The flows of capital have retreated from countless local towns in Japan. In these contemporary circumstances, how can art touch people’s lives?

Since the late 20th century, across a number of locations around the world, a new field of study has emerged. This is a field of study in which art, and movements toward social change work in tandem with each other. For various artistic forms in Japan, these shifts––often toward social practices––have become a particularly pronounced social phenomenon that influences artistic practice and cultural policy.

Certain issues in Japan, have meant that ideas around “art” are unable to be tackled through the application of western, modernist notions of art; notions that disregard art’s social implications. This problematic, has made the establishment of new approaches to thinking about “art” particularly urgent.

The curriculum for my research laboratory places its point of departure within this problematic. During the course, while learning about basic theories of arts management, students will engage in practical attempts to manage art projects, as well as develop discourses based on these practical projects.

The aim of this course is to cultivate graduates who are capable of contributing to both artistic practice and cultural policy. Our goal is to develop graduates’ analytical thinking, through experiences such as the planning and management of projects as well as through fieldwork. This fieldwork crosses various artistic genres and can overlap with other areas and fields of study such as local culture, the everyday lives of locals citizens; as well as education, welfare, and the economy.

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KUMAKURA Sumiko
Dean of the Graduate School of Global Arts; Professor in Art Management and Cultural Policy Studies. BA in Université de Paris X, MA in Keio University (Art History and Aesthetics). Producer of numerous regional art projects such as the Toride Art Project, Kitamoto Vitamin, and Art Access Adachi: Downtown Senju––Connecting through Sound Art. She is also an adviser on cultural policy for the Agency for Cultural Affairs and the Tokyo Metropolitan Government.

Arts appreciation and its advocacy in the 21st century are now facing intricate transition. It is simply because erosion of the existing media that create and communicate value and evaluation of arts is quickly in progress, and as what has been brought about by this erosion, the lapse between creators and those who appreciate any arts forms impairs a constructive and cooperative relationship between the both.

This confusion, however, reveals at the same time that now any art forms having their anchors in the western world no longer can claim their superiority over other parts of the globe. Value and creation of the arts are made relieved from the 19th century style leash of the western world.

This is my understanding on what is going on with arts, especially with music today. From the cradle to the grave, this music is our music, not “theirs,” “imported,” “imposed” or “brainwashing.”

To enhance the human infrastructure vitalizing the synergy of each arts sectors (theaters / concert halls/ higher education/philanthropic fund / artists / audience), the roles of arts management are being intensified, and its expertly trained practitioners are mandatory for facilitation of arts activities. Music requires them most, because it is essential need for both artists and audience to properly prepare an ideal place, equipment and environment for live performance by certain period of day and time so that the both can encounter creative moments at highest standard.

I sincerely hope that this new school will be a place for those who are young and earnest to be experts of directing performance institutions and venues. With the sense of balancing creation and administration, I believe it is the mission, mine and yours, to create the Asian arena of music and musicians that consists of the global community of music on an equal basis.

Kazumi W. Minoguchi

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MINOGUCHI Kazumi
Associate Professor in Music and Performing Arts Management. As a Project Coordinator and an ex-Programming Director of Suntory Hall since 2008, Minoguchi has a long experience in artistic programming and administration at performing arts venues; Casals Hall (1987-2000), the Dai-ichi Seimei Hall (2001-2008) and Suntory Hall (2008-present). Expertise of concept making and program building for chamber music, Kazumi designed and launched Suntory Hall Chamber Music Garden in 2011. She is also one of the earliest advocates of community engagement programs with musicians in Japan, and the founding coordinator of the Revitalization Project for Public Concert Venues operated by the Japan Foundation for Regional Art-Activities. Career development of young musicians is one of her life-long interests; she was a lecturer at the Tokyo National University of Arts (the Geidai) researching the career management of young performers (2006-2009). In April 2014 she joined the Music Research Centre of Ueno Gakuen University for the study of music workshop facilitation. She translated and edited for Japanese readers “Beyond Talent-Creating a Successful Career in Music” by Angela M. Beeching. Born in Yokohama in 1960, she graduated the International Christian University, majoring in the Greek and Latin Literature.

Curatorial practice is a practical criticism. As an act bridging theory and practice, it entails observing and interpreting works of art as well as various forms of cultural and social phenomena in order to produce an exhibition. It is simultaneously the production of art history and knowledge; and the practice of creating an opportunity for viewers to produce new knowledge and sensibilities. In short, the job of a curator is to interpret and communicate artworks and to transpose artworks across different cultural contexts. It is also necessary for a curator to realize that misunderstandings which arise from the cross-context transposition of artworks are not always mistakes but can in fact, produce new interpretations. Exhibitions create a mutual relationship promoting growth in both the viewers and the art itself.

At the Graduate School of Global Arts, we will explore new art history, art theory, curation, and institutional theory with a focus on museums. Through the deconstruction of cultural norms that largely belong to the ‘western’ regime, we will analyze art movements that have taken place in Asia, South America and Africa since 1990. Through our curatorial practice, we will then produce new discourses and institutional models concerning these art movements. In order to grasp a general overview of this process, guest speakers will be invited from abroad, with three planned for the first year. These will be Professor Bruno Latour of Sciences Po Paris and Dr. Anselm Franke, Head of Visual Arts and Film at Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin. Professor Bruno Latour is a philosopher, anthropologist and sociologist of science, who has critically re-examined subject-oriented modernism, and Anselm Franke, a curator and art critic, will run a curatorial workshop that integrates research and curatorial practice.

In the second year, we plan to have guest lectures from specialists in non-western cultures. In addition, we intend to invite Asian and African art specialists, including artists, to give lectures at intervals throughout the year. The GA institute is situated in the center of Tokyo, with easy access to innumerable local and international exhibitions and projects featuring art, design and fashion. The institute is also blessed with an abundance of material with which to carry out research into the visual arts; both historical and contemporary. At GA, students will be able to have first-hand experience of every aspect of art’s production process, ranging from the production of traditional arts; such as performance, crafts and ceramics, to the latest production developments in design, architecture and media imaging.

The course will include a practical component involving the actual planning of an exhibition. This will start with research and discussion concerning a variety of exhibitions. It will be followed by the organizing of talks, the production of catalogues and other printed matter, and related preparation for an exhibition. In combination with instruction concerning research and management, the role of this graduate course is to produce a new discourse that originates from Asia; creating new audiences and cultivating the next generation of world-class curators, critics and art historians.

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HASEGAWA Yuko
Yuko Hasegawa is Artistic Director of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo (2016 – present) and Professor of Graduate School of Global Arts, Tokyo University of the Arts (2016 – present). She will be the Director of the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa (2021.4-). She is also Artistic Director of Inujima Art House Project (2011-present).

She has worked on numerous biennale projects, including: The 7th International Moscow Biennale: Clouds⇄Forests (Curator, 2017-2018), Unfamiliar Asia: The Second Beijing Photo Biennial (2015), The 11th Sharjah Art Biennial “Re Emerge – Toward a New Cultural Cartography” (Curator, 2013), The 29th São Paulo Biennial (Co-curator, 2010), The 12th Venice Architecture Biennale (Artistic Advisor, 2010), Venice Biennale 2003, 50th International Exhibition of Art, Japan Pavilion (2003), Shanghai Biennale 2002 (Co-curator, 2002-2003), and The 7th International Istanbul Biennial (Artistic Director, 2001).

What does the name of this Graduate School, “Global Arts” mean? You are invited to learn critical study and practice of arts that overcome the pain of globalization and the modernization driven by anthropocentrism.

The arts, along with politics, science, and religion, are the means by which we understand and engage with the world. In the sense that, unlike any of the others, it demands us to confront individually with pre-determined standards or values, it is also a means of resistance. It is an act of expression or appreciation, using sensory experience of what has not yet been seen, heard, or touched. It enables individuals to affirm, liberate, and emancipate themselves to feel differently from others.

The role of the curator has gradually come to be focused through critical theory since structuralism, which has led us to self-reflection on the function of art in society, including not only the artists and their works, but also the museums and collectors that surround them. At the same time, international exhibitions such as biennials and cross-cultural exchanges increased, and the expertise of curators, who were responsible for “translation” and “editing,” began to attract attention from the 1980s onward.

Later, in contrast to exhibition making and catalog editing based mainly on historical and aesthetics research, there was a growing emphasis on an empiricist approach that investigated a more organic relationship among the production process in art, the viewer, and society. In other words, not only learning about history or contemporaries and selecting what is of valuable, the workshops/lectures/performances/documentation/archives, etc., are used to critique existing knowledge through inquiries raised from personal experience. Social changes such as decolonization and new media technology have also been major factors in the emergence of the term “curatorial,” which refers to the incomplete act rather than producing a final outcome.

Traditional scholarship has viewed the empirical as personal and contingent, and has sought to explore a logic that transcends it. Emphasizing experience, on the other hand, means not constructing universal principles and criteria, but focusing on the interaction of different occurrences, believing in the plurality of values in the formation of intelligence and meaning. Curatorial is not scientific research, but a practice that refuses to represent, and tries to find reality in unknowable and dissent. Moreover, the aforementioned freedom is also understood in terms of the inter-dependence with others and environment, rather than considering the individual as an autonomous subject.

No matter how much our knowledge and technology evolve, the world will continue to be full of unknowns and uncertainties. I hope you will study and find a way to add another perspective on what is considered to be a single answer or correctness.
Sumitomo Lab. Website : http://sumitomo.geidai.ac.jp/

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SUMITOMO Fumihiko
Professor in Curatorial Studies; MA in Cultural Studies, Graduate School Arts and Science, University of Tokyo. BA in Art History, University of Tokyo. He was director of Arts Maebashi from 2013 to 2021. As a senior curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo (MOT), he curated the exhibition Tadashi Kawamata: Walkway (2008) and he also worked for NTT InterCommunication Center [ICC] in Tokyo, where he organized exhibitions, Art Meets Media: Adventure in Perception (2005) and Possible Futures: Japanese Postwar Art and Technology (2005). He was also a Co-Curator of the Aichi Triennale 2013 (Nagoya), Beautiful New World: Contemporary Visual Culture from Japan (“798” Dashanzi Art District and Guangdong Museum of Art, Beijing, 2007) and Media_City Seoul 2010, and was the Artistic Director of Festival for Arts and Social Technology Yokohama [CREAM] 2009 and curator for Beppu Art Project 2012. He co-edited the book, From Postwar to Postmodern, Art in Japan 1945-1989: Primary Documents (Museum of Modern Art, New York / Duke University Press, 2012).

Today, in the age of globalization, neoliberalism, the COVID-19 pandemic, and war, our idea of politics, economy, and society are being severely shaken. Under these circumstances, what is the role of the humanities, arts and culture?

Advances in media and technology have drastically changed our living environment, triggering a drastic shift in the way we perceive the world. As technology changes, so do our values. It can sometimes make us stop thinking.

I have been examining the issues surrounding the intersection of politics and art, with a focus on the media environment. In a society in transition, the methodology of the study of culture must also change.

From the micro-scale surrounding our daily lives to the macro-scale surrounding global politics, I would like to reexamine various issues in contemporary society, crossing diverse domains such as capitalism, race, gender, liberalism, violence theory, life sciences, and so on. Also, I would like to not only learn existing knowledge, but rather to ask new questions and rethink or unlearn the “common sense” we have taken for granted from a different angle.

In the name of democracy, it is assumed that everyone is equal, but this is not the case in our life. The French philosopher Jacques Rancière once wrote that “dissent” is a situation in which one interlocutor simultaneously understands and does not understand what the other is saying. Politics will begin when we crack the existing system, which seems to be stable, and by highlighting the fact of unequal distribution. In this sense, art is really political. The future always resides in the present. Let’s explore the complex issues of contemporary society, and we will open up a new path.

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SHIMIZU Tomoko
Associate Professor in media and cultural theory. BA in Comparative Culture, University of Tsukuba; MA in Sociology and Cultural Studies, University of Birmingham, UK; and PhD. in Literature, University of Tsukuba. She has served as an associate professor at the University of Yamanashi, and the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Tsukuba. She has also served as a visiting scholar at the Reischauer Institute of Japanese Studies, Harvard University, USA (Fulbright Fellow 2010-2011) and Free University of Berlin, Germany (2018-2019). She is the author of Bunka to Bouryoku (Culture and Violence: The Unravelling Union Jack) Getsuyosha 2013, and Dizuni to Doubutsu (Disney and Animals: Breaking the Spell of Magic Kingdom) Chikuma Shobo 2021. Her co-translation works include: Notes Toward a Performative Theory of Assembly by Judith Butler, The Psychic Life of Power: Theories in Subjectivization by Judith Butler, Declaration by Antonio Negri and Michael Hart, and Surveillance after September 11 by David Ryan.

In the Age of ‘Crisis’

As we enter the twenty-first century, we are witnessing a critical turning point in our history. Art and culture is no exception. New forms of art and culture are emerging rapidly in response to the processes of globalization, transformations in politics and the economy, and developments in technology.

We should not of course, be too optimistic. This new era could also be regarded as a period of ‘crisis.’ Neo-liberal globalization, the logic of late capitalism and radical developments in technology cannot guarantee us a better future. Art and culture, and the related fields of the humanities and the social sciences, are all facing a tough crisis. The term crisis does not, however, refer only to the deadlock point where everything collapses: rather, as Gramsci has suggested, it is a ‘critical’ moment in which current cultural, political and economical formations are being re-organized into a historical conjuncture.

Our new graduate school is seeking those able to think through new approaches in con-current art and cultural practices in order to overcome this crisis with “pessimism of the intellect, but optimism of the will.” In particular, we are seeking those who are actively engaged in the development of both art-cultural theory and practice across inter-disciplinary fields and with a trans-national perspective.

My main research topics are primarily the inter-relations between the arts, culture, society and politics; grounded in the fields of sociology, cultural studies and media studies. By specialising in ‘research’ you will have the opportunity to study, for instance; the connections between contemporary art and society, modernity and postmodernity and also the interconnections in contemporary culture, the creative industries, the transformation of the city, social movements and comparative cultural studies in Asia. You will also be able to explore topics related to your own research area within this programme.

As only a limited number of students can enter this course, we are able to create a flexible educational programme that can be aligned with each student’s research theme, and their regular lectures and seminars. We are greatly looking forward to working with those individuals who, together, are able to study, think and mobilize in order to produce new forms of art and culture in this age of ‘crisis’.

Mōri Lab. Website : http://mouri.geidai.ac.jp/

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MŌRI Yoshitaka
Professor in Sociology and Cultural Studies. BA in Economics, Kyoto University, MA in Media and Communications and Ph.D. in Sociology, Goldsmiths College, London. His research interests are postmodern culture, media, art, the city and transnationalism. His publications include: Street no Shiso (The Philosophy in the Streets) NHK Publications, 2009 (available in Japanese and in Korean) and “Culture=Politics: The Emergence of New Cultural Forms of Protest in the age of Freeter” in Inter-Asia Cultural Studies 6/1, 2005; “The Pitfall Facing the Cool Japan Project: The Transnational Development of the Anime Industry Under the Condition of Post-Fordism” in International Journal of Japanese Sociology, The Japan Sociological Society, Wiley-Blackwel 2011, No 20; “J-Pop Goes the World: A New Global Fandom in the Age of Digital Media” in Made in Japan: Studies in Popular Music, T. Mitsui (Ed), Routledge, 2014; “New Collectivism, Participation and Politics after the East Japan Great Earthquake”, World Art, Routledge/Taylor & Francis, 5/2, 2015 (all in English).
Yoshitaka Mori CV (researchmap): https://researchmap.jp/yoshitakamori/