Tokyo-San Francisco Art Festival in Tokyo

The introduction on the festival’s website explains the idea behind the title as follows: it is “an open-ended question that asks the artists and audience to consider the relation between being and perceiving. The artwork selected for this program explores this theme through process-based, reactive pieces that situate the space and time of each respective city as their artistic medium.” I’m not quite certain if the show illuminates the stated relationship between “being and perceiving”, but in the least the road it takes is stimulating.

On the opening day, Saturday there were plenty of reactive pieces to interact with and the artists were there to facilitate the process. The more interesting pieces explore the idea of simultaneous presence in different places in the world. A video journal from two different places is one way of exploring this synchronicity. Ayako Washitake puts together a video composed of short entries exchanged between her and another person. The landscapes and other locations shot by one person, as the intertitles suggest, are inspiration for another to look for similar scapes and contribute.

A different way of interacting with another work is by spreading 101 red cotton- filled rabbits around “the world”, via the gallery visitors, who are to later photograph their rabbits in various places and send the photos to the artist- Jos Pollard. There are about a dozen of artist in this show who’s works are waiting to be interacted with by voice or touch.

The festival site, Tachikawa’s Showa Kinen Park, is somewhat removed from the center of Tokyo and the distance (30 min by train) put the show in a huge disadvantage. While an uninspiring painting filled gallery in the center of Tokyo was quite nicely attended later that evening, this small international festival’s attendance was quite disappointing. The festival is there until the end of the week. It’s hard to tell how available the artists will be during the week for performances, but even without them there are plenty of video to watch, sounds to listen to and rabbits to adopt.