IJIE-ROHOU Project（異解-路泡プロジェクト）：Japan-Taiwan Art and Culture Exchange Program In the Time of COVID-19

https://www.ijierohou.com/

 

About the IJIE-ROHOU Project

This is a project that was born out of an exchange program between the Graduate School of Global Arts, Tokyo University of the Arts and the Graduate School of Trans-disciplinary Arts, Taipei National University of the Arts. In the past, we have actually traveled to each other’s countries and had opportunities to experience respective art and history, but this year we have had several online meetings since September. In the process, we could have opportunities to talk directly with each other about the situations surrounding the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) and to think about globalization, which is accelerating the flow of people and information, and we have held several presentations and exchanges of opinions under the theme of “Museum without border.” After acknowledging various borders concerning nation, gender, and health, how can we think about them critically and overcome them? The fact that the subject matter we studied and thought about together was so directly related to our daily experiences must be a unique feature of this event, which is different from those in past years.

In recognition of the fact that we are currently both together and separated at the same time, the title was coined the phrase composed of two Kanjis (Chinese characters) from the English word “With-Out,” as both sides share a Kanji culture. The Taiwanese side came up with the word that means both “different” and “unraveled” at the same time, while the Japanese side came up with the word that denotes walking “road” (michi) being covered with “bubble”, and put them together to form the title of this project. On January 30, 2021, the students participating in this project will simultaneously start walking from their respective university campuses in the direction of the other. The actions of individuals will gradually become a group and walking from one place to another will create a story that connects different things. We will share with each other what we discover along the way, and occasionally stop to carry out performances or workshops. Although they cannot meet physically, this “IJIE-ROHOU” project is realized as an attempt to share the same time and learn about the differences in how we feels and our society.

※This project is conducted as part of the Arts Study Abroad Program (ASAP) of the Graduate School of Global Arts, Tokyo University of the Arts.

Program Director
Fumihiko SUMITOMO（Associate Professor, Graduate School of Global Arts）

 

About the Logo

Border is operating the differences.

Border is an invisible membrane, and there are two forces in both sides. If they want to resolve this border, they should try to make the connection of two forces and make disappearing or transforming the membrane. Under the serious differentiation of communities nowadays, we could find the borders between filtered bubbles. Therefore, the border represents the forms of each bubble, but also the traces of differences.

Border as membrane is an organic context with tension between two forces. And the crossing-border will be melting the membrane with tension and then transform the relationship in order to generate the new symbiosis. So we could say there’s closest relationship between borders and topographic experiences.

So the concept of logo design tried to focus on four characters as below:

“I” (異，different)

“Jie”（解，understanding/melting）

“Ro”（路，traces）

“Hou”（泡，filtered bubble）

 

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Overview of the projects conducted by graduate students of the Graduate School of Global Arts（GA）and the Graduate School of Trans-disciplinary Arts（TA）

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Project Name：On-Line
Project Members：Chi Fan Wang, Erika Kotabe（GA）｜Yan Ju Lin, Mei Yu Chang, Man Chun Chao（TA）

The On-Line project aims to create a borderless space by blurring geographical boundaries, allowing us to rethink the borders in our daily lives. The team members now resident in different countries, Japan and Taiwan. There are nation states, culture, languages and so on, different kind of borders among us.
In this project, the team will use Google Street View, a mix of similar street scenes from Japan and Taiwan, to present a space where we can’t easily tell where we are. In the film, the “border” is deliberately created by putting in the “warning line” which represents the limit and boundary, and the soundtrack is composed of the ambient sound collected from the team members in our daily life through software conversion. On the day of the event, January 30, participants will be invited to watch the video online at the same time, meanwhile to think about their own definition of “border”. During the walk-shop, participants are also invited to take a video or photos of their own definition of “border” and welcomed to upload their videos or photos to the project’s Instagram account to create a “borderless” space on the Internet where we can think about “borders”.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

©︎Yuto Hayashi

 

Project Name：Can I see You now?
Project Members：Riho Matsue（GA）, Yuto Hayashi（Guest Artist, Graduate School of Film and New Media, Tokyo University of the Arts）

This project uses an online game in which you try to meet people in a virtual space of Google Street View. It is played by a pair (one from each country) and the game starts simultaneously in Taipei and Tokyo. When the two players connect to the application using their computer, the voice chat system begins. Then, one of the players inputs a coordinate of a familiar place. Two players would appear somewhere close according to the coordinate, but separately. They will go on an adventure trying to meet the other by communicating what they can see through the voice chat. After the encounter, they would be able to stroll the city and visit the museum together in the virtual space of Taipei and Tokyo.

However, the discrepancies between the real space and the street view of the virtual space would sometimes make our encounter difficult. How much can we possibly share the path that one body knows and the other doesn’t? We will consider the possibilities and frustrations of online encounters.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

©︎Yang Fang

 

Project Name：The 404 Shrine
Project Members：Yang Fang（GA）, Ness Roque（Guest Artist, GA）

The 404 Shrine is indicating a nonexistent virtual shrine that doesn’t show itself to the audience or accept any visit by all means. The 404 Shrine is an individual research institute that works only one time per year to investigate people’s wishes in different countries, to sort out where the boundary of the human mind is in the turbulence of the anonymous internet data. The investigation work will be mainly using big data technology, which is becoming the new god of our life since the AI is interfering and directing our life in-depth.
Through collecting all the data of the new year(2021) wishes from different countries(written in English, Japanese, Chinese), and analyzing it to lead us to a result that can reflect our thoughts. Combining the result, we will conduct an experimental performance that consists of a conversation between a human(the artist) and an AI.

※Yang Fang（Big data analyze）, Ness Roque（Performance; sound installation）
https://nessaroque.postach.io/

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Project Name：Igokochi
Project Members：Yu Pang Wong, Jhen Ling Weng（TA） 

Beyond the cloud of Modern Capitalism shrouded in the East Asian, “dwelling” as an alternative symbol of “home” is still circulated among the Chinese language. For Japanese, “igokochi” seems to be the state of mind while someone is hanging around a place. Peter Sloterdijk, the contemporary German philosopher, claim that human being inevitably have their own boundaries and tend to shape the world as a “sphere”, ‘Being-in-the-World’ means ‘Being-in-the-Sphere’. This metaphysical infrastructure set for beings immune from external interference and nurture itself. Certainly, from ordinary languages, foreign words, to metaphysics are not completely equivalent, but at least it may be a calling for the awarenss to the state of beings.

In other word, we are asking why human are firmly rooted in a place? What kind of future will be formed by our past historical memories and present personal experience? This is a big question. However, if the self to the other, culture to nature, power to colonization, all of which are (non-)accidently constructed as an internal-space event, some vaguely visibility should be opened somehow. Believe that in-between silence, whisper still résonance.

Here is an invitation to re-imagination. Let us split into four narratives with “Folds” and “Crystal Palace”, and form an happening with(-out) sound. This is a journey back and forth. As a surveyor of the planet, you used to scale up and down other territories. Now you come back home and feel at ease, projecting yourself as an inhabitant with a special ratio……

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Project Name： Soundbody
Project Members：Keisuke Nakaya, Kawther Alzaid（GA）｜Juwon Park, Patrice Chou, Wei-Chung Pan（TA） 

The “Soundbody” is a project to explore non-verbal communication to overcome the border as a language.

In our daily lives, we rely mainly on visual information. When we communicate online, visual images like video chat also help us to communicate more smoothly. However, we wondered if this easy-to-understand visual information is sometimes robbing us of our imagination.

By focusing on the limited information of sound, exchanging recorded data, and listening carefully to each other’s sounds, we believe we can feel more deeply what is happening in distant places. Even if we are not in the same space, through the sounds emanating from each other’s bodies and the ambient sounds recorded together, we will be able to share the same space experience beyond the boundaries.

 

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Organized by Graduate School of Global Arts, Tokyo University of the Arts（GA）; Graduate School of Trans-disciplinary Arts, Taipei National University of the Arts（TA）
Supported by Tokyo Arts and Space Hongo, Yotsuya Mikakunin Studio
Program Directors：Fumihiko Sumitomo（GA）｜Chien Hung Huang （TA）
Program Managers：Erika Kotabe, Riho Matsue, Misuzu Sakai（GA）｜ Man-Chun Chao, Jhen-Ling Weng, Wei-Chung Pan（TA）
Program Coordinators：Wataru Shoji, Yamamoto Hiroki, Chun Ting Yang（GA）｜Wei Lun Chang（TA）