We have collected again REALTOKYO contributors' "Highlights of the Year", which you will find listed up on a separate page. When browsing through my notebook of 2008 in order to compile my own top ten list, I found quite a number of interesting events outside the RT territory. Below are some of those I thought most noteworthy, whereas I focus on exhibitions and other art-related events, and exclude international art shows and other overseas events that I attended.

2/16

Miyanaga Aiko "personal site" at Fukakusa, Fushimi-ku, Kyoto
Miyanaga Aiko "Rowing Style" at Kyoto Art Center

2/17

"Kyoto City University of Arts graduation exhibition" at Kyoto City University of Arts and Kyoto Municipal Museum of Art
"Art of Photography/Photography of Art" at Osaka Municipal Museum of Art
"digital images of contemporary art" at AD&A gallery Osaka

3/1

Ikeda Ryoji exhibition at Yamaguchi Center for Arts and Media (YCAM)

3/2

"Shelter x Survival" at Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art

3/13

"Bridging Modernity in the Adventures of the Audacious 19th-century Painter Kyosai" at Kyoto National Museum

4/26

Towada Art Center opening exhibition "Yoko Ono Entrance"

5/3

"ART RULES KYOTO 2008" at The National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto

5/5

Ron Mueck exhibition at 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa

5/6

"Yosa Buson: Flowing Creativity" at MIHO MUSEUM Shigaraki

5/10

Miyanaga Aiko, Hitoosa Kazuki, Shioyasu Tomoko "Oshakasama no Tanagokoro" at Artcourt Gallery Osaka

7/9

Ozawa Tsuyoshi. Selina Ou, Paramodel "Art as a bridge" at Asahi Beer Oyamazaki Villa Museum Kyoto

7/21

Pipilotti Rist "Yu Yu" at Marugame Genichiro-Inokuma Museum of Contemporary Art
"Inujima Art Project" at The Inujima Refinery Okayama

8/23

Otomo Yoshihide / Ensembles at YCAM

10/4

Carl Stone "Han Bat" at shin-bi Kyoto
Softpad, Takagi Masakatsu "dual points" at Kyoto Art Center

10/25

The 7th Hiroshima Art Prize, Cai Guo-Qiang exhibition at Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art

11/22

Hiroshi Sugimoto "History of History" at 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa

12/17

Takamine Tadasu "Big Rest" at Sendai Mediatheque

Masuoka Tatsumi "Can House"

Some of them I have discussed on this page, but also those that I haven't were excellent across the board and stand out in my memory. Many of the events I visited took place in Kyoto, which is first and foremost because I'm teaching irregularly at an art university there, but in general I think it’s also because Kyoto is simply one of the best cities in terms of culture in Japan. Whether or not regional events yielded "abundant harvests" this year I can't say without evidence by closer inspection, but personally I found them absolutely satisfying.

Ozawa Tsuyoshi "Vegetable Weapon: Chikuzenni - Kyoto"

What I noticed when making the above list is the fact that, except for the Takagi and Sugimoto exhibitions, none of the events were or are traveling to places other than the venues stated above (I don't know about future plans though). They're not coming to the Tokyo area, and they're not shown in other regions of the country either. Those who want to see them have to make journeys. While I myself was lucky to see them as a matter of duty, there must be lots of disappointed people who weren't able to catch these really good events. On the other hand, in this country where everything tends to concentrate in metropolitan Tokyo regardless of political, economic and social matters, cultural events make no exception. There exist no accurate statistics whatsoever I guess, but an overwhelming number of events are planned, carried out and consumed in the Tokyo region only, while only a very small minority make it out of the city and into other parts of Japan.

The Inujima Refinery

Whether this is good or bad can't be flatly said. At "personal site", for example, Miyanaga Aiko presented ceramic goods made at the pottery that is at once the artist’s home, along with the sounds caused by cracks resulting from dilation and contraction of the glaze on the earthenware. Most of the works shown in "Art as a bridge" in Oyamazaki were produced during residencies at a museum established around a renovated old, western-style villa, and at shrines and other places across the town. In the Inujima Art Project, architect Sambuichi Hiroshi revived a refinery that had been out of service for almost 90 years, and artist Yanagi Yukinori created pieces of art specifically for this venue. Such works of so-called site-specific art are of course not mobile, so there is no other choice than to travel if one wants to see them.

Cai Guo-Qiang "Unmanned Nature: Project for the Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art"

As I wrote before about Otomo Yoshihide’s "Ensembles", especially for the collaboration with Takamine the artists used waste material collected in the area (Yamaguchi). When suggested to ship the material from Yamaguchi to Sendai for his "Big Rest" solo show at Sendai Mediatheque, Takamine rejected because "it doesn't make sense, and also in terms of energy consumption involved in the transport, it’s unacceptable." Takamine’s solo exhibition was an ambitious project to highlight the questionableness of visual-based art exhibitions with the assistance of visually disabled persons, and as it was at once an event that leaned heavily on the reproduction and conservation of the specific local character, it was definitely a work that wouldn't "make sense" or even be "acceptable" at any other location than the one where it was staged. From the position of the creators, it was perhaps a "one-off" sort of piece with the transient quality of a performance, and therefore didn't necessarily have to be witnessed by a large number of people.

Takamine Tadasu "Big Stop"

Nonetheless, there must be a large number of people who do want to see it. So what can they do? For projects other than the above-mentioned site-specific exhibitions (or maybe even for those), a co-production between multiple museums would be one possibility. When asking a Sendai Mediatheque curator, I learned that there had been talk about co-production with the likes of YCAM and ICC (NTT InterCommunication Center), but somehow concrete measures have never been taken. It is of course not an easy undertaking, as there are many issues that have to be worked out, such as the sharing of costs, human resources and responsibility.

It’s not exactly a food problem, but even in art we have that same problems related to energy and local production for local consumption. There will perhaps be a term like "art mileage" introduced in the future, modeled after the example of food mileage. And then we'll have to consider establishing also a "visitor mileage"…