This letter, written to George Maciunas sometime in late 1965 after Mieko Shiomi had returned to Japan, shows that Shiomi was already busy crafting the object edition for Spatial Poem No. 1 (Word Event) (1965), a corkboard map dotted with paper flags printed with the text of participants’ reports. In Japan, Shiomi could not find the same supplies with which she had begun the project in New York. Shiomi’s mention of Maciunas’s performance of Spatial Poem No. 2 (Direction Event) (1965) was reported as follows: “George Maciunas was spinning himself on a office chair very rapidly in the elevator which was going up, thus facing all directions and moving upward in New York.” This letter, like many others in the Archive section of chapter 10, also chronicles Shiomi’s efforts to help Maciunas get an antique samurai sword from his personal collection repaired in Japan.
Used by permission of Mieko Shiomi.
