<\/p>\n
For me, the Yebisu International Festival for Art & Alternative Visions 2024, themed \u201c30 Ways to Go to the Moon,\u201d began on February 1, 2024\u2014one day before the official opening date\u2014when I saw Tomoaki Ishihara\u2019s \u201cSaccade and Afterimage\u201d at MEM as part of the festival\u2019s Partnership Program. I was enraptured by the artist\u2019s \u201cEye Throw\u201d videos, captured by throwing a camera up in the air. The footage resembled that taken by a camera attached to a rocket. My eyes, separated from my body, were launched into space, perhaps to see the Moon. Did I manage to \u201cgo to the Moon\u201d at that moment? Memories of previous Yebisu International Festivals for Art & Alternative Visions (\u201cYebizo,\u201d as the festival is popularly known) came flooding back, and perhaps because I recalled the second edition, \u201cSearching Songs,\u201d Space Age Love Song<\/em>\u00a0*1<\/small> started echoing in my head.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Installation view, Tomoaki Ishihara, Eye Throw<\/i>, 2022, \u201cTomoaki Ishihara | Saccade and Afterimage\u201d, MEM, Yebisu International Festival for Art & Alternative Visions 2024 “30 Ways to Go to the Moon”\u3000Photo: Kazuo Fukunaga\u3000\u00a9Tomoaki Ishihara, courtesy of MEM<\/p>\n<\/div>\n <\/p>\n This was the 16th edition of Yebizo, and I was reminded yet again of the accomplishments of Keiko Okamura\u00a0*2<\/small>, who curated \u201cSeven Nights, Seven Lights\u201d (2008) and \u201cImagination: Vision, Perception and Beyond\u201d (2008), events that preceded the festival, before going on to establish Yebizo itself. Each edition of the festival, whether the inaugural \u201cAlternative Visions\u201d (2009); the second \u201cSearching Songs\u201d (2010); the third \u201cDaydream Believer!!\u201d (2011), themed on dream- and memory-like moving images; or the fourth \u201cHow Physical\u201d (2012), which focused on the physical and bodily side of the same medium, has been bursting with the exuberance brought about by engaging unabashedly with moving images. When Space Age Love Song<\/em>and \u201cDaydream Believer!!\u201d resonate, they evoke a Moonage Daydream<\/em>*3 <\/small>.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Installation view, 3F Exhibition gallery, KIM Insook, House to Home<\/em>, 2021<\/em>, Yebisu International Festival for Art & Alternative Visions 2024 “30 Ways to Go to the Moon” \u00a0Photo: Takaaki Arai<\/p>\n <\/p>\n On February 8, I attended a live interview with Kim Insook. Seated next to Hiroko Tasaka (head curator of the Yebisu International Festival for Art & Alternative Visions 2024 and curator at the Tokyo Photographic Art Museum) and Hikotaro Kanehira (co-curator), Kim suddenly stood up and started asking her fellow panelists questions while filming the exchange. As the conversation progressed, I found out that Kanehira was part of the team that had planned the event\u00a0*4<\/small>. Kim\u2019s Commission Project (CP) exhibition on the third floor comprised two works of moving images, one focused on the conservation of tradition and its fusion with new culture, the other questioning the category of \u201cfamily\u201d and encouraging reflection on community issues. The interview with Tasaka and Kanehira was to be added to the latter work.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n February 9, Performance view, 2F Exhibition Gallery, Akira Rachi, Fragments on \u201cshibboleth \/ schibboleth<\/i>,\u201d \u00a0<\/i>Yebisu International Festival for Art & Alternative Visions 2024 “30 Ways to Go to the Moon” \u00a0Photo: Takaaki Arai<\/p>\n <\/p>\n On February 9, I attended a reading performance by Akira Rachi. The light and sound of a projector, the words being projected, and the reading itself combined to fill the air with tension. I can\u2019t seem to shake the human voice resonating in a space for moving images, speaking the words, \u201cCarry this passage around with you as a poem.\u201d A stopped clock evoked a Shomei Tomatsu photograph, as Rachi said. I suppose that thinking about ways to \u201cgo to the Moon\u201d is a means of nullifying the earthly demarcations symbolized by the word \u201cdivision.\u201d It leads to the awareness that, like all human beings, I was born on this planet; I\u2019m On Earth<\/em>\u00a0*5<\/small>.<\/p>\n I was surprised to find that many events, including Kim and Rachi\u2019s, were held in the exhibition gallery on the second floor. This was made possible by the gallery\u2019s open space, undivided by temporary partitioning walls. I don\u2019t remember seeing another exhibition at the Tokyo Photographic Art Museum (TOP) held in a gallery without temporary walls, and the space felt incredibly fresh especially for Yebizo, an event usually associated with dark, enclosed spaces. Neither not having the speakers (performers) get up on a stage, nor the audience moving around freely throughout, seemed to hinder appreciation of what was going on. Exhibition visitors were viewing the exhibits, each at their own pace, even during events, while event attendees would from time to time look at the exhibits around them, too, or watch the rest of the audience. This distinctive atmosphere was a major feature of this year\u2019s Yebizo.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n February 3, Performance view, 2F Exhibition Gallery,\u00a0Evelyn Taocheng WANG, Layers of Vocalization, <\/i>Yebisu International Festival for Art & Alternative Visions 2024 “30 Ways to Go to the Moon” \u00a0Photo: Takaaki Arai<\/p>\n <\/p>\n February 11, Performance view, 2F\u00a0Exhibition Gallery, MOUNTAIN\/FULL EDITION, Yebisu International Festival for Art & Alternative Visions 2024 “30 Ways to Go to the Moon” \u00a0Photo: Takaaki Arai<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The exhibition in the second-floor gallery, described in the official guide as a \u201cspace for collective intelligence,\u201d included works from the TOP collection and was not limited to moving images (video) in the narrow sense of the word. The same space was also used for screenings and performances by the likes of Kohei Sekigawa, Evelyn Taocheng Wang, and Mountain\/Full Edition. Here, both footage of John Baldessari teaching the alphabet to plants and a sound installation of Marcel Broodthaers interviewing cats conveyed a sense of being present at events happening in that very moment. In this room, so full of \u201cliveness\u201d in a variety of forms, moving images appeared not merely as records or reproductions, but as events in real time and space.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Installtion view, \u201cThe World Beyond,\u201d AL\u3000Photo: Chie Sumiyoshi<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n On February 10, my awareness of \u201c30 Ways to Go to the Moon\u201d was enhanced by \u201cThe World Beyond\u201d at AL, another component of the Partnership Program. The strength of the works, the clear concept, and the brilliant curation all contributed. Makoto Ofune\u2019s work, which used pigments made from crushed Martian meteorites, shone in a dimension that transcended the senses of the physical world, while Tetsuro Kano\u2019s mobiles, inspired by the mechanical models used to illustrate the movement of planets, suggested a zero-gravity space. Mars and the other planets made me think of the festival\u2019s seventh edition, \u201cSee You on the Planet\u201d (2015), and V\u00e9nus<\/em>\u00a0*6<\/small> played in my head.<\/p>\n Taro Shinoda\u2019s project of viewing footage of the moon simultaneously in different places around the world relativizes our Earth-bound perspective. I applauded \u201cThe World Beyond,\u201d an astute expression of the \u201c30 Ways to Go to the Moon\u201d theme, to the tune of Tsuki no oto<\/em>*7 <\/small>. As per the lyrics of that song, the people who had fun return to the moon, while the forgotten people play the sound of the moon. Those people are in our memories, dreams, and photographs; in images, in other words. \u201cGoing to the Moon\u201d to meet them, then, is going \u201cinto images.\u201d Images, however, aren\u2019t places we can go to.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n February 12, Performance view, 2F Lobby, Ei Arakawa-Nash, Plush Subjectivity (Tokyo)<\/i>, Yebisu International Festival for Art & Alternative Visions 2024 “30 Ways to Go to the Moon” \u00a0Photo: Takaaki Arai<\/p>\n <\/p>\n It bears noting that the festival featured several ambitious screening programs again this year, including \u201cRecent Video Works from Taiwan,\u201d which I unfortunately didn\u2019t have the opportunity to see. The Yebizo program is in essence a comprehensive one, composed of screenings, exhibitions, various events, the Partnership Program, and more. Because of this, I\u2019m aware that it would be desirable for me to critique the festival as a totality. However, as the number of programs any one individual can attend is limited, every Yebizo brings with it some difficult choices as to what to prioritize during the event period. In writing this text, I have started from the premise that it is important to indicate the grounds of one\u2019s criticism, and while the specific exhibitions and events I refer to are the ones I attended in person, I have sought to present points that are not limited to those exhibitions and events but, in part through my experiences at past editions of Yebizo, apply to and elucidate the program as a whole.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n February 17, \u00a0Performance view, 2F Exhibition Gallery, Kohei Sekigawa, The Touch of Your Lips<\/em>, Yebisu International Festival for Art & Alternative Visions 2024 “30 Ways to Go to the Moon” \u00a0Photo: Takaaki Arai<\/p>\n <\/p>\n On February 16, I ran into an acquaintance in the exhibition gallery on the second floor, where Tasaka and Kanehira also appeared. Our water cooler conversation focused on the current edition of Yebizo, with words like \u201cpark\u201d and \u201cplaza\u201d being thrown out, and the gallery, the venue of our chat, was a space not unlike a park or plaza. This revealed the meaning of saying that \u201cgoing to the Moon\u201d is also about \u201cgoing into images.\u201d A park or plaza is a place you can go to; the moment I thought of that, inspiration struck: this is a \u201cvideo plaza\u201d (video hiroba<\/em>), isn\u2019t it? Whether my idea matches the intentions of the people behind Video Hiroba, a pioneering Japanese video art collective, is beside the point; those were the words I found most appropriate in the moment.<\/p>\n Fujiko Nakaya and Dara Birnbaum, who one might call classics; Pak Sheung Chuen, whose work with transparent light is fascinating; the brilliant editor Cory Arcangel; Jay Chung and Q Takeki Maeda with their exquisite presentation methods; David Hammons, whose photos and videos are accompanied by captivating sound; F\u00e9lix Gonz\u00e1lez-Torres, whose works can be taken home; Kaoru Arima, who incorporates performative elements into his work\u2014I couldn\u2019t name all the exhibiting artists here even if I tried, and the sight of the exhibition was truly one best described as a \u201cpark\u201d or \u201cplaza\u201d of moving images. One might even say that in this space, the images did not express something; rather, they constituted the world.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Installation view, B1F Exhibition Gallery, Fenberger House \/ Roger MCDONALD, Yebisu International Festival for Art & Alternative Visions 2024 “30 Ways to Go to the Moon” \u00a0Photo: Shu Nakagawa<\/p>\n <\/p>\n On February 17, I attended a lecture about the Fenberger House by Roger McDonald in the basement gallery. An \u201cexhibition within an exhibition,\u201d the Fenberger House embodies the idea of \u201cnested\u201d curation, and indeed the allure of Tasaka and Kanehira\u2019s curation lies in the way it suggests a nested, interchangeable structure, rather than a hierarchy. Seeing the work of Hilma af Klint, I was reminded of \u201cThe Spiritual in Art: Abstract Painting 1890-1985\u201d (Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 1986). Relatedly, the work of Ana Mendieta certainly deserves more recognition.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Installation view, B1F Exhibition Gallery, AOKI Ryoko + ITO Zon, The state one reaches by the age of 9, <\/em>2011\/2024,\u00a0Yebisu International Festival for Art & Alternative Visions 2024 “30 Ways to Go to the Moon” \u00a0Photo: Shu Nakagawa<\/p>\n <\/p>\n In the same basement space, I also ran into an impressive work by Ryoko Aoki and Zon Ito. Footage seemingly depicting drawings was projected onto materials such as stones and sponges, giving a real sense of the malleability of moving images. And then, finally, I arrived at the innermost room in the basement, dedicated to the work of Nobuko Tsuchiya. The theme of this year\u2019s Yebizo, \u201c30 Ways to Go to the Moon,\u201d was derived from the title of Tsuchiya\u2019s exhibition \u201c30 Ways To Go To The Moon\u201d (2018). As the bold naming suggests, this edition of Yebizo succeeded in its broad interpretation of moving images, starting with its reference to Tsuchiya\u2019s exhibition. For this reason, it allowed attendees to encounter a diverse range of moving images freed from the self-serving aspects of the medium.<\/p>\n The experience of walking through Tsuchiya\u2019s space resembled that of taking a stroll; an experience in which the everyday and the extraordinary exist side by side, and where there is purpose, but also a lack of purpose. \u201cGoing to the Moon\u201d is the same as \u201cgoing into images,\u201d as well as \u201cgoing on a stroll.\u201d The destination of this stroll, of course, is the Moon, and the background music can be none other than Osanpo<\/em>*8 <\/small>. Tsuchiya\u2019s works are imbued with another sensation, too: sleep. When I fall asleep, my memories wake up, detach from my body, and go on a stroll. My memories encounter someone else\u2019s on their stroll to the Moon, and we exchange memory images. So someone else\u2019s memories are lurking in the dreams I see. The Moon, as Tsuchiya\u2019s work shows us, is a place where memories go for a stroll.<\/p>\n There it becomes impossible to distinguish between dreams and reality. If your memory is all you can rely on, you won\u2019t be able to differentiate between real memories and dreams. Mundane reality disappears from memory, whereas intense dreams remain. If our dreams contain someone else\u2019s memories, and those memories are derived from real experiences, it\u2019s only natural that we cannot distinguish between dreams and real memories. My body, then, is a device that stores images we call memories. When I dream, my memories escape from that device and go for a stroll to the Moon, where they encounter someone else\u2019s and images of memories are exchanged. A collective unconscious forms when an image is shared with countless memories. The Moon is a device that stores memories of the collective unconscious, and a Yebizo that inspires such reflection is nice to have. I hear The Whole of the Moon<\/em>*9 <\/small> on a full moon\u2019s night.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Installation view, B1F Exhibition Gallery, Nobuko Tsuchiya, 30 Ways To Go To The Moon<\/em>, 2024,\u00a0Yebisu International Festival for Art & Alternative Visions 2024 “30 Ways to Go to the Moon” \u00a0Photo: Shu Nakagawa<\/p>\n <\/p>\n On March 22, the Commission Project came full circle for me with Kim Insook\u2019s exhibition. It now included the interview with Tasaka and Kanehira she shot on February 9. The two curators overseeing a vast array of programs were speaking on a monitor that was part of a single artist\u2019s work. But there was no sense of anyone attempting to overturn the power structure, and both Tasaka and Kanehira were speaking naturally. The transparency of this \u201cnested\u201d structure symbolizes the appeal of this year\u2019s Yebizo. Another CP participant, Yu Araki, was exhibiting a work shot in a small village in Iceland. This \u201cRoad Movie\u201d without movement expresses the journey from Chicago to Hollywood through the eating of hamburgers named after successive places along U.S. Route 66.<\/p>\n Exhibited alongside Araki and his friends\u2019 ordeal in moving-image form were photographs related to Route 66 (by Robert Frank, Ansel Adams, Kenji Kanesaka, and others) from the TOP collection. The photos inviting the viewer to Route 66 lent fuel to Araki\u2019s film, conjuring up a Moonlight Drive<\/em>*10 <\/small>. The CP ended with an archival exhibition featuring the work of the previous project\u2019s finalists (Rei Hayama, Hiroyuki Oki, Kim, and Araki). Kim and Araki had been awarded the previous Special Prize, which won them the right to exhibit here (the prize had originally been envisioned to be given to a single artist). However, the prize is intended only as a designation within the CP framework and does not indicate that one artist\u2019s work is superior to any other\u2019s. The works of Hayama and Oki from the previous edition, although somewhat different in orientation, were all highly original and ambitious pieces deserving of praise for the way they expand the possibilities of moving-image expression.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Installation view, Tomoaki Ishihara, Unstable Eyes,<\/i> 2024, \u201cTomoaki Ishihara | Saccade and Afterimage\u201d, MEM, Yebisu International Festival for Art & Alternative Visions 2024 “30 Ways to Go to the Moon”\u3000Photo: Kazuo Fukunaga\u3000\u00a9Tomoaki Ishihara, courtesy of MEM<\/p>\n <\/p>\n<\/div>\n On March 30\u2014a month and a half after the end of the official program and nearly a week after the closing of the CP exhibition\u2014Yebizo looped back for me as I attended the two solo exhibitions by Tomoaki Ishihara held at Kyoto City University of Arts. At a symposium that same day, Ishihara used the memorable phrase, \u201cImages are light; bodies are heavy.\u201d The argument this edition of Yebizo gave rise to\u2014that moving images, rather than expressing something, constitute the world\u2014can be used to invert this ingenious comment on moving images in general; thus, \u201cImages are heavy; bodies are light.\u201d Freed from their self-referentiality as a form of visual expression, moving images appear in a variety of forms. The physical arrangement of moving images makes them feel \u201cheavy,\u201d but when they are actually viewed, the tyranny of the visual gives way to multisensory perception. The result, paradoxically, is bodily \u201clightness.\u201d<\/p>\n I hear Space Age Love Song<\/em> again, this time accompanied by a philharmonic orchestra*11 <\/small>. Phil<\/em> means \u201clove,\u201d and with harmony, a festival of moving images transforms into love for moving images. If moving images don\u2019t express something, but constitute the world, a festival of moving images is a festival of the world, and loving the medium means loving the world. Loving moving images, loving the world. Moving images love, and so does the world. The reason I chose this track as my ultra-personal Yebizo theme song becomes clear. It\u2019s a love song\u2014for going to the Moon, going into images, going to a video plaza, strolling to the Moon, and strolling through images. Behind its glamorous and festive fa\u00e7ade, the Yebisu International Festival for Art & Alternative Visions 2024: 30 Ways to Go to the Moon quietly questioned the relationship between moving images, the world, and love.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Note<\/small><\/p>\n \u00a0*1 A Flock of Seagulls \u2013 Space Age Love Song<\/small><\/p>\n \u00a0*2 Keiko Okamura is a curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo. She established the Yebisu International Festival for Art & Alternative Visions in 2009 while working at the Tokyo Photographic Art Museum, and directed editions 1\u20135, 9, 11, and 13 of the festival.<\/small><\/p>\n \u00a0*3 David Bowie \u2013 Moonage Daydream<\/small><\/p>\n \u00a0*4 See \u201cEvent Overview\u201d in the Information section for details on the members of the planning team.<\/small><\/p>\n \u00a0*5 Miki Furukawa \u2013 I\u2019m On Earth<\/small><\/p>\n \u00a0*6 The Roosters \u2013 V\u00e9nus<\/small><\/p>\n \u00a0*7 Tenniscoats \u2013 Tsuki no oto<\/small><\/p>\n \u00a0*8 Halmens \u2013 Osanpo<\/small><\/p>\n \u00a0*9 The Waterboys \u2013 The Whole of the Moon<\/small><\/p>\n \u00a0*10 Blondie \u2013 Moonlight Drive<\/small><\/p>\n \u00a0*11 A Flock of Seagulls With the Prague Philharmonic Orchestra \u2013 Space Age Love Song<\/small><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Translated by Ilmari Saarinen<\/small><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Installation view, 2F Exhibition Gallery,\u00a0Yebisu International Festival for Art & Alternative Visions 202 […]","protected":false},"author":121,"featured_media":8850,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","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\/8798"}],"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\/121"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/realtokyo.co.jp\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8798"}],"version-history":[{"count":54,"href":"https:\/\/realtokyo.co.jp\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8798\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8878,"href":"https:\/\/realtokyo.co.jp\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8798\/revisions\/8878"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/realtokyo.co.jp\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8850"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/realtokyo.co.jp\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8798"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/realtokyo.co.jp\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8798"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/realtokyo.co.jp\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8798"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/realtokyo.co.jp\/_sys2024\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/ZKF_1620_72dpi-1-1024x683.jpg\")
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