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VisArt01


has 1 film 1
Japanese Art in the Ecological Predicament: Collaborations in the Age of Crisis 
Convenors:
Theresa Deichert (Heidelberg University)
Xiaofei Guo (The Courtauld Institute of Art)
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Section:
Visual Arts
Sessions:
Friday 27 August, -
Time zone: Europe/Brussels

Short Abstract:

In an effort to add to the growing field of ecocriticism and to provide visibility for artistic practices hitherto understudied, this panel combines diverse papers that consider collaboration(s) in Japanese art and visual media that engage with ecological crisis.

Long Abstract:

In Japan, a country plagued frequently by a multitude of reoccurring natural and ensuing man-made disasters, the force of nature is ever present. However, surprisingly the field of ecocriticism and ecologically conscious cultural research are mostly still nascent. While recently the edited volume Ecocriticism in Japan (Hisaaki Wake, Keijiro Suga and Yuki Masami 2018) took a foray into the field, Japanese contemporary art still remains largely understudied in the context of its ecological engagement.

With such contemporary art formats as art projects and regional art on the rise in Japan, the limelight has been mostly on socially engaged or collaborative art that is engaged in the practices of disaster aftercare and community revitalization. However, concurrently other collaborative practices taking on an event structure or/and going beyond the confinement of traditional white cube galleries and museum spaces have developed since the early 2000s. Visual art practitioners in Japan increasingly deploy variegated forms of working together as a critical gesture towards ecological crisis. Due to dynamics of censorship and an environment sometimes hostile to critical art practices, collaborative ecological art may have been little explored previously. In an effort to provide space and visibility for such up and coming artistic practices, this panel combines papers that consider collaboration(s) in art and visual media, including video game and socially engaged and activist artistic practices, in the context of ecological crisis. The diverse approaches respond to such questions and aspects as:

- What unique strategies and practices have Japanese artists developed and employed in the context of the countries' turbulent natural and ecological history?

- How does collaboration in Japanese art move beyond traditional art spaces and take place in unconventional territories, such as virtual space, rural environments or the streets?

- How does collaboration in Japanese art facilitate positive exchange/ change to tackle ecological crisis and its related problems?

- In which ways do Japanese contemporary artists consider non and more than-human actors within collaborative practices?

- How can contemporary ecological art in Japan be contextualized art historically?

Accepted papers:

Session 1 Friday 27 August, 2021, -