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Summertime in Japan: Echigo-Tsumari Satoyama Museum of Contemporary Art [KINARE]

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Elmgreen & Dragset, Powerless Structures, Fig 429, 2012. Courtesy Echigo-Tsumari Satoyama Museum of Contemporary Art [KINARE] Photo by M-KOS

For the summer season, M-KOS has taken temporary residence in Tokyo, Japan. During our stay, we will report on the local art scene whenever possible, not only for events going on in the capital but in different parts of the country as well. For starters, we have recently visited the Echigo-Tsumari region’s Satoyama Museum of Contemporary Art [KINARE] in the city of Tokamachi, about two hours north-west of Tokyo by bullet train.

Originally built as a cultural exchange centre in 2003, KINARE was recently refurbished as a museum, inaugurated in 2012 to mark the 5th edition of the Echigo-Tsumari Art Triennale, the most ambitious event by Echigo-Tsumari Art Field, a local cultural development project themed around the symbiosis of nature, humans and artistic practice. Continue reading “Summertime in Japan: Echigo-Tsumari Satoyama Museum of Contemporary Art [KINARE]”

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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]
Continue reading “Art & Music – Search for New Synesthesia at Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo”