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Opportunities: Call for Entries for the 19th Japan Media Arts Festival

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Hedwig HEINSMAN / Niki SMIT / Simon van der LINDEN, 3RD, 2014. Interactive Installation. Image from the 18th Japan Media Arts Festival (Entertainment Division, Excellence Award) Courtesy the artists and Japan Media Arts Festival

CALL FOR ENTRIES:
19TH JAPAN MEDIA ARTS FESTIVAL

Deadline: 9 September 2015 (18:00 Japan Standard Time)

The Japan Media Arts Festival is a comprehensive festival of Media Arts (Media Geijutsu) that honors outstanding works from a diverse range of media – from animation and comics to media art and games. The festival gives awards in each of its four divisions: Art, Entertainment, Animation, and Manga. Since its inception in 1997, the festival has recognized significant works of high artistry and creativity, and in addition to a yearly Exhibition of Award-winning Works has held other events, such as symposiums, screenings, and showcases.

Entries are sought from professional, amateur, independent and commercial creators across the globe. Works completed or released between September 3, 2014 and September 9, 2015 are eligible for entry in the four divisions – Art, Entertainment, Animation and Manga.
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Opportunities: Open Call for the International Creator Residency Program 2015 at Tokyo Wonder Site, Tokyo

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Image courtesy of Tokyo Wonder Site, Tokyo. © TOKYO WONDER SITE

OPEN CALL FOR THE INTERNATIONAL CREATOR RESIDENCY PROGRAM 2015
at Tokyo Wonder Site

Deadline: 31 March 2015

Tokyo Wonder Site Residency program is the platform of creation and research for international creators in diverse fields of creation. Young emerging, middle standing, international leading
creators gather and explore their ideas in the heart of Tokyo, where global creative city with multi-layers of creativity from traditional culture to cutting edge technology. Tokyo Wonder Site Residency program has been organized by the partnership and collaboration with art centers and cultural institutions around the world since its establishment in 2006.

We intend to strengthen the network of creators from Asia. This open call program ‘International Creator Residency Program’ is for established and productive international creators in the field of Visual Art. We provide financial support to allow participants approximately three month work in residency culminating in a presentation and participating TWS art programs. Through this program, creators will expand their activities in Japan, and gain a jumping board to the international art scene. We are now calling for creators who can perform new creative activities during their programs at TWS Residency for three months.
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Summertime in Japan: Tokyo Art Marathon part 2

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Tomoko Yoneda, Kimusa 02, 2009. C-type print. Courtesy the artist and ShugoArts.

Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography is currently dedicating a perspicacious mid-career retrospective survey (through 23 September 2013) to London-based / Japanese-born Tomoko Yoneda. “We shall meet where there is no darkness” encloses over a decade of pictures within seven individual series as well as one video installation, all painstaking researching and documenting particular places and artifacts that bring back distant memories and preserve deep historical insight of Japan’s relations with its surrounding nations in the past century. Yoneda jointly organized the solo show “Rooms” at ShugoArts – the gallery in Kiyosumi-Shirakawa art complex which represents her – to gather more sets of congruent photographic works such as the “Topographical Analogies” series. (through 7 September 2013)
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Summertime in Japan : Tokyo Art Marathon part 1

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Yayoi Kusama, Love Is Calling, 2013. Installation view. Photo by M-KOS

Summer in Tokyo started off cooler than usual in the first few weeks of our stay, followed by heatwaves shining through the city streets, filled with polyphonic soundscapes of cicadas. Luckily most art spaces were still open despite the solstice mood, for M-KOS to present its Tokyo art marathon report:

Mori Art Museum celebrates its 10th anniversary with the exhibition entitled “All You Need Is LOVE” showcasing about 200 artworks such as modern masters Marc Shagall, Constantin Brancusi and Fridha Karlo, contemporary greats David Hockney, Yayoi Kusama and Jeff Koons, as well as younger generations Richard Billingham, Shilpa Gupta and Masashi Asada and “virtual” popstar Miku Hatsune. The exhibition was laid out over five sub-themed to include: What is Love?; A Couple in Love; Love is Losing; Family and Love; Love Beyond. (through 1 September 2013)
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Tomoko Yoneda “We shall meet in the place where there is no darkness” at Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography

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Tomoko Yoneda, Hiroshima Peace Day, from “Cumulus” series, 2011. C-type print. Courtesy the artist © Tomoko Yoneda

Tomoko Yoneda
We shall meet in the place where there is no darkness
20 July – 23 September 2013
at Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography

Yoneda Tomoko not only addresses subjects visible in reality but also projects the memories and history associated with places and things onto her work. As a result, through the act of looking at photographs, the viewer is challenged to question anew the essence of what is we actually are able to see.
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Opportunities: Open Call for the International Creator Residency Program 2013 at Tokyo Wonder Site in Aoyama, Tokyo

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Image courtesy the Tokyo Wonder Site, Tokyo

Open Call
International Creator Residency Program 2013
at Tokyo Wonder Site in Aoyama, Tokyo

Residency Period: From 7 January 2014 to 29 March 2014 (tentative)
Number of Applicants to be Accepted: 2

Deadline: 2 August 2013

Since its beginning in 2006, the Tokyo Wonder Site (TWS) residency program has strived to create a solid foundation for artist residencies and develop a new shape for residencies. Young emerging, middle standing and leading creators gather in Aoyama, Tokyo’s center of cultural transmission and create together. The various programs interweave, creating new dialogues and collaborations, making the residency program a place for new, experimental creation. Approximately 100 creators from all over the world are residing at TWS Aoyama: Creator-in-Residence every year and have opportunities to deepen creative exchanges with both international and local creators, and the citizens of Tokyo. Our residency programs culminate in results as varied as research projects on Tokyo to presentations.
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Art & Music – Search for New Synesthesia at Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo


Otomo Yoshihide Limited Ensembles, With “Without Records”, 2012. Installation view from Art & Music – Search for New Synesthesia, MOT, Japan. Courtey the artist and MOT. Photo by Norihiro Ueno

Art + Music – Search for New Synesthesia
Tokyo Art Meeting III
27 October 2012 – 3 February 2013
at Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo

Artists: Céleste Boursier-Mougenot, John Cage, Manon de Boer, Florian Hecker, Ryoji Ikeda, Wassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee, Udomsak Krisanamis, Carsten Nicolai, Keita Onishi, Seigen Ono + Ryuichi Sakamoto + Shiro Takatani, Otomo Yoshihide limited ensembles（Otomo Yoshihide, Yasutomo Aoyama, Sachiko M, Kanta Horio, Yuko Mohri), Christine Ödlund, Ryuichi Sakamoto + Shiro Takatani, The SINE WAVE ORCHESTRA, Toru Takemitsu, Michi Tanaka / Jiro Takamatsu, Bartholomäus Traubeck, Stephen Vitiello, Lyota Yagi. Curated by Yuko Hasegawa. General Adviser: Ryuichi Sakamoto

Music and the visual arts have shared a close relationship with each other over the course of their evolution. At the beginning of the twentieth century Wassily Kandinsky strove to create a form of comprehensive art that would arouse a variety of sensations, while Paul Klee attempted to create images through the accurate depiction of musical notation. Later, during the 1960s, John Cage and others produced experimental works that explored the rich sensual domain and widened the range of expression made possible through the crossover of the audio and the visual. [read the full article here]
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Art Marathon: Tokyo part 3

3331 Arts Chiyoda is a former junior high school transformed into a vast art complex, opened in 2010. The venue inhabits a number of art galleries, design offices, a wood workshop, artist studios, a library, a roof top organic garden as well as a café and restaurant. Although the space is owned by local government and there are many community based programs, it is actually run by a private association. M-KOS visited the featured show 3331 Independents Scholarship (7–29 January 2012) at the main gallery, an annual open submission where eight finalists were selected individually by seven different juries and audience voting.
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Art Marathon: Tokyo, part 2

For the second round of our Tokyo Art Marathon, M-KOS visited five of the eight contemporary art galleries that occupy the fifth to seventh floor of Maruhachi warehouse building in Kiyosumi-Shirakawa.

TOMIO KOYAMA GALLERY
Yoko Ono: Light (10 Dec 2011 – 28 Jan 2012)


© Yoko Ono. Courtesy Tomio Koyama Gallery

Unfortunately we are not able to publish photos of Yoko Ono’s installation due to strict copyright regulations. Yoko Ono showed two installations to bring light and hope for Japanese people in the wake of Great East Japan Earthquake. On the seventh floor, Tomio Koyama Gallery invited audiences to walk around Ono’s dimly lit space by handing out small torches to guide us through a labyrinth made of black mesh, circulating around a faint source of light glaring in the centre. For the sixth floor gallery space, Ono offered a performance on the opening night, writing Japanese characters on canvas walls, such as Imagine, Hope, Eternity, Dream and more. The middle of the same space was displayed several found objects from the house of Ono’s friend, destroyed to its foundations in Sendai by the earthquake.

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Art Marathon: Tokyo, part 1

Unlike most other Asian countries (Happy Lunar New Year of Dragon, BTW), Japan celebrates its new year on the first of January. For this occasion, three days of public holidays are followed by another long holiday weekend, celebrating the coming-of-age of 20 year olds. Many Japanese art galleries see a slow start to the year, as the country settles into holiday activities such as soaking in hot springs. Nevertheless, M-KOS still found a few good art galleries to visit in Tokyo, although this is not our usual long winded marathon. Here is a taster what we’ve seen (part one of three).

SCAI THE BATHHOUSE
Nobuko Tsuchiya: We Are Living In A Time Machine (18 Nov 2011 – 28 Jan 2012)


Situated in the neighbourhood of Yanaka where many traditional houses can recall a period townscape, the gallery SCAI THE BATHHOUSE refurbished what used to be a public bathhouse (Sento), and to this day kept the original facade. Courtesy SCAI THE BATHHOUSE. Photo by M-KOS

Exhibition view. 11th Dimension Project 1 (left) & 2 (right), 2011. Courtesy the artist and SCAI THE BATHHOUSE. Photo by M-KOS

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