I recently went to San Jose, following an invitation to the first "ZeroOne San Jose" (8/7-13), a media art festival that was concurrently held with the related Thirteenth International Symposium of Electronic Art (ISEA2006). Part of the festival was an international congress named "Global Leadership Forum", and on a question from the organizers if there wasn't a city in Japan where urban development is centering on IT and culture, I suggested Yokohama. I was then asked to make some interviews and write a report.
San Jose, the self-professed "capital of Silicon Valley" with a once flourishing IT industry, is in a critical situation since we entered the 21st century. In addition to overinvestment came the fear of war and terrorism, which has thrown the entire industry into an economical slump. In the five years between 2001 and 2005, one in five employees — which makes a total number of 185,000 — lost their jobs. Specialized Indian and Chinese technicians have relocated to Bangalore or Shanghai, and vacant buildings in residential areas and shopping districts jump to the eye. According to The Wall Street Journal’s Weekend Edition from 8/12-13, however, this year the number of those finding jobs and moving in has finally been greater than that of out-migrants.
Preparations for the festival have of course begun several years ago, so also "ZeroOne San Jose" will certainly benefit from this development. As if to evidence the organizers' enthusiasm a total of over 150 artists "on the cutting-edge", including Xu Bing, Jim Campbell, Shu Lea Cheang, etoy, Ingo Gunther, Shilpa Gupta, Hirakawa Norimichi, Raqs Media Collective, and many more have been invited to show their works in exhibitions at several different venues. On 8/7, the day of the opening, a performance of Ikeda Ryoji’s audio-visual "C4I + datamatics" (the same program that was shown in Tokyo in June) took place at the historical California Theater. For some reason the spectacle began without the scheduled announcement, and right after the abrupt start of the show some perplexed fellow in the audience jumped up and shouted, "Too loud!"…
Participating in the "Global Leadership Forum" were a total of 17 cities/regions: the Basque Region, Beijing, East England, Espoo, Guadalajara, Helsinki, Linz, Liverpool, Melbourne, Osaka, San Jose, Shanghai, Singapore, Toronto, Wellington, Yokohama and Zurich. Backgrounds were as varied as cultural institutions, schools, artist-run spaces, developpers, or urban development sections of autonomous communities, but what all participants had in common was the point that they were all linked to national or local governments, which means that public funding in one form or another is involved. My candidate, Yokohama was represented by people from the municipal government’s Creative City Promotion department, the art NPO "BankART", and professor Fujihata Masaki, who is heading the Graduate School of Film and New Media at (the Yokohama campus of the) Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music. As I wrote before in vol. 131 of this column, Fujihata is also active as an artist.
A highlight of the congress for me personally was a discussion on the second day. Gerfried Stocker, director of the Ars Electronica Center (AEC) in Linz, opposed a remark by a culture-related official of the city of San Jose. Stocker was supposedly a hidden central player at this conference, as it was certainly the AEC — along with the Ars Electronica Festival (AEF) the Center is hosting — that helped attract visitors to Linz, an industrial town struggling with recession, revive its industry and rebuild its administration. For San Jose, which is aiming at a similar "a (re-)vitalization of the town through IT and art", AEC/AEF with its history of more than 25 years is certainly a case example that, with its phenomenal success, should serve San Jose as a reliable reference above all else.
The (female) official responded to a certain architect’s claim in his keynote speech that aesthetic and efficient work environments are necessary, with the question, "What can artists do for such (aesthetic and efficient) offices and spaces? What society needs is art that is helpful for innovation." Stocker, artist himself like Fujihata, asked permission to speak, and pronounced that he was "depressed". "The question is not what artists can do, but what YOU can do for artists." He continued by referring to the performance of Ikeda Ryoji on the previous day: "Artists sometimes stimulate us with extreme things. Contemporary art is able to educate society, and experiments (=experimental art) teach children that 'it’s OK to make mistakes.' Society should teach how to understand art." Certainly true.
There exists of course art that makes offices beautiful or efficient, or that sparks innovation, but there is also art that is disturbing, even maleficent for society. But the criteria for judgeing whether art is "helpful or not" are not only nonsense, but in fact blasphemy against any kind of creative activity. Maybe the official from San Jose just adhered to her duty, but in my opinion especially for people working for governments such comments should be taboo.
When I visited AEF for the first time about nine years ago, I walked around in the venue before the opening, and saw Stocker himself fixing broken wire connections. It’s probably the fact that he is an artist himself that makes him want to provide the participating artists with the best possible environment to create and exhibit their works, and automatically lend a hand. The number of artists participating in the "Global Leadership Forum" — including Fujihata, Stocker, and one of the founding members of Beijing’s 798 Art Factory, Huang Rui — one could count on one’s fingers. I guess for the next installment of the event it will be essential to invite more artists and hear their opinions. "ZeroOne San Jose" is scheduled to be held biennially.
Ozaki Tetsuya / Editor in chief / REALTOKYO