installation with energy far more redolent and the critical edge of the work of avant-garde groups of the 1960s and 1970s. Japanese artists do seem to be exploring once again relationships between contemporary art and real life, claimed by artists of earlier movements such as Tokyo Fluxus, Hi Red Centre, Tokyo Fluxus, Gutai, 1000-Yen- Note Incident Discussion Group with their strong focus on reflections on social interactions, society, and humanness through performances in varying situations. KW: Do you feel that gradually, contemporary art in Japan is hence being brought back to the front of social reality, in some ways in direct response to and in opposition to the Art Market, and is directly or indirectly related to, social, cultural, political and ecological activism? And do you think that the interactive relationship among artist, work and public is now at the very centre of many emerging Japanese artists, intellectual and even political concerns and hence their artistic engagement? If so what conditions do you see as having contributed to these current mutations? JW: Yes. There is a significant continuity. You see it in the work of Kawamata, for example, a “relational” kind of work. It was there before Nicolas Bourriaud wrote Relational Aesthetics, and he could have picked up a little bit more on the Asian side of things I think, internationalised his inquiry, looking more at people like Navin Rawanchaikul, Shimabuku, Tadasu Takamine, Makoto Nomura – and further back, to the Gutai artists. Around the time I was doing the Sydney Biennale, Junichi Shioda then at MOT in Tokyo, made an exhibition called