaboration, the co-directors imagined that the works they produced could only be realized within these particular alliances. When they decided to invite Martirano as a festival guest, he did not believe that his work could be realized in a foreign context. But his original and challenging Ballad, as well as the spectacular intermedia piece, L’s G.A. — which involved an actor inhaling helium gas (to raise his voice by an octave), were, indeed, realized to his complete satisfaction.

CROSS TALK ARCHIVE TOKYO 1966-1969
During the late 1960s, supported by the Institute of Current World Affairs, Roger and Karen lived for three years in Tokyo. Our "mission” was to study the language, to participate in Japanese cultural life and to report to the Institute membership through monthly newsletters on any subject. They quickly became aware that nourishing communications between American and Japanese artists would be a productive path. Collaborating with the American Cultural Center there as well as the august Asahi Shinbun (newspaper), we produced three individual concerts, a three-day Festival in Kenzo Tange’s Olympic Gymnasium, and other activities such as a complete 16-hour performance of Eric Satie’s notorious Vexations. Japanese composer Jōji Yuasa and critic Kuniharu Akiyama were their dedicated collaborators. Their three-year engagement opened many metaphoric doors and did, indeed, lead to improved trans-Pacific awareness as well as furthering new personal relationships which had their own lasting impact. Unanticipated tendrils from their activities in Japan have continued to emerge. When Pauline Oliveros left UC San Diego, Yuasa was recruited, influencing a generation of graduate students as an emissary from his ancient culture and the ways in which graphic representation can enhance creativity. UC Berkeley Professor Mryam Sas spent a day with them in Del Mar, using a portable scanner to copy reams of material from their substantial collection of publications on Japan. Her essay “Feeling Media: Potentiality and the Afterlife of Art,” and another for a MOMA catalog on Experimental Cinema in the 1960s brought new attention to their CROSS TALK activities. And, in 2024, Ann Adachi-Tasch, Executive Director of Collaborative Cataloging Japan, included huge enlargements of Karen's CROSS TALK posters in an exhibition entitled “Community of Images: Japanese Moving Image Artists in the U.S. 1960s – 1970s” at the Philadelphia Art Alliance, along with other documentation.	Toshiro Mayuzumi, Karen Reynolds, Roger Reynolds awaiting the arrival of cameramen to film a television interview for Mayuzumi's afternoon television show, "Concert Without A Name" on New Year's Day 1969. The subject was Satie's Vexations, which had just been performed at the American Cultural Center in Tōkyō as a CROSS TALK extra event. Many of the most adventuresome Japanese musicians, including Toshi Ichiyanagi, Yori-Aki Matsudaira, Yuasa, as well as Karen and Roger participated, introducing this alarming eighteen-hour prank to the Japanese.
This poster coincided with Karen's early incorporation of stenciled letters as a basis for both posters and textual slide projections such as the 160 she prepared for performances of Roger’s 1968 multimedia work, Ping. This explorative multimedial work was based on a challenging text of the same name written by Samuel Beckett. The blocky forcefulness of these letters, strategically placed, created a unique texture consisting only of the interwoven names of all the major festival participants montaged.	The legendary dancer Tatsumi Hijikata Hijikata played a foundational role in the emergence of the powerfully original Japanese Butoh dance movement ("ancient dance step of utter darkness”) during the 1960s. We invited his participation in the 1969 CROSS TALK INTERMEDIA Festival, and he proposed a work to involve a live giraffe, and an equal number of crows and of elderly women. We secured the participation of the giraffe, but, for unknown reasons, Hijikata withdrew, using the traditional Japanese go-between practice. His personal “master” made the apologies to us formally at a gathering at the apartment of ACC Director Donald Albright.
A quiet moment of bilingual consultation during rehearsals for the CROSS TALK INTERMEDIA festival’s Ping presentation (in Japanese as well as English). Left to right, Joji Yuasa, percussionist Hiroshi Kumagai, Roger and Karen (dressed in a suit designed by Toshi Ichiyanagi’s trend-setting tailor).
Roger conducting an ensemble of Japanese musicians in a performance of Salvatore Martirano’s Ballade, with American service man Autry Rabon as soloist. During the 1960s, innovative composers began to collaborate with individuals in differing fields. Invested in the experience of inter-personal collaboration, the co-directors imagined that the works they produced could only be realized within these particular alliances. When they decided to invite Martirano as a festival guest, he did not believe that his work could be realized in a foreign context. But his original and challenging Ballad, as well as the spectacular intermedia piece, L’s G.A. — which involved an actor inhaling helium gas (to raise his voice by an octave), were, indeed, realized to his complete satisfaction.