Approaches to Art in a Decelerated World: UENOYES 2020 “HOME & AWAY” ＜Ryuichi Sakamoto×Ari Hatsuzawa＞
UENOYES was launched in the autumn of 2018 as a community-based art project that hosts arts and cultural events in the vicinity of Ueno Park, under the banner of social inclusiveness. Amid the novel coronavirus pandemic, UENOYES made the leap to the digital world in November 2020, inviting a diverse roster of guests to participate in a six-day series of talk events streamed online, hosted by UENOYES General Producer and artist Katsuhiko Hibino. Titled “UENOYES 2020 HOME & AWAY,” the program explored the new normal under a global lockdown, tapping the internet to bridge social distance and continue to connect participants quartered in their homes, both in Japan and abroad.
In this installment, we highlight one of the discussion panels to illustrate how UENOYES continued the dialogue on the future of art and culture during a most uncertain year.
◆Participants: Ryuichi Sakamoto (musician), Ari Hatsuzawa (photographer), Katsuhiko Hibino (UENOYES General Producer, artist)
Documenting the pandemic through music and photography
UENOYES
2020 kicked off on November 20th with two talk events probing the
day’s overarching theme, “opening the door to culture and art for all.” The
second panel of the evening featured two guests, musician Ryuichi Sakamoto and
photographer Ari Hatsuzawa, whose illustrious careers have epitomized the
spirit of UENOYES.
Sakamoto, having recently flown back to Japan, dialed in to the video chat from quarantine. Behind Hatsuzawa could be seen the walls of an art gallery where he was preparing to host a solo exhibition, while Hibino led the socially distanced discussion from the Plaster Casts Gallery at the Tokyo University of the Arts.
Although it was the first time Sakamoto and Hatsuzawa had spoken face-to-digital-face, the artists connected over a similar experience of using their respective mediums of music and photography to document visual and emotional landscapes under lockdown. The men took turns introducing their recent projects. Hatsuzawa discussed his new photobook, Tokyo: Corona-ka (COVID-19 pandemic in Tokyo.), and Sakamoto followed by talking about his collaborative composition project, incomplete.
Hatsuzawa
began by sharing his snapshots of Tokyo under the pandemic. A photo of Ueno
Park’s iconic cherry blossoms taken on March 29th invited lively
discussion from the panel.
“This
was a rare year when it snowed in Tokyo while the sakura were in full bloom.
The park was cordoned off as a crowd-control measure during the pandemic, so
the cherry-lined promenade was empty of its usual crowds. I doubt the
conditions will ever align to take a picture like this again,” Hatsuzawa
explained.
On the subject of changed landscapes, Sakamoto reported that he had also noticed a new aural soundscape outside his New York City window. He said that when the pandemic muted the usual cacophony of the metropolis, it was as if someone had turned up the volume on the sound of nature and birdsong. The experience resonated with Hatsuzawa, who said he would never forget how only the sound of waves could be heard in Kesennuma, Miyagi Prefecture, the day after the Great East Japan Earthquake.
When
the novel coronavirus first became a global pandemic, Sakamoto began uploading
compositions to YouTube in an evolving project titled incomplete, as a
way to articulate through music the indescribable sensations he felt in a world
turned upside down.
Via
email, Sakamoto assembled a multinational, multicultural roster of 13 musicians
who collaborated to record the tracks remotely from around the world.
Each
of the ethereal tracks is imbued with a slightly different perspective on a
hushed quietude felt under lockdown, reflecting the varying experiences of
collaborators in Europe, Asia, and America.
An exploration of these dynamics and distances between artists was one of the goals of the project. Sakamoto instructed the musicians not to hold back, but rather, to celebrate their differences through heterogenous harmony.
The photographer who walked the streets with camera in hand, documenting the deserted city. The musician who looked within, capturing uncertain sensations through sound in collaboration with fellow artists around the world. Although active in differing mediums, both Sakamoto and Hatsuzawa showed the versatile power of art to resonate with the changing rhythms of life in a decelerated world.
