Mieko Shiomi (b. 1938) is a Japanese artist, composer, and performer who played a key role in the development of text scores, free improvisation, tape music, and many other practices exploring the limits of sound and music. During her studies in the Tokyo University of the Arts, together with Yasunao Tone, Takehisa Kosugi, and others, she founded the experimental music collective Group Ongaku, pioneering electroacoustic improvisation, which later became a worldwide phenomenon. In 1964, she was invited by George Maciunas to join the Fluxus movement, where she introduced and developed some of her practices for an international audience, before returning to Japan and starting work on performances (‘events’), ensemble pieces, and other works — for example, Spatial Poems, an event that bends time and geography and integrates all her practices, based on instructions sent to fellow artists and the careful documentation of the results.
Still active today, her work has been widely circulated as Fluxus editions, featured in concert halls, museums, galleries, and non-traditional spaces, as well as re-performed numerous times by other musicians and artists. Since 2014, Mieko Shiomi has also been giving lectures at Kyoto City University of Arts as a Distinguished Visiting Scholar.
