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AIT ARTIST TALK #75
"Indefinite ways of actual seeing"
by Charlott Markus from the Netherlands
Date: Tuesday, February 19, 2019
Time: 19:00 - 21:00 (18:30 Door open)
Venue: Daikanyama AIT Room
Support: Mondriaan Fonds
*All admissions with 1 drink / Booking required / Consecutive Japanese translation available


Left: Detail of front side of the work 'Partition #3 (Markus&I)', 2018
Right: Detail of backside of the work 'Partition #3 (Markus&I)', 2018


AIT is pleased to host the artist talk by our current artist in residence from the Netherlands, Charlott Markus, with the support of Mondriaan Fund. Markus is staying with us in Japan until April 4th.

A Sweden-born, Amsterdam-based artist, Charlott Markus started her artistic career by making various still-life photographs, pursuing the trajectories of the remnants that our society left behind. Yet her recent artwork still traces two-dimensional components but over time, her practice enhances spatial configurations to construct installations with more stories to tell beyond still-life photographs. It can be described as 'extended still-life', the artist explains where she explores possibility and its limit to create untold narratives and meanings. Her research touches down on the hidden stories of found objects and how they are constructed and transformed. Markus for example, employs old and used fabrics such as curtains to bring us the experience in transcendence of time, while immersing our imagination through many objects and materials in her multi-layered installation.

To excavate "Unseen" and "Hidden" subjects in her artwork is great pleasure, when viewers are encouraged to walk from various directions to approach, even from behind. However, the props such as curtains and partitions are almost paradoxically seen in her installations, as the spatial structure with those props questions existent perspective and challenges our spontaneous action to see. Her artwork gently invites us to sense the emotional bounce between consciousness and unconsciousness, and suddenly such action through the artistic experience becomes emphasized.

At this talk, Markus will speak about her previous artworks, and the recent involvement in the research upon the Japanese textile (Boro). The event is part of the Yebisu International Festival for Art & Alternative Visions 2019, with the theme, The Art of Transposition that compositing an art exhibition, screenings, and symposia alongside. We look forward to welcoming you.
We hope that you can join us.

2019-1-31

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AIT SLIDE TALK #36
"Alternative Art Education for Social Changes in Japan and Hong Kong"
With Yoshiko Shimada and Asia Art Archive
Date: Wednesday, 25 July, 2018
Time: 19:00-21:00 (18:30 Door open)
Venue: Daikanyama AIT Room
Seats: 30 (Booking required)
Admission: 1000 JPY (general), 800 JPY (MAD students and AIT Base Members), Free (AIT House and Support Members) /All admissions with 1 drink
*Summarized translation available


Gendaishicho-sha Bigakkō, Nakanishi Natsuyuki's class (Photographed by Jun Morinaga, 1969)

AIT is pleased to host AIT SLIDE TALK #36 titled "Alternative Art Education for Social Changes in Japan and Hong Kong" on July 25th.
This public talk specially introduces Yoshiko Shimada, a Japanese contemporary artist, and we are also excited to be joined by Asia Art Archive (AAA), one of the non-profit organizations leading in Hong Kong and beyond that Shimada recently joined their residency program in this year.

Since 2010, Shimada has been continuously engaging her research on Gendaishicho-sha Bigakkō that was initially established in 1969 and continued until 1975 as an alternative art school in Tokyo during the aftermaths of the student movement by Gendaishicho-sha, the publishing company known for their radical criticism. The founder Kyoji Ishii envisioned the school as "A movement to change the world by changing the way the world is perceived." Nakanishi Natsuyuki, Akasegawa Genpei from Hi Red Center, and Nakamura Hiroshi, Kikuhata Mokuha from Kyushu-sha, and a forerunner of Japanese Conceptualism, Yutaka Matsuzawa taught at the school.
During her time in Asia Art Archive, she came across a similar form of alternative art school, "創建実験学院" which was established in 1967 riot aftermath and last one year from 1968.
Shimada shares her perspective, and ongoing research mainly focused on alternative art education and her most recent findings in Hong Kong, to bring up discussions with some fundamental principles of Bigakkō and how those artists formed them during that period, which may be still relevant today when we consider about alternative art education.

　　　　　創建実験学院 advertisement, Image Courtesy of the Ha Bik Chuen Family and Asia Art Archive

Susanna Chung, Head of Learning and Participation from Asia Art Archive will give a glimpse of the various programs they organize from digital archiving to the educational program that they have been engaging. She will share the recent dramatic development in the landscape surrounding arts and culture in Hong Kong with more new art institutions such as the recently opened Tai Kwun Contemporary, and M+, the new museum for visual culture in Hong Kong, anticipated to open soon, and how AAA responses to the changing cultural ecology through collecting, creating, and sharing of knowledge around recent art in Asia.


Photo(left): Teaching Labs | Urban Interventions Art in the City workshop by Ricky Yeung, 2016. Courtesy of Asia Art Archive
Photo(right): School visit at Asia Art Archive's project space, Ha Bik Chuen Archive, 2017. Courtesy of Asia Art Archive

This public talk will be a fruitful opportunity for anyone who is interested in art education over the times in the changing society. Through Shimada's presentation around Gendaishicho-sha Bigakkō with experimental pedagogy and how AAA is observing the current state with fast pace in Hong Kong, the discussion will be brought up how we stand on the history of alternative art education and its future in the changeable social landscape.
We encourage all to join us.

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On this particular occasion, AAA and AIT will also host a roundtable to discuss current changes in the social environment that both organizations are experiencing in Hong Kong and Japan, and how alternative art education would foster our community to grow within. The talk, "Alternative Art Education for Social Changes in Japan and Hong Kong" would be a fruitful opportunity for Japanese audience to reflect the history around the topic and its string extending to the current state in alternative art education we see today.
Over the decade, AIT organizes its educational program, MAD (Making Art Different) with a variety of topics around arts and culture in Japan and beyond. We are also overseeing the current state around alternative art education, especially when "Aternative Art School Fair" to introduce new and existing schools here at AIT this past spring. The series of discussions with Yoshiko Shimada and Asia Art Archive would bring us continuous exploration and examination to deepen our knowledge in alternative art education.

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2018-7- 9

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AIT ARTIST TALK #73
"Low Relief / Unreal Estate"
Artist Talk by Marina Višić and Ksenia Galiaeva from the Netherlands
Date: Tuesday, February 27, 2018
Time: 19:00 - 21:00 (18:30 Door open)
Venue: Daikanyama AIT Room
Support: Mondriaan Fonds, Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands
*All admissions with 1 drink / Booking required / Consecutive Japanese translation available


Marina Višić / (Left) Studio experimentation with compositions, 2017 / (Center) Bankside Sulphur, 2017, video loop / (Right) Stills from Oriel, 2017, detail of 3 channel video installation


Ksenia Galiaeva / (Left and Center) 'Mt Knee' / (Right) 'Cloudscreens'


AIT is very pleased to present the artist talk by Marina Višić and Ksenia Galiaeva, both based in the Netherlands. Višić is a current residency artist at AIT until April 7th in collaboration with the Mondriann Funds. Ksenia Galiaeva is also the artist who participated in the same residency program for 3 months back in 2012. These two artists will each share their stories with slides about the current and previous works and projects and welcome public audience to take a Q&A afterwards.

Through her artistic practices, Marina Višić investigates how a variety of textures and movements can be placed into the landscape of the moving image. Staging is important, as is the scale of the images and their relation to the body. Her research at AIT is based on a various references concerning Japanese aesthetics, for instance, from Junichiro Tanizaki's In Praise of Shadows and the films of Akira Kurosawa and Yasujiro Ozu. In her talk, Višić will give an introduction to her work, followed by the motivation of her research here in Japan.

In turn, Ksenia Galiaeva has been photographing her parents in the paradisiacal surroundings of their Russian summerhouse for 20 years. With her project, 'Unreal Estate', Galiaeva explores the ways in which memory can be influenced and guided and which part of it plays in perception. Galiaeva describes her work as 'autobiographical fiction', a tool she uses to construct her own life story. Galiaeva considers self-dialogue through visual images the basis of all her work.

Even these two artists work in a various fields of mediums, both of their artistic practices examine and evoke our perception towards visual experiences through their works and projects.
At this public talk, Višić and Galiaeva will talk about their works and projects with slides to introduce further, and look into deeply how their residencies would reflect on their future career as well.
We hope that you can join us.

2018-2-12

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AIT ARTIST TALK #72
"History flows from all the presents"
Artist Talk by Hans Andersson from Sweden
Date: Tuesday, November 14, 2017
Time: 19:00-21:00 (18:30 Door open)
Venue: Daikanyama AIT Room
*All admissions with 1 drink / Booking required / Summarized Japanese translation available


Works by Hans Andersson, 2017, Courtesy of Galerie Forsblom, Photo by Angel Gil

AIT is pleased to host the artist talk by our current artist in residence from Sweden, Hans Andersson, with the support of Iaspis.

What if a work of art could induce in the viewer a certain calming state of mind?
This kind of question was predominant when art was made in the service of higher consciousness. We see it repeated in the religious art of all cultures, and yet it is a question that is somewhat difficult to confront since the dawning of modernism.
Hans Andersson creates dense and richly time-layered drawings, collages and objects which perhaps hold some sense of this 'timeless' quality of great religious art. Drawing on numerous experiences and sources, including early electro-acoustic music, Indian Tantric art, architecture and altered states of consciousness, Andersson's art asks us to surrender and give ourselves over to the complex but eternally intruiging intersecting of matter and time.
Andersson will bring examples of his art work to help expound his talk, and Roger McDonald from AIT will join him later in conversation, and provide some basic consecutive translation.
We hope that you can join us.

2017-11- 2

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AIT ARTIST TALK #71
"Tangled Thread over Southeast Asia"
Artist Talk by Piyarat Piyapongwiwat from Thailand
Date: Monday, October 23, 2017
Time: 19:00-21:00 (18:30 Door open)
Venue: Daikanyama AIT Room
*All admissions with 1 drink / Booking required / English only


Collaborative patchwork created by local home-based tailor, courtesy of the artist

AIT is pleased to host a talk by the current artist in residence from Thailand, Piyarat Piyapongwiwat.
For the past decades, Fast Fashion has brought a whirlwind of change in our world, economically and culturally. With the countries of Southeast Asia as well as China are the main producers in the industry that they satisfy our basic necessity, issues on the wage and the working/living environment of the workers have emerged along with the growth of the industry.

Over the last 5 months, Piyarat Piyapongwiwat has spent her days conducting detailed research over several countries in Southeast Asia such as Vietnam, Thaniland, Cambodia, Myanmar where she observed of workers carefully in garment factories in each country. She collected pieces of video footages including everyday lives of these workers, even with their own cameras on the mobile phones capturing their private scenes with the family members.


Left: Garment workers working in the factory in Phnom Penh, courtesy of the artist
Right: Worker dormitory near Phnom Penh Special Economic Zone (PPSEZ), courtesy of the artist

At this talk, Piyapongwiwat will share us what these collections of moments will narrate in today's globalizing community and will revolve around the issues on work environment, wage, and labor conditions in the Southeast Asia's garment industry, as the reverse side of globalism in our economic and cultural activities.

We hope that you can join us.

2017-10-11

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AIT ARTIST TALK #70
"FUTURE BODY TALK"
Artist Talk by Dutch artist Rory Pilgrim

Date: Friday, March 17, 2017
Time: 19:00-21:00 (18:30 Door open)
Venue: Daikanyama AIT Room
*All admissions with 1 drink / Booking required / Consecutive translation available


Top and bottom left: Sacred Repository N.3: THE OPEN SKY HD Film, 2016
Bottom right: Affection is the Best Protection Performance Land Art Live, Flevoland, NL 2015



AIT is pleased to host a talk by the current artist in residence from the Netherlands, Rory Pilgrim on Friday, March 17th. Rory Pilgrim is currently undertaking his residency in Japan from January to March in 2017 with AIT, with the support of The Mondriaan Fonds in the Netherlands.

Pilgrim will make a performative talk that will explore ideas of language, body and technology. In his work, Pilgrim is greatly inspired by the origins of Socially Engaged and Feminist art practice. At a time dominated by the proliferation of the Internet, Pilgrim's work has explored how people come together beyond the screen to voice themselves individually and collectively. Pilgrim composes music as a way to bring people together, enable action and create a collective experience.

Working with a variety of people in contexts including schools, churches, art fairs, public space and television, his work has focused on the need and failure of language to voice ourselves. The largest of his performance works included choreographing the re-opening of the Stedelijk Museum in which he collaborated with a group of teenagers to create an anthem and a series of speeches exploring how they as a generation would give a voice to the museum. From 2013-2016, Pilgrim created a film trilogy entitled 'Sacred Repositories' that focused on the need to find and reclaim words through intergenerational dialogue, as a means to explore how language can still have radical agency.

At the talk, Pilgrim will introduce examples of his work while interweaving a series of simple exercises that think about language and our relationship with the body. Pilgrim will also use these exercises to introduce his current research in Japan which will contribute towards his latest body of work entitled 'Erasure' that focuses on how the voice and body can be used as a site of action at a time of momentous global political change.

We hope that you can join us.

2017-2-28

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AIT ARTIST TALK #69
"Unknown Arts & Crafts"
Artist Talk by British artists, Eva Masterman and Jackson Sprague
followed by a discussion with Roger McDonald [AIT]
Date and Time: Friday, Feburary 17, 2017, 19:00-21:00 (18:30 Door open)
Venue: Daikanyama AIT Room

Left: Jackson Sprague, My hand on your eye, 2017, Plywood, acrylic, Coutesy of Breese Little
Right: Eva Masterman, Used, 2016, Ceramic, Steel, Kiln Props, trolley

Unknown Arts & Crafts: Eva Masterman & Jackson Sprague

AIT is very pleased to host two UK based artists in collaboration with Camden Arts Center. This collaboration has focused on the exchanges and dialogues between contemporary art practice and ceramics.
The wider issues which this residency explores are the ways in which art today is an expanded field incorporating many different fields and approaches. One of these has been a renewed interest in the field of craft, and its many implications concerning the hand-made, traditional materials such as clay and an array of historical references and figures which have usually been left out of art discourse.

The title of this talk indeed references two of these figures: the founder of the Japanese Mingei Movement Yanagi Soetsu and the title of his collected writings 'The Unknown Craftsman' (1972), which is also a fascinating point of dialogue between the English potter Bernard Leach and Japanese ideas about art and craft, and the Arts and Crafts Movement of John Ruskin and William Morris in the UK.
This unique historical dialogue is one of the reasons we wanted to create a collaborative residency with Camden focused on the arts and crafts dialogue today.

The two artists will each present a thirty minute slideshow about their works, followed by a discussion moderated by Roger McDonald from AIT about some of the wider issues surrounding art and craft, art and issues of use-value, domesticity, social function, the hand-made and ideas about presence and time, and the relevance of historical references.
These issues are also very much a part of the 2017 MAD curriculum and its Holistic perspective. Several lectures will focus on similar issues throughout 2017.

We hope that you can join us.

[Outline]
AIT ARTIST TALK #69
"Unknown Arts & Crafts"
- Artist Talk by British artists, Eva Masterman and Jackson Sprague
followed by a discussion with Roger McDonald [AIT]

Date and Time: 19:00-21:00, Friday, February 17, 2017 (18:30 Door open)
Venue: Daikanyama AIT Room
Capacity: 20 seats *Booking required
Admission: 1,000 yen (800 yen for MAD students, general students and AIT Base member / Free for AIT House and Support member) *All admission include 1 free drink.
Moderator: Roger McDonald [AIT]
Translation: Satoshi Ikeda
Organized by Arts Initiative Tokyo
*Agency for Cultural Affairs Government of Japan in the fiscal 2016

[Booking] Please send an email with its subject line as "AIT ARTIST TALK #69" at otoiawase＠a-i-t.net, including your name, contact phone number and the category of your admission. (Please input @ in normal-width)

2017-2- 2

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AIT ARTIST TALK #68: "From the History of Battle to Reconciliation and Love"
Artist Talk by Chaw Ei Thein (Myanmay/Burma) and Krishnapriya Tharmakrishna (Sri Lanka)
Date and Time: Wednesday, July 13 2016, 19:00-21:00


Arts Initiative Tokyo [AIT] is pleased to present AIT ARTIST TALK #68 by two women artists Chaw Ei Thien (Myanmar/Burma) and Krishnapriya Tharmakrishnar (Sri Lanka) who are currently in Tokyo through the residency programme with the support of The Backers Foundation and AIT.

This artist talk is organised in conjunction with the exhibition, "Healing and Loving", which will be on view from July 9 to 23 at YAMAMOTO GENDAI.


Chaw Ei Thein (b. 1969)
（Image left: Chaw Ei Thein）
has been a prominent artist for many years working in Myanmar, also known as Burma, creating paintings, sculptures and provocative public performances which comment on the situation of women's experiences and a situation of brutal oppression and dictatorship. Since her residency to New York supported by Asian Cultural Council in 2009, Chaw Ei Thein is currently in exile and based in New York and was unable to return to her country until the recent democratic elections in Myanmar/Burma.

Krishnapriya Tharmakrishnar (b. 1987)
（Image: Impression 2-1, 2015, Nail drawing on tracing paper）
is an emerging artist lives and works in the northern Sri Lankan city of Jaffna, Sri Lanka, which experienced fierce fighting during the civil war from the early 1980s. The loss of family members and home forms a powerful ground for her works which largely take the form of paper based drawings and prints. Many dots and lines outline her individuality and identity from particular times of her life such as childhood, emphasizing an inner-heart empathy. "Healing and Loving" exhibition in Tokyo will be the first time showcasing her previous works in addition to the recent works she produces during this residency period.

Both Myanmar/Burma and Sri Lanka have brutal history of battles in the past and these two artists have experienced them directly in their youth. At this artist talk, their stories behind the works will be shared with us and tell how these women artists see their countries after all these years with dramatic changes in the political landscape and take them into their artistic practices.

We hope that you can join us for the artist talk and "Healing and Loving" exhibition at YAMAMOTO GENDAI.

2016-6-15

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AIT + ARCUS Minglius Night Part 8
"Hide and Go Seek- Uncovering history and borders"
Mini Talk by Artists from Indonesia, UK, South Africa, Sweden and Germany
Date: Friday November 27th, 2015
Time: 18:30-21:30, Mini Talks begin at 19:00
Venue: AIT room Daikanyama [MAP] *Free Entry / No booking required






We are pleased to host AIT + ARCUS Minglius Night Part 8 "Hide and Go Seek- Uncovering history and borders" on Friday, November 27. 5 resident artists/designers from AIT and ARCUS Project will give a talk about their works and their experiences in Japan. The talk will be translated consecutively into Japanese from English.
From ARCUS Project, the coordinators organizing the residency will also be present at the event.

As usual, there will be a bar, snacks, a relaxed sitting on the floor environment and music.
We look forward to seeing you!

*From November 14 to 22(excl.16), there will be an Open Studio event at ARCUS Studio!
For details, see HERE>>.

[ARCUS Project Artists in Residence]
-Timoteus Anggawan Kusno (Indonesia)
-Stephanie Bickford-Smith (U.K.)
-Eduardo Cachucho (South Africa)

To know more about them, visit the ARCUS Project website!

[AIT Artist in Residence]
-Menja Stevenson (Germany / Supported by Mercedes-Benz Japan Co., Ltd.)
-Fredrik Färg and Emma Marga Blanche (Sweden / Supported by IASPIS)

[OUTLINE]
Date: Friday, November 27, 2015
Time: 18:30-21:30, Mini Talks begin at 19:00
Venue: AIT room Daikanyama[MAP]
Organized by: Arts Initiative Tokyo [AIT]
Supported by: ARCUS Project, IASPIS, Mercedes-Benz Japan Co., Ltd.
Capacity：40 persons
Admission: Free *No booking required
*There will be simultaneous translation from English to Japanese for the mini talks
*Minglius is a non smoking event. Thanks you for your cooperation in advance!

2015-11-10

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AIT ARTIST TALK #67: "Today of Yesterday"
Talk and Film Screening by Rattana Vandy and Kanitha Tith from Cambodia
Date: Wednesday, July 15th 2015, 19:00 - 21:00


Top Left: Rattana Vandy, Looking In My Office 7, 2006 / Top Right: Rattana Vandy, Surface, France, 2011
Bottom Left: Kanitha Tith, Season of Cambodia, Transparent Studio at Bose Pacia, NYC photo courtesy: Pete Pin Bottom Right: Kanitha Tith, "Endlessly"(2011), Photo by Heng Ravuth


'History, memory, time.'
An evening talk and video screening with two emerging artists from Cambodia.

Arts Initiative Tokyo [AIT] is pleased to present AIT ARTIST TALK #67 on Wednesday, July 15. Commencing at 7pm, the talk and video screening will be led by Rattana Vandy and Kanitha Tith, two Cambodian artists who are currently in Tokyo with the support of The Backers Foundation and AIT.

The event has been organised in conjunction with Vandy and Tith's exhibition,The BAR Vol.8 "Today of Yesterday", which will open on Saturday, July 11 at YAMAMOTO GENDAI.

A self taught photographer with a background in journalism, Rattana Vandy (b. 1980) is an artist working predominately with photography and video. As one of Cambodia's up-and-coming artists, Vandy has had his work featured in recent exhibitions including "TIME of OTHERS" at Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Contemporary Art and "dOCUMENTA(13)", and was also shortlisted for this year's Hugo Boss Asia Art Award. In his most recent video work, "MONOLOGUE", Vandy speaks to those who lost their lives during the reign of the Khmer Rouge, addressing the time and pain that have since been removed from history. Through a translation project that has been reviving Khmer-language philosophy and technical texts lost through the bookburning policies of the Pol Pot era, Vandy has been reflecting on memory and history.

Kanitha Tith (b. 1987) is an artist who produces works across a range of media including sculpture, performance and installation. As an artist that questions the stereotypical roles assigned to women in Cambodia and the loss of history and place under the weight of power and capitalism, Tith's previous works include "Season of Cambodia" (2013), an installation comprising wire sculptures and women's underwear, and "Heavy Sand" (2012), a performance in which she wore a bathing suit and showered in a mix of water and sand. In 2010, Tith received an honourable mention at the inaugural You Khin Memorial Women's Art Prize, an award that recognises contributions to improving the rights and social status of women in Cambodia.

While celebrating strong economic growth in recent years, Cambodia is a country where much remains buried in history and time. Throughout the evening, the artists will use their talk and video screening as the basis for taking a broader look at their country's social circumstances, while also shedding light on the thinking behind their practice.
We hope that you can join us for this insightful and thought-provoking evening.


＊Also participating in The Backer's Foundation/AIT joint residency program is Marianna Dobkowska, a Polish curator who will arrive in Tokyo on July 7. Dobukousuka will also be presenting an evening talk on Wednesday, July 22. The event will be held in English only, with further information to be uploaded to the AIT website in the coming weeks.

2015-7- 2

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