Paper short abstract:

Tracing the narrative of socio-ecological resilience constructed by a regional regeneration art project, my paper considers how leveraging cultural frameworks to imagine sustainable futures also imagines a selective past, and whether this practice ideates a collective identity in post-growth Japan.

Paper long abstract:

Dispersed over 200 hamlets in Niigata prefecture, Echigo-Tsumari Art Field (ETAF) represents an innovative network of cultural institutions that collaborate with local people to fill farmland, unused homes and closed schools with art and cultural activity. This is one example of a growing number of regional regeneration "art projects" in post-growth Japan, meant to foster sustainable community development in the face of depopulation and rural-to-urban migration, which increasingly jeopardizes the conservation of cultural and natural heritage in peripheral localities. Drawing selectively from this rural heritage, ETAF designates an entire 760m2 region as its "museum"—a realm in which to imagine and model a future when, once again, "human beings are part of nature". This paper contextualizes such institutional narrative through a museological perspective by first, demonstrating how ETAF ideates and enacts heritage towards the reification of regional identity; and second, considering how this practice relates to national narratives of socio-ecological resilience. Ultimately, this paper questions how, in the process of leveraging cultural frameworks to imagine ecological futures, the past is also imagined.

Embarking from ETAF's own institutional assertions—that "all of 'satoyama' [village mountain] is an art museum" and that "human beings are part of nature"—I employ a grounded theory approach in two key stages: an autoethnography and content analysis of interpretive materials gathered during participation in the 2018 Echigo-Tsumari Art Triennale. I demonstrate how ETAF enacts the lore of local climate and topography ("Snow Country"), encultured concepts of nature (satoyama), agricultural histories and prehistories (Jōmon archaeology) to weave a narrative of continued survival, becoming an expressive metaphor for overcoming contemporary socio-economic hardship in the region through cultural resources. Through this narrative, the art project becomes a normative medium for communicating and fostering pride in regional ecological identity. At the same time, this narrative imagines an idealized rural Japan: Drawing from the nostalgia of a selective past, ETAF infers characteristics of the region and its residents towards much hoped-for cultural continuity. I contextualize these findings within the museological literature—chiefly, the theory of "imagined communities" and "invented traditions"—to discuss historiographical precedent and the directionality of power in institutional reproductions of rural Japan.

Paper short abstract:

This paper points to the emergence of Japanese contemporary art festivals for regional revitalization. Based on anthropological research, it examines the engagement and perception among aged residents of rural regions where art festivals take place, and evaluates the social transformation behind.

Paper long abstract:

Comparing with other Asian countries, Japan has a relatively long history of organizing periodical international art exhibitions, with Tokyo Biennale (1952-1970) as its early example. While these early exhibitions represented significant moments in the history of Japanese avant-garde, in the 21st Century periodical exhibitions resurface in a new format and context. Pioneered by Echigo-Tsumari Art Triennale of Niigata Prefecture (since 2000) and followed by prominent followers such as Setouchi Triennale of Kagawa and Okayama Prefecture (since 2010), biennales/triennales have become innovative means for tackling social problems, especially in rural regions Facing rapidly aging and shrinking populations, municipal governments attempt to use contemporary art for regional revitalization: to bring media exposures, tourists, domestic migrants, and to forge new social relations with aged residents of these otherwise marginalized and neglected regions. Under the banner of "art festivals" (geijutsusai), biennales/triennales are no longer merely "exhibitions"; they have become social projects, involving much wider scopes of participants beyond the conventional art worlds. Based on my anthropological research on revitalization-oriented art festivals in rural Japan since 2017, this paper focuses on a particular group of participants: the local residents. How do these local residents, most of them elderly in the aging communities, engage in the processes? What do the art festivals mean to them? And how do they perceive the regional transformation brought by these festivals? By examining narratives from local residents, this papers evaluate the efficacy and problems of art festivals as social projects in the context of contemporary Japan.