Art vs. disaster: UENOYES 2020 “HOME & AWAY”
＜Fram Kitagawa ×Hiroyasu Yamauchi×Noi Sawaragi＞

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.

◆Saturday, November 28th, 2020
“The online environment: an increasingly real space”
Talk session: “New curatorial spaces: the Reiwa era, disasters, and art”

◆Participants: Fram Kitagawa (art director), Hiroyasu Yamauchi (Rias Ark Museum Vice Director), Noi Sawaragi (art critic), Katsuhiko Hibino (UENOYES General Producer)

Meet the masterminds behind the curtain

“Surely this interweaving of thoughts and perspectives, from each and every unique individual, is the very definition of culture itself.”

The sentiment, offered in Hibino’s closing remarks, was one of many maxims that could be drawn from the stimulating series of 12 fruitful discussions that made up UENOYES 2020.

But for that matter, the second panel session on the fifth and penultimate day of proceedings would also have been a fitting culmination. Out of the public limelight, a full cast of planners, producers, curators, and critics acts as a bridge between art and wider society, nurturing new ideas to fruition. In this panel, the veteran movers and shakers who work behind the scenes in the art world offered an exegesis on the road traveled and the forking paths that lie ahead.

The impressive Plaster Casts Gallery at the Tokyo University of the Arts was a fitting background for the distinguished resume of Fram Kitagawa. An esteemed art director and longtime champion of art as a means of regional revitalization, Kitagawa has overseen five regional arts festivals, including The Echigo-Tsumari Art Triennial.

Undeterred by the spate of arts festival cancellations due to the pandemic, Kitagawa reported that he has been engaged in careful dialogue with regional communities that have an eye for hosting events. This line of discussion led to a reassertion of the synergies that arise from artistic diversity:

“At a most fundamental level, art evinces the overwhelming miracle that is the coexistence of so many people, with so many disparate viewpoints on the world. There are 7.7 billion people on Earth. 7.7 billion is far greater than one homogeneous whole. Our lives can be enriched through interaction with people living in the far corners of the nation, the elderly, and the handicapped. The opportunity to engage with these diverse people is one of the great boons of art. This is something that is more valuable than ever amid the coronavirus pandemic.”

Hiroyasu Yamauchi joined the discussion from the Rias Ark Museum in Kesennuma, Miyagi Prefecture, where he serves as vice director of the museum. Yamauchi emphasized the importance of presenting archival material pertaining to natural disasters in formats akin to an installation. Conducting exhibitions in disaster-stricken areas, educating audiences on both the destructive power of nature and the value of artistic expression, can be a tool to create more compelling messages that reach not only the young generation, but also the world at large. His words carried extra weight, as he is an authority in the protection and conservation of regional culture.

“The uniqueness of the peripheral communities is their greatest lifeline. You can’t find what they have anywhere else. This is something that became particularly relevant in the wake of the Tohoku earthquake and tsunami. Affected areas have made an extra effort to show the world how they intend to continue living in their homeland, in the face of significant challenges.”

Yamauchi added that after the coronavirus outbreak, he embraced the internet in earnest to develop a “YouTuber Museum” project, which helped foster new connections between people across the world.

What difference does a decade make?

Art critic Noi Sawargi joined the discussion remotely from Kyoto, fresh on the heels of curating the exhibition Bubbles/Debris: Art of the Heisei Era 1989-2019 (held at the Kyoto City KYOCERA Museum of Art from January 23^rd to April 11^th, 2021). Sawaragi revealed that the exhibition grew out of a misgiving over how art and culture tend to be delineated in 10-year increments, resulting instead in a 30-year bird’s-eye retrospective covering the breadth of the Heisei era.

Sawaragi urged audiences to approach art from a long-term perspective:

“Serendipitously, a majority of the so-called ‘postwar’ years became fertile ground for the construction of ‘homogenous spaces’ unmarred by an experience of devastating natural disaster. This placidity made the high-growth economic miracle possible and might have also lubricated the transition to a high-consumption society. The advent of globalism has shortened the yardstick for measuring art. When you factor in pandemics and natural disasters, decades become the bellwether for what is sustainable and continuous. We must look at art more from this longer timeline, from the perspective of natural disasters.”

From here, the discussion branched out to touch upon historical attitudes toward late 20^th century culture, art projects that seek to solve social ills, the evolution of artistic mediums in the Heisei era, Sanriku region (Aomori, Iwate, and Miyagi prefectures) culture, and the connection between Toshoku and Ueno.

Ultimately, this panel seemed to be circling one fundamental question: How should art respond to calamity?

True to UENOYES, the experts parsed the roles of art and the artist amidst the pandemic, in quintessentially freewheeling fashion.

Text: Mayumi Yawataya
Photos: Fumitaka Miyoshi (images marked with an asterisk)

UENOYES 2020 “HOME & AWAY”
Dates: Nov. 20-22 and Nov. 27-29, 2020
Note: This talk session is available to watch on YouTube.