Paper short abstract:

This paper looks at a new centrality given to artists/directors in the creation of community, in a process with newly delimited possibilities. At stake are the idea of an artistic act; the grounds of an artistic object; and the sense of community that might emerge out of this artistic process.

Paper long abstract:

The partnership of Yamaguchi Chikako as a video director for the dancer Kawaguchi Takao might seem counterintuitive: Yamaguchi is an director working with apparently political themes, on behalf of Okinawan island identities and communities, while Kawaguchi is a dancer embodying the more apolitical, placeless butoh dance of Ohno Kazuo. I take this pairing as in fact representative of a fairly fundamental shift in the role of art (and design) currently underway. On the one hand, community itself has not only become one of the ends or aims of art, but also itself an artistic object. On the other hand, in that process, the very ideas of both community and artist /director seem also to be fundamentally shifting, even as they gain new centrality. Starting with the pairing of Yamaguchi and Kawaguchi as an example, this paper looks both at the very specific modes and images of community that are now commonly taking shape, and the idea of an artistic designer or director that goes with these images of community. The claim is that these tendencies are systematic, and the outcome of current conditions especially in Japan and Asia, but also across the globe. The focus is on artists, designer/directors, and arts-based communities especially in Japan and China; in some cases, art direction blurs directly into the imagining of community. At stake are the idea of an artistic act; the grounds of an artistic object; and the sense of community that might (or might not) emerge out of this artistic process.