{"id":5133,"date":"2020-08-21T11:05:34","date_gmt":"2020-08-21T02:05:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/realtokyo.co.jp\/_sys2024\/en\/?p=5133"},"modified":"2020-09-04T15:04:36","modified_gmt":"2020-09-04T06:04:36","slug":"hirosaki-museum-of-contemporary-art-an-invisible-site-and-time-specific-museum-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/realtokyo.co.jp\/en\/exhibition\/hirosaki-museum-of-contemporary-art-an-invisible-site-and-time-specific-museum-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Hirosaki Museum of Contemporary Art \u30fc An invisible, site – and time specific museum"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u00a9\ufe0eNaoya Hatakeyama<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Since the end of 2019 up to this day, the world has been facing the threat of COVID-19. We are dealing with a type of coronavirus that is so novel and complicated that even experts are greatly divided in terms of characteristics and methods of treatment. We are still in a situation where we don\u2019t have much clear information as to how to deal with it properly, making us aware of the menace that a virus we cannot see presents to us.<\/p>\n

In Yoshino-cho, Hirosaki, a place where apple orchards used to be in the Meiji and Taisho eras, Tosuke Fukushima, a businessman who had been studying the then-revolutionary pure yeast brewing method, erected a brick warehouse that was to be used as a sake brewery. He opted for a brick construction because he thought that the building would be solid enough to be useful to later generations in case he didn\u2019t succeed with his own business. The warehouse was equipped with a fermentation chamber and a brewing chamber. After the war, another entrepreneur named Isamu Yoshii brought the cidre brewing technique home from France, and established Asahi Cidre on the premises. After that, the business was taken over by Nikka Whisky, and the warehouse went on to serve as the distillery\u2019s Hirosaki plant until 1965.<\/p>\n

In 1988, civic activities calling for the use of the brick warehouse in Yoshino-cho for cultural purposes led to the foundation of a commission for the building\u2019s reuse. In 1991, an exhibition of Japanese contemporary prints (featuring about 60 works by the likes of Masuo Ikeda, Tadanori Yokoo, Lee Ufan, Jasper Johns and Shiko Munakata) was held as a PR event in the city.<\/p>\n

The city\u2019s own plan was to re-establish the Yoshino-cho neighborhood as a \u201cgreen belt,\u201d but the officials weren\u2019t able to achieve an agreement with the warehouse\u2019s owner, as a result of which\u00a0the plans for the brick warehouse were temporarily scrapped.<\/p>\n

In 2002, Yoshitomo Nara visited the warehouse on the proposal of Chiyoko Yoshii, the president of Yoshii Shuzo Co., Ltd. at the time, and that visit inspired him to\u00a0<\/span>show his works in celebrated large-scale solo and group exhibitions at this venue in 2002, 2005 and 2006. Nara used the proceeds from these exhibitions for the creation of a sculpture of a white dog,\u00a0to express his gratitude to the volunteer staff. He named his work<\/span> \u201cA to Z Memorial Dog\u201d and donated it to Hirosaki City. The \u201cdog\u201d is today guarding the entrance of the Hirosaki Museum of Contemporary Art. The museum would probably not have opened without the president of Yoshii Shuzo, Chiyoko Yoshii<\/span>, who initiated the three Yoshitomo Nara exhibitions in the first place.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

\u00a9\ufe0eNaoya Hatakeyama<\/p>\n

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NARA Yoshitomo, A to Z Memorial Dog<\/i>, 2007\u3000\u00a9\ufe0eYoshitomo Nara\u3000Photo: Naoya Hatakeyama\u3000Courtesy of Hirosaki Museum of Contemporary Art<\/p>\n

Based on the concepts of \u201csuccession of memory\u201d and \u201ccreation<\/span> of landscape,\u201d the museum\u2019s building was designed by Tsuyoshi Tane, an architect who won the international competition for the design of the Estonian National Museum. Proposing the idea of \u201cperpetuating\u201d \u2013 rather than newly constructing, extending or renovating \u2013 existing buildings, he connects the past to the future.<\/p>\n

The museum\u2019s main characteristic is defined by a combination of a \u201csite-specific\u201d approach to commissioning works in accordance with architectural and regional aspects, and a \u201ctime-specific\u201d viewpoint implementing different rhythms and timeframes to exhibitions of different works, each of which make maximum use of the spatial possibilities the warehouse offers. The opening is commemorated with the exhibition \u201cThank You Memory \u2013 From Cidre to Contemporary Art\u201d (until September 22). Due to the spread of COVID-19, the grand opening was postponed from April 11 to July 11.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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HAN Ishu, The thinker floats on the sea<\/i>, 2016 \u00a9\ufe0eIshu Han\u3000Photo: Naoya Hatakeyama\u3000Courtesy of Hirosaki Museum of Contemporary Art<\/p>\n

In addition to group exhibitions, one of the museum\u2019s unique activities is the \u201cHirosaki Exchange\u201d program. This is an experimental platform for various \u201cexchange\u201d between local and global, creator and viewer, in the form of talk sessions, lectures and other programs in which artists (partly related to Hirosaki)\u00a0<\/span>share the results on their investigations and research into the region\u2019s tradition and history. The first participant is Ishu Han, an artist who moved to Hirosaki from Shanghai in his early childhood. His solo exhibition, titled \u201cWhere my art was born,\u201d is being assembled over the period of several months during which the artist revisits his memories and feelings that connect him to Hirosaki. \u00a0The final results are scheduled to be unveiled in January 2021.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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YIN Xiuzhen, Portable City: Hirosaki<\/i>, 2020 \u00a9Yin Xiuzhen\u3000Photo: Naoya Hatakeyama\u3000Courtesy of Hirosaki Museum of Contemporary Art<\/p>\n

The diverse lineup of artists featured in the \u201cThank You Memory\u201d exhibition further includes Yin Xiuzhen, Jean-Michel Othoniel, Aki Sasamoto, Naoya Hatakeyama, Hikaru Fujii, Yoshitomo Nara and Navin Rawanchaikul. Rather than exhibiting works at the museum that they have created in their respective own ateliers, each of the artists visited Hirosaki several times in order to create something based on their interaction with the region, its history and its people; something that ultimately manifests the characteristic properties of the warehouse itself.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Navin RAWANCHAIKUL, A Letter to Inocchi<\/i>, 2020\u3000Photo: Naoya Hatakeyama\u3000Courtesy of Hirosaki Museum of Contemporary Art<\/p>\n

Rawanchaikul, for example, conducted interviews with over 30 citizens of Hirosaki. Based on these interviews, he created paintings and videos in which portraits are accumulated like road maps. Yin worked with one hundred old garments provided by citizens of Hirosaki, to build a series of \u201csuitcase towns.\u201d She used buttons to map the locations of various cities on one of the museum\u2019s walls, and threads to connect them to points on another wall, making the museum\u2019s walls look like giant pieces of clothing in a way. Hatakeyama and graphic designer Kazunari Hattori, who created the museum\u2019s logo, together present a set of posters that illustrate aspects of the warehouse\u2019s eventful history. Through the projection of memories of past moments into the present-day setting of the warehouse\u2019s walls, the time of one place is split up into multiple layers.<\/p>\n

The creation and exhibition of site-and time-specific artworks in a space that has its very own inherent history and memory, is certainly a unique and unusual approach. That style, however, is also somewhat dramatic and emotional. It undeniably draws from the exhibition space\u2019s pre-installed notion of exciting the visitor, rather than relying on pure art and forceful works conveying modernist views.<\/p>\n

Back when it was used as a rice wine distillery, and later as a facility for cidre brewing, the warehouse must have been filled with natural and artificial yeast that is used in the fermentation process, and it is exactly those fungi that represent the site – and time – specific qualities that are invisible to our eyes.\u00a0In this respect, the very fact that the opening of this museum was delayed due to an invisible virus is again a rather curious reality.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Translated by Andreas Stuhlmann<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u00a9\ufe0eNaoya Hatakeyama   Since the end of 2019 up to this day, the world has been facing the threat of COVID- […]","protected":false},"author":17,"featured_media":5134,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[73],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/realtokyo.co.jp\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5133"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/realtokyo.co.jp\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/realtokyo.co.jp\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/realtokyo.co.jp\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/17"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/realtokyo.co.jp\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5133"}],"version-history":[{"count":23,"href":"https:\/\/realtokyo.co.jp\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5133\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5199,"href":"https:\/\/realtokyo.co.jp\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5133\/revisions\/5199"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/realtokyo.co.jp\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5134"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/realtokyo.co.jp\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5133"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/realtokyo.co.jp\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5133"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/realtokyo.co.jp\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5133"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}