Master’s Course Special Project Research:
Exhibition
AIR / POOL: To Stir Up the City

AIR / POOL: To Stir Up the City is a cityscape-based participatory exhibition curated by Lily SHU, a student majoring in Curation at our Department of Arts Studies and Curatorial Practices, Graduate School of Global Arts, Tokyo University of the Arts. Presented across venues around Nishi-koyama Station area on the Tokyu Meguro Line, the exhibition runs for three days from September 29 until October 1.

SHU has, for sometime since her undergraduate years, been creating photographic works from a unique perspective informed by her studies in existentialism and phenomenology, and her interest in issues of the subjective, and private and social construction. For her Master’s Course Special Project Research, the town of Nishi-koyama acts as a stage for her Project, an area of Tokyo in which she has lived for two years, and attempts to explore how personal perspectives permeate public space.

Through her curated exhibition, SHU aims to realize a Project, which is not constituted merely by a collection of works as “information” deemed to be swallowed into a one-dimensional and single-visioned context of “History as the Grand Narrative”, but one realized through collaborations among artists, curators and visitors, who together set up “conversations”, bringing their own personal and private viewpoints and individual stories to the exhibition.

Maps will be handed to visitors at the Reception Desk in Nishi-koyama Ekimae Hiroba (Nishi-koyama Station Square), which can be found just in front of the Station’s Exit. The curator hopes the map will form a record of each visitors movements and thoughts while actually walking and searching for artworks, a personalized map of his/her own journey through the exhibition.

Furthermore, SHU hopes that visitors will take pictures of what they evaluate as “artworks of this exhibition” and post the images to the exhibition’s special website. Through participating in a process of engagement with this exhibition, the curator anticipates situations, where “new routes” will be opened up inside the consciousness of participants, which will, in turn, re-draw representations of the town and the exhibition itself.

All welcome. Please visit, join us and take part.

 

Dates: Friday, September 29 – Sunday, October 1, 2017. Open everyday.
Opening Hours: 12:00-19:00
Venues: Nishi-koyama Station Square, Nishi-koyama Shopping Mall, Nishi-koyama Park etc.

Curator: Lily SHU［Master’s Course in Arts Studies and Curatorial Practices, Graduate School of Global Arts, Tokyo University of the Arts］
Organizer: LSK
Cooperators: Nishikoyama Shopping Street Promotion Association and Department of Arts Studies and Curatorial Practices, Graduate School of Global Arts, Tokyo University of the Arts
Exhibition Website: https://airpool-nishiko.jimdo.com/

 

 

Participating Artists:
Mirna BAMIE x Haruka HIRAYAMA, Bunpei KADO, Teippei KANEUJI, Hiroyuki KAWANO, Tomohiro KUBOTA, Yusuke MUROI, Lily SHU, Yumiko UTSU

 

Exhibition Program:
Nishi-koyama Station Square (Reception Desk)  *Please take a copy of Exhibition Map at the Reception Desk.
Lily SHU shows her new video installation work on the theme of personal memory in a totalitarian society, attempting to create new relationships with passengers walking through the Station Square.

Nishi-koyama Shopping Mall
In collaboration with the curator, Teippei KANEUJI shows his new graphic works that sculpt imaginative cities. Yumiko UTSU shows past and recent collage works based on her research of Nishi-koyama area. Her works ask the question of how the mundane can be reconstructed through the imaginative and fantastic. Yusuke MUROI approaches the area through its unconsciousness, by adding, removing and/or re-arranging things that define details of its city-scape. Bunpei KADO extends his interest in the relationship between cultural production and ecology of local areas and shows his installation work made of Souvenir Bears indigenous to Nishi-koyama.

Nishi-koyama Shopping Mall Radio Station
Mirna BAMIEH x Haruka HIRAYAMA shows their collaborative contemporary music piece, composed with recorded sounds that people from diverse backgrounds made while humming melodies, which they do habitually when they feel calm without noticing it. The work offers visitors the opportunity to listen to others’ “voices on their minds”.

Caffe Robbia
Hiroyuki KAWANO reflects on the relationship between energy of a community and emotion of an individual. He shows new works focusing on the idiosyncrasies in fabrics and pigments and the multi-layered structures on the Caffe window. His works possess both crafts’ beauty and sculptural strength.

Nishi-koyama Park
Tomohiro KUBOTA creates an installation work while conducting  performances involving labelling, naming and evaluating “values” of non-combustible garbage collected from the area and various places.

 

Photo: LILY SHU


©︎ Teppei Kaneuji


©︎ Yusuke Muroi

 

Related Events:
Opening Reception
Date: Friday, September 29, 2017
Time: 19:00-20:30 (Doors open at 18:30).
Venue: Nishi-koyama Station Square

Free Drink Serving Event
Date: Sunday, October 1, 2017
Time: 13:00 – (Limited to visitors’ number and supplies).
Venue: Nishi-koyama Park

Artists’ Talk
Date: Sunday, October 1, 2017
Time: 15:00-16:30
Venue: caffe robbia

 ＊All events are open to the public and no booking required.

 

Inquiry:
Department of the Arts Studies and Curatorial Practices,
Graduate School of Global Arts, Tokyo University of the Arts
Tel: +81-(0)70-2188-9301 (Lily SHU)
lilyshu.x@gmail.com