Shusaku Arakawa, who spoke of himself as an eternal outsider and abstractionist of the distant future, was a member of Tokyo's Neo-Dadaism Organizers, a precursor to the Neo-Dada movement, and his early works were first displayed in the infamous Yomiuri Independent Exhibition, a watershed event for postwar Japanese avant-garde art. Arakawa arrived in New York in 1961 with fourteen dollars in his pocket and a telephone number for Marcel Duchamp, whom he phoned from the airport and with whom he eventually formed a close friendship.