With preparations for international exhibitions, related events and art fairs underway in ten major Asian cities, October will be another extremely busy month for everyone who loves or is involved in art. In Japan, the Yokohama Triennale opened its doors on 9/13, and while talk about administrational problems is circulating, the participation of such performing and performative artists as Teshigawara Saburo, Philippe Parreno, a quite a few others, lends this festival a particularly refreshing touch. Hans Ulrich Obrist, one member of the curatorial team, spoke in the press conference of the implementation of a "plan against the homogenized globalization." The concrete strategy he drafted for this Obrist summarized, "instead of each artist getting space — each artist would get time," which means nothing other than expanding the range of featured artists to the realm of performing arts. As Obrist points out in the current edition (vol. 20) of "ART iT" magazine, the same strategy was already adopted in "Il Tempo del Postino", when it was exhibited/performed last year in Manchester. It will be highly interesting to see whether it will be established as a standard approach in the future.
Yokohama, however, will be a topic in the next issue of "ART iT", so here I'd like to focus on other exceptionally thrilling exhibitions that are concurrently (right now that is) held instead. The first is "Akasaka Art Flower 08" (through 10/13). Hosted by the Akasaka-based TV station TBS, the exhibition was put together by Kubota Kenji, whom you might know from his "Tokyo Initiator’s Diary" contribution to Realtokyo in the past. The idea behind the event is to grab a map and see pieces of art while strolling the streets of central Tokyo. The artworks are displayed at seven different locations, but as they're not too far away from each other, it doesn't take much more effort than a Sunday walk to get around and see all of them as long as the weather is fine.
Photo: Kato Ken
While reminding me a bit of "In Praise of Shadows", the rooms of a former restaurant where video pieces and objects are on display are a nicely appropriate venue in this entertainment area. The greatest fun though I had at the gymnasium of the former Akasaka Elementary School. Ozawa Tsuyoshi’s trademark futons are piled up on the gym’s boarded floor, tempting kids and adults alike to climb up and slide down. In addition to this innocent game, there is a tunnel in the mountain of futons, and those who are interested can take a ride on a human-powered train (?). Exhibited on the upper floor is "Kiss Boy", a piece that I'd classify as a "chill-out manga" by Tao Soju + Okame Pro, and Susai Takako’s soothingly lovely hut full of strange, fancywork sort of little objects made of cloth. The most amazing part of the exhibition, however, has to be the work of Paramodel that fills out the entire space up to the high ceiling. The mixed duo of Osaka-born thirtysomethings create incredibly extensive installations with model railways. The gap between material and scale is at once overwhelming and disarming, and exposes an unaffected yet perfectly plotted sense of humor.
Photo: Kato Ken
Ozawa’s "train" and the model railway make an exquisite combination. Both artists have been featured in several group exhibitions in the past, so the chemistry seems to be right regardless of the age difference. The environment of a former elementary school is nice, and the somewhat exhausted feeling of the gym is pleasantly addictive. In terms of interactivity, the displays remind of the likes of Rirkrit Tiravanija, and if Nicolas Bourriaud, who happens to be in Japan right now, saw the show, I can imagine he would call it "a fine example of relational aesthetics." Likewise, as a curator of several events featuring the work of Ozawa, Obrist would perhaps detect a "temporal quality" in Paramodel’s creations.
Another event I'd like to mention is the current "Extended Senses: Present of Japanese/Korean Media Art" exhibition at NTT InterCommunication Center [ICC] (through 11/3). This one was jointly planned by the Korean alternative space "Gallery Loop", and the BK21 Digital Media Division of Soongsil University. Curators are ICC'S Hatanaka Minoru and Suh Jinsuk from LOOP. Paramodel are participating in this show as well, and even though their contribution here is smaller than that shown at the gymnasium, it’s once again an unruly, spontaneously and audaciously built model railway installation of a scale that is totally over the top. Like the work at Akasaka, the one presented here includes next to railway trains also plastic models of cranes, placed in a landscape with white styrofoam "mountains".
What Paramodel do is different from so-called media art, so you might think they don't really fit into ICC’s concept. However, looking at their works displayed next to all the others, they don't seem out of place at all. In fact, even the other pieces of "media art" are characterized first and foremost by their material, "mass-consumed goods" kind of nature and, bluntly speaking, plain cheapness, rather than demonstrating technological advancedness. Well aware of the risk of getting frowned upon, I'd go as far as to say that the atmosphere at ICC had quite a lot in common with an average Akihabara corner shop. I'm not a frequent visitor to the Akihabara neighborhood, but the sense of comfort that this atmosphere projects is extremely close to the calmness I felt at the elementary school in Akasaka. It appears to me that this may be the special kind of current that the history-less mass consumer society in East Asian cities such as Tokyo, Seoul, or perhaps even in the entire Asian region - if not the entire non-western world - produces.
The works by Zin Kijong, which I had seen before in Seoul and Karlsruhe, are particularly interesting. The artist creates dioramas out of photographs and small figures, films these with a low-resolution camera, and shows the images in a fake news footage style on a monitor. The topics of his works range from media literacy to the manipulation of information through authorities, the dual nature of technology, and others. Zin seasons his works with the additional flavor of coarse images, revealing behind-the-scenes footage and the cheapness of materials, and serves even the heaviest subject in a humorous wrapping. There is an undercurrent that connects these works with the videos of the group of Gimhongsok and Ozawa (with the occasional participation of Chen Shaoxiong), and that special taste — which is present also in Paramodel’s work — one can perhaps see as one characteristic of "Asian", or better, "Non-Western" art.
Anyway, when looking at the works of young Japanese creators these days I keep experiencing deja vus, which I suppose has to be credited to the indirect influence of Nakahara Kodai, one of the leading artists in the 1980s. Apart from the direct influence on such artists as Murakami Takashi and Yanobe Kenji, just try and look at the next generation, including the likes of Tanaka Koki, Kimura Yuki, and exonemo, and you'll see the connection. Paramodel’s model railways quite simply can't be anything else but homages to Nakahara’s "Lego". Nakahara hasn't been doing many big exhibitions in recent years, and most young people in their twenties probably don't even know his name, so I think it’s about time that a smart curator plans a large-scale solo exhibition dedicated to Nakahara’s oeuvre.
*Paramodel are also participating in the current "Diorama of the City: Between Site & Space" exhibition at Tokyo Wonder Site. I haven't seen this one yet, but reviews are good.