Jan 6, 2009
I have been in Singapore since 10 December. I have been working on the multicultural communities as a subject matter for a commission of Singapore Fringe Festival '09.
This festival mainly consists of performing arts, but Fringe Gallery (a section of visual arts) is also rich in content. I selected 'Lullaby' sung in the home as a topic for the festival theme "Arts & Family" this year. 'Lullaby' functions as a medium of telling the cultural background and the atmosphere of generations as well as a song to make you sleepy. Moreover, unlike the traditional events, 'Lullaby' has a distinction that it is handed down from generation to generation on totally private level without any obligation or restriction by anyone else. Collecting these lullabies in Singapore makes it clear that there have been cultural fusion and elimination.
Interesting facts that the effect of Malay children's songs compiled by the government in the 70s, local songs translated into English by mothers who gave up taking over the native language, and the children learning the songs not from their parents but from their foreign maids will be reflected in my project. The works will be installation room consisting of the voice of 'Lullaby' collected in Singapore and the image acted by the local collaborators.
7 to 18 January 2009
* Artist talk on Friday 9 January at 7:30pm
Opening hours: 11am to 8pm daily
Venue: Gallery, The Substation
Admission: free
A Fringe commission & World Premiere
02:47 AM
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Sep 2, 2008
The long-term video project which was planned for the past few years has started in Thailand. This is a project of collecting the images of usual family lives, doing workshops with the local residents in three ASEAN countries such as Thailand, Indonesia and Philippines.
I think that the confrontation of “the universality and the vernacular” which is inherent in the basic unit which constitutes a community called a family, or "the formalization of the lifestyle by globalization and preservation of a tradition style" actualizes itself on the boundary of the every day and non-every day in a family life. At the same time,
the ambiguous boundary of the concept of "the documentary and the fiction" which the expression technique of an image has will be verified in this project.
     
During my stay in Bangkok from July, the participants were collected in the workshop carried out mainly by the students studying film and video. The various details of 11 families have been videotaped so far. Some of the videotaping developed into collaboration with the participants and both of us tried to catch the family’s figure full of life. Consequently, the moment that a family’s every day changes into non-every day was certainly perceived and we succeeded in recording some of them. The project in Thailand will be carried on until 10 September. The same project will be carried out in the other two countries later on. The completion of the work as the whole (the contemporary images of family) will pass through the process by finally analyzing and editing the detail images collected in the three countries respectively. I will keep you informed of the progress here.
Thanks to API Fellowship, the realization of this project became possible. I also got full support from The Jim Thompson Art Center in Bangkok for the substantial activities in Thailand. I very much appreciate their cooperation, and above all, I am very thankful to the participants and their families for accepting the collaboration.
03:09 PM
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Jul 9, 2008
  
The project “Field of Nusa” has started to exhibit in Hokkaido (the northern part Japan). Spending two years, and produced by more than 5,000 participants all over Japan, the works made of about 7,000 pieces of white ceramics were installed in Tokachi Millennium Forest, Hokkaido. The motif of the works is "what we would like to leave 1000 years later" that each participant considers. The installation this time is the first stage, and the production workshop is planned to be continued.
The location is the grass on the hill surrounded by deep forests and swamps. The silhouette of the gentle slope turned a 400 square meters of hillock into beautiful heights. A young beech tree was planted at the center of the hilltop, and pieces of white ceramics were laid circularly around it. Standing in this site, you will feel the breath of nature, and at the same time the handwork engraved on the numerous pieces of ceramics will remind you of each tiny life of the people. Also, these works are expected to have viewers for 1,000 years ahead. The gap that gives you a little dizziness because of the small and private creatures against the grandeur of nature around them will create a unique atmosphere in this site. Starting from the first stage this time, the aspects of the works that coexist and change with nature for the future will be exhibited permanently.
 
12:50 AM
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Mar 25, 2008
I will produce a video clip introducing the daily life in Tokyo at the request of Japan-Vietnam Cultural Association foundation which organizes an interchanging event “Sakura Festival in Vietnam 2008” taking place in Hanoi, the capital city of Vietnam.The work is compilation snapshot video of the urban life through eyes of Vietnamese living in Japan.
The average age of the people in Vietnam is late twenties, and not my generation but the younger Japanese generation holds the key to the future of the interchange with Vietnam now.It is not realistic for each other to approach drastically with deep interest under the present condition, but on the other hand a new interchange which smoothly shares the common background widely spread in Asia seems to be expected.
The clip will be shown on the projector at Hanoi Horizon Hotel (preview) on 5 April, and at Vietnam International Convention Center (Ngoc Khanh Road / the main hall) on 6 April. Also this clip is to be broadcast on a national TV program after the festival.
  
08:30 PM
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Mar 14, 2007
I am currently working in a collaborative project entitled In Repose, which is formed by mainly Japanese-Australian and Australian artists. However, I have joined the project as a Tokyo-based Japanese artist. Inspired by a Japanese cemetery located in Townsville, and through this site, we are exploring the heart and history of Japanese emigrant workers who contributed to the sugar cane industry around Townsville in early 20th century. On 10th of February, as the first part of this project, Koto player Satsuki Odamura and Dancer/Choreographer, Wakako Asano performed at the cemetery site for the local residents.
  
Although I have been doing many site-specific art projects with ordinary collaborators, until now, I did not have many opportunities to create projects with independent artists. At the beginning of this project, my main concern was focused on how we can avoid the diffusion of our intentions. However, this concern itself was in fact the uniqueness of our project. Now I have realized that each artist is able to use their varying viewpoints and methods to capture something from the specific site, and that it is possible for these varying results to co-exist in the same project (=art piece). This fact may be a matter of course, but I think that this project is a good example in confirming how a site-specific project involves different approaches to the site.
Odamura requested three composers to create compositions especially for this project, including one local composer. For the performance in February, she had invited the local composer to the cemetery to hear the music being played on site. This exercise would hugely affect future compositions of the composer within the meaning of site-specificity.
Asano usually dances with the Sydney Dance Company, so stages in theaters are her normal space for dancing. In this project, however, it seemed that she was attempting to find a way to hold a dialogue with spirits of Japanese immigrants under the rough ground of the site with her bare feet.
Australian sound artist Vic McEwan turned the spotlight on the caretaker of the cemetery. By the way of his respectful introduction, local residents could acknowledge the presence of caretaker in the community. This opportunity was obviously created by the Vic’s stance as an outsider, because I believe that the outsider’s viewpoint could suggest a new context to the everyday life in a community. These various approaches by them gave me an opportunity to reconsider my artistic attitudes in site-specific works. You do not have to be fixed in your work styles for things site-specific (of course).
I am the only member of this project who is a Japanese artist who lives and works in Japan, so I would like to utilize this stance of mine as the only original(?) Japanese and add a different viewpoint from the others, and explore the relationship between migration and death within contemporary life in Japan. My video work will be combined with Vic’s sound work, along with another video work by Mayu Kanamori (who is the originator of the project). And it will be installed at Umbrella Studio in Townsville in May. So now we are on the way to complete our collaboration. We have set just a minimum format such as a length etc, before the combination of the three. We hope that there will be a chemical reaction to occur between our different expressions for the final piece. I really look forward to the result.
01:38 AM
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Sep 14, 2006
My latest video installation titled Dining Time can be seen at the Japan Foundation Art Space Bangkok from September 13 to 30. The work puts a question to our contemporary life as to the meaning of dining at a table amid the uniformity of foods, collapsing of families and local communities arising from so called globalization. Also I created this work to pay homage to many artists who can sublimate various social contexts and structures of taking meals into artistic expression, which indicate a close relationship between cuisine and culture in Thailand.
  
11:12 PM
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Jul 28, 2006
I participated in an interdisciplinary art laboratory called Time_Place_Space 5 (from 24 June- 9 July 2006 at Queensland University of Technology, Creative Industries Precinct, Brisbane). During those two weeks, participants had been thinking of the ways to collaborate and share their skills with other artists who work in different disciplines. As I was one of the international facilitators, it was a great opportunity to find out about the artist's attitudes to the multicultural situation in Australia. During this period, I gave them one subject with a long title: Proposition of ideal stereotypes instead of an unbearable stereotype of your cultural background. Or, how do you see the whole image of a huge iceberg.
Participants were divided into five groups of four, and they spent four days preparing a presentation about the subject. During which this time, I found two interesting vector in the participant's attitudes. If the participants already had some feelings of cultural minority within about themselves, they always have had to face stereotypes in everyday life. Therefore, they could internalise the subject matter and express themselves accordingly. On the other hand, participants who have thought that they belonged to the mainstream were not able to express themselves through stereotypes, and as a result, they attempted to search for a social presence of their beings to the outside world.
 
I was personally impressed by two final presentations on the subject. One group attempted to express by switching their personalities, using video images of performance and live narration. In their video, they interchanged their costumes and monologues. It successfully indicated the basic structure of the concept of stereotypes, which is not only based on cultural backgrounds, but also consists of more latent factors such as appearance and gender, etc. Another group went out and intervened on the street. They asked the public to give their intuitive impressions about each member in the group, using ten specific questions (eg. grade of income, political and sexual attitude etc). It was an exciting aspect of this work: that passers-by tried to judge a total stranger by their biased viewpoint, giving a visual indication of the process of making a single identity, which was divided by the plural. I have learned a lot about the multicultural situation in my country Japan, from working with Australian artists.
01:32 AM
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