BURKE, Alex international-context japanese art

Prévia do material em texto

‘International Context’ 
Alex Burke 
 
The similarities between the art communities in Tokyo and San Francisco are numerous. 
The two cities have museums, for-profit galleries, non-profit spaces, a residency 
program, and art schools that actively participate in the art world. The cities have 
minimal funding resources, and a high cost of living. When it is put that way, however, 
the two cities on the Pacific Rim sound no different than New York or London. Through 
an analysis of how the world moves on a global scale, it is my aim to see how an 
international context for an arts organization, similar to the way Arts Initiative Tokyo 
contextualizes their programs, could be sustainable in San Francisco. 
 
The organizational super-structure of Tokyo’s art community clearly resembles the ones 
found in Europe and the United States, nonetheless it remains important to acknowledge 
why the similarities exist. At the end of World War II General McArthur initiated Japan’s 
reconstruction by installing a Western-style constitution, which guaranteed civil liberties 
and individual freedom, stripped the Emperor of political power, and completed 
sweeping education reform.1 Tokyo’s art community also emulated the organizational 
models established in the West: modern art museums were developed first, contemporary 
art museums second, and soon thereafter international curators organized contemporary 
Japanese art surveys, and Tokyo-based galleries began to exhibit in art fairs.2 The 
Japanese art community was swept up into the global community. 
 
According to the Tokyo-based critic Atsushi Sugita, the system in Tokyo perpetuates the 
“self-legitimizing structure of museums, market led values and the reliance on a linear 
idea of art history” that is rooted in the West.3 That system was established by New 
York’s Museum of Modern Art and follows the cannon of art history it widely 
encourages. Sugita notes that it is through organizations such as Arts Initiative Tokyo that 
“it becomes possible to propose and alter circumstances, creating new and hybridized 
systems…that can respond swiftly to the changing situations in a flexible manner.”4 The 
changing situation features a growing interest in contemporary art by Japanese youth, and 
Tokyo’s increasingly intimate relationship with the international network of artistic 
practice. It is a situation in which the museum and gallery structure is not entirely capable 
of accommodating. 
 
 
1 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_McArthur 
2 The National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo was built in 1952; The Museum of 
Contemporary Art Tokyo in 1995, “Japanese Art After 1945: Scream Against the Sky” 
was organized by the Yokohama Museum of Art in 1995. This chronology follows a 
pattern established in the United States and Europe by cities that developed art centers for 
a tourist economy. 
3 SUGITA, Atsushi, “Alternatives as ‘demon’ or ‘subject’” presented at “Viva Tokyo! A 
Big Debate on Recent Alternative Practices,” Sunday, April 6th, 2003. Organized by Arts 
Initiative Tokyo. Published in “Art Breakz: Talking Futures” by A-I-T. 
4 Ibid. 
In response to the growing interest in contemporary art, Arts Initiative Tokyo was created 
as a sustainable organization, which aims to serve Tokyo’s art community in the context 
of the international art world. The organization takes into account the fact that funding 
for non-profit arts organizations in Japan is limited. There is no direct funding from the 
city or national government: no National Endowment for the Arts, California Arts 
Council or San Francisco Arts Commission/Hotel Tax Fund. According to Roger 
McDonald, deputy director of A-I-T, they have responded by widening their funding base 
through partnerships with outside organizations (e.g. IASPIS), which has enabled them to 
initiate programs which otherwise would not be possible.5 A-I-T also generates its 
income through fees from educational programs, symposiums and sales from 
publications, and yearly individual donations and business patronage. Their funding 
structure supports a flexible organization. 
 
A-I-T consciously chose to be flexible, mobile and bi-lingual from the outset. They found 
that if they paid the cost of renting, and acquired the restrictions of conventional 
exhibition space they could not effectively accommodate the needs of Tokyo’s 
contemporary art community. Instead, A-I-T is organized out of one office suite where 
they hold meetings, symposia, classes, and keep a small research library. Their programs 
include educational courses, symposiums and slide talks, residency opportunities, and 
other support services for artists and curators. The staff also curates exhibitions in Japan 
and abroad, organizes parties, and publishes bi-lingual materials about contemporary art 
from Japan.6 McDonald believes that his ability to fluently speak Japanese and English is 
a big asset for the organization. “I feel that my presence in AIT, as a foreigner, changes 
our image inside Japan as well as outside. Its easier for many people to approach us if 
someone like me is here.” The flexible organizational model and its staff reflect their 
interest in working within an international context. 
 
Roger McDonald points to a couple reasons why A-I-T feels it is important to position 
itself within the international field, “we all understand that Japan is totally implicated in a 
globalized ‘Empire,’ to use Hardt and Negri's term. Economically, financially, politically, 
culturally, Japan is very much embedded in international systems. It seems essentialist to 
try to isolate some pure Japanese-ness or ignore relationships with other cultures etc. 
Especially so, when you work in the contemporary arena.”7 
 
A definable “Japanese-ness,” and a lack of one, is an interest of the Japanese artist 
Takashi Murakami. Murakami graduated from the Tokyo University of Fine Arts and 
 
5 International Artists Studio Programme in Sweden (IASPIS) is an artist-in-residence 
program based in Stockholm and a government funded institution supporting Swedish 
artists exhibiting abroad. The main purpose of IASPIS is to facilitate creative dialogues 
and collaborations between artists from Sweden and from other countries. A-I-T hosted 
an event that featured the director of IASPIS and a recent resident, independent curator 
Yukie Kamiya, on Jan. 20, 2003. At which 50 people attended. 
6 http://www.a-i-t.net/eg/aboutus_e.html 
7 “Empire,” by Michael Hardt, Antonio Negri. Harvard University Press. 2001 
Music in the late 1980s with a PhD in “nihonga”—a traditional Japanese painting style.8 
Upon graduation, Murakami achieved success as an artist with conceptual work. His 
work featured a similar style and intention to artists’ practice in the West, but he was not 
content and wanted to create a more authentic Japanese style. In 1994, while in residence 
in New York, his artwork became predominantly influenced by otaku—a particular pop 
culture trend popular among young Japanese men. Otaku style is based on manga and 
anime, but is typically sexually explicit and therefore considered dishonorable by 
traditional Japanese society. For several years, between 1994 and ’96, Murakami painted 
cute cartoon characters on canvas in the otaku style, but did not receive acclaim from the 
strict otaku critics. In response he created Hiropon in 1997. The sculpture featured a tall, 
naked female character on a pedestal with milk pouring out of her large breasts and into 
the shape of a jump rope behind her—it was an instant favorite of the otaku subculture. 
Murakami found critical acclaim in Hiropon with a style that he and his critics considered 
‘Japanese.’ 
 
A few years after creating Hiropon, Murakami curated an exhibition of Japanese art titled 
“Superflat,” which criticallyexamined Japan’s complicit relationship with the Western 
world. Murakami found that in Japan there is no distinction between high and low art—
there is no separation between art and life. It was not until Murakami examined the otaku 
style more closely that he realized how complicit the manga and anime characters were 
with reality. He discovered that in many otaku stories there are explosions that resemble 
atomic blasts reminiscent of the hydrogen bombs dropped on Japan in 1945. Murakami 
concluded that otaku was a mirror to reality that the larger culture preferred to ignore. 
Murakami said, “Otaku culture is handicapped reality. We have to realize we are 
handicapped, and we don’t want to realize it. We know the US is our father…we are 
handicapped people. We need help.”9 Murakami was, like many other Japanese 
intellectuals, critical of his country’s military past and its acquiescent present.10 Like Arts 
Initiative Tokyo, Murakami found that to isolate his work within a particular Japanese 
culture would be to ignore his country’s relationship with the Western world. He has 
begun to work with a team of artists, in Tokyo and New York, producing work for 
exhibitions around the world—his aim is to gain a critical detachment from Japanese 
culture through an abundance of popularity. 
 
While Murakami’s art is primarily interested in Japan and America’s relationship, A-I-T 
has chosen to work on a larger international scale. According to McDonald, the way 
A-I-T “defines 'international' is important and something that underlies most of [their] 
discussions.” They feel it is important to create links with countries in the Pacific Rim in 
particular. They have actively made strong connections with groups in Korea, China, 
 
8 My review of Murakami’s artwork and ideas follows Arthur Lubow’s recent review in 
The New York Times Magazine. Lubow, Arthur. “The Murakami Method,” The New York 
Times Magazine. April 3, 2005. p. 51. 
9 Ibid. p. 54 
10 Ibid. p. 54 
New Zealand, and San Francisco—that is with organizations and groups who share 
similar outlooks to A-I-T.11 
 
The Raqs Media Collective in New Delhi, India shares a similar concern with being 
international. The collective is interested in aspects of the invisible city that lies 
underneath, outside, and beyond the sanctioned global city. Shuddhabrata Sengupta, a 
member of Raqs, defined their interest in international relationships by describing how 
their practice searches for the relational fields between cities. They believe that that 
interrelationship defines a city today. Raqs “thinks of space as if it were constantly in 
some kind of relational field with other spaces. So that one thinks of contiguity, and 
contagion, and flows between spaces rather than thinking this is a ‘San Francisco reality’ 
or that is a ‘Delhi reality.’ It’s to think of the in-between-ness of Delhi and San 
Francisco.”12 The idea of ‘in-between-ness’ expands the notion of the relationship A-I-T 
and Murakami see between Japan and United States onto a larger global scale, and is 
helpful to understand why A-I-T is forging links with other organizations throughout the 
Pacific Rim. 
 
An arts organization in San Francisco that looks beyond the regional, and considers its 
relationship with the global to be more dynamic than the international art market, would 
find similarities with A-I-T and its related organizations. Art organizations frequently 
define their relationship to globalization in terms of the art market—art fairs, biennials, 
etc. However, like Raqs Media Collective described above, cities today define themselves 
according to their relationship with other cities. It would be important then that a 
contemporary arts organization in the United States look beyond just financial systems 
and include the cultural, social and technological systems that affect their situation, too. 
 
San Francisco has a strong relationship with other cities and cultures along the Pacific 
Rim because of its position on the west coast of North America. For example, the city has 
long been a major port of trade and commerce, and even its World War II bunkers are a 
reflection of a time when the city was hyper-aware of its relationship to the open Pacific. 
Like Tokyo, it should be impossible to think about the identity of San Francisco without 
considering the influence of the Pacific Rim. More research into the unique character of 
San Francisco’s relationship to the Pacific Rim would help to define how a contemporary 
arts organization could explore the ‘in-between-ness’ that defines their city and local 
artists’ relationship to it. 
 
In conclusion, Atsushi Sugita believes a contemporary arts organization needs to look at 
other models besides only the traditional museum and gallery system established in the 
West to represent the character of today’s global art community. The artists in Raqs 
Media Collective define a city by its interrelationships with other cities, and Takashi 
Murakami employs the popularity of otaku as a critical tool in his artwork. In response, 
Arts Initiative Tokyo contextualizes its programs in the international field with the intent 
 
11 Roger McDonald’s response to an interview question via email. April 18, 2005 
12 Raqs Media Collective described their work in a classroom lecture at the California 
College of the Arts. April 13, 2005. 
to serve the needs of Tokyo’s growing art community. San Francisco’s relationship to the 
Pacific Rim offers potential for arts organizations to expand beyond the regional art 
context and relate local art production to a larger global field.