An artist who began as a sculptor and has created work in a variety of media throughout her career, she frequently incorporates pre-existing material at the centre of her projects via a considered process of interrogative mediation. More recently, it is filmic texts and the presentation of written communication that have become increasingly prominent in her oeuvre. With this it is worth noting that Clarke is also the founder of Banner Repeater, a reading room and project space located on the platform of Hackney Downs railway station, East London. From here artistic texts are distributed to the public en masse and information laid directly into the hands of weary commuters, their target audience. The process of denoting “knowledge” and the questions of how “knowledge” is disseminated and then acquired on an individual level are at the forefront of her creative practice and the issues addressed by the works now on show.

In the current exhibition entitled “Be Seeing You”, Clarke’s process of re-appropriating matter as a way to expose the underlying relationships and assumptions that original texts precariously subsist upon is in full force. Broadly acknowledging and often highlighting the original sources for her works, and meanwhile discussing the manner in which she discovered and subsequently altered them, Clarke’s way of working lauds an overwhelming transparency.

The main video projection is telling of both Clarke’s fascination with the popular late Sixties British spy fiction TV series “The Prisoner” and her ongoing investigation into the nature of how information is handled in the age of modern technology and advanced capitalism. It is not necessary for one to have knowledge of “The Prisoner” prior to visiting the exhibition, but having a grasp of the themes the series explores may provide a useful point of entry for this particular work.

In the first episode the main protagonist/prisoner awakes in an anonymous and isolated village, having been abducted for interrogation following his abrupt resignation from a secret agent role. He angrily states, “I will not make any deals with you. I resigned. I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed or numbered. My life is my own.” Arguably this sentiment resonates strongly with the video work. Primarily featuring footage of ‘Rover’ (a large, white, balloon-like object that forcibly controls non-compliant inhabitants) and rhythmically edited scenes of varying depictions of light, the nature of the changeable spherical images represented in this large projection are laid open for questioning. Re-presenting multiple manifestations to explore the construction of Rover specifically, taken from both the original TV series and the 2009 U.S. mini-series, Clarke makes a bid to analyse an object that she admits has been a long-term obsession of hers. However, in making this video, more than ever the plasticity of the object and the impossibility of its movement becomes increasing opaque, as she is the first to claim; whilst the filmic illusion is broken down in the reconfiguring of the stock footage, the absurd and somewhat alarming nature of the circular image on screen is retained. Rather than briefing or debriefing the audience and allowing them to “know” the object represented, she turns the interrogative strobe back onto the viewer, rejecting and challenging their desire for a single channel of explanation, and instead allows it to have a life of its own.

Furthermore, Clarke also exposes the fallacious nature of the chimeric one-directional relationship between the viewer and the screen by demonstrating that such an archaic, singular standpoint is merely one of a multiplicity positions that the viewer may choose to inhabit when encountering a filmic text. In an age of ever more refined technology, direct experience and interaction with art has become increasingly treasured, something that is adamantly avoided in popular filmic tradition. For this reason, the container space itself is also significant. With a rather odd and disconnected atmosphere, it holds the viewer at a tension as to whether they are situated in a submersive environment or actually at somewhat of a remove from the projected work. Whilst stood awkwardly in an unevenly darkened and rather cramped steel shell – there is no indication of where is best to stand – the sound in the film also comes and goes. At times it is rather loud, a mixture of the stock music and actors’ voices, though more often than not it is barely audible. The extraneous noises from the salon are consistently perceptible and often drown out the more dulcet film score. This makes one unable to avoid the artificiality of the situation and the incongruous nature of the video and the screening set up – the illusion is broken.

What is most interesting is that for Clarke it is the plurality of manifestations and perspectives, which the illusory dimension so reliably denies or disavows, that are of concern. “UNPUBLISH”, some of the pink pages of which are enlarged and pasted up inside The Container, could be considered as an unconnected yet occasionally converging exploration of similar themes. Openly addressing the act of deleting information as an attempt to re-write history, Clarke playfully takes the recent case of U.S. solider Bradley Manning and questions the concept of “un-publishing” information. For, as in the films, she appropriates pre-existing material and re-works it in a way that allows audiences to dispute the often singular authority that a text is assumed to have, granting it license to continue to exist with a life of its own.

Ryudai Takano is an artist whose best-known works boldly explore nudity and queer identity through large-scale photographic portraiture. In the past ten years or so he has held solo shows with titles such as “Tender Penis”, “How to Contact a Man”, and “With Me”, the latter being an amazing series of self-portraits taken in the nude with willing locals, also nude, in Okinawa and Tokyo. He has also published photo books such as the 2005 publication, “In My Room”, for which he won the 31st Kimura Ihei Photography Prize.

Visually, “Photo-Graph” is vastly different to Takano’s figurative photography. Like many artists after March 11th, he became introspective while considering the best way to respond artistically to this major event. His instincts took him to a place that was more simple and stripped-back than his figurative works. The message became reduced to a “mood”, away from colour imagery to far more sober-looking silver gelatine prints in monochrome. These large, black-and-white images focus on pavement, walls and other non-descript urban surfaces that seem purposefully void of focal points.

On closer inspection, it seems that Takano hasn’t entirely given up figurative photography. Some of the surfaces carry the artist’s shadow. If this is “post-March 11th” art, Takano’s series accurately portrays that sense of quiet and calm that many people, not just artists, were looking for in the panic of the following weeks after the great earthquake.

Over at NADiff a/p/a/r/t, “Daily Photos” includes more familiar content. The title is quite appropriate for Takano, an artist who not only takes photographs every day, but several times a day, as the impulse takes him. The term “daily photography” also suggests that the content is somehow familiar — familiar faces, objects, scenery, etc — as in the Japanese term for everyday life, seikatsu. While the everyday has been an extremely popular topic for contemporary Japanese photographers, Takano manages to present his original take on this genre.

As a gay man, Takano’s everyday life differs from most people’s experience. In the hundreds of photographs on display, both printed and shown in a slide show video, one can see images of transvestites and other naked men, recognisable from Takano’s photo books, bedroom scenes, artists, placed among more banal images like empty streets and doorways. This work is not about calmness, but it is still a reflection of life after the Great East Japan Earthquake. He is reflecting back on life before 3/11, but he is struggling against the inherent nostalgia. After years of photographing all kinds of moments, not just the big holidays and milestones that usually call for a photographs, Takano is sifting through his collection to present an as authentic as possible exposition of his daily life up until the life-changing events of last year.

There have been several graduation exhibitions being held around Tokyo, some of which have already ended. One organized by the Department of Inter Media Art in Tokyo Art University was held at BankART Studio NYK from January 7 to 15. As the department supposedly focuses on the relationship between art and society, the exhibition explained it self as “the answer the students gave towards the Japanese situation after 3/11”. The show might have been organized under that slogan but its actual content was less uniform. Some did address Fukushima or the earthquake, but many others were more concerned with their individual aesthetic inquiries. All three floors of BankART were occupied with photographs, paintings, drawings, and installations, as well as scheduled performances and talk shows.

To introduce several from the exhibited works:

Kaya Hanasaki, a graduating MA student, did a performance where she hung herself from the ceiling on a boat. The little boat had holes cut out for her legs to dangle out, successfully transforming the performer into a boat/woman. Suspended above the spectators’ heads, both boat and man were made into a symbol of impotence, placed outside their usual context, lost in mid-air. Titling it ‘Row Your Boat’, Hanasaki explains that she drew upon the relationship between people and the changing social currents, and how social upheaval potentially estranges people from known reality. Thrown into the midst of unpredictable circumstances, each individual becomes a little boat on a stormy sea, trying to stay afloat, tossed around by wind, current, and unexpected waves.

While Hanasaki’s performance concentrated on the fragility of man, Toma Seki, another MA student, focused on its potential strength. With a prolonged interest in energy, his earlier works were concerned with natural energy such as sunlight. In this performance however, Seki concentrated on innate human power expressed in the form of breathing: the artist submerged himself in inked water while breathing through a white tube. Breathing is one of the fundamental activities that keep us alive, but it is an activity done unconsciously and none of us take heed of it in daily life. Seki, by erasing his visual physicality, visualized his breath as the essence of life and power behind human activity. It, in connection with certain accepted safeties before the quake about things like drinking water and food products, highlights how the most important aspects of life goes unnoticed.

Alongside such performances, there also was an installation by Hiroyuki Mizuno titled ‘A Reckless Project’ in which he projected flags of countries supportive of nuclear power onto a screen made out of newspaper clippings about Fukushima. Watching the colorful flags flicker on the screen, the viewer realizes that the nuclear problem is not only a problem within Japan but also something to be dealt with on a global scale. Mizuno explains that the title alludes to the anti-genpatsu (nuclear power plant) demonstrations, as well as his own work that questions the justice behind such a potentially hazardous energy source, in contrast to the continuing development of nuclear energy in other parts of the world.

In addition to the students’ artworks there were also talk events. On the last day of the exhibition, a panel session was held under the theme “10 months after 3.11” with guest speakers Yoshihide Otomo, Illcomonz, Tadasu Takamine, Kazuhiko Hachiya, Risaku Suzuki, Fuyuki Yamakawa, and Noboru Takayama. As artists who have created projects or artworks related to the quake and Fukushima, they were asked to explain their activities and their future plans, as well as answer prepared questions submitted by art students. Usually, guest talks have little potential for real debate and end by reconfirming some uniform agreement amongst its participants. However, this session was interesting in that there were some visible rifts and disagreements. For example, on the question of whether words or speech can change society, some were supportive of the role of language while others disagreed. Although this may have been unintended by the organizers, the talk illuminated the absence of one clear answer or mutuality, even among those who have found inspiration in Fukushima or the quake. As many of the questions directed to the guests were concerned with the ‘correct way’ to deal with the disaster, the session potentially provided good food for thought for those in search of pre-prepared, clear-cut solutions.

Overall, the Department of Inter Media Art did not provide an ‘answer’ to the quake or Fukushima; rather, it successfully portrayed the ambiguity, hopes, and fears felt by the Japanese people. This, of course, is the answer: that there is none, and that we have to keep thinking.

Other upcoming graduation exhibitions are as follows: Tokyo University of Arts January 29 to February 3, Tama Art University Department of Design Feb 8 to 12, Yokohama Art University February 23 to 26, Tokyo Zokei University Department of Graphic Design March 3 to 4, Joshi Art University March 11 to 14.

You’ve queued for two hours in the August sun for Thunder/Splash/Space Mountain, only to be rendered speechless and slightly queasy. You’ve slid down water slides, been to every dinosaur, train, aeroplane and science exhibition, zoo and planetarium with every other parent and their gaggle of kids, and may by now have rather a fine collection of photos with life-sized Hello Kitties and all her little furry friends.

But enough is enough, it’s time to expose the kids to some of the finer things in life, and introduce them to the world of art. But where to start?

Ghibli Museum
Behind the doors of the colourful Ghibli Museum building, the world of Hayao Miyazaki’s imagination is waiting to be discovered.

A delightfully crafted building, with fresco paintings, stained glass windows, a maze of spiral staircases, bridges and terraces, visitors are instantly transported to the animated worlds of the Ghibli films. Under twelves can rumble and tumble in the (almost) life size Cat Bus from “My Neighbour Totoro”, play with the Dust Bunnies, and stand in awe of the five-metre tall Robot Soldier. In the Saturn Theatre, exclusive original animated short films are shown, and through the transparent screen visitors can see how a projector works. Older kids and adults may also enjoy browsing through the book collection in the Tri-Hawks Library, and as you walk through the exhibition rooms of the first floor, discover how an animated film is made.

The museum makes for a perfect morning or afternoon visit, and situated on the edge of Inokashira Park, can easily be combined with a visit to the nearby zoo. Do note, that tickets must be booked in advance.
www.ghibli-museum.jp

Suginami Animation Museum
Not far from the Ghibli Museum is lesser-known Suginami Animation Museum. Perhaps created as much for the manga otaku as for kids, it is none the less worth a visit should you have an interest in anime.

With information in both English and Japanese, push button displays introduce visitors to the basics of anime and replicas of the working desks of famous animators show where it all began. The best fun to be had is the hands-on activities — we made our own flipbook cartoon and saw it come to life on a computer screen within minutes of completion, and though my impression of Astro Boy was not entirely appreciated, much fun was to be had in the dubbing experience booth. As well as this, there is an anime theatre showing various classics, and an anime library where you can choose your favourite DVD and sit down to a private viewing with headphones. All for free it’s a fun little low-key place to learn and explore about anime.
www.sam.or.jp

For those who might wish to explore the world of anime museums in more detail, JNTO has a handy anime map which can be downloaded.

Another great way to introduce kids to art without having to tell them to “Shush” every five minutes is to take them to outdoor displays. Here are two that I would thoroughly recommend.

Edo Open Air Architectural Museum
Located in the west of Tokyo, an easy bus shuttle ride from Koganei, this is a spacious and chilled-out place to learn about architecture or (and perhaps more importantly) imagine you have been transported back in time to Edo-Tokyo.

The buildings are all original structures, relocated to the seven-hectare park, where they have been lovingly reconstructed and preserved. Roam the grounds and enter the buildings at your leisure — from thatched roof farmhouses to turn of the century residential houses. And for the real atmosphere of downtown Edo head for Shitamachi-naka Street for some virtual window-shopping. For some unexplainable reason my daughter and her wee pal always end up sitting in the bath house (empty, I should add) and with a classic Fuji mural in the background, chattering away like a couple of regulars to their hearts’ content. Soba noodles for lunch, and green tea for sweets, or bring a picnic. You could easily spend a pleasant morning or afternoon here. Located within the grounds of Koganei Park, it’s a pleasant day out for all the family. The Bon Festival in August is a real step back in time, and well worth a visit.
www.tatemonoen.jp

Hakone Open Air Museum
A visit to this fantastic sculpture park could easily be a whole day out for the family. Arm yourself and the kids with the audio guide and interactive map available in both Japanese and English, and enter a land littered with — according to the guide — 120 artworks. Famous names like Moore, Balzac, Okamoto and Picasso are all here. Some personal favourites were Bukichi Inoue’s ‘My Sky Hole’, a giant metal ball bearing suspended above your head, the mesmerizing ‘16 Turning Sticks’ by Takamichi Ito, Niki de Saint Phalle’s ‘Miss Black Power’ (the big statue on all the museum posters), and the tranquil ‘Floating Sculpture’ by Marta Pan. Curious delights await you, and this is a fun, but also highly impressive collection. Recent additions of the Curved Space Diamond Structure, a plastic honeycomb climbing adventure for pre-schoolers and primary school kids, Woods of Net and its colourful hammock-like trampoline playground, as well as the Manz Room where kids can play in mini versions of the real thing, will all keep younger kids entertained.

Foot baths for weary feet, buffet-style lunch to fill up hungry tummies: you simply can’t go wrong here. Ninety minutes from Shinjuku, it could be done in a day, though I would recommend an overnight stay if possible, and do the more touristy things (such as eating stinky black eggs if you so desire) on the other day.
www.hakone-oam.or.jp

There are many other museums to be visited in Hakone. If you have an hour or two to spare, the Museum of the Little Prince is worth a visit. More a museum to author Saint-Exupery than the Little Prince himself, it is a charming make-believe world worth an hour or so.

Taro Okamoto Museum of Art, Kawasaki
Walk through the red hallway at the entrance of this museum and be transported to the weird and wonderful world of Taro Okamoto. While the paintings themselves may not be quite enough to keep the kids’ attention, the design of the museum encourages children to explore and find exhibits that are less obvious.

At the section of the museum which charts the history of Okamoto’s work and requires longer attention than kids may be capable of, a glass hole in the floor reveals a hidden clock to distract their attention, as well as a wall with peep holes at heights for all sizes through which children (and adults too of course) can view miniature pictures of his various artwork and sculpture. And chairs a-plenty: lip-shaped chairs, hand-woven chairs and chairs that simply refuse to be sat on. Life-sized cardboard cut outs of the surprisingly small Okamoto make for some fun pics, as does the cardboard cut out of the Tower of the Sun. Outside is the huge ‘Tower of Mother’ and plenty of room to run around.
www.taromuseum.jp

It is a little out of town for some perhaps, but could easily be combined with a visit to the Japan Open-Air Folk House Museum, or the Planetarium at the Kawasaki Municipal Science Museum for Youth. (Unfortunately closed right now, but due to open again in 2012).

Mori Art Museum
Located on the 53rd floor of Roppongi Hills, exhibitions here are temporary, and do vary, though always of a modern contemporary flavour. With three to four exhibitions a year it might be worth checking out just exactly what the exhibit is, depending on the age of your child.

As admission to the museum includes entry to Tokyo City View, and for a mere 300 yen extra to go on the roof, even the most art-allergic kids could be persuaded on a quick detour to the gallery, and who knows they might even enjoy it. Kids’ tours are only in Japanese, but audio guides are available in English.
www.mori.art.museum

The National Art Center
While I wouldn’t recommend bringing boisterous pre-schoolers to this place, it is definitely a space that inspires calm and wonder. A short walk from the Mori, there are three floors of galleries, a café, two restaurants and plenty of well-lit ambient space in which to unwind. Exhibitions vary greatly here, and it can sometimes feel like feast or famine. Saying that, this is certainly the place where you are most likely to find Japanese Fine Art and contemporary university graduate exhibitions all under the one roof. Did I mention the shop — oh, lots of goodies there!
www.nact.jp

It is also worth checking out the websites of the Museum of Contemporary Art and the National Museum of Western Art as both provide a number of children-orientated events throughout the year. Though largely in Japanese, it does encourage children to get to know more about the galleries through guided talks and more hands-on type workshops.

Though a visit to any or all of the above might not guarantee an end to your family trips to Disney, I am sure it will do far more to trigger your child’s imagination and ignite their curiosity. It’s certainly worth a go, and will make for a pleasant change for theme-park weary parents.

Check TAB for up-to-date kids-friendly events.

We cannot even begin any reflection on the year without first considering the enormous impact of the earthquake and tsunami of March 11. It led to several high profile cancellations and postponements (including Art Fair Tokyo and Roppongi Art Night), as well as charitable efforts by galleries and organizations too numerous to list here. Many galleries also abstained from having opening receptions as strategies to reduce energy consumption amidst the setsuden hysteria.

It may well be still too early for any authentic artist response and yet many have been trying. Chim↑Pom achieved the most publicity through their largely facile video and “guerilla” stunt “sabotaging” Taro Okamoto’s anti-war mural, ‘The Myth of Tomorrow’. The analogy with the Okamoto painting, far from being an attack on the establishment — since when has Okamoto been an appropriate symbol of respectability? — is also troubling for its malapropos posturing. Fukushima is, after all, an example of corporate and postwar hubris, not to mention possible government venality. Okamoto’s previously lost work is urgently pacifist in nature and its constant exploitation for cheap artistic tricks is troubling. (The short film “Blind” also made extensive use of shots including the mural.) Beyond the superficial “nuclear” similarities, the parallel simply does not hold up and merely becomes as complex as the jejune stick figures drawn by the Chim↑Pom members.

Ever since I saw them openly admit at a talk event that they had “no plan” in attempting their Hiroshima “pika!” stunt, I’ve been unable to make up my mind whether Chim↑Pom were immensely naive or just plain bad. Now I’ve started to suspect they are rather merely insincere.

Take their name. In a country such as Japan, free of Judeo-Christian guilt about sex and with essentially lolicon idols embraced into mainstream pop culture, how is it subversive or even interesting to take a name that brazenly hints at genitalia? You can be misguided, incoherent or slapdash. You may even be inept. But an artist must always be sincere if they are to be taken seriously. If I am wrong and Chim↑Pom’s work is meant in good faith, then these stunts only go so far. The question is not to go into Fukushima’s no man’s land and create reportage, as Chim↑Pom did with their videos in the exhibition “Real Times”, even if by doing so you put your health at risk. There are plenty of more qualified journalists doing the work of documentation. The issues are grave and require either responses more emotive, or more critical.

Yokohama Triennale

In any normal year the calendar would have been dominated by the Yokohama Triennale. The event (reviewed by Emily Wakeling) in Tokyo’s neighbour still managed to make headlines, though, and achieved record numbers of visitors to boot.

Compared to its more sprawling previous incarnation, the number of venues was mainly reduced to two cram-packed, conventional buildings and there was an undeniable feeling at times that famine would have been preferred to feast, especially when the overarching “theme” was so hackneyed and vapid (“Our Magic Hour”), and much of the work familiar as part of the Yokohama Museum of Art’s collection. A clutch of big names (Yoko Ono, Hiroshi Sugimoto et al) and a splash of colourful exhibits, and hey presto, you apparently have a nice day out for city slickers.

With some noble exceptions, it seems increasingly inevitable that major arts events must aim for visitors stats at the expense of compelling or challenging presentations. The role of such a triennale should be to bring new ideas and thinking to the fore, rather than recycling motifs of “senses” and “myths”. Quality should always take precedence over quantity, a cliche apparently oft forgotten by organizers and curators.

Top Exhibitions

In a year otherwise influenced so much by catastrophe, what other art events can be remembered fondly? The best response to 3.11 has likely so far been Yoko Ono’s “LIGHT” at Tomio Koyama (reviewed by Jessica Howard), with its haunting sense of bewilderment in the darkness. The ArtGigTokyo series successfully utilized innovative public spaces, including a gay club in Shinjuku and a disused hospital in Hatsudai, each site apt to its theme and curation. On the other hand, the “Villa Tokyo” event (reviewed by Emily Wakeling) saw a series of office buildings converted into temporary exhibition spaces in Kyobashi, but sadly with less obvious flair and imagination.

But what about the other TABlog contributors? Here are the personal favs for 2011 from three of the team.

Emily Wakeling
My personal favourites (that I didn’t review) were “Kusama’s Body Festival in the ’60s” held at Watarium, Min Wong’s “Imitation of Life” at Hara, RongRong and Inri’s “Three Begets Ten Thousand Things” at Shiseido and Tomoko Yoneda’s “Japanese House” at shugoarts. I was impressed by Chim Pom’s very quick turnaround for works about the 3.11. In May they debuted video performances at SNAC Gallery in response to the nuclear crisis, including their illicit contribution to the Taro Okamoto mural ‘Myth of Tomorrow’. Another successful piece in response to 3.11 was Australian artist Susan Norrie’s ‘Transit’ video at the Yokohama Triennale 2011. It had a slightly alarming message about the reaches of scientific progress versus the uncontrollable power of nature.

Darryl Jingwen Wee
My top 3 votes go to the Anri Sala show at Kaikai Kiki, Naoya Hatakeyama at Syabi, and the Berlin show at the MOT.

Anri Sala’s gallery debut in Japan (coinciding with a small solo showcase at the National Museum of Art in Osaka) deftly deployed Kaikai Kiki’s L-shaped space to maximum effect. Sala experimented with how sound, and the act of its articulation, can possibly be translated into visual form. ‘Long Sorrow’ laboriously traced the joyous contractions of an improv sax player’s mouth as he blew hot and cold in a riotous stutter high above a Berlin suburb, while ‘Tlatelolco Clash’ featured a fascinating cast of local Mexican residents, each offering a personalized, idiosyncratic rendition of The Clash’s ‘Should I Stay or Should I Go’ on a hand-cranked barrel organ.

Hatakeyama’s survey was a quiet but confident rejoinder to a crowded Japanese market of pop-colored painting. Standouts from the MOT’s Berlin show were definitely Simon Fujiwara’s video/installation that managed to memorialize his reticent relationship with his father in a poignant way, in addition to exploring how Berlin seems to function as a post-national space conducive to exploring issues of heritage, nationality and cultural idiom.

Dan Abbe
The 3/11 earthquake and its aftermath have made plenty of photographers look ordinary: not only photojournalists, but respected fine art photographers have visited the affected areas and been unable to come away with images that expand our understanding of what’s happening. Perhaps it’s no coincidence that some of the most compelling images to emerge so far have come from ROLLS TOHOKU, a project which puts disposable cameras in the hands of people of all ages living in evacuation centers. The resulting photographs distinguish themselves through their genuine personal connection to the disaster — something that’s kept professionals at a distance. ROLLS is nominally a web-based project, but it was exhibited at 3331 Arts Chiyoda in July, where, like its online incarnation, it was displayed as a series of unedited rolls of film.

Given that Naoya Hatakeyama’s own hometown of Rikuzentakada was one of the cities leveled by the 3/11 tsunami, it might have been reasonable to expect that his work would evince some personal reaction. Instead, it seems as though he simply worked twice as hard as any other photographer to produce the most stunning, technically meticulous photographs of the destruction so far. This work was displayed as part of his fall exhibition at Syabi, “Natural Stories,” which included photographs from his entire career showing his sensitive relationship to the earth (in the literal sense of “ground”). The Rikuzentakada photos were printed small, and incorporated into the flow of the exhibit without any fanfare. Photographs as powerful as these don’t need embellishment.

New Galleries

As with any year, Tokyo witnessed its usual array of fluctuating gallery addresses.

In the most exciting development, Zen Foto, Ota Fine Arts and Wako Works of Art, three galleries formerly in Shibuya, Kachidoki and Shinjuku respectively, moved into the same building in Roppongi, joined by a new Taka Ishii venue, Taka Ishii Gallery Photography/Film.

On the other hand, Foil Gallery in Bakurocho moved out of the capital to Kyoto, while new spaces include The Container, which was installed in a hair salon in Nakameguro.

Art Fairs

A delayed and rather subdued Art Fair Tokyo opened in the summer instead of the spring. Several major galleries did not take part and the atmosphere had an undeniably all too familiar ring to it.

Following its debut last year, G-tokyo was held again at Mori Art Museum but successfully eschewed deja vu. Demonstrating that less is definitely more, larger “booth” spaces and an overall sense of curation made this a more enjoyable and memorable experience for the average visitor.

Almost simultaneous with G-tokyo 2011 was a new art fair, Tokyo Frontline, at 3331 Arts Chiyoda and provided a much more interesting use of space by an art fair than the usual suspect(s). Booths were installed in the upstairs gymnasium of the former school and all over the first floor. Fingers crossed this event can develop into a regular alternative fair.

Also on TABlog…

Popular posts amongst the plethora of articles published over 2011 include our interview with media and music artist Sputniko! and with the festival director of FILMeX, Shozo Ichiyama. We also covered in-depth the recent talk event between Fumio Nanjo and Rem Koolhaas on the subject of Metabolism, and witnessed Tsubasa Kato’s participatory art event in Kiba park. Plus we reported on how artistic robots are becoming the next generation of painters, and surveyed the innovative relationship between the Japanese corporate and art worlds.

2012

What to expect for the next twelve months? Kids-friendly Roppongi Art Night is now confirmed for March next year after being cancelled in 2011, as are at least G-tokyo and Tokyo Frontline in February. Otherwise, with the Fukushima nuclear situation ostensibly stabilized, we can hopefully hold our breaths for more contemplative and thought-provoking (as opposed to merely ostensibly “provoking”) responses from local artists.

Upon entering both gallery spaces, the first things you will notice in each show respectively are large, loosely painted black kanji characters vertically mounted or painted on white walls. Reportedly inscriptions of Ono’s hopes and thoughts, some of these characters are written so faintly that they are barely legible, whilst others are produced as a roughly continuous gesture, almost as a cursive script. In terms of the formal similarities, however, this is as far as the two exhibitions can be said to reference each other.

To address the “I WANT YOU TO REMEMBER ME” show first, aside from the calligraphy, the body of work is comprised from variously sized photographic portraits, each of which has been framed behind shattered panes of glass. The first portraits, clearly blown up from older, much smaller photographs, are of three women. On the adjacent wall a similar set of images, but this time of five children, confronts you. As you gaze through the fractured glass to the blurry images, you soon notice that the portraits appear to be roughly cropped and taken from a larger composition. Turning to the wall opposite, the full size, unedited portrait featuring all eight people can be viewed, though it is similarly enlarged and somewhat obscured behind splintered glass fragments.

According to Ono, this work is inspired by her own experiences of war, for it is known that she remained in Tokyo in March 1945 whilst the great fire-bombing took place. Though it is unclear whether the images featured are directly related to her, the point is that they offer the viewer windows through which to project their own feelings and experiences. We all have a past that we are able to connect with, and this inevitably includes troubling memories and recollections that these fragile portraits can help to draw out.

In contrast to this very personal and rather internalised approach, the “LIGHT” installation across town functions according to quite a different principle. On the first floor of the exhibition, where the calligraphy is located, there is a slightly raised platform covered back a tatty grey blanket in the centre of the room. On top of the blanket there is an arrangement of used objects. This work, entitled ‘Remnants’, includes articles taken from a house ravaged by the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake, such as a cordless fan, a standing clock and a turntable. As indexical objects, these various items have the power to evoke memories relating to March 11 and the devastating aftermath. Be these memories first hand or third hand, they are equally valid and called upon by the physical presence of the objects, which actively work to reduce the distance between the viewer and the past event.

This connection to some kind of collective memory or experience is made very literal in the installation located two floors above, which is titled ‘To the Light’. As you remove your shoes and collect a torch, you are confronted by three dark corridors, the far left and right of which have their openings obstructed by black string curtains. Encouraged to enter the central passage, the first things you notice are the springy mesh walls which you must rely on to guide you around what turns out to be a maze. Located in the centre of this labyrinth is a bright white light that shines directly up at the ceiling. En route to making it to this middle point, and later to the outer parameter where other works are located, you find yourself receiving guidance from other viewers also searching their way through the narrow passageways. In return, you will almost certainly end up offering your own advice and gestures as to which direction to move in. It is this interactive element of the work and the concept of a shared event that is arguably what differentiates it from the other show. In some ways the cramped, dark space is quite uncomfortable, especially when there are many other people also struggling to move around the claustrophobic space. However, the metaphorical, and indeed literal, search for the light as a common event is entirely what makes the experience.

As in many of her works from the last five decades, both of these exhibitions by Ono implore their viewers to re-address traumatic or difficult histories and experiences, be they individual or shared, with a view to transcending the horror of them in order to achieve a more peaceful future. By using selected images, objects and physical experiences to stimulate and access such sites of internal suffering, Ono’s exhibitions are both cathartic and inspirational to partake in.

An additional or alternative work to these two temporary exhibitions is the ‘Wish Tree For Tokyo’ that is now permanently located in the sculpture garden of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo, a short walk from Tomio Koyama Gallery. You participate in this work by writing a wish and attaching it to the tree, though the single day each year that you are able to do this on, December 9, has just passed.

This year, Tibetan director Pema Tseden’s Old Dog took the jury’s grand prize. The film’s story begins with the seemingly simple sale of a family dog in Tibet, as the faithful old mastiff has suddenly become a prize commodity for urban Chinese in distant cities. Patiently expanding this sale through an intergenerational conflict between father and son, Old Dog paints a portrait of a rural society in untoward transition. As dodgy animal traders and dognappers prowl their land, the family must confront the creeping effects of economic development that are undermining their traditional life.

In political terms, Korea might be nearly the last remaining flash point of the global Cold War between capitalist and communist states. Of the three South Korean films in the FILMeX competition, two shared an interest in this conflict. The special jury prize went (very deservedly) to Jung-bum Park’s debut feature, The Journals of Musan, a vivid story of North Korean defectors trying to “make it” in Seoul. The promised land of freedom and opportunity proves to offer only a hardscrabble existence at the bottom of the social ladder. Painfully isolated and inept, Seung-chul seeks to befriend Sook-young, a girl who sings in his church’s choir by day and doesn’t sing in a low-end karaoke club by night. Journals is remarkable for its nuanced defamiliarization of the quotidian codes of life in the capitalist South.

Also looking at the geopolitical schism of present-day Korea, Jai-hong Juhn’s Poongsan spins a complicated tale of intrigue around a one-man underground railroad between North and South. The eponymous hero transports possessions, memories, and even people across the DMZ. Ostensibly an entertaining political thriller, it is marred by a frustrating excess of melodrama and more than a few undercooked genre conventions. Nevertheless, it offers a curious riff on the fantasy of a world in which politics and diplomacy can be transcended through mute, ass-kicking violence. Of course, the taciturn action hero is something of a cliché, but Poongsan literally never speaks a word. A more subtle and engaging depiction of political violence is given by Sanjeewa Pushpakumara’s Flying Fish. Set against the backdrop of the Sri Lankan Civil War, the story follows three young people whose lives intersect through the savage conflict that besets their families. Visually, this was one of the most compelling films in the festival, and the director’s idiosyncratic, downtempo approach to story and situation manages to be both unsettling and mesmerizing.

Of all the films in this year’s competition, Yosuke Okuda’s low-budget Tokyo Playboy Club proved to be the most perversely amusing. While it feels a bit loose, the story is filled with enough deliciously violent twists to compensate. The set-up: dogged by a long-standing anger problem, Katsutoshi flees a crime in his small town to hide out in Tokyo. He is taken in by Seikichi, an old friend who manages a bottom-rung sex club. He hopes to lay low for a while, but when the club’s doorman absconds with the till and Katsutoshi unwittingly brutalizes a local gang member, the club is plunged into uncharted danger. Although at first blush a yakuza film, Tokyo Playboy Club is more a sketch of fringe characters in the sex trade who run afoul of the underworld. Director Okuda has a knack for combining violence, foolishness, sheer bad luck, and giving it all a darkly humorous turn.

In the special screenings program, Toshiaki Toyoda’s Monsters Club stood out as the most engaged and visually satisfying of the Japanese entries. Inspired by Ted Kaczynski’s “Industrial Society and Its Future”, Toyoda transports us to the deep countryside of Japan, where the loner Ryoichi lives in a snow-covered cabin and mails off booby-trapped packages to politicians and media outlets. One day, Ryoichi encounters a strange monster that has come to haunt his solitary life in the forest. Through this contact, we begin to understand both his past and the threats looming in his future. The film offers a hard-hitting yet remarkably subtle meditation on Kaczynski’s theses in a Japanese context. While the subject matter sounds gloomy, Toyoda manages to spin it into a highly evocative and, dare I say it, even beautiful film.

Among the Japanese entires in the program, Amir Naderi’s co-production CUT seemed the most mixed in its execution. The conceit for the film is irresistible: a young Japanese director named Shuji gets into debt with the yakuza. To repay the gang for the money spent to make his films, he offers himself as a human punching bag. CUT is a kind of meta-film, a film about the life and death of Japanese cinema, and a paean to cinéphilia. From there, though, Naderi embarks in a puzzling direction. Cinema and cinéphile are made out to be both the hapless victims of a system that cares only about its pound of flesh and, at the same time, precious and self-righteous.

Overall, the festival’s offerings this year were very strong, the only weakness being an evident lack of budget for a full retrospective program. Many of the Somai films, for example, were not subtitled, and with only four films the Kawashima program was a retrospective in name only. To be fair, the fault here is not really that of the FILMeX programmers. Rather, it lies with the Japanese government’s crippling lack of an adequate policy for film heritage.

Coming up in 2012: The Journals of Musan, at Image Forum in June; Tokyo Playboy Club, Monsters Club, and RIVER at Eurospace; CUT, at Cinemart from December 17th, 2011; The Turin Horse at Image Forum; and Kotoko at Theater Shinjuku in April.

TABlog also recently interviewed FILMeX director, Shozo Ichiyama.

The survey was kindly answered by 764 users, of which 239 were male and 525 were female.

Here’s a brief summary of the top results:
- Female users outnumber male ones (as you might have guessed from the breakdown above of the respondents)
- …and tend to be aged from their mid- to late twenties
- …who visit art events two or three times a month
- Favourite galleries and museums are the Teshima Art Museum (on Naoshima), 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa, 21_21 Design Sight, and Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo
- The mobile phone of choice is the iPhone
- Users are typically company employees or public servants, or doing something in the creative industries
- And their preferred art event genres are painting, installations, photography or media art

Art-lovers are single!

So it seems in Tokyo at any rate. No doubt partly because art event visitor demographics often skewer younger, 82.2% of the survey respondents said they were single and, surprisingly, over 60% also said that they visit events on their own. (Phew, I’m not the only one! Literally.) In other words, Tokyo’s galleries might just be perfect places to find that special person!

Or are they? Only around 10% of respondents said that they go to events to meet new people. Over 90% said, as you’d expect, they went out of curiosity about an event, or due to work or to learn something new. And a mere 2% said they went in order to spend time with friends, family or lovers. Going to see an exhibition is apparently not a good date! (However, the top reasons for going to art event opening receptions or art talks was answered as in order to meet new people.)

Sharing Impressions

Word of mouth and buzz are surely one of the top ways to attract visitors to a show that doesn’t have the mega advertising budget of events like the Yokohama Triennale. How are visitors sharing their impressions of events? Over 73% said they did it over Twitter — almost the same as who said they did it directly with other people. Also, around the same amount of users posted things on their own blogs (25.2%) as on Facebook, mixi or other SNS (29.4%), so it seems that tweeting is the digital platform of choice for TAB users by far.

Artistic Influences

Sometimes getting to a gallery or museum in Tokyo is a real pain, in spite of the city’s superb transport system. Venues can be tucked away or far from stations, so what motivates or influences people to make that special effort to go to an exhibition? Practical factors like ticket price, or location or opening hours?

The most influential factor by far (78.6%) is whether there will be exhibits at the show from an artist users. This does not mean that people are completely shying away from things they are not already familiar with: over 50% said that the overall theme of the exhibition also influenced their decision to head out.

You can view the original version of this article in Japanese on TABlog JP (parts one, two and three), where the results are digested in more detail.

Illustrations by Ayaka Sugiyama.

In the last few years, though, the Tokyo art world seems to have caught architectural fever like never before: Many museums and galleries have been trying to top each other with ever-bigger and imaginative exhibitions, ranging from world-famous architects to collective projects. While the retrospective on the Metabolism movement currently at the Mori Art Museum is a historically faithful but rather ponderous and unsurprising display of the usual drawings and models, other recent exhibitions, like Toyo Ito’s monster project at the Tokyo Opera City Gallery in 2006 and Tadao Ando’s 2008 solo show at Gallery MA, have blazed a new trail in transforming the exhibition space itself into an exciting work of art and an interactive experience.

Another interesting trend has been the progressive blurring of the distinction between art and architecture, where the viewer constantly wonders whether the models on display actually have something to do with houses and cities. It is not surprising, then, that the Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo has decided to put the two things under the same roof in its latest project, “Architectural Environments for Tomorrow,” the second installment in the Tokyo Art Meeting exhibition program by the Tokyo Culture Creation Project.

Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa, the world-famous dynamic duo who usually hide themselves behind the SANAA moniker, have collaborated with MOT’s chief curator Yuko Hasegawa to gather twenty-eight architects and artists from fourteen countries for this exhibition. Between historical figures like Frank O. Gehry and Toyo Ito, up-and-coming youngsters like Sou Fujimoto, Akihisa Hirata and Haruka Kojin, and other less known international talents, we have a wide variety of styles and approaches.

As Nishizawa said at the preview, both art and architecture are like a mirror reflecting society and the world at large as they change through time. Simultaneously, Nishizawa and Sejima, who look like they would more likely be sitting in a Left Bank café in Paris than behind a drawing table, stress the need for today’s creative people to respond to recent environmental changes brought about by new lifestyles and rising demographic pressure on the urban landscape. The best way to do this, according to the curators, is to show the way towards a new philosophy of life made up of different coexisting models. On a practical level, for this particular exhibition they got rid of walls and partitions, and the cavernous spaces of the MOT were turned into a huge colorful bazaar; a chaotic display of drawings, models, images, sculptures, photos, and elaborate mix-media installations.

As it often happens in such cases, the plurality of voices runs the risk of pushing the unifying message into the background. Still, many of the works on display stand out on their own merit as visually stunning, thoughtful meditation on architecture.

Some of the more interesting works address the need to reaffirm mankind’s communion with nature. Tetsuo Kondo’s “A Path in the Forest,” for instance, is an up-and-down walking path that, like a roller coaster, winds around trees. The installation, that was designed for a 300-year-old forest near Tallin, Estonia, directly puts people face-to-face with nature in order to stress our dependence on it for our survival. This is a statement whose importance we can hardly overlook.

On the other side, Ghanaian artist El Anatsui’s “Garden Wall”, made of throwaway bottle seals, reminds us of both traditional African tapestry and the green walls that are becoming increasingly popular as an ecological alternative to air conditioners as they screen the buildings from the sun and the summer heat.

Though Junya Ishigami’s flat “Glass Bubble” is perhaps less impressive and the Kondo/Matthias Schuler collaboration (a sort of cloud maker) looks more like a good source for witty jokes, models by the always thought-provoking Ito and the SANAA duo themselves show why they have reached the status of internationally recognized superstars. Ito’s influence on contemporary architecture is further confirmed by the works of other creative minds like Fujimoto and Hirata (the latter is also responsible for the striking pavilion which graces the museum forecourt). Ito’s imprint on the younger architects is such that if viewers don’t read the information on the side of the models, they could be forgiven for confusing the authors.

All in all, the museum’s huge spaces, high ceilings and strong lights favor bold, big-sized projects over the many small object-like works that are scattered around its two floors. If, for example, the ultra-minimal intervention of Office Kersten Geers David van Severen (a simple white shadecloth put over a museum courtyard and all but invisible unless someone points it out) is too subtle for the MOT’s mammoth building, one work on whose striking beauty everybody seems to agree is Haruka Kojin’s wall of lenses. Kojin, who happens to be the youngest of the exhibitors, explores reality through two types of lenses, one completely flat and clear and the other with a curved surface, to create a surreal environment in which the images on the other side of the wall are distorted and sometimes appear upside down. The lenses themselves are completely transparent and become only visible through the objects and people whose shapes they endlessly transform. This is a gadget I would not mind having in my house, if my house were big enough.

In conclusion, Yuko Hasegawa and SANAA have put together a diverse selection of projects. If at times the single parts outshine the whole, there is still enough food for thought here to keep viewers intelligently entertained, and everybody will find something to their liking.

Randy Swank
Escaped from his home country in 1992 and found refuge in Japan, where he promptly found a job teaching people how to shout HELP! and avoid being robbed on foreign buses. Since 1997 he has been unhealthily active in the mail art network, unleashing on the unsuspecting public, among other things, the Treatise of Pataphysical Anatomy and the international fake political campaign poster project. When not running after his two kids and from his wife, he is usually busy making zines (one of them is about Tokyo and all things Japanese), writing for high- and lowbrow magazines, and exploring Tokyo. You can read his uncensored, Gonzo-like adventures in Artland at The Randy Reviewer. See other writings

A ten-day festival called TERATOTERA Matsuri literally took over Kichijoji in late October, occupying various department stores and supermarkets around the station for installations and performances. The event was jointly organized by TERATOTERA, a creative group that organizes art projects along Chuo Line stations from Koenji to Kichijoji, and the Tokyo Culture Creation Project’s Tokyo Artpoint Project series, and, included installations, musical performances, dance, film, workshops, and a symposium. It also collaborated with another group, Project Fukushima, headed by musician Yoshihide Otomo, and organized a separate project called “Tokyo-Fukushima”.

In concept, the matsuri (festival) was about post-earthquake restoration and energizing Tokyo with art, with the additional aim of speculating on the nature of artistic practice after the earthquake under the theme of “post-”. However, these conceptual elements seemed less irrelevant as the event came across as less an art event and more a Japanese “matsuri”, focused on creating human connections and with most of the fun coming from being a participant instead of a passive viewer. Not only professional artists and musicians, but also ordinary citizens gathered together in Kichijoji during the ten days and expressed their optimism towards a brighter future.

TERATOTERA Matsuri was mainly comprised of performances and workshops, one of which was organized by Ichiro Endo. A self-proclaimed “future artist”, Endo is known for his interactive style and focus on forming human bonds in his projects. For the matsuri, Endo provided a number of installation pieces and also organized a workshop.

Titled “Future Dragon”, participants were asked to write down their future goals on small, yellow kites. The worktable was set in the center of an underground shopping mall inside Kichijoji Station, attracting onlookers and newly recruited participants who didn’t know about the event. Marker in hand, adults and kids alike scribbled down their hopes for the future. When the time came, everybody walked out into an open field in Inokashira Park where Endo tied together the kites with one long string and asked each person to line up and hold their “dream”. “Please let go on the count of three!” Endo yelled and one, two, three… as participants exclaimed in awe, the long kite quickly flew up into the air. The yellow stream of kites fluttered in the sky as everybody looked up at their future dreams, smiling and talking amongst themselves, sharing the experience with each other.

Alongside such participatory events, there were also installations interspersed within the Kichijoji area. A group of artists showed their work on top of PARCO, emanating the feeling of a run-down circus, while some exhibited in Harmonica Yokocho, a maze-like side street comprised of bars and izakayas. One artist, Yusuke Asai, decorated the street in front of Seiyu department store with white tape.

Others provided film pieces, which were organized into three programs and aired at Kichijoji Bauhaus. Contributors included artists such as Koki Tanaka, COBRA, Taro Izumi, and Chim↑Pom. The pieces were varied in content, with some focused on the March 11 earthquake while others less so, but they were organized in such a way that made each program a meaty fifty-five minutes.

Program A, for example, aimed to balance the lighter works with the more contemplative. Tetsushi Higashino’s “3BG8/32” was the former, a piece created out of excerpts from the popular Japanese television series “Kinpachi Sensei”. Higashino selected recurring scenes from several episodes, combining them together to create six minutes worth of children repeatedly rushing to their teacher or Kinpachi running to the 3-B classroom over and over again. Higashino’s tongue-in-cheek depiction of the series’ unchanging plotline aroused laughter from the audience.

The latter style was exemplified in Yuko Ozawa’s film “Kasaneru” (Overlap), in which she questioned the division of fiction and reality as well as characters on film and the audience. Ozawa repeats a clip from an American monochrome film, each time with different subtitles. The text begins as conversation within the narrative framework but gradually became meta-commentaries by the hero and heroine, reflecting on their situation as characters on film. In the end, the two comment on themselves on screen, viewing the film from the audience’s seats. The program ended with Keisuke Sagiyama’s “Facing the stormy seas” after an airing of Chim↑Pom’s short documentary narrating their guerilla stunt involving Taro Okamoto’s mural, “The Myth of Tomorrow”. The energy exerted in Chim↑Pom’s film was leveled out by the ceaseless waves captured in Sagiyama’s, a somewhat ominous image reminiscent of the tsunami, and allowed for a smooth and satisfying end to the program.

The matsuri also included a slew of other events such as dance performances on top of Tokyu Department store, a live music performance in Musashino Public Hall, and two symposiums. In addition to the main festival, the sub-project “Tokyo-Fukushima!” itself organized a different set of programs, such as an open-air “orchestra” that welcomed all those interested in making music out of noise. All in all, the ten-day event was an exciting if sprawling mix of different over-lapping programs that was greatly enjoyed by all those who took part in the event. Some had traveled from Fukushima, and a few all the way from Sendai, to participate and intermingle with those with a similar cause, and their satisfaction was visibly seen in the smiles on their faces.

To learn more about TERATOTERA Matsuri, please see the official website (Japanese only):
http://teratotera.jp/

To learn more about the Tokyo Artpoint Project, see the official website:
http://www.bh-project.jp/artpoint/

Chisako Izuhara
She was always interested in people. Chisako escaped her mother’s womb in 1990 but only entered the real world in 2008 upon starting school in Tokyo. There she found herself amidst a crowd of crazy people, ideas, and action which made her want to learn more about them. Studying a variety of subjects in school ranging from the history and philosophy of science to Buddhism, her schedule book is always full with various art exhibits and events. The vibrant Tokyo art scene always keeps her busy but she also likes to relax at her favorite cafe and drink coffee while reading a book on travel. See other writings