Line Incident is now considered to belong more properly to the pre-history of Hi-Red Center. The work is printed as such: “18 Oct. Event on Yamate loop line street car. A continuous black string with various everyday objects attached to it at intervals was laid out on street from moving street car along its circular route. Compact objects were hung from hand straps inside street car and observed by performers at close range with battery lights. Faces of performers were painted white. Performers read newspapers with holes burned in them.” The event was featured in the magazine Keishō, then under the editorship of Yoshihiko Imaizumi. According to Akasegawa, Nakanishi and Takamatsu used the Yamanote Line as a site for their event in order to "destroy the hierarchical status of art by bringing it into the ‘space of daily activities.’” Hi-Red Center (1963-4) In 1963, Takamatsu co-founded the art collective Hi-Red Center along with Natsuyuki Nakanishi and Akasegawa Genpei. This brief-lived but influential group executed a variety of performance art events that sought to eliminate the boundaries between daily life and art. The group's name was formed from the first kanji characters of the three artists' surnames: "high" (the "Taka" in Takamatsu), "red" (the "Aka" in Akasegawa), and "center" (the "Naka" in Nakanishi). The foundation for Hi-Red Center might be located in the roundtable discussion, sponsored by the art magazine Keishо̄ in November 1962, on the relationship between art and political action (as reflected the recent Yamanote Line Incident happening) titled Signs of Discourse on Direct Action, in which all three members had participated. All three artists had begun as painters but had turned to methods of “direct action” through Hi-Red Center, a term taken from prewar socialist agitators. With “direct action,” the artists meant to raise to consciousness the absurdities and contradictions of Japanese society. This interest in Art as direct action has been contextualised as rooted in the atmosphere following massive Anpo protests against the U.S.-Japan Security Treaty in 1960. Although the group's inaugural exhibition, Fifth Mixer Plan (Dai goji mikisā keikaku, May 1963), featured artworks the three artists had created independently, such as Takamatsu's busy entanglements of strings, Akasegawa's objects wrapped in printed 1000-yen notes, and Nakanishi's Konpakuto obuje ("Compact Objets"), egg-shaped translucent resign sculptures that embalmed everyday items, the emphasis on collaborative "direct action" came to the fore in the group's later activities, which featured a variety