Officially registered as contribution to “EU-Japan Year 2005”
Artist in Residence: June - July / SAITOH Minako & TAKAHASHI Tomoko
Artist in Residence: August - September / ADACHI Tomomo & ISHIDA Takashi
Artist in Residence: October - November / IIMURA Takahiko & YAMAGIWA Mitsuhiro
Exhibition schedule:
Map of Meanings I SAITOH Minako & TAKAHASHI Tomoko
5th July – 14th July PLATTFORM - Raum für Kunst & MQ21
Map of Meanings II ADACHI Tomomo & ISHIDA Takashi
25th August – 3th September PLATTFORM - Raum für Kunst & MQ21
Map of Meanings III IIMURA Takahiko & YAMAGIWA Mitsuhiro
31st October – 9th November PLATTFORM - Raum für Kunst & MQ21
Cultural studies concerns itself with the meaning and practices of everyday life. Cultural practices comprise the ways people do particular things - such as watching television, eating out, celebrating special occasions, etc. - in a given culture.
In the context of cultural studies, the idea of a presentation not only includes written language, but also films, photographs, videos, music, visual arts and fashion. Similarly, the discipline widens the concept of culture. Culture for a cultural studies researcher does not only include the traditional high arts and popular arts, but also everyday meanings and practices. The last two, in fact, have become the main focus of cultural studies.
Culture is then seen more in a social context, and the work of art is a product of this culture. Raymond Williams, one of the originators of cultural studies, defined culture as "a particular way of life, whether of a people, a period or a group."The artists chosen for this project, represent a broad spectrum of art categories, which matches with the idea of cultural studies in the sense of an open concept of culture. Three times in the year 2 artists will stay together for about 1 up to 2 months at artist in residence apartments in Vienna. The concept of the project provides with the objective, to share their experiences over a certain period of time, so that they have a chance to evaluate their “cultural studies” in interpersonal dialogues.
The main intention of the project is to cultivate an intercultural communication with the local community in Vienna. The artists will try to get close to Viennese people, to seeing their daily life practises out of the eyes of an artist, and will be enduring to understand the everyday meanings.At the same time the artists will produce a “work of art” - either as a collaboration work or for two single presentations - which should be directly related to their “cultural studies”. MAP OF MEANINGS will be the title of this exhibition, which presents the result of the artist’s cultural studies at the end of their stay. kuspace association will organize an “artist talk” with the artists in residence during the exhibition, held by Austrian art critiques and curators. The transliteration of these talks will be compiled as one of the contributions to a catalogue, which will be published at the end of the year as a documentation of these “Artist In Residence + Exhibition Project 2005”, which is officially registered as contribution to “EU-Japan Year 2005”.
*1976 Kanagawa. Lives and works in Japan.
Performance events: Exit, International Festival for Unusual Live Performances, Helsinki, 2001; Performance Festival, High Calibre, Berlin, 2002; Echigostumari Art Triennale, Nigata, Japan, 2003; Spark Contemporary Art Space, New York, 2004.
“The performance art I’m doing right now is called action art or time-based
art, which is different from dance and theatre. You can do whatever you
like, so that it’s pretty experimental. Sometimes you can’t do it except
the commitment with the audience. It looks analogue but I believe that
it has the possibility to speak to people’s heart. This action art can’t
be replaced the performing by showing videos so that I need to perform
some hours every day.”
Allurements of mass media, 4th Internarional Performance Art Festival Odensee, Denmark, 2003.
* 1962 Japan, lives and works in Japan.
Exhibitions: Viewing Room Yotsuya, Tokyo, 2001; The First Fuchu Biennial,
Fuchu Art Museum, Tokyo, 2002; Oita Art Museum, Oita Japan, 2002; Brunswiker
Raum, Kiel Germany, 2003.
“Japanese people have very definite feelings about mental institutions,
the places are not regarded as a part of society, they are seen as being
outside”, Minako Saitoh says. In a sense, Minako Saitoh has reversed the perspective with this work from
her "Memory Series". The show at the Viewing Room in Tokyo's
Yotsuya, 2001, does not look into a mental institute, rather it uses the
institution as a place from which to view the outside world, or little
pieces of it, at least. Three large back-lighted transparent photographs
and a mass of mangled mattress make up the room-filling installation that
Saitoh has brought to the gallery. The pictures were shot in an Ibaraki mental hospital, in patients' rooms and the cafeteria, and capture views
through the thick panels of dense translucent plastic that serve as windows.
Memory, Viewing Room Yotsuya, Tokyo, 2001.
Mitsuhiro Yamagiwa
Every installation Mitsuhiro Yamagiwa creates is enveloped in a strange
silence. The individual works in his installations are left incomplete, as if he
had changed his mind in the process of creating them. The motifs in his installations are images found at construction sites
and scenes that he photographed while traveling. The individual works are arranged in an abrupt manner in the installation
space, not allowing viewers to read any line of connection. This makes the viewers begin to feel perplexed. And because the installation itself is in a suspended state, as if it is
still in the process of being created, the viewers are also plunged into
a state of anxiety. His works harbor a certain sense of wanting, an incomplete, "in the
process" feelings that can be described as being the polar opposite
of substantialized, complete and accomplished ideas, under which works
of art are normally prescribed.
art&riverbank, Japan, 2003.
Takahiko Iimura
* 1937 in Tokyo, lives and works in Tokyo.
Takahiko Iimura has been a pioneer artist of Japanese experimental film
and video, working in film since l960 and with video since 1970. He is
also a widely established international artist, having numerous exhibitions
in Japan, the USA, and in Europe. One of his early films, "Onan", was awarded Special Prize at
the legendary Brussels International Experimental Festival, l964. Recently
he has been involved in using the computer, publishing multimedia CD-ROMs/DVDs
combining film, video, graphics, text, and animation.
CD-ROM "INTERACTIVE: AIUEONN SIX FEATURES", 1998.
Combining the comical and the absurd, Iimura created six funny faces, which
were manipulated by System G (Real time texture mapping developed by Sony),
to animate the visual images of Japanese vowels in Japanese and Roman alphabet.
The concept is developed from Jacques Derrida's "Differance"
in which the difference of "image," "letter" and "voice"
works in space and movement. Thus six images of "AIUEONN" differ
and delay with the letters and the voices, creating an example of multiculturalism.
Takashi Ishida
*1972 in Tokyo. He began making films in 1995.
His works were shown at The 24th Hong Kong International Film Festival
(CHINA), The 31. International Short Film Festival (FINLAND), Holland animation
film festival 2002 (Holland), 18th Vancouver International film festival
(CANADA), YAMAGATA International Documentary film festival 2001(JAPAN),
Image forum film festival 1999 (JAPAN), ISEA2002, 11th International Symposium
on Electronic Art, NAGOYA (JAPAN), Best international film award in 2003
IMAGES film festival (CANADA), and Montreal International Festival New
Cinema New Media 2003 (CANADA).
“Amber sunlight shines into the corner of the room from the window. The
shadows projected on the wall erode each other away, and as this increases,
the three-dimensional shape of the room flickers between the actual walls
and an illusory vision produced by the flatness of a drawing. It is a miraculous
room whose shape changes with the spectator’s perceptual actions. Animation in 2.5
dimensions”.
Gestalt , 7min, 16mm, sound, colour, 1999.
Tomomi Adachi
*1972 Kanazawa, lives and works in Tokyo.
Composer and performer. He studied philosophy and aesthetics at Waseda University in Tokyo. He has performed contemporary music by John Cage, Cornelius Cardew, Dieter
Schnebel, Takahashi Yuji and Fluxus including world premier and Japan premier. From 1999 he started the new concert series “Music Factory”,
which picks up sound art, collaboration works and inter-disciplinary performances. Performance of “Adachi Tomomi Royal Chorus” at Yokohama Triennial, 2001; Europe tour of
“VACA” at Galerie Rachel Haferkamp, Cologne, Stadtgalerie Saarbrücken,
MeX, Dortmund, Maschinenhaus, Essen and Les Voutes, Paris, 2003. Recently
he is focusing his activities on solo performances with voice, computer,
and self-made instruments.
Tomomi Adachi performing at „Method Art Festival“ at Kitakyushu Art Museum, Kitakyushu, 2001.
