A dialogue shouldn't fail because of distance, Mieko Shiomi thought long before the world knew the internet.

Through her “Spatial Poems” the composer, who was born in Okayama, Japan in 1938, made contact with people from all over the world, some of whom were complete strangers, in the mid-1960s.

To do this, she sent out instructions that were short and clear, but gave their recipients the greatest possible leeway in carrying them out.

For example, she asked them to write a word on a card, then leave the card anywhere and tell her the location.

The request was linked to her promise to mark the point on a world map.

In nine such actions, between 1965 and 1975, Shiomi networked with the world and at the same time cemented her importance for the Fluxus movement, which ignored common genre definitions and focused less on a finished object and more on the processual, literally fleeting.

She came into contact with the avant-garde art movement in the early 1960s when she met Nam June Paik in Tokyo and was invited by George Maciunas to New York, in the eye of the Fluxus hurricane.

How is it supposed to continue now?

The Japanese artist, who now lives in Osaka, was correspondingly close to the group of Fluxus pioneers who smashed a concert grand piano at the Wiesbaden Museum at the “Newest Music Festival” in 1962 and thus wrote art history insofar as this iconic moment is often identified with the birth of Fluxus.

The sixtieth anniversary of the event, which currently determines the exhibition calendar of the state capital, is being used in the museum to commemorate Shiomi's work with an "intervention".

On the third floor of the house, curator Jana Dennhardt has collected facsimiles of the nine instructions that the artist once sent to around 200 people whose names she had found on a Maciunas address list.

The example of the first "Spatial Poem" makes it clear how playfully this form of "Mail Art" overcomes spatial and human distance.

Small paper flags are stuck on a world map whose idiosyncratic scale shows Japan and even more so New York disproportionately large.

They are printed with answers that can only be read through a magnifying glass, of which Shiomi received 69.

In the case of Nam June Paik and Maciunas, they were “no words” or “anywhere”.

A wall-filling photograph shows that the small museum exhibition does not end with Shiomi.

Instead of the moment of the piano being smashed, which is often quoted again at the moment, it depicts the chaos in which the actors left the place.

Styrofoam sleet, unrolled toilet paper, a shoe and a fallen bucket mix on the floor to create a still life that raises one question above all: How is it supposed to continue now?

In fact, at that moment, an energy was released that future generations still draw on.

The anonymous Internet artist Cem A provides evidence of this. On social media, he spreads bizarre little pictures and films, so-called memes, in which he, among other things, processes his own, often frustrating, experiences with the art world.

The humorous approach to a by no means always cheerful subject via a network connects him not only to Shiomi's position, but to Fluxus in general.

Even if the technology has changed and the digital dimensions enable a much greater reach today, the strategies remain strikingly similar.

This applies not least to the interviews that Dennhardt conducted with both artists: the conversation with the Japanese artist can be found on a leaflet, the dialogue with Cem A. can be accessed via a QR code.

Mieko Shiomi: Intervention Museum Wiesbaden, Friedrich-Ebert-Allee 2, Wiesbaden, until September 25