Ukawa Naohiro, contemporary artist, or “current artist” as he prefers to call himself, wears many hats ranging from video artist and graphic designer, to VJ, writer, and curator. He was also a part of UENOYES. His live-streaming performance art “DOMMUNE” was used to send out all the UENOYES programs to the world. We spoke to him about how he perceived the appeal of Ueno through his participation in UENOYES.
——What led to your participation in UENOYES?
DOMMUNE is a live-streaming studio and channel that broadcasts videos in real time over the internet. We differ from YouTubers in that their channels are designed to gain advertising revenues to support their livelihoods and so are done on the assumption of “work,” while our broadcasts are in themselves “works of art” that are sent out into the world as a contemporary art “activity.” That is the crucial difference.
Since DOMMUNE began broadcasting in 2010, we have been opening satellite studios in various locations within Japan and abroad, and have produced about 5,000 programs to date. Meanwhile, in 2019, as an artist participating in Setouchi Triennale 2019, I fully renovated a building in the city of Takamatsu, turning the entire building into a studio for one-month streaming. It was during this time that I was invited to join UENOYES.
——What is your take on Ueno?
Ueno has an extraordinary local environment. Ueno station is a transportation hub served by several Shinkansen bullet train lines, and the area contains both sides of Tokyo—the urban sophistication of the Yamanote area and the quaint air of the Shitamachi area. It is a cultural area where the “grand” museums have a dominating presence, and this has earned it a reputation as a “city of art.” But, despite this, it does not set a high threshold for art. In fact, I think it’s widening the entrance to art for the general public. This makes me very interested in seeing how our kind of contemporary art expression was received.
The cardboard installation supervised by Katsuhiko Hibino at UENOYES 2019 was a true reflection of Ueno’s spirit of art. It was a project that welcomed anyone, even those with no special education in art, to join in and exhibit their individuality through a free run of expression. Just like the dynamism of the cardboard works quickly filling the site, this creative work has the power to immediately transform the entire town. That Ueno can expand the doorway to bring people closer to this kind of art is probably possible because art here thrives on the foundation of history. This is a cultural area that is totally different from Roppongi or Shibuya.
——What kind of impact did this time’s theme, FLOATING NOMAD, have on your work?
We also opened a satellite studio as a work of art, but precisely because of the nature of the Ueno area, as I just explained to you, there was a clear difference in the type of audience visiting the studio. A middle-aged guy who dropped by after visiting the National Museum of Nature and Science to see the Mummies of the World exhibition; after being subjected to the various views of life and death at that special exhibition, he was then mind-boggled by a deep study on the Silk Road. Or the primary school kid who, after being enchanted by Xiang Xiang, the 2-year-old giant panda cub at Ueno Zoo, just happened to wander into our yurt with his mother and had the chance to hear about Koichi Umetsu’s Parplume Preparatory School for young artists. There were sure to have been people like that (laughter). And then there’s no overlooking the impact that this time’s studio itself had on them. It was a yurt, a tent used as a home for Mongolian nomads.
Live streaming and nomads, by nature, go well together. This is especially true for DOMMUNE. While the studio is headquartered in Shibuya, DOMMUNE takes on the style of moving the studio itself to places around the globe and broadcasting out to the world from those locations. If the viewer can watch the program from the same desktop every day, the scene that can be seen from that window—no matter what part of the world it comes from—could itself become the substance of the media called DOMMUNE. This is the very identity of nomads.
Our art expression involves two meanings of the Japanese word henzai （偏在）. One is henzai as a “concentration in a place.” The studio created in the yurt is a unique existence at the place where it happens to be. It is the very substantiation of the “here-and-now” as the aura, which is also an art criticism cliché. Meanwhile, however, the activities of DOMMUNE connect to the world through the internet, allowing viewers to watch live streaming. In other words, this is henzai in its meaning as a “ubiquitous” presence. Through the FLOATING NOMAD concept by Yoshikazu Yamagata of writtenafterwards, I believe that these two henzai led to the reality of expression at UENOYES.
——Did the speakers make their respective programs from content they thought up themselves?
Yes. After bouncing ideas with the Nakanishi duo of ASHU, the organizer, we share the program outline with the speakers. But what actually comes out depends on the speaker. The mass media measures success by how many people watch a program, with ratings reigning supreme. DOMMUNE doesn’t need such shallow evaluations. We are not targeting the public to urge on consumption. What we are doing is artistic expression, so theoretically, we can even make a program for one wildly enthusiastic viewer. The existence and history of an individual, a person “here and now,” is broadcasted as a straight message over the internet and shared throughout the world. And, we also attach importance on the program being archived as a cultural heritage that is very dense in content.
Considering things from that point of view, I thought that the word “extreme” perfectly matched what we were doing. For example, the broadcast with the young artists of the Parplume Preparatory School contained fresh, young vitality, and so, although there may have been some tedious parts during the program, I myself was reminded of the dawn of the age of live streaming, which made me feel fresh again.
The program with Seiran Tsuno and the people of Bethel’s House was also the ultimate in freedom. These are individuals who are aware of their mental disorders and perceive them as their identity. We were able to stream them as they are to the world. I think this was a work that could only have been done by DOMMUNE at UENOYES.
［プロフィール］ Ukawa Naohiro Born in 1968 in Kagawa Prefecture. Ukawa Naohiro is active in many areas including video art, graphic design, VJ, and writing. In March 2010, he established the live-streaming channel DOMMUNE as one of his artistic activities. In November 2019, he moved his studio to the newly reopened Shibuya Parco building, from where he streams various talks, sessions by DJs from Japan and abroad, live music, and more.
Text：Naoko Tsunoda (Fillmore East Co., Ltd) Photos：Kuniko Hirano
UENOYES 2019／FLOATING NOMAD
Duration: November 9 – 10, 2019 Time: 11 a.m. – 6 p.m. Venue: Ueno Park, Takenodai Plaza (Fountain Plaza) URL: https://uenoyes.ueno-bunka.jp/2019
