The 4th International Symposium for Media Art

Open Media
Culture:Collaborations, Networks, Exchange
Report [PDF ver.]Bob Edrian (Curator, Instrumenta / Writer)
Kim Seong-hee (Independent performing arts curator)
Hiroaki Umeda (Choreographer / Dancer / Visual artist)
Fumi Hirota (The Japan Foundation Asia Center)
Chikara Fujiwara (Critic / Artist / orangcosong)
May Adadol Ingawanij (Professor, University of Westminster)
Koichi Iwabuchi (Professor, Monash University)
Minoru Hatanaka (Chief Curator, NTT InterCommunication Center [ICC])

Organized by the Japan Foundation Asia Center and NTT InterCommunication Center [ICC](Nippon Telegraph and Telephone East Corporation)Preface

The Japan Foundation Asia Center and NTT InterCommunication Center [ICC] organized the 4thInternational Symposium for Media Art, “Open Media Culture: Collaborations, Networks,
Exchange,” in February 2020. Due to the coronavirus pandemic, the symposium was not held
before a public audience as usual but was instead streamed live on the ICC’s YouTube account.
This series of international symposia on media art have taken place on three previous
occasions with the aim of providing a forum for creating, disseminating, and networking art
and culture in the new media art and digital creativity fields. The first three iterations of theevent were organized jointly by the Japan Foundation Asia Center and Arts Council Tokyo,
widely showcasing historical shifts and international trends in the fields as well as the newprocesses by which culture is formed through digital technology. Presented by the JapanFoundation Asia Center in partnership with ICC, which has established itself as a hub for cultural expression at the intersection of art and technology, the fourth symposium took place inconjunction with the exhibition “Open Possibilities: There is not only one neat way to imagine
our futures,” held at ICC from January 11 to February 28, 2020.
Along with introducing new trends in the respective fields in Asia, this symposium aspired to reinterpret art and technology as another means for people to connect openly, and to
widely discuss the possibilities for culture and art in the next generation. The symposium’s guest
speakers were up-and-coming curators and artists working across national borders, and others
engaged in practices that can be described in various ways as “collaboration” or “cooperation.”
The guests gave presentations about examples of exchange through culture and art, and about
the mobility and networking that is evolving with globalization. Ending with a discussion repletewith insights based on the experiences of each speaker, the event proved an opportunity to explore the extent to which openness influences culture in Asia in current approaches amonginternational networks and platforms, and to seek out the potential for that openness. Since thesymposium was streamed online, it was also watched widely by viewers both in Japan and abroad.
In closing, we would like to express our sincere gratitude to the guest speakers and everyone who helped us organize symposium and ensured that it was held successfully in alive-streamed format.
The Japan Foundation Asia Center
NTT InterCommunication Center [ICC](Nippon Telegraph and Telephone East Corporation)
January 2021

［01］

The 4th International Symposium for Media Art

Open Media Culture:

Collaborations, Networks, Exchange

Possibilities for culture opened up by intersections of art and technology
Among art and technology trends in Asia, two tendencies have emerged: one that responds totechnological and artistic demands globally through forms of expression that integrate the latest technologies; another that incorporates technology into historical and cultural contexts ineach country to usher in new creative practices. While a prevalence exists across the region for“spectacle” that meets the desire for commercial or festive content, alternative scenes and new
platforms that do not depend on existing art systems are also emerging.
Through the latest examples of artistic practices utilizing technology as well as transnational collaborative and collective projects, this symposium reconsidered the nature of art andculture in our globalized and networked society, the challenges faced today, and the possibilities for the future.

Date & Time: Saturday, February 22, 2020, 12:30–5:30 p.m.
Venue: NTT InterCommunication Center [ICC] YouTube channel

With English–Japanese simultaneous interpretation
Organized by the Japan Foundation Asia Center and NTT InterCommunication Center [ICC](Nippon Telegraph and Telephone East Corporation)［02］

The 4th International Symposium for Media Art

Open Media Culture: Collaborations, Networks, Exchange
Report [PDF ver.]Contents

Preface ……… 0 1[Session 1]

Environments and Expression Made Possible by Media/Art
The Rise and Fall of the Media Art Festival in Indonesia ……… 0 5
Bob Edrian

Rethinking Technology: Arts as Critical Intervention ……… 1 0
Kim Seong-hee

Dance Performances as Forms of Visual Art ……… 1 5
Hiroaki Umeda[Session 2]

The Future of Collaboration and Networks
Opening Media Art in Asia ……… 2 0
Fumi Hirota

Performing Arts That Emerge from Asian Partnerships ……… 2 6
Chikara Fujiwara[Session 3]

Trans-Asian Approaches and Practices
Experimental Curatorial Practices Through Small-Scale Collaboration and Networks ……… 3 3
May Adadol Ingawanij

Trans-Asia and Media Arts: Collaboration as Method ……… 3 8
Koichi Iwabuchi[Final Session]

Rethinking the Relationship Between Technology and Culture
Discussion by the Moderator and Presenters ……… 4 5

Symposium Organizers ……… 4 9

Job titles are those at the time of the symposium. Some profiles have been updated.

Open Media Culture: Collaborations, Networks, Exchange［03］[Session 1]

Environments and Expression
Made Possible by Media/Art
Exploring new developments in media and the evolution of technology, this session
featured presentations from curators involved with shaping better environments
for artistic expression, and a dancer who has pursued an innovative practice.

The 4th International Symposium for Media Art

Open Media
Culture:Moderator

Speakers

Minoru Hatanaka

Bob Edrian

Chief Curator, NTT InterCommunication Center [ICC] [ Japan]

Curator, Instrumenta / Writer [Indonesia]

Collaborations, Networks, Exchange
Kim Seong-hee

Independent performing arts curator [South Korea]

Hiroaki Umeda

Choreographer / Dancer / Visual artist [Japan]

The Rise and Fall of the Media Art Festival
in Indonesia
Bob Edrian Curator, Instrumenta / Writer

Bob Edrian spoke about the rise and apparent“fall” of media art events in Indonesia throughhis experience as the curator of Instrumenta,
a government-funded international media
arts festival, from 2018 to 2019. The case of
Instrumenta reveals how the art world has
developed so far in Indonesia as well as thechallenges it faces in the immediate future.

# A Growing Media Arts Festival
Instrumenta is an annual international media arts festival held inJakarta at the National Gallery of Indonesia since 2018 (Figs. 1, 2).
Initiated and funded by the Ministry of Education and Culture
Republic of Indonesia, the event aims to further support andfacilitate media artists in exhibiting their works, meeting, interacting, and exchanging information. The festival hopes tobring greater appreciation and understanding among both theIndonesian and international public about the latest developments in media art.
The main idea of the festival is to present works of media
art within themes that are quite familiar for a general audience,
specifically in Indonesia. It is one of the reasons we prefer to
use the term “media arts,” instead of “media art,” as the term“art” carries a historical stigma tied to frameworks of exclusive
artistic approaches, networks, and understandings—that is,
the so-called art world. As our artistic director, Agung
Hujatnikajennong, said in the last curatorial text, “In each iteration, Instrumenta tries to map relations and the overlap
between media art practices—in layman’s terms, art that employs the use of ‘media technology’—with the dynamics ofcontemporary culture.”
Under the Ministry of Education and Culture of the
Republic of Indonesia, there is a General Directorate of Culturethat supervises the Directorate of Art. In this organizational
structure, we find the Subdirectorate of Media Art under the
Directorate of Art. It was formed to develop and organize
media art festivals and exhibitions both national—like Pekan
Seni Media (Media Art Week)—and international, such asOpen Media Culture: Collaborations, Networks, Exchange

Bob Edrian

Fig. 1 Instrumenta 2018: Sandbox.
Courtesy of the Ministry of Education
and Culture, Republic of Indonesia

Fig. 2 Instrumenta 2: Machine/Magic.
Courtesy of the Ministry of Education
and Culture, Republic of Indonesia［05］

Instrumenta. The National Gallery of Indonesia, located in Central Jakarta, became the main
venue for Instrumenta both in 2018 and 2019. In this way, the festival is located within a triangular relationship of the Ministry of Education and Culture, the Subdirectorate of Media Art,and the National Gallery.
I would like to take a closer look at how the Instrumenta was held in the National Gallery.
For the first edition of Instrumenta, in 2018, the festival was held in three different buildings in
the National Gallery: Buildings B, C, and D. Last year’s second edition, though, utilized only twobuildings. But this time, they are the main buildings of the National Gallery. This change showsthat the festival has gradually become more significant and important because the main building of National Gallery of Indonesia is intended to be the center of attention compared to theother buildings. This second edition of Instrumenta was attended by 12,811 visitors. It grew by atleast 60 percent from the first edition in 2018, which had 7,987 visitors. In other words, we got
almost 5,000 more visitors.

# Festival Themes: From the Open World to the Machinal and Magical World
The first edition of Instrumenta held in 2018 chose the term “sandbox” as the main theme, while
the latest Instrumenta (in 2019) came up with the theme “Machine/Magic.” Choosing a theme
like this is one of the main attractions and characteristics of our festival. I would like to compare
these two ideas: 2018’s sandbox and 2019’s machine/magic.
Instrumenta 2018 presented the idea of playfulness, combining the development of thegame industry and the interactive aspect of media art. The idea behind the sandbox metaphor
was to invite artists to explore the idea of an “open world,” because “sandbox” is actually a popular term in gaming industry. We developed it further into more speculative concepts about theworld in general. For the 2018 festival, we invited twenty-five artists—nineteen Indonesian artists and six international artists from Japan, Hong Kong, China, the United States, New Zealand,
and the Philippines. The festival then presented their work within a framework of “games.” Thischanged a lot with last year’s festival (Instrumenta: Machine/Magic), which pursued a theme
exploring how technology is perceived by different cultures, especially in Indonesia: where themachine—or we could say science and modern technology—sits side by side with the ritualistic
and magical. These two are almost intertwined in terms of everyday activities, where sciencecannot be detached from the idea of magic. The mechanical aspect of technology is sometimes
seen as a magical, metaphysical phenomenon.
The curatorial approach in the 2018 festival attempted to investigate media art practices
through the idea of play or games, which we see as universal paradigms and significant activities in arts, culture, and human life in general. Art has always been embedded within elementsof game at its core because it is made through humans’ creative processes. Art is strongly tied togames as an activity that comes with sensory and recreational effects.
With the 2019 festival, we explored science fiction as a concept and artistic phenomenon
for a discussion of art, science, and technology. Science fiction is a literary genre that we find in
novels, short stories, comics, games, films, and other forms of popular culture, characterized bynarratives that blend prophetic visions with scientific facts. As an imagination of science andtechnology in human life, science fiction is an alternative way to discuss the praxis of science,technology, and culture of societies at different points in time. In science fiction, the narrativesof the development of science and technology are often synthesized with fantastic, supernatural, and even magical things. The second Instrumenta wanted to question the various tensions
between the machinal and the magical.

# Commissioning New Works, Inspired by the Old
In addition to the works exhibited at the festival, we also had public lectures by the artists. In
2018, Ryota Kuwakubo was our special artist. His work The Tenth Sentiment was presented inOpen Media Culture: Collaborations, Networks, Exchange［06］Building B of the National Gallery of Indonesia(Fig. 3). For the most recent Instrumenta, we invited Melbourne-based Australian artist Stelarc(Fig. 4). Both Kuwakubo and Stelarc had to present
not only their artworks but also give lectures
about how they are developing their practices.
Besides these special presentations and lectures, we have commissioned works. The numberof commissions changes with each festival. The
first Instrumenta had about five or six commissioned pieces. For the second Instrumenta in 2019,
we had fewer commissions—just three or four.
I will now provide an overview of some ofthese commissions.
Dekomposisi Danarto #1 is a sound andspatial installation produced by a Jakarta-based
young collective called DIVISI62, in collaboration with Al Imran Karim and Evans Storn, aBandung-based instrument builder (Fig. 5). It was
inspired by the works of Danarto, a member of
the Gerakan Seni Rupa Baru Indonesia, orFig. 3 Ryota Kuwakubo, The Tenth Sentiment (2010).
Installation view at Instrumenta 2018: Sandbox.
Indonesian New Art Movement (especially in
Courtesy of Ardiles Klimarsen
1975–79). In 2019, Dwiky KA, a young artist basedin Surabaya and Yogyakarta, built a big spider
robot called X-SPIDER PUNX in front of the mainbuilding of the National Gallery. This work was
inspired by Djokolelono, a pioneer of science fiction in Indonesia who published his novels as
early as the 1960s. These two examples are
typical of the way we commission works for
Instrumenta, whereby we challenge the artist to
respond to historical works or figures related tothe themes we chose for the year’s festival.
Another commissioned artist in the 2018
Fig. 4 Omnibus of Stelarc’s performance works at
Instrumenta 2: Machine/Magic (2019).
festival was Zaini Alif, a game researcher fromCourtesy of Andang Iskandar, Humanika Artspace
Bandung. In collaboration with Hong Community,
which he founded in 2005, he tried to preserve
traditional games in Indonesia. Zaini produced
three commissioned works: Toekoe Oemar Spel
(The Game of Teuku Umar) (Fig. 6), Social Game
Bench (which were spread across the B, C, and D
buildings of the National Gallery), and Sondah (anIndonesian traditional game). Toekoe Oemar Spelis related to the era of colonization in Indonesia,
especially during the Dutch occupation.
Kusno Drajat and Rico Prasetyo are two
young artists from, respectively, Jakarta andFig. 5 DIVISI62, Al Imran Karim, Evans Storn, Dekomposisi
Danarto #1 (2018). Installation view at Instrumenta 2018:
Bogor who we also commissioned for the 2018
Sandbox. Courtesy of Ardiles Klimarsen
festival. They built a kind of claw machine entitled THē ‘märkit SHō, which audiences could
interact with and collect items or prizes from. The items or prizes available to collect were theartworks made by their peer artists.
Open Media Culture: Collaborations, Networks, Exchange［07］

In the 2019 festival, we commissioned acollaborative work by two young artists, theBandung-based Rega Rahman and Cilacap-based
Bandu Darmawan, titled Ciburial Project: Sudjana
Kerton (Fig. 7). It is a work inspired by a 1980s
Indonesian artist, Sudjana Kerton, who said that
he had been abducted by an alien—actually, hebelieves twice! Rega Rahman and Bandu
Darmawan were interested in this idea of how theartist got abducted and the work that they made islike a radar to find the missing Sudjana Kerton.
We also commissioned Rianti Gautama, a
Jakarta-based artist, who built a bridge out ofwood called Spacetime Architecture: Experiment#01. Why a bridge? It is intended to function likea portal between the real world and the spiritual
world. It is also a work that questioned the ideaof the dynamic/moving construction in architecture. This work was presented right in front of
the National Gallery of Indonesia.

Fig. 6 Zaini Alif and Hong Community, Toekoe Oemar Spel(2018). Installation view at Instrumenta 2018: Sandbox.
Courtesy of Ardiles Klimarsen

Fig. 7 Rega Rahman and Bandu Darmawan, Ciburial
Project: Sudjana Kerton (2019). Installation view at
Instrumenta 2: Machine/Magic. Courtesy of Andang
Iskandar, Humanika Artspace# Organizational Shifts

The internal organization of the festival haschanged in terms of the artistic team. In 2018, I
was joined by another curator and an artistic director. In 2019, we changed the shape of the teamto have three curators. We started off more compact and then the festival grew, but this alsoentailed further problems when it came to dealing with the larger scale of the festival. This
being Indonesia, we had to talk a lot with many different government departments. In the end,
we have heavily reorganized how we run things.
There have also been bureaucratic changes that have affected our festival. In 2019, in particular, the present president was reelected and this led to various changes in the ministries,
especially the Ministry of Education and Culture. It is basically why the festival will not be happening this year, 2020. In fact, it is proposed for the festival to morph from an annual event intoa biennale, so the next Instrumenta is likely going to be in 2021.

# The Development of Media Art in Indonesia
From the case of Instrumenta festival, I will now try to expand thediscussion to the broader topic of
how media art has developed inIndonesia. I will try to map this development, which is spread out
over at least four decades (Fig. 8).
In the 1990s, there was the
emergence of experimental art byindividuals and collectives. It wasalso during this time that people inIndonesia were introduced to theterm “installation art.” In the 1980s,
installation was often known asOpen Media Culture: Collaborations, Networks, Exchange

Fig. 8 The development of media art in Indonesia. Courtesy of Bob Edrian［08］

“experimental sculpture.” Even the notion of independent curators was still new in the 1990s. It
was the Jakarta Biennale XI in 1993, when Jim Supangkat—a curator, and also a member of theGerakan Seni Rupa Baru Indonesia—introduced terms like “postmodern,” “contemporary art,”“installation art,” and “independent curator.” From then, an international network started toappear through the 1990s, which is known, especially in the Indonesian art world, as the era ofinternationalism. In particular, good relationships were developed with Japan and Australia.
Moving into 2000s, we saw a rise of art collectives, artist-run spaces, and alternative
spaces. Newly emerged collectives included ruangrupa in Jakarta, House of Natural Fiber in
Yogyakarta, and Common Room in Bandung. There was also a phenomenon of individual artists
launching art spaces by themselves. Sunaryo, a well-known and established sculptor built the
Selasar Sunaryo Art Space in Bandung. There is also NuArt Sculpture Park, built by a 1970s sculptor, Nyoman Nuarta. Both are known for their openness to the idea of the recent and new
exploration of art.
The 2000s were also the time when the commercial galleries were appearing. It was related to the period (especially from 2005 until around 2010) of a second Indonesian art boom.
The first one happened in the late 1980s, known as the Indonesian painting boom. During thesecond Indonesian art boom, a lot of collectors from all over the world came to Indonesia tocollect as much art with an Indonesian name on it as they could. This period was also opening
up opportunities for collecting media artworks.
Since 2010, we have experienced a decade of increasing artist residencies and art fairs. Of
the latter, there was now Art Jakarta, Artjog, Art Unlimited, and Art Stage, held in at least three
big cities in Indonesia: Bandung, Jakarta, and Yogyakarta. These events led to more diversity
among audiences. This was also the period where the internet became ubiquitous in Indonesia
and boosted networking significantly.
More relevant to Instrumenta, the growth of video art, performance art, sound art, andintermedia art was also boosted by the emergence of media art or intermedia art studies in art
academies. Institutions like the Bandung Institute of Technology, which in 2007 opened up a
new specialized facility, the Intermedia Studio—at the time, the first intermedia studio inSoutheast Asia. Alongside this, media art festivals appeared like the OK. Video Festival, which
was initiated by ruangrupa, and Common Room’s Nu Substance Festival.
The 2010s saw heightened awareness of the ideas of multimedia art, intermedia, andmedia art. People started to explore the differences among multimedia, intermedia, and media
art. Finally, government, private sector, and international support for media art exhibitions andfestivals also emerged.
In this way, Instrumenta is the culmination of various trends in the Indonesia art scene
and the media art world in particular. We are now trying to reach the public more widely.
Recently, there is also a demand for media art as entertainment. Media art is treated similarly tointeractive art. But alongside this popularization of media art is a decline in government support for media art, which is where Instrumenta finds itself right now. It is my hope, then, that2020 and beyond can see us establish and refine an international media art network to take ourefforts to more exciting places in the future.

Bob Edrian｜Based in Bandung, Indonesia, Bob Edrian’s writing and curatorial research mainly focus on the development ofsound in the arts and media art. He has curated over thirty exhibitions in Indonesia, including “Intomedia” (Galeri Soemardja,2017) and the international media arts festival Instrumenta (National Gallery of Indonesia, 2018–19). He is a cofounder ofSalon, a platform for sound and music performance and discussion, and a director of Audial Plane, the Orange Cliff Records
division for sound art and experimental music. He currently teaches and tutors at Telkom University and the School of Businessand Management at Institut Teknologi Bandung.

Open Media Culture: Collaborations, Networks, Exchange［09］Rethinking Technology:
Arts as Critical Intervention
Kim Seong-hee Independent performing arts curator

A curator and producer from South Korea,
Kim Seong-hee shared examples of performance and art from both Europe and Asia.
These works present artists’ acute observations and perspectives on technology,
particularly in relation to society today. Suchastute and compelling endeavors indicate
ways that technology can be perceived
through the lens of art, without reducing
the results to the merely spectacular.
Kim Seong-hee# Technology-Based Art Directed Toward Critical Thinking
I am a curator and producer. I have been the artistic director of Festival Bo:m, the Asia Culture
Center in Gwangju, and the project director of performing arts at the National Museum ofModern and Contemporary Art, Korea. At the moment I am preparing for an art and technology
festival to be held in October 2020. I would like to share with you some of the questions that I am
dealing with in my work as the producer of a number of technologically oriented art projects.
Recently, the South Korean government has made it a policy to promote fifth-generation
communication technologies, including virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality. The Ministryof Culture, Sports and Tourism announced the allocation of 10 billion won (approximately $9
million), and created a special sector solely devoted to art and technology within Arts Council
Korea. This led to an increase in the number of technologically oriented projects. Cultural policy, however, tends to frame culture only from economic or industrial standpoints. Many
concrete projects accordingly focus on economic dimensions, using new technical tools to exhibit innovation as spectacle. I am personally very concerned that the disproportionate
concentration of public funding on technologically oriented practices might lead to the excessive fetishization of technologies at the expense of critical thinking.
On the other hand, I clearly sense directions in international contemporary arts withquite different attitudes and perspectives. Last year’s Kultursymposium in Weimar and thePolitics of Algorithms festival in Munich, for instance, both addressed and responded to thenecessity for in-depth understanding of what technologies mean in sociopolitical contexts. A
news article about these events described them as follows: “Each session proposes fundamental
questions on how artificial intelligence, robots, and other high-end technologies reshape daily
lives and offers political, sociological, or philosophical frameworks to deal with such questions.
We need more support and funding to facilitate philosophical discourses on technologies.”
Such a direction is evident in a number of concrete art projects. I would like to talk about examples of this mainly in the work of the Berlin-based digital art group doublelucky productions,led by Christiane Kühl and Chris Kondek.

Open Media Culture: Collaborations, Networks, Exchange［10］# doublelucky productions: Interrogating Technology Through Theater (or Onstage)
In its performance YOU ARE OUT
THERE (2017), the artist collective
examines our omnipresent selfportraits from the context of theever-growing power of industry
and institutions that can collectdigital data for their own commercial purposes (Fig. 1). Data that makeup individual identities including
Fig. 1 doublelucky productions, YOU ARE OUT THERE (2017).
birth certificates, driving licenses,
Courtesy of the artist
health cards, passports, visas, work
permits, and biometric photos canbe thus collected. YOU ARE OUT THERE questions how individual identities can be imagined,
controlled, and manipulated by reorganizing
identity cards.
The Hairs Of Your Head Are Numbered(2018) is another performance by doublelucky
productions (Fig. 2). By means of complex technologies reprogrammed for theater contexts, thepiece makes use of audience biodata to visualize
Fig. 2 doublelucky productions,the manipulation of personal data. The group
The Hairs Of Your Head Are Numbered (2018).
Photo: Kim Albrecht. Courtesy of the artist
demonstrates that we exist as data that are measurable, quantifiable, and controllable.
True You (we know how you feel) (2019) is alecture performance that questions the technological conditions upon which “truth” ismeasured (Fig. 3). Tracing the history of varying
means to determine truthfulness, including
Chinese rice tests and lie detectors, the piece interrogates how advanced technologies change
the very nature of what truth means.
Finally, though not by doublelucky proFig. 3 doublelucky productions, True You (we know how
ductions, I would like to bring up another
you feel) (2019). Courtesy of the artist
example, Uncanny Valley (2018) by Stefan Kaegi of
Rimini Protokoll (Fig. 4). Kaegi worked with
Thomas Melle, the author of the bestseller of thesame title, or rather an animatronic double ofMelle, to be exact. This humanoid takes the author’s place and engages in a dialogue thatdemystifies the conditions for what is considered “original.” Technology is used onstage toquestion how our preconceptions of representaFig. 4 Stefan Kaegi, Uncanny Valley (2018).
tion and identity are reshaped according to
Photo: Gabriela Neeb
technological changes.

Open Media Culture: Collaborations, Networks, Exchange［11］

# Virtual Station: A Discursive Art Platform Revolving Around Technology
I would now like to turn to the festival that I am
organizing this October, Virtual Station. It willtake place at Culture Station Seoul 284, an art
museum inside a building that was formerly thecentral railway station in Seoul.*
While the program of Virtual Station includes artworks that utilize robotics, virtual
reality, artificial intelligence, and holograms,
among other technologically advanced tools, it
attempts to construct discursive grounds uponwhich the philosophical, political, and sociological aspects of new technologies can be explored.
I also want to highlight that the majority of thepresented works are by Asian artists.
The Deserted is a performative VR projectby the world-renowned Taiwanese film director
Tsai Ming-liang, following on from his first VR
film, also called The Deserted, which was shownat the 74th Venice International Film Festival(Fig. 5). In the previous VR film, Tsai reimagined
what we know as the cinematic space by depicting a sense of isolation. What I found interestingin this project was the convergence of technology and supernaturality, which I would like to
see him develop further in his next projects.
Ho Tzu Nyen’s ongoing The Critical
Dictionary of Southeast Asia asks the question:
What is Southeast Asia? (Fig. 6) An existing collaborative online database, an “oracular montage
machine” where an algorithm selects and weaves
together a different set of sounds and images toform an “abecedary” of Southeast Asia, will be rendered as interactive 360-degree VR. Audiences canchoose to visit each alphabet as a virtual library.
Virtual Station will also feature several
South Korea artists. Kim Ji-sun’s Deep Present explores the idea of outsourcing as a central
concept of our time, and one that is fundamentally changing human cognition (Fig. 7). In Deep
Present, four types of artificial intelligence (AI)execute outsourced acts of thinking on behalf ofhumans. It ultimately questions how the division of labor is changing in the age of AI.
Seo Hyun-suk’s Motion Sickness/In a Maze isa site-specific, participatory performance utilizing a location-aware system to allow participants’physical navigation within a simulation of the actual space of the exhibition featuring distorted
physical laws of scale, distance, and time (Fig. 8).
Open Media Culture: Collaborations, Networks, Exchange

Fig. 5 Tsai Ming-liang, The Deserted (2017).
Courtesy of the artist

Fig. 6 Ho Tzu Nyen, R for Resonance from The Critical
Dictionary of Southeast Asia (2019). Photo: Haupt & Binder

Fig. 7 Kim Ji-sun, Deep Present (2017).
Photo: Euiseok Seong

Fig. 8 Seo Hyun-suk, Motion Sickness/In a Maze.
Courtesy of the artist［12］

Participants are “trained” to learn new ways tonavigate a simulated maze-like space. By deliberately breaking the synchronization of bodily
maneuvering and its representation in the VR, thepiece ultimately questions and unsettles the modernist conceptions of space, time, and mobility.
In her practice, Jeong Geumhyung has rearranged the boundaries between the flesh andFig. 9 Royce Ng, Sci-(no)-Fi (2020). Courtesy of the artist
plastic, control and voyeurism, imagination andreality. For Virtual Station, Jeong will engage
mechanistic props into the most intimate
spheres of the human body. Using large-scale
DIY robots that she has built and exhibited at
Kunsthalle Basel in Switzerland, Jeong will further explore the eroticism of technologicalanimism in the form of performance, using asystem of sensors that will interact with choreographed mechanical bodies.
In his new piece Sci-(no)-Fi, Royce Ng will
use a device that incorporates holograms to interFig. 10 Meiro Koizumi, Prometheus Bound (2019), Aichi
Triennale 2019. Photo: Shun Satorogate how China projects its own future society
through technological means (Fig. 9). It will be acontemplation on how the images of future are being realized in everyday life corresponding to
China’s new role as an international superpower. Technological means are again used artisticallyto re-examine the very currents of how technologies are utilized ideologically or politically.
I have also programmed a work by a Japanese artist in the festival. Through experimental
video and performance works that mingle reality with fiction, Meiro Koizumi explores the relationships between the state or collective and the individual, and between the body and emotions.
In 2018, I commissioned Koizumi to produce his very first VR piece, Sacrifice, dealing with theconcept of the other. For Virtual Station, I have invited him to present Prometheus Bound (2019),
which allows participants to experience vicariously what it is like to be fully paralyzed (Fig. 10).
By extending our bodily senses through VR, Koizumi tries to test the limits of empathy andimagine the physicality of the other. To Koizumi, VR is the ground for extending ethical questions concerning otherness.

# Art as a Means to Ponder and Question Technology
So far, I have tried to convey my own perspective in regard to facing the demands of high-end
technologies in the field of art. Needless to say, I am not suggesting that my attitude is the only
valid one. Rather, I am proposing that the rapid advancements of technology require various
forms of critical thinking. Creating sensory stimuli and spectacles is the role of commercial industries. The role of art, on the other hand, is perhaps to propose means to ponder and question
the ways different technologies reshape our lives and social relations.
Art does not have to offer answers, though. Each of us is responsible for our own way ofunderstanding and interpreting things. The mission of contemporary art is not to indulge illusionary representations of technologies like we might see at a magic show, but to prompt us toconfront how reality is changing and to spur critical thinking. Many artists, as I hope my examples have demonstrated, are already through their work advancing our understanding of theimplications of new technologies. What is needed now are more spaces to accommodate andsupport such artists.

Open Media Culture: Collaborations, Networks, Exchange［13］* Due to the coronavirus pandemic, this was postponed until the last week of February to the first week of March in 2021. It will takeplace at the Oil Tank Culture Park, a complex of cultural spaces that was formerly the oil depository in Seoul. Along with the change
in date, there are also some changes to the programming.

Kim Seong-hee ｜Kim Seong-hee is an independent performing arts curator based in South Korea. She is currently thefounder and artistic director of the Ob/Scene Festival. From 2017 to 2018, Kim served as Project Director of Performing Arts at
the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea. From 2013 to 2016, Kim served as the inaugural artistic
director of the Asian Arts Theatre at the Asian Culture Center. Kim was also the founder and artistic director of Festival Bo:m(2007–13), an international interdisciplinary arts festival, the artistic director of Station 2 at the Nam June Paik Art Center’sInaugural Festival (2008), and the organizer and director of the International Modern Dance Festival (Seoul, 2001–5).

Open Media Culture: Collaborations, Networks, Exchange［14］Dance Performances as Forms of Visual Art
Hiroaki Umeda Choreographer / Dancer / Visual artist

Hiroaki Umeda began his career as a dancer
and choreographer and has presented dance
performances in more than 160 cities allover the world. He also designs the sound,video, and lighting himself using a computer,traveling to each location with just one device in tow for his performances. In recent
years, he has deployed these skills to create
installations, presenting and performing
many of his works in the fields of technology
art and music. According to Umeda, technology has boosted his efficiency in creatingthese works, while also helping to expand
the concept of choreography.

Hiroaki Umeda# Developing a Practice Abroad with Just a Single Computer
I am active in the fields of choreography and dance, as well as visual art.
Originally, I studied photography at university, but I couldn’t really get into it or take very
good photos. I came to dance as I was searching for another art form to pursue. I’ve been dancing
since I was twenty years old. I wasn’t very good when I first started, but I also found out that
producing a work of dance was very expensive. This was about twenty years ago, but today computers are well within our reach, so I figured that it would be better to polish my computer skills
instead of spending money on labor costs. The idea was to create a setup where we could edit thesound, create music and videos, and control the lighting, all using computers.
Currently, I mostly perform outside of Japan. I have given performances in over 160 cities
in forty countries to date. My style consists mainly of solo dance pieces. I travel to the venues
and do the performances myself, and I have a system in place that allows me to get onboard, so
to speak, just by myself with my computer. It seems to me that this was fairly unusual at thetime, about fifteen years ago. As this system kept production costs quite low, I think it’s also fairto say that this made it relatively easy to get invited overseas. Today, I feel quite keenly thatkeeping costs down was important in terms of circulating my work.
I also have a keen interest in the visual arts. I try to incorporate elements of visual art into
my dance works. When producing works like these, it’s very important to get the design of thelighting and the quality of the images right, and I’ve also been recognized for these things. As aresult, I have had many opportunities to give dance performances in the fields of technology art
and digital music.
In addition to my solo dance output, I also choreograph works for several dancers, andsometimes I choreograph for dance companies not just in Japan, but those abroad as well. At thesame time, I have a style that is an extension of my dance works, and I produce video installations too.
As for my own dance works, rather than pieces where people are at the center, I place
Open Media Culture: Collaborations, Networks, Exchange［15］

lights, images, and music in my work by treating them as elements with the same value. In
dance, the human body tends to occupy the limelight, but I treat all these constituents as having
equal value. I consider the music, choreography, video design, and lighting design in my work
to be part of the choreography.
In my view, elements of visual art come through very strongly in dance. One day, I realized that you can’t really see the dance unless you design the lighting properly, and thatchoreographing a dance is pretty much equivalent to designing the lighting, so I became interested in how the eye functions and the psychology of vision. I try to incorporate these things
into the elements in my work.
I also have a dance method of my own. I wasn’t good at dancing, so I’ve built this method
up through discovering what movements I could perform with my own body.
I’ve been traveling abroad quite frequently, and one of the things that I pay attention to in
my work is how dance contains many different elements. From the extremely primitive to moresocietal elements, a wide range of things can end up inside a work of dance. If you deal withgender, for instance, it can become a very socially conscious piece. If you choose to show lines,
contours, and shapes of the body, then the emphasis will be on the primitive elements. As formyself, I create works that allow me to fall somewhere in between. I deliberately seek to create
pieces that can be appreciated without being bound by one’s cultural background.

# Works of Dance That Deploy Technology
The reason my work is performed in the context oftechnology art and digital music is because it has
a strong musical and, of course, visual characterto it. Let me give you some individual examples.
In 2011, I created a piece called Holistic
Strata in collaboration with the Yamaguchi
Center for Arts and Media [YCAM] (Fig. 1). They
had a great depth of knowledge and technicalcapability with regard to technology, and fully
understood what I wanted to do. I think I wasable to create a piece of work that went over andbeyond my own methods. The people at YCAM
taught me a lot regarding various things including sensor technology, and allowed me to
conduct many experiments. Their programmers
also helped me in terms of the visual design, andI think I was able to create a piece that connected
the dance with the visuals through technology.
This piece was created in 2011 and was
performed at such locations as a technology art
festival in France or in Spain and Montreal,
Canada, and is still frequently performed abroad.
It has also become a piece that is often performed
at music festivals. This work has allowed me tooperate a little bit beyond the field of dance.
In 2015, I created a piece called Intensional
Particle in France (Fig. 2). Performing Holistic Strataabroad has meant many people are aware of mystyle. This made it easier for me to convey a senseof the kind of work I wanted to create, and I consulted with people from overseas theaters andOpen Media Culture: Collaborations, Networks, Exchange

Fig. 1 Holistic Strata (2011). Photo: Ryuichi Maruo(Yamaguchi Center for Arts and Media [YCAM]).
Courtesy of Yamaguchi Center for Arts and Media [YCAM]

Fig. 2 Intensional Particle (2015). Photo: S20［16］

festivals so that they could collaborate with me on
the production. Intensional Particle is the result ofa collaboration with Stereolux, an event space in
Nantes, France, that specializes in technology,
and a center for technology art in Jeumont, a small
town in the French countryside. With Holistic
Strata, we were able to get people to acknowledge
the kind of work I was making, which subsequently made it easier for us to make proposals.
For Intensional Particle, I was able to obtainthe support of the staff at the YoshihikoNakamura Laboratory at the University of Tokyo,
who enabled me to capture the data of my own
muscle movements. They had a great sensor andmotion capture system, so I tried to make it sothat my dancing could be reflected in the video
imagery, creating a work where both the dancing
and the video playing behind it would be treatedFig. 3 Median (2018). Photo: S20
as similarly as possible. This work is also becoming more and more accepted in the fields ofdigital and technology art.
The next work is a dance piece called Median, which I created in 2018 (Fig. 3). It is a video
work with cell motifs that was produced by a programmer. I had a desire to choreograph things
like natural objects and cells, so I collaborated with the programmer by sharing my desire to
make these cells dance and had him write the program. In making this work, I wanted to put thehuman body and cell-like visuals and movements onstage, and incorporate things with a different scale from them into the piece. Median was another collaboration with Stereolux in France.
It can also be considered a piece of technology art. Last December (2019), we performed it at
MUTEK.JP, a digital music festival in Japan.

# Expanding the Concept of Choreography
If I had not had a computer, I probably would not have been making dance works, even though I
got interested in dance about twenty years ago. As I previously mentioned, I wanted to see choreography as something a bit more expansive than the act of only choreographing the humanbody. In thinking about how I could engage with things like lights and sound in terms of choreography, I think it was the computer that allowed me to do that.
First of all, it has been very gratifying to be able to expand the concept of choreography
within production. Having this technology has also made production more efficient. When I
create a dance piece, for example, I use music software, and I can input all the choreography,
music, and video scores into it, which makes me more efficient both when I’m producing andwhen I’m performing. I think technology has boosted my efficiency in producing these works.
At the same time, by converting the movements of the human body into sensor movements and expressing them through other media and materials, and making it possible tovisualize such movements from the human body, for example, I think we have made it possible
for choreography to go beyond the human body. In addition to boosting the efficiency of how
the work is produced, technology has also expanded the concept of choreography.
Likewise, technological advances have helped to expand the format and concept of what
constitutes a work of dance, something that is linked to my installations. I have presented video
works in France and visual installations as extensions of my dance works at the Tanz im August
dance festival in Berlin. My sense is that thanks to technology, we are seeing a thriving processof transformation in terms of how dance is being interpreted.
Open Media Culture: Collaborations, Networks, Exchange［17］

The installation I’m currently showing at
ICC (NTT InterCommunication Center [ICC]) is
also based on the idea of dance (Fig. 4). It’s an interactive system, where data from the audience’s
movements are reflected in the video based on
the center of gravity and force of the human
body, just like in dance. By so doing, I wanted tocreate an installation that mixes up my own
movements with those of the environment.
Fig. 4 kinesis #3 – dissolving field (2019).
To make the point again, dance is someInstallation view at “Open Space 2019: Alternative Views”
thing that basically takes its point of departure(2019–20, NTT InterCommunication Center [ICC]).
Photo: S20
from the body, while my practice has sought touse technology to expand the remit of somethingthat started with the body. The visual installation
I presented at the Tanz im August festival I mentioned earlier is one such example, and recently
there has been an increase in the number ofdome-shaped spaces, where I have been presenting images created through dance, converted
into a form that can be viewed in these domes(Fig. 5). In this way, we find that we no longer haveuse for the human body: only images have beFig. 5 Intensional Particle Dome Installation (2015).
Photo: S20
come able to traverse the entire world. While
there is something a bit sad about this situation,
I do think there will be more and more dance works that will become mediatized, such as
through virtual reality, and won’t require the human body to be present.
In fact, in Montreal, there is an institution called the Société des arts technologiques,
which is an art center that specializes in dome-shaped projections and focuses its efforts on technology. In May this year (2020), I will be presenting a dance piece there, with the involvement ofa dance festival in Montreal.* The way that dance is perceived and its various formats are becoming more diverse, and I have been performing and creating more prolifically in that context.
* This dance performance had been planned for May 2020 but was canceled due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Hiroaki Umeda ｜Since 2002, Hiroaki Umeda’s choreographed works have been staged at more than 160 cities in forty
countries, including at the Théâtre National de Chaillot in Paris. In addition to the choreography and dance in his performances,
he also creates the sound, video, and lighting design, the results of which have been presented as technology art and music.
In recent years, he has made installations with a special focus on physical sensations as well as standalone video works forsuch exhibitions as “AUDIO ARCHITECTURE” (21_21 DESIGN SIGHT, Tokyo, 2018), or video works based on his dance pieces andshown as dome projections at festivals around the world. His work was included in the exhibition “Open Space 2019:
Alternative Views” at NTT InterCommunication Center [ICC] (Tokyo, 2019–20).
http://hiroakiumeda.com

Open Media Culture: Collaborations, Networks, Exchange［18］[Session 2]

The Future ofCollaboration and Networks
In this session with a focus on cultural exchange between Japan and the rest of Asia,
an artist and a representative from an arts support organization gave reports
about their work staying, doing research, and holding events in various Asian countries.

The 4th International Symposium for Media Art

Open Media
Culture:Moderator

Speakers

Koichi Iwabuchi

Fumi Hirota

Professor, Monash University [ Japan / Australia]

The Japan Foundation Asia Center [ Japan]

Collaborations, Networks, Exchange
Chikara Fujiwara

Critic / Artist / orangcosong [ Japan]

Opening Media Art in Asia
Fumi Hirota The Japan Foundation Asia Center

At the Asia Center, which was established as a
specialized unit within the Japan Foundation,
Fumi Hirota has overseen the media art exchange initiative. While conducting researchand planning events specific to Asia, she noticed that there was an art style that differedfrom so-called Western art history, and a characteristic of Southeast Asia was that the
young artists in particular came to the fore.
She spoke about the events organized by theJapan Foundation Asia Center and the practices with which she was involved.

Fumi Hirota# The Japan Foundation Asia Center’s Media Art Exchange Initiative
Today, I would like to present a summary of the media art exchange initiative I have been working on at the Japan Foundation Asia Center for the last five years.
First, to give a brief introduction to the Asia Center, it was established in April 2014 as a
specialized unit within the Japan Foundation. Looking ahead to the 2020 Tokyo Olympic andParalympic Games, it aimed to promote exchange programs among the people of Asia in a wide
range of fields from music, cinema, performing arts, and sports to Japanese-language educationand scholarship. In this context, the media art exchange initiative was not intended to be simply
a series of media art exhibitions. Today, I would like to explain the reasons for this decision byintroducing the activities that we have undertaken across several projects.
The mission of the Japan Foundation Asia Center consists of concepts referred to as thefour Cs: “communicate,” “connect and share,” “collaborate,” and “create.” The concepts refer tocommunicating and understanding one another, to connecting and sharing knowledge and experiences, to collaborating in a wide range of disciplines, and to creating new culture. I believethat all of these apply to what has been advocated as the approaches based on information environments and creativity prevalent since the multimedia era.
In terms of projects implemented in Southeast Asia, I will first introduce the festival created collaboratively by the Asia Center and Indonesia Netaudio Festival in Yogyakarta, Indonesia,
in 2018 (Figs. 1, 2). Yogyakarta is a hub for collectives such as Lifepatch, and alternative activities
are very prolific, but media and art are here positioned as a means of engaging with society morepractically and critically, and which does not rely on the existing art systems, evaluation ofworks, or art criticism.
The festival originally does not have a type or category, but rather intersects various ones.
In terms of type, it is a mix of art, music, and education; in terms of category, it could be media art,
contemporary or modern, pop or experimental. The distinctive feature is that everything is mixed.
As the festival director, Wok The Rock, also said, these characteristics manifest themselves due toa basic premise of the values and spirit of sharing and commonality through media technology.
As we look at the situation in Southeast Asia, we see many examples of communityOpen Media Culture: Collaborations, Networks, Exchange［20］

building and social problem-solving not onlywith technology, but also with works of withmedia art that fully embody this spirit and withmedia technology–based workshops.
In this initiative, which is focused on
Southeast Asia, through these and other activities in the area, we considered media and art as ameans of cultural exchange, and aimed to implement the four Cs mentioned earlier. If we
Fig. 1 Performance by Barakatak at the music program ofcreate while sharing information and tools, andIndonesia Netaudio Festival 2018—Sharing Over Netizen
share abundance through that, or if we can take
Explosion (2019, Jogja National Museum). Photo: Ciptadi
Kusuma. Courtesy of Indonesia Netaudio Festival
advantage of the creative methods of our timewith media technology–based creativity forthings such as pursuing public value or forming
communities, we thought it might present new
cultural approaches.
The initiative consisted of projects organized across four programs to represent the stateof contemporary media culture and to respond to
new trends in artistic expression. They are exhibitions of media art, workshops, a music program
called Sounds in Culture, and conferences, such
Fig. 2 exonemo, I randomly love you / hate you (2018).
Installation view at “Internet of (No)Things”
as symposia like the one we have today. With(2018, Jogja National Museum). Photo: Swandi Ranadila.
these multiple developments, we aimed to sysCourtesy of Indonesian Netaudio Festival
tematically capture contemporary creativity inmedia culture. At the same time, an importantpart of this initiative was to find works that are “representations” of media culture in Asia, andfurthermore to establish an environment and a network that allows for creative expression.

# Collaborations with the Younger Generation in Southeast Asian Countries
I will look at where in the Asian region and to what extent programs have been implemented. Inorder to realize a project within the program, we first do preliminary research in Japan and thenactually go to the region to meet people and see what is happening in the culture, artistic expression, and scene at each place. It is a simple approach that specifically involves cramming
appointments into the schedule for the duration of the stay, interviewing many people evenwhile traveling with the ride-hailing app Grab, and taking notes of the kind of people we meet so
as not to forget. In the midst of this, it was apparent that the younger generation, who are oriented toward technology-based expression, were trying to create a new place for that. As such,
we came up with the idea of developing the program in partnership with them so that we could
create this “place” together.
Let’s take a step-by-step look at the actual projects.
First, in 2016, here at ICC (NTT InterCommunication Center [ICC]), we held a small exhibition with Lifepatch, “‘Media Conscious’ in Asia: Lifepatch Rumah and Halaman (Home andYard).” Since then, we have collaborated with communities and festivals from various regions tohold exhibitions in Manila, Tokyo, Indonesia, and Singapore. And this process is now being
concluded at ICC in the current exhibition, “Open Possibilities: There is not only one neat way
to imagine our futures.”
In Manila, for example, the Japan Foundation collaborated with the local festival WSK(pronounced “wasak”) to make sure the Japanese works were properly localized and not justbrought there. As a result, interaction and collaboration among artists and production teams
was fostered, and a lasting network could be built among participants.
Open Media Culture: Collaborations, Networks, Exchange［21］

Yamada Taro Project, which was developed
by Japanese artist Katsuki Nogami on the streetsof Manila, would not have been possible without
collaborating with a local festival (Fig. 3). It wasachieved through the partnership with WSK aswell as the Manila Biennale 2018, and was fortunate to attract a large number of participantsfrom the region. I was also worried about safety
and other issues, but in the end, police officers
accompanied us on the street and we were able tofinish it peacefully. In this way, by collaborating
Fig. 3 Katsuki Nogami, Yamada Taro Project (2014–)
at “INTERSTICES: Manifolds of the In-between”
with local festivals and with the support of vari(2017, WSK Festival 2017)ous art networks, I feel like I have taken on many
challenges in various places.
I will introduce the workshop program
next. We have conducted one-off workshops as
exhibition related events and intensive workshops in the style of camps that are run for abouta week. The camps are held twice, with participants selected from an open call for participation.
The first was organized with the Institute ofAdvanced Media Arts and Sciences [IAMAS] in
Gifu Prefecture, and the second was organizedwith a Tokyo-based team called BioClub.
Fig. 4 Workshop from BioCamp: Gardens as ‘Biotechnik’(2018, FabCafe MTRL). Photo: Aya Suzuki
BioCamp: Gardens as ‘Biotechnik’ washeld in 2018, led by a team of three directors consisting of two people from Bioclub and one person who was a member of Lifepatch fromIndonesia (Fig. 4). The theme was very intriguing and included two intentions. One of them,“Biotechnik” (biotechnology), or in other words, viewing biotechnology as a new way of life, wasdistinctive. The other was “gardens.” The term for “garden,” whether it is niwa in Japanese, garden in English-speaking countries, or halaman in Indonesia, has different characteristics andfunctions depending on the respective social and cultural context. By focusing on these characteristics and functions, we saw the garden as a platform to promote mutual understanding ofsociety and culture.
These workshops are what we call “two-way exchange,” and this is not by any means
made up of outbound communication, where a particular culture would show some sort of superiority, but rather achieved both exchange among participants and inbound communication,
rooted in the experience and abilities of the artists themselves. I think being together for a period of time also had quite an impact in terms of creating an ongoing network of artists.
Next is the music program. Although I say music, it was not experimental music performances or international touring performances, as is often the case with cultural projects, butrather collaborative production focused on electronic music. This is because of the worldwide
expansion of internet-based environments as a service as well as a creative source.
I will introduce the live music events we did in Ho Chi Minh City and Hanoi, Vietnam(Figs. 5, 6). This series of event was held as part of Bordering Practice. In this project, performanceswere held in Tokyo, Manila, Jakarta, Ho Chi Minh City, and Hanoi, with thirty-four artists participating from seven countries, and it eventually led to the challenge of artists collaborating
together to create video works in Imaginary Line. The development of the project title is alsointeresting. Under its initial name, Bordering Practice, artists who were making internet-based
works participated, and the concept was that they would deliberately draw “borders” between
one another, intentionally setting boundaries. This is packed with the significance of an approach to exchange unique to the next generation, whereby they deliberately connect and draw
Open Media Culture: Collaborations, Networks, Exchange［22］boundaries in order to know where their identity
lies, precisely because they are connected by networks. In contrast, for the final iteration of the
project, Imaginary Line, we added a perspective
turned toward the future, in which we tried to
draw a hypothetical line of thinking about how
we can be connected in the future. Maltine
Records head tomad, who was one of the directors of the project, came up with these concepts,
Fig. 5 “Cloud Room—Pop & Electronic Sounds in Asia”
which not only embodied contemporary cultural(2019, Lighthouse, Ho Chi Minh City).
exchange but also served as great motivators for
Photo: Jun Yokoyama
the participants.
In Imaginary Line, three artists and musicians from Japan, a video production teamfrom Vietnam and Indonesia, and a musician
from the Philippines collaborated on three video
works. One of them was for “Leap (feat. Mantra
Vutura & similarobjects)” by PARKGOLF, in which
not only the video but the music itself was alsocollaboratively produced in Jakarta, Indonesia.
This music was created while staying in Jakarta,
Fig. 6 “Call Back from Hanoi—Pop & Electronic Sounds
working with local performers of such instruin Asia” (2019, Japan Foundation Center for Cultural
Exchange in Vietnam, Hanoi). Photo: Jun Yokoyamaments as piano, flute, saxophone, and percussion.
In the video, directed by the Jakarta-based Double
Deer, the traditional dance of lengger, which is
performed by men dressed as women, is depictedin the form of a woman dressed in the male costume pattern lurik (Fig. 7). It incorporates topics
such as how dance and fashion have changed
with modernization, the history behind textiles
for those heading off to war, the former ban on
women dancing, and even current gender andLGBT issues. It was truly amazing to see thisgroup of young people in their twenties from different regions, actively joining forces to create asingle piece of work that ended up being as multifaceted and well-made as a film.
The project also provided an opportunity to work dynamically with Asia in mind,
Fig. 7 Music video for PARKGOLF, “Leap (feat. Mantra
Vutura & similarobjects).” Director: Reinhard Samuelespecially for the next generation of musicians
Maychaelson Gunawan (Double Deer)in the country facing the urgent challenge of how
to attract listeners now that music subscription
services are so widespread. I think the project provided a model for how the next generation ofJapanese artists can demonstrate their internationalism and communication skills.
Finally, I would like to explain about the symposia. Three have been held so far, andtoday’s symposium is the fourth. The first gave an overview of the history and status of art andtechnology in various regions, including Japan. The second introduced the situation in Asia,
including Japan, and Europe regarding production, education, and archiving with a focus on
media art. The third, held last year (2019), presented changes in creativity and distribution
methods since the internet, and how the next generation is navigating these. Though this will be
the last symposium, we are holding it because we want to give you an opportunity to think
about the potential that media culture and cultural exchange have for creativity, collaboration,
Open Media Culture: Collaborations, Networks, Exchange［23］and networking.
Since the symposia are held in Japan, we also aim to educate Japanese audiences about
the international situation. Each time, we compile a report in Japanese and English. All the presenters’ talks are put together and published in a printed format and as a PDF available online.
The PDF can be downloaded for free on the Japan Foundation website, so please check it out.

# Sustainability in Arts and Culture
In 2006, there was an exhibition in Ogaki, Gifu, exploring the theme of media art in Asia. This
was the Ogaki Biennale 2006. The following text, which explains the cultural uniqueness ofAsian media art, was written by Gunalan Nadarajan from Singapore, who was the co-director of
the event.
This oft-neglected disjunction between the rhetoric of globalized media and the specific ways in whichmedia technologies are actually being interpreted and exploited is most conspicuous in the media arts
developments of Asia.
The thrust towards new media arts in many of the Asian countries seem to be caught between
two parallel and related trends—a) the need to develop culturally specific and located ways of engaging with and incorporating the new information, communication, experiential, and biotechnologies;
and b) the need to respond to the global imperatives that drive these technologies and their related
artistic developments.1
What I felt through the media art exchange initiative was that the first thing we had to
do was to look at this “disjunction” and come up with a way to overcome it together. I think thatJapan, in particular, seems to have grown in response to these “global imperatives” because themedia art trends in Europe and the United States were introduced here from the 1990s, before
other places in Asia, both in terms of education and the development of art centers. This is why,
when you go to Southeast Asia, people often say, “Japan is a nation of technophilia.” Therefore,
when considering the structure and development of this initiative, it was a struggle to figure out
how these two directions could be balanced.
However, one thing that was consistent in this initiative was the focus on people’s connections since the emergence of the internet. We also placed the greatest importance on building
a team with people who represent the next generation of talent. As a result, I think it led to thespontaneous creation of many networks and collaborations. Personally, through this initiative I
learned how to view culture itself as something very dynamic, not as a social structure, hierarchy, or sector of cultural policy.
Finally, in response to this commentary, I would like to introduce the exhibition “Open
Possibilities,” which is currently on show. This exhibition has come from Singapore and is now
being held here at ICC with some changes and additions to the works on display. ICC’s Yasuko
Yubisui and Riar Rizaldi from Indonesia are co-curators.
The theme of the exhibition is based on the advice Rizaldi gave me when I invited him
to the third symposium. As he listened to the presentations of the Japanese speakers and talked
to people involved in art and culture in Japan, he said, “Why don’t you think about the open
possibilities again?” This is because, since 2010, Japan has been in a situation where regionalism
and cultural specificity in culture and art have been demanded in different contexts, such as in
the response to earthquake recovery and the Olympics. Given that arts and culture are now seen
as part of social structures and economic value under the 2017 amendments to the Basic Act on
the Promotion of Culture and the Arts, their role will continue to be multifaceted in the future.
Personally, I think there are infinite stakeholders in arts and culture, so I understandthat this direction, depending on your position concerning arts and culture, could be a goal or aform of publicity, or, depending on the person, it could be a challenge and a problem. There may
also be a distrust of the loss of freedom of expression since public interest is a precondition.
Open Media Culture: Collaborations, Networks, Exchange［24］

Furthermore, I feel that a certain sense of entrapment has been created by singling out arts andculture as an alternative solution to social issues or as an economic benefit. Here is an excerpt
from a text that Rizaldi wrote with Yubisui.
In this context, our vision of the future in Asia likewise need not only be a single, homogeneous one. It
is possible to have alternative futures. With these common tools and practices that are fostered bymedia technology, can we know each other and see these differences better than before? How do thesedifferences present alternative visions of the future? 2
The English exhibition title, “Open Possibilities,” deliberately uses the plural form. This
five-year initiative has certainly fostered collaboration and networking, and has achieved a certain degree of cultural exchange in that we have been able to get to know each other and take alook at ourselves critically. I think what I learned from them was the attitude of being open toothers, to look critically at society through art, and how to practice that through art and media.
This seems to have been the methodology employed by the next generation of Asian artists andcurators, who continue to take the initiative in thinking about open possibilities, and to put
these into practice.
In five years, the media art exchange initiative has implemented sixty-nine events, featuring a total 268 participating artists. Including the international teams on the production side,
the projects have involved about 500 people. In addition, through this initiative, we have been
consulted by production companies, agencies, publishers, and various artists, and I can sense
an intrinsic sustainability in this situation where various collaborations are still emerging in arhizomatic way.
1. Gunalan Nadarajan, “The Cultural Specificities of Asian Media Arts,” Ogaki Biennale 2006—Janken: The Power of Chance (catalogue),
Ogaki: Center for Media Culture, Institute of Advanced Media Arts and Sciences, 2007, p. 52.
2. Riar Rizaldi, Yasuko Yubisui, Open Possibilities: There is not only one neat way to imagine our futures (catalogue), Tokyo: The JapanFoundation Asia Center, NTT InterCommunication Center [ICC], 2020, p. 7.

Fumi Hirota ｜After completing graduate studies at the Institute of Advanced Media Arts and Sciences [IAMAS], Fumi Hirota
worked as a researcher for the Cultural Media Center at IAMAS. She joined the Yamaguchi Center for Arts and Media [YCAM]
in 2008, where she was involved with production and planning for new media art and other projects. From 2012, she was a
researcher in the Arts and Culture Division of the Cultural Affairs Department at the Agency for Cultural Affairs. She worked on
initiatives promoting media arts, including efforts to expand the reach of the Japan Media Arts Festival overseas and in regional
Japan. During this period, she also launched a project related to restoring and archiving media art. She left the Agency for
Cultural Affairs in 2015 to work at the Japan Foundation Asia Center, where she was involved with media art projects as part ofcultural exchange initiatives between Japan and Southeast Asia. She currently works at the Tokyo Metropolitan Foundation for
History and Culture and is also a part-time lecturer in the Urban Culture Design Department at Nishogakusha University.

Open Media Culture: Collaborations, Networks, Exchange［25］Performing Arts That Emerge
from Asian Partnerships
Chikara Fujiwara Critic / Artist / orangcosong

Chikara Fujiwara is a critic, artist, and dramaturg, working primarily with theatre-based
approaches. He is active internationally, creating and presenting his itinerant touring
project Engeki Quest in Yokohama, Kinosaki,
Manila, Düsseldorf, and other cities. As a reflection of this, he started the theatricalperformance IsLand Bar, which he reinterprets for each country he presents it in.
Fujiwara spoke about the significance of collaborating with artists from different countries
to create works and the relationships that are
built through this process.

Chikara Fujiwara# Who Should Ultimately Benefit
from the Financial Assistance and Grants for Artistic Activities?
As a performing arts critic and practitioner, I
have been working primarily in Asia, particularly
over the five-year period since 2015. Today, I
would like to give a short presentation drawing
on those experiences.
It was Performing Arts Meeting in
Yokohama (TPAM) in 2015 that first provided theimpetus for me to work in Asia. Theater producer
Takuo Miyanaga, who was one of the directors of
TPAM at the time, picked up my Engeki Quest (engeki meaning “theater”), which allowed me to get
to know a variety of producers from both Japanand abroad. Engeki Quest is a project where participants move freely around the city with an“Adventure Book” in hand. This book contains
instructions and a continuous story in which you
can “choose your own adventure” by turning to acertain numbered section if you want to go right,
Fig. 1 Engeki Quest and the Adventure Bookor another section if you want to go left, allowing
you to enter real urban spaces or the world of
your imagination (Fig. 1). It’s more of an ultra-analog book than a form of media art, though.
Engeki Quest has been staged in Yokohama, Kinosaki, Tokyo, Manila, Düsseldorf, Ansan inSouth Korea, Hong Kong, and Bangkok. Typically, I spend about two months in each location
doing the research up until the Adventure Book has been completed, in order to create a workthat is unique to that city. I also traveled to Taipei and Shanghai for IsLand Bar, a project that I will
Open Media Culture: Collaborations, Networks, Exchange［26］

introduce later, and to Busan, Shanghai, Yangon, and Yogyakarta for a project called Hitsudankai
by Minori Sumiyoshiyama, with whom I have formed a collective called orangcosong.
Although money is often an issue for these kinds of site-specific projects, we have received a great deal of financial support from the Japan Foundation Asia Center and branches of
the Japan Foundation in the respective local cities as well as grants from The Saison Foundationand the Agency for Cultural Affairs East Asian Cultural Exchange Envoy initiative. That is why I
have been constantly thinking about how and to whom I should pay it forward after having
gained the experiences that I have from these projects. I have also been thinking about building
tough and tenacious networks.
So the question is: Who ought to benefit from this paying it forward? Should it just be
Japanese people? I hold a Japanese passport and my first language is Japanese. Over the past few
years, however, I’ve met so many people, especially in Asia, eating, staying, and even crying andlaughing with them, that I’ve started to lose sight of my nationality. At the very least, I get thesense that my close friends think of me not as a “Japanese artist,” but just as “Chikara.” It’s very
dangerous for a Japanese person to represent “Japanese people” in general when abroad, andI’ve personally felt that there are certain limits to how much we can communicate about thehistorical past in Asia, for example, by representing “the Japanese.” As a single human being, I
would like to challenge myself to confront these historical ruptures and engage in a dialogue
with them. This may be difficult to do in the political arena, and it may sound like a rather
commonplace sentiment, but I do believe that there are things that can be done precisely
through the medium of art.
Bearing all this in mind, it seems to me completely unnecessary to limit myself toJapanese people in terms of paying it forward through my activities as an artist. Rather, what is
important is to have ideas that go beyond such a “national” framework. Personally, I have a desire to seek out a transnational way of life.

# The Importance of Continuous Relationships
I didn’t start out thinking this way,either. In fact, I was a rather “typical” Japanese before I first went to
the Philippines in 2015. When I
performed Engeki Quest at TPAM in
2015, I met the Manila-based artist
JK Anicoche and his right-handlieutenant, Sarah Salazar, who werelooking for a Japanese artist to inFig. 2 Visit to Manila in 2015vite to Karnabal Festival in Manila.
As I was walking around Yokohama
with Sarah, she told me, “My grandpa hates Japan because of the war, but I don’t.” Upon hearing
this, I was at a loss for a response.
As a Japanese person, I was worried about how people would react if I went to thePhilippines, given the disparity with Japan and the history of exploitation between the twocountries. The first time I went to Manila, I was seriously worried that if I brought with me, say,
fancy chocolate as a gift, it would be perceived as a sarcastic gesture.
Anyway, I went to Manila in 2015. I wasn’t staying in a luxury hotel, so there were bugs in
my room, no hot water for the shower, children begging, nasty traffic, and terrible air pollution.
The internet was also very slow. You are almost guaranteed to get ripped off by your cab driver. I
even got on a motorcycle taxi-like vehicle called a tricycle all by myself and got lost.
However, thanks to my kind host JK Anicoche and his friends, fun and enjoyment prevailed (Fig. 2). As we talked late into the night over beer, I think I learned a fair bit about Filipino
culture and politics, and also improved my English. Another major takeaway had to do with
Open Media Culture: Collaborations, Networks, Exchange［27］

what I learned about means of transportation. In thePhilippines, there are minibuses called jeepneys
that are quite tricky to navigate. By learning how to
get on and off these vehicles, I felt as if I had gotten a
lot lighter.
Incidentally, JK Anicoche told me that hewanted to invite two other Japanese artists, and so
Riki Takeda and Natsuki Ishigami went to Manila
with me. Takeda stayed in the Philippines for a long
period of time and started to create a work that involved making takoyaki octopus balls in the slums,
while Ishigami went to the area formerly known as
Smokey Mountain—a giant trash heap—to make a
Fig. 3 At Karnabal Festival
work together with a local nonprofit. Although wecollaborated with each other in Manila on researchand shared information, we didn’t just stick together in a Japanese group. This, I think, is important in light of today’s keyword, “openness.” I think the real pleasure of this kind of residency
program lies in getting actively involved with the local people.
Another significant factor had to do with the fact that the Asia Center had unofficiallyagreed to provide continuous support for Karnabal Festival for three years. I was grateful that JK
Anicoche had told me from the beginning that he would be running the festival for three years,
and asked me to come along for the ride based on that intention. I was able to think long andhard about how to deal with the Philippines over a three-year time frame, rather than just going
there and expecting to produce immediate results (Fig. 3).
Karnabal Festival lasted for three years from 2015 to 2017, but my relationship with thePhilippines didn’t end after those three years. JK Anicoche came to Japan, or invited me to goover there: he ended up coming to Japan several times as an artist in residence, and has been
gradually building up a body of work here. He has also been doing projects in various Asian cities, and I think that he will go on to become a key figure in the theatrical arts in Asia in the future.
He’s a funny, bright, and energetic person full of sunshine who holds his friends dear to him andthinks of them as a “big family.” I felt that this family also included Japanese people like me, andI never got tired of being around him because there was something happening every day.
I’ve been thinking about the idea of “gravity” as opposed to “mobility” recently. It seems
to me that JK Anicoche has a strong gravitational field around him that sucks all kinds of people
into it. I’ve been building a close relationship with him and his colleagues for five years now,and I’d like to continue to deepen that relationship.

# Developing IsLand Bar
Next, I turned my attention to this region called East Asia. South Korea, Taiwan, China, Hong
Kong, and Macao: What possibilities do these places hold? I also wanted to explore the potential
associated with their currencies, like the Korean won, Taiwan dollar, Chinese yuan, and Hong
Kong dollar. In order for Japanese people to get out of the national framework of “Japan,” I had
been thinking that we needed to overcome the barriers posed by the Japanese language and theJapanese yen.
On that note, I also want to mention my relationship with the Taipei Performing Arts
Center. In 2017, I was invited by the curator Tang Fu Kuen to participate in the Taipei Performing
Arts Center’s artist laboratory program, Asia Discovers Asia Meeting for Contemporary
Performance (ADAM), where seventeen or eighteen artists from all over Asia were invited tospend two weeks together. I got to know many artists there, and I hit it off particularly well with
Scarlet Yu, who is from Hong Kong but lives and works in Berlin, and we did some research together. Of course, I had exchanges not only with Scarlet but many other artists as well, and theOpen Media Culture: Collaborations, Networks, Exchange［28］

work that emerged out of these interactions wascalled IsLand Bar (Fig. 4).
IsLand Bar is a performance in which eachartist takes a table and hands a special, self-concocted cocktail to an audience of one or two
people. The cocktails have a connection to theartists themselves or some kind of historical andpolitical context, allowing the audience to get asense of the world behind the cocktails as they
sip them. In this work, multiple tables are set up
in the same space.
Fig. 4 IsLand Bar performance (2018).
Courtesy of Taipei Performing Arts Center
The idea for IsLand Bar came from the factthat ADAM has the feeling of a market, like how a
trade fair would be. At the time, I felt that ADAM had a fervent desire to become the “best market
in Asia.” On the last day of the festival, for example, producers from all over the world come,which naturally leads to a sense of expectation over what these artists are going to show us. This
expectation leads to future possibilities for the artists, and ADAM has provided us with suchopportunities. However, I also had the feeling that I was being “priced out” of the market. At thetime, ADAM had a matching program called Speed Networking where people could introduce
themselves to each other in ten minutes, and so we decided to turn the concept around and try
to create a space for “non-speed networking.” The vibe surrounding IsLand Bar went somethingalong the lines of: “Thank you for coming all the way out here. Would you like to see a dance, ora piece of theater? In any case, please, come have a drink and relax.” It was surprisingly popular,
and Tang Fu Kuen offered me the chance to present at the Taipei Arts Festival the following year.
While I don’t have the time to talk about it in detail today, the response was that we seemed tohave succeeded in demonstrating a certain format.
The thing, however, is that IsLand Bar emerged out of the ideas of various artists. I can’t
claim that it belongs to Scarlet and I. So we decided to think about what would constitute thehappiest outcome for this project, and after consulting with the Taipei Performing Arts Center,
we decided to make it open source, with no one owning it. As long as they put a disclaimer on itthat says “IsLand Bar is an open-source project first initiated as an experiment at ADAM 2017 andcommissioned for Taipei Arts Festival 2018, led by principal artists Scarlet Yu (Hong Kong/
Germany), Chikara Fujiwara (Japan), and Lee Ming-Chen (Taiwan),” this is a work that anyone
can stage and perform. This, to me, is a form of openness.
In 2019, two productions of IsLand Bar were presented. In Taipei, it was presented by
Huang Ding-Yun and Henry Tan. On the other hand, I created a completely different version of
IsLand Bar at the Rockbund Art Museum in Shanghai, for three hours each night and seven nights
in total. On the last day, nobody went home when it turned midnight, the time that the event was
supposed to end. We extended it until about 1 a.m., and I was thinking, “Oh, so it’s OK to do thisin a museum.” That’s how much fun it was, and I think it generated a good response. I was so
exhausted that I thought it would be enough to do the next one only about three years later.
However, the artist River Lin, who was also a curator at ADAM, wanted to present it at
TPAM next with all the past members of ADAM—that is, as the “ADAM’s Family.” I told him thatit might be tricky to produce IsLand Bar at a pace like that since it is a transnational work madetogether with people who don’t share a common language, but Sumiyoshiyama was really keen
and hit it off with River, so I ended up being pushed to do it. The result was called IsLand Bar(Yokohama)—Port Undersea, which we performed just a few days ago in Yokohama at the TPAM
2020 Fringe program.

Open Media Culture: Collaborations, Networks, Exchange［29］

# Relationships of Trust in the Production of Artworks
In the end, I was glad that we presented IsLand
Bar in Yokohama. It also helped that we were able
to meet with River Lin at the end of the year in
Kansai and align our values with each other. The
schedule was tough, with the members arriving
on-site just two days before the show, but I was
reassured as long as we had River with us. The
Cave, the venue where it was presented, is an art
space run by Natsuki Ishigami, whom I mentioned earlier when talking about Manila. By also
having Natsuki join the event as a performer, weFig. 5 IsLand Bar (Yokohama) performance (2020).
Courtesy of Taipei Performing Arts Centerfelt that we were able to harness the power of theplace for our purposes (Fig. 5).
We had some difficult discussions during the creative process, too. In the beginning, it
seemed that the people at the Taipei Performing Arts Center wanted to present IsLand Bar as aso-called “performance,” and control the movement of the audience. I, on the other hand,wanted to exert as little control as possible, and let the audience take the initiative. Even if there
were people who didn’t quite know how to behave as a result, I wanted them to also be a part of
IsLand Bar. No amount of discussion via email is going to bridge these discrepancies, and there
are also limits to having these discussions in English, a language that is not native to either
party. As such, we decided to just let everyone do as they pleased during the dress rehearsal. For
the time being, we had a foundation to build on, so we proceeded to have a concrete discussion
with constructive arguments about where to go from there.
For example, we had decided to allow bookings of up to twenty-five people for each performance, but I made a loose estimate of the numbers so that we would be able to accommodate
audiences even if there were a few more. The Taipei Performing Arts Center, however, came backto me rather sternly and said that the number had been fixed and they couldn’t take in morethan that. As it turned out, when a number of people arrived without reservations on the day ofthe event, instead of turning them away, they came to me to discuss how they ought to respond:“Chikara, what shall we do?” I thought that was cute of them—or rather, that they were surprisingly nice about the whole thing. I could see that they had a human, flexible side to them as well.
That was the moment I knew I wanted to continue working with these people.
I think there are ways in which an artist can push through and make a strong case for theoverall design right from the beginning. Personally, though, I’m interested in the variable natureof human beings. You change, and therefore the other person changes as well. This may seem
like something of a compromise, but I think it’s fine as long as you zealously guard the core ofyour work. In the case of IsLand Bar, what is important is to create a sense of organic circulation
within the site. As long as you can maintain that, I think it’s more interesting to leave room fornegotiation and reflect the opinions of various people as you make the work. This, to me, is also
a form of “openness.”
I believe that I have established a relationship of trust with the people of the Taipei
Performing Arts Center, but what exactly is this “trust”? Words like “network” and “collaboration” are often used in the art world. These words are certainly beautiful, but it is not easy toactually build a relationship of trust. Today, more than ever, we live in an era of divisions. People
are quickly divided into black or white, friend or foe. It is no longer easy for the gray area in between to exist. We believe the fake news that our allies tell us, but find ourselves unable to listen
to what our enemies are saying. An invisible wall in between stands so high that it becomes very
difficult to imagine what lies on the other side. We can spit over this wall, but we cannot know
the world that lies beyond it. We are unable to understand each other. All we can do is to keep
Open Media Culture: Collaborations, Networks, Exchange［30］

persistently engaging in dialogue and negotiation with people whom we don’t understand.
What’s more, this is an enterprise that will always fail. We are unable to understand each other.
The person on the other side of the wall may see a different landscape than you and I—a landscape that exceeds the limits of our imagination. Are we really unable to understand each other?
We are running out of time. At the end of the Yokohama presentation of IsLand Bar, we
handed each guest a card with a QR code so that he or she could gain access to a secret message.
I would like to conclude my presentation today by reading out that message.

First of all, I’m pleased that the audiences and the participating artists have gathered here tonight. Although she is not here, Scarlet Yu, a Berlin-based artist from Hong Kong, also participated
via letters. She sent us five letters, but only four arrived in Yokohama. Where did the other one
disappear . . . ? Undersea?
IsLand Bar is a platform for artists who have diverse backgrounds to meet you as an audience. It’s not possible without mobility across borders. But our mobility is vulnerable. For
example, by the coronavirus. Governments limit people’s mobility very easily. As Prime Minister
Abe talked about Fukushima seven years ago, “the situation is under control.”Nevertheless, we continue to move. Sometimes against gravity, sometimes according togravity. You too, right? In this world, some people are difficult to move because of financial
problems. Some people, such as refugees and disaster victims, have been forced to move undesired. But artists and producers have privileged mobility. At least you could come to this “fakebar” in Yokohama tonight, and toasted with people from all over the world. The privileged cocktails may have the hope of the people.
The last music is called “Farewell Waltz” or “Firefly Light (Hotaru no Hikari).” In Japan, it’sa very popular song as a closing song for department stores or pachinko parlors, etc. The original song is Scottish “Auld Lang Syne”: a song to toast for friendship. It was sung in the European
Parliament just a few days ago when Brexit was enacted. In Japan, it has been sung since 1881.
No. 4 lyrics express the territory, such as “Chishima, Okinawa.” At the beginning of the twentieth century, it was replaced by “Taiwan and Karafuto (Sakhalin).”
Just as music has histories, the various gadgets and alcohols you have touched here also
have histories. They crossed from someone to someone on this planet and finally appeared in
front of you tonight, in 2020. Now, it may be in your stomach.
IsLand Bar—Port Undersea ends now here. But our lives will continue. Just like Brexit is
not only the end but also the starting point . . . We are weak creatures, always fail. Not perfect.
Can we learn something from that failures? In this severed world, can we restore our imagination and trust in each other?
Hope to see you again somewhere.
Message translation: Chikara Fujiwara

Chikara Fujiwara ｜Chikara Fujiwara is based in Yokohama and active in Japan and overseas as a critic, artist, curator, mentor,
and dramaturg. With the aim of connecting a world divided by what he calls “invisible walls,” he has produced the flaneur-style
touring project Engeki Quest in Yokohama, Kinosaki, Manila, Düsseldorf, Ansan, Hong Kong, Tokyo, and Bangkok. Inspired by hisinterest in human mobility, he created the performances Woman in A Port (2017) and HONEYMOON (2018), and the IsLand Bar
project with transnational artists at Asia Discovers Asia Meeting for Contemporary Performance 2017 in Taipei and at the Taipei
Arts Festival 2018. In 2017, he was a Senior Fellow of The Saison Foundation and an East Asian Cultural Exchange Envoy for the
Agency for Cultural Affairs. In April 2019, he founded the art collective orangcosong with Minori Sumiyoshiyama.
http://hiroakiumeda.com

Open Media Culture: Collaborations, Networks, Exchange［31］[Session 3]

Trans-AsianApproaches and Practices
How can we understand “Asia”? What are the cultural differences between Japanand other Asian countries? In this session, speakers presented new approaches
for thinking about the future of international exchange.

The 4th International Symposium for Media Art

Open Media
Culture:Moderator

Speakers

Minoru Hatanaka

May Adadol Ingawanij

Chief Curator, NTT InterCommunication Center [ICC] [ Japan]

Professor, University of Westminster [Thailand / UK]

Collaborations, Networks, Exchange
Koichi Iwabuchi

Professor, Monash University [ Japan / Australia]

Experimental Curatorial Practices
Through Small-Scale Collaboration
and Networks
May Adadol Ingawanij Professor, University of Westminster

The researcher and curator May Adadol
Ingawanij outlined her vision of collaborative and international practices that operate
on a smaller scale consciously in tune with
the identities of the location, from Southeast
Asia to Europe. Such practices are rooted inour relationship with technology and in approaches that emphasize the nonhumanand animistic.

# Large-Scale and Small-Scale Collaboration Models:Inter-Museum Versus Trans-Local
I will mainly talk today about Animistic
Apparatus, a research and curatorial project that
I initiated, and which has a screening program aspart of the “Open Possibilities” exhibition at NTT
InterCommunication Center [ICC] (Fig. 1). I hopethat my presentation will tie in well with some of
the themes that have already been raised in theprevious panels concerning the question of:What makes a network?
When we talk about networks and relations, one facet of it is interpersonal relations.
My Animistic Apparatus project approaches thequestion of relations in another sense, a morecosmological, ecological one asking about theplace of humans in the broader cosmos: humanand nonhuman relations. This links to thetheme of technology’s relation with ritual forms,
and new technology’s relation with very oldtechnology as practiced through ritual and religious forms.
Let us start by making some broader remarks about this question of possibilities andmodels of collaboration and exchange. I live andwork in the United Kingdom. I practice and research in Southeast Asia, specifically in Thailand,
as well in the UK. As such, my zone of practice issomewhere between Southeast Asia and the UK.
Open Media Culture: Collaborations, Networks, Exchange

May Adadol Ingawanij

Fig. 1 Installation view of screening program “Animistic
Apparatus: Cosmos” at “Open Possibilities: There is not
only one neat way to imagine our futures,” NTTInterCommunication Center [ICC], 2020.
Photo: Keizo Kioku.
Courtesy of NTT InterCommunication Center [ICC]［33］

When I talk about models and possibilities of collaboration, it is important to foreground mycomments with where I am situated and how I observe this.
It is useful to make a simple distinction when we talk about models and possibilities ofcollaboration between large-scale possibilities of collaboration and exchange and small-scaleones, what I will be calling trans-local scales of collaborations and exchange.
There are two kinds of possibilities of integrating the UK as part of emerging trans-Asian
networks. The first is the large-scale one of inter-museum collaborations. One recent exampleof this took place at the Tate Modern, London, with a retrospective of Nam June Paik’s work,
which was made possible through a collaboration of several major museums in the world.
The other model, which is the one I am much more interested and invested in, is that ofsmall-scale networks of collaboration. Those trans-local networks of collaboration consist ofartist-led groups, micro-festivals, and practitioners who are in between cultures and worlds.
This is something that has been appearing increasingly in the spheres of art and artists’ cinema
in the UK within the past decade or so: a network of exchange of people, knowledge, and information, consisting of small-scale film and arts festivals in various cities or towns in the UK thatconnect with various cities or towns in Southeast Asia. The linkage, the ecology that is createdquite informally, is creating a space where art films, independent films, and moving image
works by artists made from and in Southeast Asia acquire a level of visibility in the UK.

# Micro-Festivals Bridging Southeast Asia and the UK
An example of this micro-festival model is Aperture: Asia & Pacific Film Festival, which was
initiated by the founder of a micro-film distribution label Day For Night, with some internal
assistance from CREAM, the research center that I co-direct at the University of Westminster.
One of the festival’s foci is finding interesting ways of juxtaposing independent Southeast Asianfilms with films from the Pacific islands and from Central Asia, and using the space of a micro-festival in order to show some of these films in the UK.
Another example is the Open City Documentary Festival. This small-scale festival isfunded by University College London and recently started a production development program.
In this way, it is moving from being a small-scale, very well-curated festival of documentaryfilms into also making a certain amount of funding available to support documentary filmmakers from anywhere in the world. Anyone can apply to join its preproduction/production
development program. Along with Aperture: Asia & Pacific Film Festival, Open City Documentary
Festival is an interesting example of a model of funding for the arts and culture in the UK, whichthese days can tap into some degree of collaboration with universities. This is coming out of acontext whereby universities are under pressure to open up and engage with the public. Thereis also a sense of a historical responsibility to do some overdue work in the UK of cultural decolonization, acknowledging the UK’s implication in imperialism and colonization.
Another example of a small-scale festival that forms part of this trans-local micro-festival
network is a very successful Korean film festival in the UK called the London Korean Film
Festival. It is interesting for many reasons. One is that the scale of the festival is quite small.
Secondly, it is well funded by the South Korean cultural agency. Thirdly, and what makes thisfestival so distinctive, is the fact that its reputation is derived from the quality of its programming, which is well respected by experts and curators. The director of this festival has been in
London for a long time and is regarded as part of a group of emerging curators of world cinema
and moving image artworks, and with knowledge beyond that of practices in the UK and North
America. All this means the festival goes beyond being just an arm for Korean soft power.
The final festival I will highlight is the Berwick Film & Media Arts Festival, which is held
in a border town. Berwick-upon-Tweed is located by the border between England and Scotland.
Historically, Berwick has existed within the borders of both nations, so this border town character very much informs the identity and adventurousness of the festival itself. I will return todiscuss this festival further at the end.
Open Media Culture: Collaborations, Networks, Exchange［34］

# Animistic Apparatus: Integrating Curatorial Methodology into Research
Animistic Apparatus is an academic research projectwith a strong curatorial dimension. This curatorial
project is reliant on trans-local networks of collaboration, exchange, relationships among practitioners to
do two activities: one took place in the northeast of
Thailand in a province called Udon Thani; the otherone in Berwick, as part of the Berwick Film & Media
Arts Festival (Fig. 2).
I wanted to experiment with looking differently at contemporary Southeast Asian artists’ moving
image and art cinema practices. I wanted to find a wayof thinking about the form of these works and theirsignificance by placing these works in a conceptual
relationship with practices of Southeast Asian animism. The result is a project that experiments withthe method of looking at contemporary artists’ moving image work through a curatorial and media
archeological lens: thinking about the affinity or resonance between contemporary artists’ practices andFig. 2 Animistic Apparatus
very old practices of Southeast Asian animism, defined as the rituals, tools, apparatuses, and forms of communicating with spirits.
As part of the process I co-curated a trip to Udon Thani province in the northeast of
Thailand. We called the trip a number of things in order to move away from thinking and doing
curating as an exhibition. Sometimes we would describe our trip as fieldwork; or an artistic fieldlearning lab; or a sociable field learning lab.
The project explores the idea of technological apparatus and the forms that technologicalapparatus can take when they travel the world and exist in a wide variety of cultural and ritualistic contexts, which then make their own demands. In the case of the history of the cinematic
apparatus in northeast Thailand, the question that this project asks is: What became of this apparatus, especially the apparatus of outdoor cinema screening, when they intertwine withanimistic ritual practices of relating and communicating with powerful local spirits?
We took around forty artists, curators, writers, and cultural producers, mostly fromaround Southeast Asia, to Udon Thani, to learn about the history of outdoor cinema projectionin the province, to encounter its spaces of animistic rituals, and to experiment with using theapparatus of outdoor film projection (for ritual and commercial purposes) as part of media arts
and artists’ moving image practices. In Udon Thani, we spent time with a film projection troupe
owned by a skilled technician and projectionist called Khasem Khamnak. They are experts insetting up very big screens in outdoor settings, and projecting films using a combination ofdigital projectors with some additional tools from the analog era. The idea behind this field trip
to Udon Thani, what we also called a sociable field learning trip and an artistic research lab, wasthat we would go as a group to learn from the open-air projectionists. What are the considerations they have when they are commissioned to do ritualistic film projections addressed tospirits? We saw how they put up the scaffolding and sound system. Even the truck they used is
not just a vehicle for transporting the equipment but also part of the apparatus of open-air film
projection itself. The projectors are placed on the truck, which is where you control the soundsystem from.
Over the roughly one-week period in Udon Thani learning from this troupe, we experimented with using some of the tools of ritualistic film projection, integrating them into ourown artistic, curatorial, or written practices. We had three evenings where we could try out theOpen Media Culture: Collaborations, Networks, Exchange［35］

equipment and improvise some practices of performance and projection, or simply play aroundwith the audiovisual tools that the projectionist troupe routinely used for outdoor projection to
see what we could create with them.
During one of the nights when we were given permission to use this open-air space in thevillage of Ban Chiang in Udon Thani, various activities unfolded organically. Among the attendees was a collective from Taiwan called lololol, which is two artists—Sheryl Cheung and Xia
Lin—whose practice revolves around the relationship between post-internet and posthumanist
technology, and older forms of practices of channeling the body’s energy. It led a session where
Xia Lin, who is a tai chi master, drew inspiration from the apparatus of ritualistic film projection
and created tai chi moves, which she taught to the rest of us in front of the large projection screen.

# A Resulting Network Connecting to TokyoA kind of network then emerged, linking the participants who responded to our call to come andtake part, but also linking us with the projectionists, who are themselves very mobile in theirown way. They have their own circuit of doing mobile projections, traveling around the northeastern region of Thailand and sometimes beyond.
From this group of people, we can trace links with the “Open Possibilities” exhibition.
Participants of the field learning lab included Riar Rizaldi, who co-curated “Open Possibilities,”
which features the work of Rei Hayama, a Japanese artist who also took part in the Animistic
Apparatus lab. Zai Tang, the Singaporean sound artist whose work is in the exhibition, likewise
participated in the Animistic Apparatus lab. The exhibition includes Thai artist Tanatchai
Bandasak’s installation Central Region, comprising standing stones in the highlands of Laos, andwhich came out of his experience of the Animistic Apparatus lab in Udon Thani. It is a work that
responds directly to the interests and the concerns of this project, asking questions about thelinkage and relationship with old ritualistic forms of animism, communicating with spirits,
and the possibilities of contemporary moving image art.

# Linking Southeast Asian Animism to the UK
After the trip to Udon Thani, I came away with the idea that I would try to curate an exhibitionin the UK, a place that has no direct relationship to Southeast Asian animistic practices. And so
my question became: What if we do an exhibition of Southeast Asian works in the UK, but not in
the usual way? We did not want to do an exhibition that claimed to be showcasing works bySoutheast Asian artists in the UK, nor an exhibition that claimed to be saying something about
Southeast Asia as a region. We wanted to do an exhibition in a more speculative register. The
exhibition would be curated and programmed in response to this question: What if exhibitions
did not need to primarily address humans? The problem that I set for myself was how to do thiskind of an exhibition with a speculative curatorial slant in the UK, featuring works by Southeast
Asian artists without claiming to be representing a region in its totality, and without claiming to
be introducing Southeast Asian artists to the UK.
This is where Berwick Film & Media Arts Festival comes back in. I was attracted to it because it is a small-scale yet adventurous festival. Its director, Peter Taylor, is part of this translocal
network of curators, artists, and film programmers in the UK who are very outward-looking. But
it was also the location of Berwick itself as a borderland town with a long history of conflicts,
and with interesting sites of ruins and archaeology. I was able to translate my curatorial idea
into a series of installations outside of gallery spaces; a series of onsite installations where I
could stage an encounter between an artist’s work and a site of historical ruins or a site of exposure to Berwick’s very wild weather.
We installed Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s Fireworks (Archives), an installation responding
to the history of anti-communist suppression in the northeast of Thailand, in a cavernous site in
Berwick. You enter the site through a stone passageway, a kind of tunnel, which then opens up into
Open Media Culture: Collaborations, Networks, Exchange［36］

a big stone lined space under one of the arches of abridge going across the river Tweed. In the eighteenth century, this was where blocks of ice would
be stored in order to facilitate the salmon trade
linking Berwick to places like the United States.
Berwick is on the sea and also at a river mouth, so
it was a town of trade and exchange. During WorldWar II the site became a bunker.
Tanatchai Bandasak’s Central Region was
installed in a tiny tower cut into a hill, which wasformerly used as a surveillance site during the
Fig. 3 Tanatchai Bandasak, Central Region (2019), Coxon’s
conflict between the Scots and the English in the
Tower, Berwick-upon-Tweed. Commissioned by Animistic
Apparatus. Installation view at Animistic Apparatus,
premodern era (Fig. 3). Tanatchai’s work was situ15th Berwick Film & Media Arts Festival
ated there as a kind of installation that could
response directly to the actual site of the tower
itself, an encounter creating a surprising beauty.
I also curated an outdoor projection of A
Lullaby to the Sorrowful Mystery by Filipino filmmaker Lav Diaz, who is famous for making very
long films (Fig. 4). A Lullaby to the Sorrowful Mysteryis no exception—over eight hours long. We asked
that the projection be announced not as a film
screening but as a projection and an offering to
the spirits of place of Berwick. We wanted to see
Fig. 4 Lav Diaz, A Lullaby to the Sorrowful Mystery (2016),
how that gesture would sit within a film festival
Rose Garden and Flagstaff Park, Berwick-upon-Tweed.
and how people would respond to it. The locaInstallation view at Animistic Apparatus,
15th Berwick Film & Media Arts Festival
tion we got to set up the screen was near asixteenth-century wall, overlooking the sea,
which meant that as soon as the sun went down, the area became intensely dark, as there werevery few street lights or lights from buildings and houses in the vicinity. We started projecting
Lav Diaz’s film from some point after the sun had gone down, and tried to estimate the running
time so that the film would end as the sun was coming up the next day. We called this a “projection ritual.” Who was the audience in such a place? The harvest moon in September, some stars,
a handful of bats and other creatures, and very, very few humans.
This demonstrated the potential for experimentation at play, which in my experience so
far of curating Animistic Apparatus seems more possible within a network of collaboration andexchange involving practitioners in groups working on a smaller scale.

May Adadol Ingawanij ｜May Adadol Ingawanij is a writer, curator, and teacher. Her research explores genealogies ofcinematic and media apparatus, potentialities of contemporary artistic and curatorial practices, and the aesthetics andcirculation of artists’ moving images, art, and independent films in, around, and beyond Southeast Asia. She co-directs theCentre for Research and Education in Arts and Media. She is the recipient of the British Academy’s Mid-Career Fellowship(2018–19) for her curatorial and publication project Animistic Apparatus (2018–). Her recent English-language publications
include “Comedy of Entanglement: The Karrabing Film Collective” (Afterall: A Journal of Art, Context and Enquiry, 2019) and“Making Line and Medium” (Southeast of Now: Directions in Contemporary and Modern Art in Asia, Vol. 3, 2019).
http://mayadadol.info

Open Media Culture: Collaborations, Networks, Exchange［37］

Trans-Asia and Media Arts:
Collaboration as Method
Koichi Iwabuchi Professor, Monash University

Koichi Iwabuchi has devoted himself to researching cultural fluidity, diversity, andmulticultural societies in the Asian region,
based on the idea of what he calls “transAsia as method.” In particular, he has been
focusing on media arts and activism that
promote international exchange and crossborder collaboration in Asia in the digitalera. Iwabuchi spoke about international exchange and cross-border connections, while
also introducing the activities of Trans-EastAsia Multiculturalism, a project that seeks topromote expressions of cultural diversity inEast Asian societies.

Koichi Iwabuchi# Dialogue with Experiences of a Similar, yet Different Asia
I have been working on a project called Trans-Asia as Method for a long time, so today I would
like to share my thoughts, or some recent developments, from that point of view. First of all, I
would like to explain the title. I chose the plural form of the term “media arts” because it encompasses a wide variety of cultural forms, such as video, music, and visual arts. Also, in my own
field of cultural studies, an intellectual movement centered on the Inter-Asia Cultural Studies
Society, which organizes conferences and publishes a journal, has been flourishing since theyear 2000 or so, but I use the term “Trans-Asia” instead of “Inter-Asia.”
One of the fundamental reasons for using the term “Trans-Asia” is the interest in the phenomenon of the increased movement of people, goods, money, and media across borders in ahistorical and social context over the last thirty years or so. This interest has also flourished in the
Asian region. Various problems are being shared across borders: more and more, we are seeingthat even if problems cannot be resolved within a particular country, new solutions and insights
can be gleaned by tackling them together. Of course, there are a variety of ways to forge suchconnections. Some of them are based on dialogue and goodwill, while others invite fragmentation and conflict. A wide range of connections and links have taken root in the Asian region.
In this context, movements and ideas that go beyond an Asian or even national framework have emerged, while geopolitical pigeonholing and perceptions that seek to fix countries
and regions have also come into question. The various dialogues found within Asia, for example, were not as lively in the 1980s as they are now. A particular situation has become more
conspicuous over the last thirty years or so: the links and dialogues among not only academics,
but also the people of Asia, the grassroots, and artists, or among the media and producers, havebecome very active. “Trans” rather than “inter” is meant to allow us to examine these contexts ofgrowing transnational and cross-border flows and linkages, and the various phenomena thatare occurring within these contexts.
So, what does the project Trans-Asia as Method mean to me? First of all, it represents an
Open Media Culture: Collaborations, Networks, Exchange［38］attempt to reflect on and analyze how the encounters, exchanges, and dialogues, or competitionand hostility that emerge through regionalization or media cultures across the Asian region
have increased in the context of globalization. In addition, Trans-Asia as Method focuses on the
new possibilities that emerge from the active production of knowledge that has been de-Westernized—of intellect in a broad sense, if you will. By reflecting on visions of a new kind ofknowledge, imagination, and future drawn from the Asian experience, and the history of thepast, can there be a dialogue that transcends Western-centric perspectives, and how can we go
about fostering such a dialogue? The Inter-Asia Cultural Studies project also has a keen interestin these questions.
In Japan, Yoshimi Takeuchi discussed the idea of “Asia as method” during the 1960s.1
Although Takeuchi only posited “Asia as method” as a possibility, various scholars have paid
renewed attention to this notion over the last twenty to thirty years. One of the main reasons forthis is that we cannot escape the history of the modernization, imperialization, and colonization of the West. As such, although we might share a common perspective on the scars left
behind by these events, there was also a shared acknowledgement of the necessity of not only
confronting the West as we have done in the past, but also seeking out new forms of knowledge
through the fostering of dialogue while making reference to the experiences of other Asian
countries. Taiwanese scholar Chen Kuan-Hsing, one of the pioneers of the Inter-Asia Cultural
Studies project, argues in his book Asia as Method: Toward Deimperialization that dialogue within
the Asian region may have the potential to give rise to a new worldview or vision oriented toward deimperialization.2 Chen’s book was full of expectation, and was a statement of intent,with regard to how a new vision of modernity or the future and a historical viewpoint would
emerge, not only through dialogue with experiences of the West, of Europe and America, butalso the diverse experiences of Asia and the cultivation of a transnational, transversal dialogue.
Like Singapore’s Chua Beng Huat, I also use the term “inter-Asian referencing.” What is
important to me is that this cross-referencing across Asia happens not just among intellectuals,
but at the grassroots on a daily basis. These days, Korean TV dramas and K-pop are at the centerof this phenomenon, but as the transnational, border-crossing flows of media culture and its
mutual consumption across Asia become more commonplace, many people are experiencing
Asia as method in their everyday life. This has been empirically demonstrated by various researchers, myself included. When Japanese or Thai people watch Korean TV dramas and movies,
for example, they feel a strong sense of sympathy and become aware of certain similarities anddifferences pertaining to gender, sexuality, work, and family issues. There are many cases wheresuch culture provides an opportunity to reassess their daily lives and society. It may not be possible to have a face-to-face conversation because of the subtle interplay of feelings with regard
to similarity and difference, or proximity and distance. Through mediation, however, these experiences can lead us toward new modes of critical thinking, providing an opportunity torethink our own lives, society, the relationship of the self to the other, and our historical relationships. The trans-Asian fluidity and dynamics of consumption of media culture foster
cross-border dialogue. To me, this is what is crucial about Trans-Asia as Method.

# Trans-Asia’s Efforts to Promote Multiculturalism
The prefix “trans” has various meanings: to cross, traverse, or be between something. The important thing, however, is that it implies a shift toward a new situation. While the same is trueof translation, it seems to me that “trans” is linked to “something as a method,” in the sense thatit represents a method or tool for arriving at a new situation. In this next section, I would like toaddress the topic of what becomes evident when thinking about media arts as a method.
The other day, I happened to see an interview with Ryuichi Sakamoto, in which he said
that “the power of music” was his “least favorite phrase.”3 As an artist, Sakamoto believes that it
would be too presumptuous to proclaim that the music one makes will change society and theworld, and so such a declaration would be repellent. I could see his point: art and artistic
Open Media Culture: Collaborations, Networks, Exchange［39］

practices don’t necessarily have toexist to effect social change, andthere is no need for musicians to
be deployed for political activism.
As Sakamoto also acknowledges,
however, it is of course highly possible that those on the receiving
end will end up feeling or thinking
something, thereby triggeringsome sort of change.
There is a growing interestin the power of such media arts,
and in the use of diverse expressive practices and tools for social
purposes. For example, an obvious example is the revitalization of rural areas. Many rural areasin Japan are now partnering with art and museums to revitalize their local economies and communities. There is also a movement happening where companies are incorporating andencouraging activist-style civic media arts practices for business innovation. What I am interested in, however, is how media arts can contribute to fostering a critical view and dialogue thatrethinks existing social relationships and ways of being.
There are several chapters devoted to art in the handbook The Routledge Companion to
Media and Activism, published in 2018, demonstrating that the role of art—or artistic activity ina broad sense—in activism has grown in the digital age.4 Stephen Duncombe and Steve Lambertargue that while the power of art has previously been understood as what Kant would call the“supersensible,” which transcends reason and rationality, the power of art in the present lies in
its “affective effect.” “Affective” refers to the emotional power of art and artistic activity, while“effect” refers to the social effects and results that activism and social practice in a broad sense
seek to achieve. Duncombe and Lambert introduce the coined word “æffect” to show that “affective effect” is a combination of all these factors. Media arts give a certain form to criticalimagination and emotions that are difficult to put into words. While there are various modes of
expression in media arts, be it through sound or visual culture, the word “æffect” is used to denote the fact that it has the power to spur people on to some kind of social practice by giving
these things a form.
It is often said that in the age of digitalization, social movements have shifted from collective to connective action. As the rise of major social movements such as the Arab Spring has
demonstrated, social media, the internet, and digital media have an immeasurable power toelicit emotion and mobilize a sense of solidarity among people. In some cases, this can work
positively, while it can take a very negative turn in others. In any case, however, by combining
the affective and the connective, we are looking at the power to change existing systems andways of thinking, and the possibility of creating new relationships.
The British sociologist Roger Silverstone once said that in the age of digitalization and theinternet, all things, forms of consciousness, ways of thinking, and visions have become shareable.
Shareable, however, doesn’t necessarily mean that we can share something and tackle or engage
in it together, or that we feel sympathy for what is happening elsewhere. How can we move from“shareable” to “shared”? This, I believe, is why the power of media arts is being reevaluated.
A variety of practices are emerging in Japan as well. There are the fairly uninspiring stories of dubious attempts to incorporate art into business of the sort that ad agency Dentsu would
lead. On the other hand, there have also been initiatives getting started among various Japanesemuseums and curators that seek to promote debate and critical thinking among citizens about
how to deploy art in the service of diversity and inclusivity, by the people at the Contemporary
Art Center, Art Tower Mito, for instance. Projects and exhibitions that combine trans-Asia andmedia arts are being held, including this one at the NTT InterCommunication Center [ICC]. I
Open Media Culture: Collaborations, Networks, Exchange［40］

don’t have the time here to go into too much detail, but these are all very exciting efforts todevelop a sense of critical public pedagogy
through media arts.
My main interests at the moment are thesense of inclusivity and coexistence brought
about by diversity in relation to immigration in a
broad sense (including short stays in anothercountry) and the diaspora made up of second-generation migrants and beyond. I am interested in
how we might encourage the development ofFig. 1 Trans-East-Asia Multiculturalism projects underway
multiculturalism, coexistence between different
cultures, and a sense of inclusivity arising fromdiversity, as well as how we can move beyond
racism and hate speech. While these things do
not have to be limited to Asia, I have led several
projects that combine the inclusivity and coexistence brought about by diversity with artistic
activities, using trans-Asia as a keyword.
One of the projects, focused mainly
on East Asia, was called Trans-East-Asia
Multiculturalism (TEAM) and funded by the
Toyota Foundation. With scholars from Japan,
Fig. 2 The Migrant Diplomacy exchange project was
Korea, Taiwan, and Hong Kong, including myself,
carried out in partnership with the Immigration Museum
in Australia.
acting as intermediaries, we set up a place wherea variety of players and stakeholders, including
visual and musical artists, nonprofits, NGOs,
civic groups, migrants, minorities, and local government officials, could come together and havea dialogue with one another. In this way, TEAM sought to spur the development of inclusivity asa result of diversity in a transversal, cross-border fashion. We’ve done about one such event every
year from 2015 to 2017 (Fig. 1). The scope of TEAM was limited to East Asia because the situation
in Southeast Asia is rather different. Human migration, immigration issues, and discriminationand exclusivity are shared concerns, however, and by introducing various experiences that areslightly different in this context and discussing them with each other, we have come to see newperspectives on multiculturalism and coexistence between different cultures. We have also
been able to promote cross-border collaborations among diverse actors, and share with everyone the know-how and difficulties related to our efforts to encourage cultural diversity.
The other project is called Migrant Diplomacy. I currently live in Melbourne, which has afairly large Immigration Museum. I received a grant from the Australia-Japan Foundation towork on an exchange project between the Immigration Museum and the artists who collaborate
with it, and people who are working on similar issues in Japan. There were people in Japan who
had been influenced by the Immigration Museum and were engaged in similar concerns, andAustralia is actually part of the trans-Asian movements of people, so we thought it would be agreat opportunity for people from both countries to interact with each other. A core componentof the exchange is to recognize the role that museums and media arts play in raising awarenessof the cultural diversity associated with the migrant experience, or boosting its inclusivity, andto develop these practices in a collaborative way. We have been working toward this goal througha series of reciprocal visits and jointly organized events between Australia and Japan (Fig. 2). In
Japan last year (2019), I visited Hamamatsu and Nagoya, two Japanese cities with some of themost migrants in the country, where the local government has been trying hard to promote
multiculturalism for a long time. We asked programmers and artists from the Immigration
Museum to talk to local citizens in Hamamatsu and Nagoya as well as young people with diverse
Open Media Culture: Collaborations, Networks, Exchange［41］

cultural backgrounds about what it means to express oneself, and also held a workshop whereparticipants wrote their own stories (Fig. 3).
According to the questionnaire they completed
afterwards, the participants gleaned new perspectives and stimulating experiences regarding
the practice of multiculturalism through art.
While residents of Hamamatsu and Nagoya werealso very interested in fostering a sense of diversity and coexistence among citizens through art,
they did not know how to go about it, so theyfound the workshop very helpful. In the future, I
believe there will be more events like this inJapan that aim to promote diversity and coexistence through the arts, and I would like tocontinue to be involved in them.

# The Significance ofInternational Exchange, and Mobility
Finally, I would like to talk about how we can go
beyond the idea of international exchange. If we
Fig. 3 Flyers
for events held
were to do that, the Japan Foundation would
in Hamamatsucease to exist, but that doesn’t mean that weand Nagoya
should do away with the term or abandon all
such initiatives. The term “international exchange” can sometimes imply international comparisons, but as I have argued today, I think it’sless a matter of comparison and more about how we can foster practices of dialogue and sharing
with each other, and encourage cross-border collaboration and cooperation. We want this to bea starting point and then go one step further, without letting it remain at the level of “that exchange was fun.” The question is how to motivate people to work together to address the
problems that are common to all societies, such as living in harmony with diversity. I think thisis an important issue for the future that we should be aware of when we use the term “international exchange” in carrying out our projects.
Another issue has to do with the limitations of international exchange objectives that are
built on existing national frameworks of exchange. Rather, how can we create an approach, a
network, or form of engagement and commitment that is denationalized? This is not the sameas post-national. Around the year 2000, the term “postnational” was being used in a fairly optimistic way, in the sense that globalization transcended the concept of a nation. A postnationalist
would say, “We don’t need nations.” In reality, however, nations do exist, and they are gradually
becoming more powerful. There is no point in simply denying the nation. In this context, what
would a framework that transcends the existing concept of the national look like, how do wecreate it, and how can we promote collaboration and dialogue that would address common
problems? I believe that we need to address these issues seriously.
The Japanese word for “international” is kokusai. The character for sai can also be read as
kiwa, which means edge, or borderline. This latter reading suggests a kind of internationalitythat is based not on existing national frameworks, but rather a way of reinterpreting relationships from the periphery or boundary. Kiwa also means “a state in which something is about totake place,” which overlaps with how “trans” indicates the act of “moving toward another state.”
By understanding the concept of international or kokusai in terms of edges or borders, I believethat we can turn our attention to entities, values, people, and groups existing on the peripheryof a country that have previously been overlooked, and then rethink the nature of nations andOpen Media Culture: Collaborations, Networks, Exchange［42］bring them to a new state of being with a focus on these people. The Migrant Diplomacy initiative that I mentioned earlier is one example of this. It is also a project that seeks to rethink thenotion of international exchange and diplomacy by focusing on the experiences and issues ofpeople who have never been the main protagonists in international exchange, cultural diplomacy, and migrant diplomacy.
There is an urgent need to restructure the national framework into one that is more interactive and encouraging of solidarity, and I believe that we need to explore and practice thepossibilities of cultural forms and media arts in order to achieve this. Governments are increasingly colluding with the market to deploy culture and media arts in the service of soft power andnation branding. Of course, while it is important to promote and encourage media arts, it isproblematic that this is being tied to national interests in a narrow sense. Cool Japan and soft
power may quickly become policy issues, but they display no commitment to the problems ofimmigration and multiculturalism. Exclusionary nationalism is also on the rise in Japan, but
the issue of living in harmony with social diversity has been left behind. There is a clear polarization of cultural policy in the name of promoting national interests.
In my view, media arts can also play a significant role in society in terms of thinking
critically about this issue. I recently learned that in Austria, they have an annual media arts
festival called Ars Electronica. Saki Hibino quoted the overall artistic director of last year’s festival, Gerfried Stocker, in the online magazine Axis. Stocker said that:
Before we realized what was happening, the evolution of technology became strongly linked to thepower of corporations and the state. It has become commonplace for us to live in a kind of box enclosedby them. Art plays an important role as a “second opinion”—a means of critiquing the essence of thisbox (preconception), and of escaping from it.5
The possibilities of digitalization are hemmed in by the state and corporations, and they
have only developed in one particular direction. The purpose of this festival is to use the powerof art to think about how we might extricate ourselves from that situation. This kind of media
arts initiative, which seeks to interrogate the way in which we are being governed by the stateand corporations, and forge new conceptions of social solidarity, promises to be extremely important moving forward. I believe that we will be able to promote it more effectively throughcross-border collaborations, like this symposium.
All of today’s presenters think and work in solidarity while moving from one place toanother. I, too, continue to have that experience, and I believe that movement can confer on us
three kinds of perspectives. Firstly, a bird’s-eye view that encourages you to take a panoramic
look at things, relativize your own experience, realize where the exercise of power and authority is considered “natural,” as well as confront different common experiences in different
social contexts. Secondly, a “fish’s eye” that is attuned to larger social trends and the zeitgeist
brings a physical understanding of transnational currents from multiple sites, as well as anappreciation of the importance of creating networks that bring about cross-border connections and collaboration. Finally, the compound vision of a “bug’s eye,” which views things frommultiple angles, reminds us of the importance of making our commitment to a particular local
context the foundation of a kind of translocal solidarity, in order not to end up only with analoof, top-down cosmopolitanism.
If the coronavirus pandemic drags on, significant restrictions may be imposed oncross-border physical movements in the future. Imaginative movements across boundaries,
however, will not be restricted. What is important is to remain rooted in the here and now while
maintaining a willingness to foster more interactive and open connections, a sense of imagination, and solidarity. In that sense, I believe this symposium, held online at short notice, was athought-provoking occasion for those of you who followed it, and I am very happy to have participated as a presenter.

Open Media Culture: Collaborations, Networks, Exchange［43］

1. Yoshimi Takeuchi, Asia as Method: Our Prewar, Wartime, and Postwar 1935–1976 (Tokyo: Sohjusha, 1978).
2. Kuan-Hsing Chen, Asia as Method: Toward Deimperialization, Durham: Duke University Press, 2010.
3. “The ‘power of music’ is my least favorite phrase: The Trauma of Ryuichi Sakamoto,” Asahi Shimbun Digital, January 30, 2020.
https://www.asahi.com/articles/ASN1Y4WTYN1WUCVL005.html.
4. Graham Meikle (ed.), The Routledge Companion to Media and Activism, New York: Routledge, 2018.
5. Saki Hibino, “The Power of Art that Leads to the Overturning of Common Sense: Ars Electronica 2019 (part one),” AXIS Web Magazine,
January 10, 2020. https://www.axismag.jp/posts/2020/01/161123.html.

Koichi Iwabuchi ｜Koichi Iwabuchi’s research interests are trans-Asian cultural flows, connections, and dialogue as well as
diversity, multicultural questions, and cultural citizenship. His work engages in transnationally enhancing cultural diversity
through artistic practices, such as by collaborating with the Immigration Museum in Melbourne in addition to leading theTrans-East-Asia Multiculturalism project. His recent English publications include Resilient Borders and Cultural Diversity:
Internationalism, Brand Nationalism, and Multiculturalism in Japan (Lexington Books, 2015), “Migrancy and Diplomacy: Fostering
Cross-Border Dialogue and Collaboration in the Age of Hyper-Mobility” (The Brown Journal of World Affairs, 2018), and “TransAsia as Method: A Collaborative and Dialogic Project in a Globalised World” (Trans-Asia as Method: Theory and Practices,
Rowman & Littlefield International, 2019). In April 2020, he took up a position as a professor in the School of Sociology at
Kwansei Gakuin University.

Open Media Culture: Collaborations, Networks, Exchange［44］[Final Session]

Rethinking the Relationship Between Technology and Culture
Discussion by the Moderator and Presenters

Moderator

Minoru Hatanaka 

Chief Curator, NTT InterCommunication Center [ICC] [ Japan]

Minoru Hatanaka graduated from Tama Art University. He joined NTT InterCommunication Center [ICC] in
1996, prior to its opening. He has curated such exhibitions at ICC as the group shows “Sound Art – Soundas Media” (2000), “Silent Dialogue” (2007), and “[Internet Art Future]—Reality in Post Internet Era” (2012),
and solo shows featuring the work of Dumb Type, Maywa Denki, Laurie Anderson, Kazuhiko Hachiya,
Rhizomatiks, Arata Isozaki, Otomo Yoshihide, and John Wood and Paul Harrison. https://www.ntticc.or.jp

Climate Change and the Internet
Minoru Hatanaka: As I was listening to Koichi Iwabuchi’s presentation, it occurred to me that
there is a certain power to be found in music. There are genres like protest songs, and I personally feel that music is capable of making an incredible impact. How we make use of it, though,is perhaps what his phrase “as method” was referring to.
In that sense, I don’t think the theme of “open media culture” at this symposium pertains
only to the realm of media art. The trend of socially engaged art, for instance, also emerged outof this context. As Walter Benjamin once said, a work of art used to be something that you had
to go somewhere to see, or else you had to spend quite a bit of money to get there, and it involved
a lot of waiting in lines. Now, though, we don’t have to go there to see this art. In addition, there
is an inherent mobility in technology today that allows one to go anywhere with a single computer, like Hiroaki Umeda does.
No matter how many borders get drawn, any one culture contains elements of anotherculture within it. If you take any musical instrument, for instance, not all Western musical instruments were born in the West: they arrived in the West by crossing the Silk Road from Asia.
In that sense, I thought that Chikara Fujiwara’s approach makes explicit the historical viewpoint
and perspective implied by the word “mobility.”
I’ve shared my impressions, but I was also hoping that the various participants would ask
each other questions and have a bit of an exchange. What do you think?
May Adadol Ingawanij: We are talking about the “potential of mobility” now, and while there havebeen many forms of exchange so far in this century, the emergence of the climate change issue isalso important. On this front, we need a model that is capable of reforming these collaborations
and exchanges. What kinds of discussions are the other presenters having in their work incultural organizations? You mentioned mobility earlier, and various institutions are now advocating for mobility, which also has to do with escaping from climate change. How are organizations
responding to climate emergencies within the framework of diversity of cultural contexts?
Chikara Fujiwara: Before the symposium started, in the waiting room, we were discussing
whether mobility is exerting a negative impact on climate change. Nowadays, the idea of mobility is becoming more widespread in Asia with the rise of low-cost carriers, for example, but in
Europe we are starting to see artists who refuse to travel by plane. I still don’t have a clear answer
regarding how we ought to respond to this. Unlike Europe, in Asia we have no choice but to crossthe ocean, so we must rely on airplanes. At the same time, I think we have to constantly think
about whether this is a good thing or not.
There is an Australian artist named David Finnigan, for example, who often works with
the Filipino artist JK Anicoche, producing work that deals with the theme of climate change andOpen Media Culture: Collaborations, Networks, Exchange［45］

questions it.
Hatanaka: Fujiwara’s presentation talked about mobility and gravity as being opposed to eachother, but that there could be a way to prevent them from coming into conflict. My sense is that
this is exactly what network technology will achieve.
Fujiwara: For me, today’s symposium was another experiment in using the internet without an
audience. Despite there being some problems with the technology, I think we’re going to see more
and more of these kinds of performative acts in the future. So I think it will be possible to havemeetings and projects that don’t necessarily involve moving around and going to these places.
At the same time, however, as an artist myself, I don’t always get a good sense of things
unless I travel to the actual site. Or rather, maybe I’m just someone who likes being at these sites,
so I would want to carry on being “mobile” while my body can take it. Perhaps that’s just a matterof having the privilege of being on the move, and there’s always going to be some pain and suffering involved. I wonder if that means that my actions are going to cause potential harm, as
well as the fact that I will have to remain active.
Fumi Hirota: I’ve actually never been in a place where these issues are discussed at an institutional or organizational level. I don’t think Japanese museums have been very conscious ofthem. However, I did perceive a certain shift in the situation in how Mami Kataoka, the directorof Mori Art Museum, has been proactively calling for the need to consider environmental issues
when discussing how to circulate contemporary art to other countries—a message that she has
been pushing since she took on her role at the museum.

A Continuation and Rediscovery of Animism
Hatanaka: Another thing that I thought was going to be key as I was listening to all the speakers
was Bob Edrian’s mention of “magic” and “animism” during his presentation. There is a kind of
re-enchantment that happens with technology, and it’s also sort of the endpoint of modernization. Animism, meanwhile, points in the opposite direction, and if this process of re-enchantment
goes ahead, I think a different kind of animism will be born.
Bob Edrian: In Indonesia, there are many different rituals and customs, and each island has adistinct way of thinking about magic and metaphysics. The question is how these modes ofthought are being used in Indonesia. Indonesia is a big user of technology, but not the main
player in terms of the production of it. It seems to me that the way technology is used inIndonesia is somehow related to the fact that “magic” happens in some way, in a realm that is
invisible to the eye.
For example, if a television breaks down, there are still Indonesians who might think that it
was because a spirit or demon played a trick on it. They sometimes associate technology with themagical. Often times in everyday life, this is also a matter of how the magical mindset relates toreligion. In Indonesia, there are five official religions and probably many ancestral unofficial religions. To take another example, if we talked about climate issues or natural disasters in Indonesia,
some people might think that it happened because God has a reason behind it or God is furious.
Indonesians often tie things to God’s will. No matter what happens, most Indonesians
will say that it’s God’s will. As such, we are in a situation where modern technology is also associated with the magical.
Kim Seong-hee: When Asian curators and artists talk about things like animism or the supernatural, it seems to me that they are taking an approach that seeks to mystify things. I don’t think
this is that interesting, though.
For example, the German curator Anselm Franke deals with the issue of animism. His
point of view, however, is that the West has resorted to the old divisions in this modern era:
basically, a dichotomy in which the West occupies the center and the others on the periphery are
not scientific, rational, or logical. While there are truly supernatural ideas to be found in Asia,
Open Media Culture: Collaborations, Networks, Exchange［46］

Western modernization has forced these out onto the margins. That era is over, however. The
thinking of the twentieth century is no longer sustainable, and I think we need a mode ofthought that is appropriate for the twenty-first century.
What is needed now is to reconstruct the relationship between nature and human beings.
So I think it is possible that we will see the return of animism. This return may provide somekind of inspiration and help to rebuild the relationship between humans and nature. In thiscontext, I think the climate issue may also be involved.
Hatanaka: I think you’re right. In fact, technology makes us forget about things like climatechange, in a certain sense. Whenever a disaster occurs, for example, we remember what it was
like in the era before technology, and how people were able to communicate a sense of it.
Animism and so on encompasses things that we have forgotten in a world that has become soconvenient through technology that has kept us away from disasters, or given us the illusion of
security. So we need to recover that relationship. In the twentieth century, we detached animism
from technology, but the twenty-first century entails a situation where it is being reconnected.
Edrian mentioned that in Indonesia, nature and technology have always been inseparable.
This is perhaps due to a certain cultural and historical upbringing, which may well persist thanks
to technology. Those historical and empirical links that have been forgotten as a result of the established myth of technology may become reconnected and transformed into somethingsustainable. This, it seems to me, is the opportunity that is being presented to us at the moment.
Fujiwara: What I’ve been thinking about in terms of technology and animism has to do with how
I feel I’m getting older these days, because I’m not a digital native or an internet native. The
younger generation, though, have become internet natives. One of the plays that was recently
nominated for the Kishida Prize for Drama was Mixture, written by Yuri Yamada of the ZEITAKU
BINBOU (“Luxurious Poverty”) theater company. The voice of a yoga teacher appears in the play,
but it’s the voice of a machine. It’s not a person, but a machine that is teaching yoga. It occurred
to me that for a younger generation of artists, perhaps, we live in an environment where this is
the default. And if that’s the case, there can no longer be a return to the nature of the past, but anenvironment where they can coexist with machines, which is “nature” for them. It will be interesting to see what might emerge from this situation, but also a little scary at the same time.
Hatanaka: Speaking of that sort of situation, Kim mentioned robot theater earlier on. Is thissome kind of sensibility that might be unique to Asia?
Ingawanij: It might be important for us to abandon the old habit of tying technology to the ideaof modernist progress, and defining technology in opposition to nature. In my most recent writing and curatorial practice, I have been trying to explore how we can approach cinema andmoving image in an ecological sense, and as practices and concepts connected with or resonantwith animistic notions of human-nonhuman relations and communication, and notions of theintertwinement of nature and technology.

Who Is Using the Technology?
Kim: In my opinion, technology itself is not the problem. Rather, the big issue has to do with
who is using the technology—and the even bigger issue is: Who is controlling it? It’s a questionof who becomes empowered by the technology by using it. That’s what we should be focusing on
and understanding. That’s why art, through its use of technology, is about what we actually visualize and do with this particular device. Perhaps this is what is required of our work in termsof its approach.
Koichi Iwabuchi: I think that’s true, but when I look at the young digital natives of today, I feellike the idea of progress and technology as connected may no longer be the case anymore. There
are so many people who are happy with the conveniences of life today, but are pessimistic about
the future. They also seem to be quite lacking in an appreciation for social and historical issues.
Open Media Culture: Collaborations, Networks, Exchange［47］

It’s quite surprising how little interest they have in memories of the past, and it’s not just inJapan. They don’t know the contexts of history or time—they don’t even know what happened
ten years ago. I think the question of how the increasing development of digital technology isconnected to the loss or revival of a sense of history is an extremely important one.
Hatanaka: In the digital environment, history is no longer linear in the sense that things are laidout in a certain order. Things are arranged in the order that we come to know them, so there is
only a very shallow awareness of how things have changed. I think what you are all talking about
is a sense of history that allows us to rethink our culture once again.
Fujiwara: In terms of the relationship between young people and history, when I was in thePhilippines, I felt that young people were very knowledgeable about history. For example, theirparents’ generation overthrew the Marcos regime during the People Power Revolution, so they
seem to have a better sense of time in relation to the past compared with the average Japanese.
If cultural exchange and migration continue among the younger generation, then, their perception of history may change.
Also, while I think that the question of who uses the technology is an important one, withtechnology itself being used in an open-source manner, and information accumulating in systems like Google, the issue of who uses and controls technology may have become obscured. I
myself probably have a strong awareness of who holds the reins, but I think it is important toconsider how far things like subjectivity and authorship can be accepted, and what will be created when they disappear, when thinking about the openness of media culture.
Kim: In my view, it would be corporations that best understand technology—not in terms of one
particular country, but rather corporations that transcend borders. Google, Amazon, Facebook,and Apple, for instance, are companies that collect all this information from all over the world, but
I don’t think each country has been able to organize that information in a consistent way. My senseis that corporate networks now contribute much more to controlling people than countries.
Hatanaka: Although I would like to delve deeper into the discussion, unfortunately we are running out of time. The theme of this symposium was openness in media culture, and I feel that
this openness can take different forms in various cultures. Thinking about how technology canovercome the influence of companies like Google, Apple, Facebook, and Amazon that were justmentioned will in alternative ways lead, I think, to a sense of openness in each culture.
I would like to thank all of you today for participating in today’s rather long symposium.

Open Media Culture: Collaborations, Networks, Exchange［48］Symposium Organizers
The Japan Foundation Asia Center
The Japan Foundation is Japan’s principal independent administrative institution dedicated to carrying out cultural exchange initiatives throughout the world. The Asia Center, established in April 2014,is a division within the Foundation that conducts and supports collaborative initiatives with its
Asian—primarily ASEAN—counterparts. Through interacting and working together in Japanese language education, arts and culture, sports, and grassroots and intellectual exchange, the Asia Center
aspires to develop the sense of kinship and coexistence as neighboring inhabitants of Asia.
https://jfac.jp/en

NTT InterCommunication Center [ICC]NTT InterCommunication Center [ICC] is a cultural facility established to commemorate the 100th
anniversary of telephone service in Japan in 1990. Operated by Nippon Telegraph and Telephone East
Corporation (NTT East Corp.), ICC was created firstly to facilitate dialogue among science, technology,
and artistic culture, and secondly to serve as a center for networking and information exchange connecting artists and scientists worldwide. In addition to the annual “Open Space” and “Kids Program”
exhibition series, ICC organizes a variety of other exhibitions, events, and activities across its galleries and online spaces.

The 4th International Symposium for Media Art

Open Media Culture: Collaborations, Networks, Exchange
Report [PDF ver.]Published: January 26, 2021
Publisher

The Japan Foundation Asia Center
Yotsuya Cruce 3F, 1-6-4 Yotsuya, Shinjuku-ku, Tokyo 160-0004 Japan
Email: acinfo@jpf.go.jp

NTT InterCommunication Center [ICC] (Nippon Telegraph and Telephone East Corporation)
Tokyo Opera City Tower 4F, 3-20-2 Nishishinjuku, Shinjuku-ku, Tokyo 163-1404 Japan
Email: query@ntticc.or.jp
EditorMoeko Kashima (The Japan Foundation Asia Center)
English Editing

William Andrews
Editorial Support

Kenichi Abe
Translation

William Andrews (p. 1)
Darryl Jingwen Wee (pp. 15–18, 26–31, 38–44, 45–48)
Trivector Co., Ltd. (pp. 20–25)
DesignIuko Matsukawa© 2021 The Japan Foundation Asia Center / NTT InterCommunication Center [ICC] (Nippon Telegraph and Telephone East Corporation)
All rights reserved.

This publication is a report of the 4th International Symposium for Media Arts, “Open Media Culture:
Collaborations, Networks, Exchange,” which was organized as a related event for the following exhibition.

Open Possibilities: There is not only one neat way to imagine our futures
Curation: Riar Rizaldi (Artist / Researcher), Yasuko Yubisui (Assistant Curator, NTT InterCommunication Center [ICC])
December 6–21, 2019
Venue: Japan Creative Centre ( JCC)
Organized by the Japan Foundation Asia Center, NTT InterCommunication Center [ICC] (Nippon Telegraph and Telephone
East Corporation), and Japan Creative Centre, Embassy of Japan in Singapore
January 11–March 1, 2020 (closed February 29 and March 1 as coronavirus preventive measure)
Venue: NTT Intercommunication Center [ICC]
Organized by NTT InterCommunication Center [ICC] (Nippon Telegraph and Telephone East Corporation) and the JapanFoundation Asia Center

Left:
Gallery A entrance, NTT InterCommunication Center [ICC].
Photo: Keizo Kioku. Courtesy of NTT InterCommunication Center [ICC]
Lower left:
Etsuko Ichihara, Digital Shaman Project (2015–).
Installation view at Japan Creative Centre ( JCC), 2019
Lower middle:
Tanatchai Bandasak, Central Region (2019).
Installation view at NTT InterCommunication Center [ICC], 2020.
Photo: Keizo Kioku. Courtesy of NTT InterCommunication Center [ICC]
Lower right:
Heri Dono, GAMELAN OF NOMMUNICATION (1997/2020).
Installation view at NTT InterCommunication Center [ICC], 2020.
Photo: Keizo Kioku. Courtesy of NTT InterCommunication Center [ICC]