American Art in Asia

This book challenges existing notions of what is "American" and/or "Asian" art,
moving beyond the identity issues that have dominated art-world conversationsof the1980s and the 1990s and aligning with new trends and issues in contem porary
art
today, e.g. the Global South, labor, environment, and gender identity.
Contributors examine both historical and contemporary instances in art practices
and exhibition-making under the rubric of "American art in Asia." The
bookcomplicates existing notions of what constitutes American art, Asian American(andAmerican Asian) art. As today's production and display of contemporary art
takes
place across diffused borders, under the fluid conditions of a globalized art
world
since transformed by the COVID-19 pandemic, new contexts, and art historicalnarratives are forming that upend traditional Euro-American mappings ofcentermargins, migratory patterns, and community engagement.
The book will be of interest to scholars working in art history, American studies,
Asian studies, and visual culture.

Michelle Lim is Assistant Professor at the College of Humanities, Arts and Social
Sciences at Nanya ng Technological University, Singapore.
Kyunghee Pyun is Associate Professor of History of Art at the State University of
New
York, Fashion Institute of Technology.

American Art in Asia
Artistic Praxis and Theoretical
Divergence

Edited by Michelle Lim andKyunghee Pyun

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NEW YORK AND LONDONth, 20_1_'} ~lte el for the La~ y of e Ho use
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201 9, fall season. Photo: M.i

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Con tent~-

List of Figures
List nf Contributors
Acknowledgments

Vll
XlV

XlX

1 American Art as Cultural Hegemony: 1945-1989
KYUNGHEE PYUN

1PART !

Post-War American Art in Postcolonial Asia

17

2 Leaving Yours elf Behind: Bourke-White, Zarina ,and the Partit ion of British India

19

ASMA NAEEM

3 What Can Ad Reinh ardt Teach Us About Asian Art?

36

MICHAEL J. HATCH

4 Painti ng as Inform ation: The Reception of Abstract
Expre ssioni sm in Japan

51

KENJI KAJIY A

5 Minim alism: A View from Singapore

68

RUSSELL STORERPART II

American Artists in Asia Today

87

6 The (im)Possibilities of Cultur al Collectivity: American
Artist in Setouchi

89

JAMES JACK

I

l
vt

Co11te11ts. Extraction G eolo~·· ,rnd
7 Rare Earth Image Ban k •.
Stock Photos, from Wyoming to Inner \ to:igo 1i a

105

D AV ID K E L LEY• Howa rd H en rv C hen·
8 Interstates an d Inner Sta t e S ·120

V I(:T L ~PART ID

Locating Asia in American Art

137

9 Mapping Lee Mingwei's Transnationa l Arc Practice139

LES LI E URE N A

10 American War in Vit;t Nam: We Are Besides Ourselves152

H ONG- AN TR lfONG

11 America in China: Cross-cultural Confluences inContemporary American Art

168

MI C HELL E YU N MAPPL ETHORP E

PART IV

Connecting Asia and the Americas in the Global South183

12 Buying and Selling American Taste: Pop Art and theInscription of Violence as Artistic Strategy in Colombia

185

JENNIFER BURRIS

13 Considering Dhaka Art Summit from a CHamoru
Perspective: A Walk Through its Institutional History

207

DIAN A C AMPB ELL

14 The Artpologists: Rethinking Food Justice in Central Asia

222

ZHANARA N A URUZBAYEVA

15 Points of Intersection: Realigning Future Art Histories

235

MI C HELL E LIM

Index

254

Contributors

Jennifer Burris is a curator and writer based in Bogota, Col~mbia. As the director of .
Athenee Press she works closely with contemporary arnsts to develop researchdriven books 'that explore the intersection between site, language, and cultural
memory. These long-standing collaborations are anchored in the collective
knowledge of spoken narratives, rumored histories, private archives, andimagined futures: a process that also informs her curatorial work, which includes
exhibitions at the Museo de Arte Moderno, Bogota; Brooklyn Museum, New York;Haverford College's Cantor Fitzgerald Gallery, Philadelphia; and the Institute ofContemporary Art, Philadelphia. As a writer she has contributed to publications
including The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, Studies in French Cinema,
Bomb Daily, Revista C6digo, Afterall, and Frieze as well as numerous catalogues
and anthologies. A graduate of the University of Cambridge (PhD) and Princeton
University (AB), she was a 2010-2011 Helena Rubinstein Curatorial Fellow at the
Whitney Independent Study Program and the 2011-2013 Whitney-Lauder
Curatorial FelJow at the Institute of Contemporary Art at the University ofPennsylvania. From 2018 to 2020, she was an Assistant Professor in Curatorial
Practice and Museum Studies at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore.
Diana Campbell is the Chief Curator of the Dhaka Art Summit (DAS) and Founding
Artistic Director of the Samdani Art Foundation. Since 2013, Campbell has
developed DAS into the foremost research and exhibition platform for art fromSouth Asia. Concurrent to her work in South Asia, from 2016 to 2018, Campbell
was also the Founding Artistic Director of Bellas Anes Projects, a non-profit
international residency and exhibition program with sites in Manila and Bataan.
As an independent curator, she has realized many significant solo projects andgroup exhibitions at leading institutions and galleries such as the Frieze Projects in
London in 2018 and 2019. She also chairs the board of the Mumbai Art Room,
one of India's leading non-profit spaces. Through her exhibitions, artist
commissions, education outreach, and scholarly cross-pollination in conjunction
with academic resea.rch centers, Campbell is laying the groundwork for valuablecross-cultural dialogue, by nurturing solidarity across the Global South towards
the necessary rewriting of art history for our collective future. CampbeJI was
educated at Princeton University, and has been Jiving and working across Asia
since 2010. She currently Jives in Brussels and Dhaka.

Michael J. Hatch is an Assistant Professor of East Asian art at Miami University in
Ohio. His research focuses on the interplay between sensuous, material, andContributors

xv

intellectual modes of viewing Ch inese painting, a nd ranges from the 18th century
to the 21st century. His current book manuscript is The Tactful Literattts:
Networks of Touch in Chinese Art, 1790-1840. His recent articles appear inArchives of Asian Art and the M etropolitan Museum Journal. Hatch earned a PhD
in Art and Archaeology from Princeton University in 2015, and has held
fellowships at the Metropolita n Museum of Art and the Princeton University
Art Museum. Before graduate school, he worked in auctions and galleries,
spending three years at China Guardian Auctions in Beijing and a year at
Kaikodo Gallery in New York.
James Jack is an artist and Associate Professor at Waseda University. James Jack is an
artist who engages layered histories tied to place as a way to concentrate on
instances of positive change achieved through community-l ed initiatives. Exhibitionsof his work have been held at the Echigo-Tsum ari Triennale, Setouchi Triennale,
Busan Biennale, Tokyo Metropolita n Museum of Art, Honolulu Museum of Art,
Oku-Noto Triennale, Institute of Contempora ry Art Singapore, TMT Art Projects(Fukuoka), TAMA Gallery (New York) and NTU Centre for Contempora ry Art
Singapore. Publications of his writings include "Spirits of Tsureshima: Creative
Storytelling with Islanders" in Shima, "Stories of Khayalan: Reparative Islands" inPlace-Labor-Capital, The Sea We See and an essay in Requiem for the Sun: The Art
of Mono-ha. He holds a PhD from Tokyo University of the Arts, was a Crown
Prince Akihito Scholar, a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Social Art Lab, Kyushu
University, a Georgette Chen Fellow and directed the artist-in-resid ence program at
Yale-NUS College in Singapore from 2018-2021.
Kenji Kajiya is an art historian and Professor of representati on studies at the

University of Tokyo. Kajiya also serves as Director of the Oral Art History
Archives of Japanese Art. He is a co-editor of From the Postwar to the
Postmodern , Art in Japan 1945-1989: Primary Documents (New York:
Museum of Modern Art, 2012) and the 12-volume Selected Art Writings ofNakahara Yusuke (Tokyo and Yokohama: Gendai Kikakushits u and BankART
Publishing, 2011-). His first book, Formless Modernism: Color Field Painting and20th-Centur y American Culture, is forthcoming from the University of Tokyo
Press.
David Kelley is an Associate Professor in the Roski School of Art and Design,
University of Southern California. His recent work examines circuits of extraction,
shifting social and political geographies , and the effects of global capitalism. Kelley
has exhibited work internationa lly, including BAK in Utrecht, the Netherlands ;deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum in Massachuse tts; the Nanjing Art
Museum, China; the Museum of Modern Art, New York; MAAP in Brisbane,
Australia; and the Jim Thompson Art Center in Bangkok. His collaboratio ns withfellow USC faculty member Patty Chang have earned them both recognition andawards. Their film about the Three Gorges Dam, Flotsam Jetsam (2007), wasexhibited at the 2008 New Directors/N ew Films Festival and won the Golden
Pyramid at the Cairo IMFA Y Media Arts Festival. Another collaboratio n, Route 3(2011 ), a three-chann el video about a recently completed highway in Laos, hasbeen exhibited in venues in Massachuse tts, Brisbane, Hong Kong and the Bangkok
Experimenta l Film Festival. Kelley earned a bachelor's degree from Trinity College

Part II

American Artists in
Asia Todayes of Cultural
6 The (im)Possibiliti
istCollectivity: American Art
in Setouchi

James Jack

What methods do my artworks suggest for understanding the world?
understand theArtistic systems for refl,ecting on moments outside of now to better
unity is in
comm
the
,
groundgcontradictions of this mome nt. We all stand on movin1
motion, opinions changing one at a time in relation to each other.

Introduction: lntercultural Encountersto her home.
The late Satsuki Kuros hima often told storie s durin g long visits I mademind:
On the topic of this book, the follow ing story imme diatel y comes to
ra. One day,Soon after the war, I move d from Kobe to this harbo r town of Konou
I could see
a foreign sailbo at lande d in the harbo r. As the visitors came to shore,water or athey were Amer icans. They appro ached perha ps to ask for a toilet,
simply said,
store, but I could n't under stand a word they spoke . I stood there and 2
was.
"No English." They under stood me perfec tly, how amazi ng thatthe joy she felt as
Seven decades after this brief encou nter, Satsu ki vividly recou ntedh." Toget her
they under stood the only word s she knew in their langu age, "No Englis
the irony of her
we would roll in laugh ter each time she told this story, aware ofese language.
utterance with our comm unica tion now possib le entire ly in the Japannot under standShe would retell this story when ever I broug ht someo ne who did
the visitor each
Japanese to her house . I would transl ate the story into English forl understan~ing.
time, transf ormin g an inabil ity to comm unica te to one of mutua, these microIn contrast to histor ical relati ons betwe en the Unite d States and Japantandin g. Whilecommunications led to rich excha nges based on mutua l underSt ten years, I haveworking on an artwo rk next door to Satsu ki's home over the paSt~. These rebe:n facilitating cultur al relati onshi ps betwe en atypic al cou_nterRar
1st0rIC si~e~ _b~t alsolationships not only shape d the artwo rk I made with the hposs1b1hties and~hifted my artisti c metho ds to engag e direct ly with the collective.
impossibilities of langu age itself.
e workcreativ
es,
decad
two
past
the
for
h
Working on th e W est ed ge o f t h e p ac1.6 c R'1m
. y ·d w
.
w o
ang
a
I
artist
nese
ch·
·
1
.
.
With Janguage 1s.
. .
woven throu ghout my art practice.
can
nding
derstamisun
t1c
lingms
that
me
ht
l
l
• H ono u u taugk. s ·•
spent much o f h er l'f.
I e m
wor mg withmean 1·usr as much I'f not more t h an un d erstandi· ng for artists. While
DOI: 10.43 24/97 81003 13028 4-8

90 James Jack
dialogue is central to my praxis, which is full of understa ndings, misunderstandi
an_d more, "Americ a" and "Asia" are just two ?f many words floating in the air/~t~1s chapter I aim to diversify these two terms with a _more comple : la~g~age from the
air we breathe in artistic practice. I pause before ~smg_ the_ word Asia, . and extend
this to "Americ a" with the a~m of find~g more 1magma_ttve wa~s to discuss artists
and the places they are workmg today. I rely upon regi~~-speci_fic vocabulary andfolklore , think of people as more than the~r birthpla~e or_ cJt~zenship st~tus, _and resist1homoge neity with active engagement of m_ternal _d1_v_e~sity ~ groups. This chapter
investigates the collective possibilities and 1mposs1b1httes of mtercultural artistic engagemen t through an intimate lens in Seto Inland Sea, or Setouchi in Japanese. As an
artist I believe in the value of artistic research and aim to contribu te critical reflections
from one island in a rural area of Japan so they might impact social relationships inother places. It is my hope these reflections can foster a shift away from hierarchicalrelations towards cooperative methodologies for artistic practitio ners working with6
diverse communities.
Reflective artistic research opens spaces for artists, commun ities, and others toshare cooperat ive methods for how to work respectfully with each other in mutually
beneficial ways. Howeve r, there are far too many example s of artists and scholars
not working with communities. I offer methods for how to work through challenges
and find ways to "suspen d damage" with research "to reimagin e how findings might7
be used by, for and with commun ities." I have witnesse d the presence of American
power in the form of military bases, resource extractio n, and econom ic oppression
first hand in Okinaw a, Hawai'i and Indonesi a. This power is often based on modernist thinking including the superior ity of the West and its racist, imperialist, andunjust structures. A commitm ent to coopera tive artmaki ng is a critical part of unwho
doing violent footprin ts with peaceful actions made in solidarit y with others
8stand up against the barriers that militarism exerts on cultural diplomacy. As amethodo logy, cooperative work with close-knit commun ities resists hierarchicalthinking by working equally with people of diverse linguistic, ethnic, gender, socioeconomic, and age orientations. As faith in democra cy and capitalis m further erodes~nth~ a~e of COVID- 19, ~l_ternative models for intercult ural engagem ent have urgent
1mphcat1ons for commumt1es across the globe working towards cooperat ive systemsof governance and horizontal forms of exchang e .
. In this chapter, I searc~ for alternative forms of cultural diploma cy based on nonv10lent methods_ at the site of one artwork entitled Sunset House: The House as
Language of Being. Here, ~ ~ork with the possibilities of collective language in intercultural encounter~ prov1dmg one new perspective from rural Japan. This artwork• and myself as an
at1ve for commun ity member s, vi·si'to rs t o t h e site,has. been transform.
lessons for those expandi·ng u pon art as a form o f m eaningful
artist.
. It contams useful .
d where.
centers 9 I work on movmg
ent outside of. colonialsocial engagem
groun
·
.
d
ha
· ·
c·ve ways.
.
ct1ons arise ' which I wor k t hrough mcontrad1
opm10ns c nge an· screa 1h"•.
. my praxis now 1s: i·f people
0 ne tenet I Iearned m etouc 1 and continue to em Ploy m. . .
to exist.
.
.
1t will continue but 1·f they d o not 1t
want th e artwork to exist,
w1 11 cease
'
•
1·b
·
fi
b
.
A co•
.
' ·
d.
Th1s can e con mng, 1 eratmg, or more deof che.
s1tuat1?n
the
upon
mg
pen
center'm
theatpeoplewithhoperative approac
work depends upon a social fabric of differe tean~ ~he existenc e (or cessauon) Jciple
n opmions woven together by muparticipants in tongue duree.

(im)Possibilities of Cultural Collectivity

91}-lope Shattered. my first visit to Setouchi in 2009, I saw few people yet felt great presence. On. I d.trector Fram Kitagawa we.
. d tnenma· h newIY appomteounngII boat together wit
a sma d at the islands of Teshima, Shodoshima, Ogijima, and Megijima. At the site ofI·· too Is, time
· an d f arming
stoPPe·c shed full o f fi sh mg
to the speed of cracks in
sowed
t
.
.
.
f
.
d wa II s an d stains o rust seepmg m.
a rus tugh intertor
from nails on the exterior.
muh~~-:ovillage stood as still as the tranquil sea, yet I felt the presence of powerful
m~vements. This town of Konoura, t'¥n'ti or "bay of spirits," was a protected harbora maritime artery where boats would frequently anchor. From the 7th to
f
.
h
h.
aIong
nineteenth century,_s 1ps were t e primary means o transport~tion, carrying people,
culture, beliefs, and more across the sea. In the twentieth century, Setouchi
t nes '
I nature park in Japan in the 1930s to.
. t he fi ~st nat1o?asoregion went from bec?mmg
functioning as a repository for toxic waste in the 1980s. Over the past decade, I havebeen working amid a complex social landscape of intercultural encounters, shatteredhope and collective dreams interwoven in this shed and its social relations. An earlysketch captivates part of this relationality. In it, I drew each of the names of thepeople, elements, and activities that kept the site alive, as the foundation for Sunset
House as an artwork (Figure 6.1 ).
The stillness of small harbors and winding one-way roads of Setouchi are inaccessible by low-cost carriers, Shinkansen, and ultra-large container vessels.
Instead, one must slow down to take a ferry boat and a bus, car, or local train. I firstencountered methods of co-creation, cooperation and collective praxis while participating in the 4th Echigo-Tsumari Triennale in Niigata earlier in the same year
I first visited Setouchi. 10 Between ten to twenty artists and I resided in a former~~~ ; ,~~~l•I , '~-r•,

Figure 6.1 James Jack, The House as Language of Being, 2011. Graphite on paper, 17-9 " x 22".

Image retouched by Kenta Kawagoe.

92 James Jack
dormitory for elementary school teachers, int~racting, d~}I~ _with local farrne
craftspeople, and schoolteachers. Here, I felt Kitagawa s vision to re~onnect rs,
and nature" while working with a local farmer, temple keeper, and kindergar:r1
children to create an artwork in the former schoolhouse _where ~e all exhibited~~
This philosophy resonated with me deeply as I was se~kmg a wider range of i ·thginative possibilities while growing less concerned w~ mar~etplaces which
ded upon. I saw other Amencan artists such as M·1erleY
II..
.
early career h a d depen
Laderman Ukeles and James Turrell exhibit m Nug~ta as _we , yet their appro hto site-specificity did not appear to include workm_g wit~ co~munities on :~eground in a durational way. The approach of conversing ~a1l_y wit? people in theirlanguage and noticing overlooked aspects of the place while m residence over lo
ng
d I
I
.h
·
·
eriods of time led me and other artists to interact. wit peop e an pace on th ~.
P
own terms, adapt to their timing and adjust to t h_elf ~ace.
12This residential approach is shared by other artists m the Postwar period. First
travelling to Japan in 1957, artist Sam Francis ~192~-1994) esta?lis~ed a studio, built
a home and continued to spend significant time m Japan until his death. He saw
the relationship between both places as interdependent as can be seen in the following
excerpt from a poem: "New York needs Tokyo needs Paris needs Tokyo needs LA.
needs Tokyo needs the world." 13 Francis actively engaged with artists, writers, architects, and composers in Japan and had two children with video art pioneer Mako
Idemitsu, one of whom is Shingo Francis, an artist. Printmaker Sarah Brayer arrived
in Japan in 1979 to work with renowned woodblock printers and continues to utilize
traditional craft in her work with washi paper and aquatint techniques today. By
maintaining an active practice between Kyoto and New York over the past four
decades, Brayer devotes her work and life to gaining a deeper appreciation ofJapanese craft outside of Japan. Conceptual artist Arthur Huang moved to Tokyoand established the artist collective Art Byte Critique in 2012. His time-based works,
which are made with a meticulous focus on mapping memories, utilize creative waysof recording daily walks in microforms; Huang is also known for shifting ocular
perception, through an artwork included in the 2013 Setouchi Triennale. Like these
artists_, I often engage in long conversations, walk on winding roads, and employ local
ma_te~1als as a method to embody complexity underneath cultural stereotypes in myart1s~c process. The grassroots, slow-lifestyle, and communitarian aspects of my art
practice have grown alo~gs~de artists, curators, and local people of diverse age,gender, and cultural upbrmgmgs who share these aims.
_Art can and does inspire sea changes, sparking robust tranformations that resonate
w1~ broader forms of cultural_ awakening. 14 By working with others in creative ways,
artJ~ and cultural workers resist extractive approaches to place by building meaningfulsoci . s~uc~es ~o n~rture collective dreams. To this day my art teaching and activism
·
'
'
.
••
f"
·
remam
,, 15 with the aim O positive social change achieved through cornrnUJlltr·. . .m.sohdanty
Ied Irutlat1ves.
· that1d
Each year J w·rn
1
ess peop e epart and pass away in a conunuruty
has largely bee 1 ft b h. d'.
m m rhe quest for speed and convenience. Currently, only five
Chi.ldren res1'de ~m ethe etown
• ·n
k
wh
e_re n:1Y wor was created, which is a common s1tuat10.
across ruralthat my woJapanj Wh!Je ;orkmg m Setouchi, I learned how to actively acknowledge
munity memb: on eXI~ ec~use of the participation, motivation, and vision of corn·bookstore kayarks.g ?dget er .k~itbh new and renewed sites-a bath house, gelato sh?P'
non
,
1
d
u1 e, a sa e rewery'' an count ess cafes-artworks are an attracdon the twelve isla dh T .
n s an two ports wh
ere t e nennale is concentrated.

:a-

i

►

(im) Possibilities of Cultural Collectivity 93
ting wealthy domestic and. . lly reliant on a familiar museu m model of attrac
·
h
d
I
.
h
nent
Jnitia-American au d'1ences, t e 1s an s ave grown mto one of the most promi
h
·
·
d
b
·
Euro
activities.
examples of comblmunt~y-l_ase_ art p_ract~cesl wd_1t year-lroufnd grassr ootsmic}-Jere, a sustaina ed rev1ta 11~aAt1oftn p_r~J~ct me u . mg peo~ eho diverse socio-econo
er m_1t1a 1 expeNnmenht_s wit typical exhibition models
backgrounds is und erwhay.
aos 1ma, artist- turned -curat or Yuji
Tokyo an ot er metro po 11ses onfface-to~~::ot o developed a radical model i~ 2_000, when he bega~ linking artists.1 7 This
face with islanders .~o make ar~o~ ,k~ mt1~a tel~ co~ne_cted with local culture
and new
developed into t~e .house pro1ect, . m which histori c s1_tes were _re-:1'urposed
villages.
h ses were bmlt m harmo ny with vernac ular archit ecture ms1de small
Teshima,p;:manent artworks were install ed on other isla~ds i~cl~ding Inujima andup to the launch of a large-scale rural tnenm al tsm partne rship with the preIeading
.
II
.
d
of
fecrural government an a privat e art ga ery m 2010. Now the methodologyof time isartists engaging with aband oned places and local people over long periods
acrosstransforming regions into places of abund ance at other festivals occurring· 19
Japan and As1a.
Of course, the area is aff/,icted by depopulation. However, the excitement uponseeing this bay for the 'first time, and the excitement of walking along thescoastline later, will never be forgotten. It can be said that Sunset House borrowIelements of the surrounding bay, mountains and villages as part of its scenery.
will surely have another chance to write about this house and garden. But mostnoteworthy in this garden is the open process of collaboration, participation andandialogue with the local residents. In that sense, this garden cannot be called
20
ordinary work of art.
-Shin ichi Anzai, 2013
Collective Dreamst, Sunset
The community-involv ing artisti c praxis I engag ed with for the projec
colHouse: The House as Language of Being, opens oppor tunitie s for cultur alcompl exlectivity while also reveal ing situat ions where collec tivity is not possible. A
shed~anguage weaves throug h social and mater ial encou nters on site. In this small
summ ermfused with the stories of a defun ct stone quarry , I was invite d to hold2010. At
workshops by the island town counc il along with thirtee n other artists inwood
th~ site, I felt memo ries, storie s, and hards hips seepin g out of the dirt walls,
t~oug hfloo~, _and tile roof that comp ose the house . These feelings becam e visib~eng toar.ticipat?ry works hops. Slowl y acqua inting mysel f with towns people , hste~u_
onedheir stones, and reflecting upon all that had happe ned before ~e, I ~nvisi
artwo rk.
mer hods for remak ing an existi ng struct ure into more than an " ordma ry.
decad es
Each person who had touch ed the struct ure shape d its existe nce thus farm
only
Past,_yet it was now falling out of use, to the point where its existence couldt. ~he~~ntmue_if a new group of peopl e were to activ~l~ touch the site in the_ p~eseng the m~ required urgen t care, so I began with repair mg the floor and pamtm
that alltenor walls with fresh mud togeth er with artist Ko Maed a. Along e way
stages, sponta neous small gather ings occur red inside and aroun d the house as wellinform al
as on meandering footpa ths in the village. Upon finishing the tatam i floor,
fish togarherings lasted longer as Satsuk i played her instru ment, Satoru caugh t freshf94 James Jack

share, Atsushi stood by chuckling, and the mayor would frequently stop b
Y toobserve all that was happening.
I utilized vernacular materials such as ~ud, . upcycl_ed tatami and yakita (bclapboards) while repairing the house. While this was m progress I wrote "O urnr
' ne byf Ib·1
one each useless item finds a new purpose. Not necessan Yuse u ut also no I
useless." 21 I also experimente d with local materials in unconventional wa on~er
ys, inh .I d· deluding stone dust from granite and basa It mme on t e 1s an as well as upcy 11. ·ceramic rooftiles. The dust I mixed in with the mud to paint arc forms into the: ~1g
to show the links the small house has with the sky and earth. Many of the artists w~ sstayed more than a few months on the island wou_l~ ge~ call~ from Michael Yad~whenever his construction company ~as on demolit10n Job ~1te~, as we shared his
obsession with upcycling. One matenal I recovered fr~m him 1?cluded old black
rooftiles. With another artist from France, I broke the tries up usmg a hammer andspread them over the dirt floor inside the house, thinking this would make a cleaner
interior and match the color palette of the mud walls. However, shortly after thetriennial was over, the son of the owner asked the town council managing the artwork to have the rooftiles removed. I was informed of this in Tokyo but did notunderstand the underlying motives until later.
Over a year later, after returning to live as an artist-in-:residence in a repurposed
kindergarten on the island, I sat down with Satsuki's son Makio Kuroshima. We
spoke at length while listening to jazz in his three-walled shed, which overlooked amodest hillside garden of persimmons, carrots, herbs, and more. I shared stories
about how my artworks utilized local materials such as dirt and walnut husks, while
he shared stories about his father and his grandchildre n, while we sipped on coffee
and ate fresh tangerines. I learned how he had taken apart and rebuilt the shed withhis father after a landslide occurred in the 1970s. During a long and winding conversation, he explained why he felt rooftiles were intended for roofs, not to be
stepped on, and so asked the town officers to remove them after I left. From a material aesthetic standpoint, I disagreed with him; yet I empathized with him as changes
were made without including him in the communicat ions. His care for the shed andthe land became the underlying spirit that united us, as I too was falling in love with it
now. Against the modernist trend of artistic genius, where art is for communities, I
chose to prioritize people over aesthetics in order to work with the community
members, leading to unpredictable results. Art with community, not for them. Eachtime I visited Shodoshima from then on, I paid respects at the local temple, went ~obring a gift for Makio and spoke with community leaders to ask what had changed intheir lives. Ideas for the artwork would slowly arise afterwards in the air we breathedtogether. These conversations became the basis for a work that stood not upon scone,
wood, and mud-materi al choices shift over the years-but with the core language of· and making decisions together. The language ofk'mg a clvice.
. tton-see
commuruca
share~ memo~i~s became the core framework for the work.
While repamng th~ ~alls during this period of residency, I opened the process topeople of all ages. I mv1ted everyone who wished to write on papers to have the!11
be~ome part of the mud walls (Figure 6.2). The essential work of replacing ~e e~jtenor ~lapboard_s needed urgent attention as the sea salt and wind had taken their co f
overk~1me .. Bhut ilnstelad of completing the work in days, I extended the process_111og• open for mon ths , alloW k
wor mg wit. the walls would remam. . a. oca carpenter so
open part1c1pat1on to occur. While slowing the pace of carpentry and plastering wor '(im)Possibilities of Cultural Collectivity 95(captio11 u11 next page)96

James Jack

Figure 6.2 a) One of the resident s, the late Satsuki Kuros~ ima, writing her note, "2S
0
23 Heisei. Praying the soul of _this artwork will become a _great .success. D
ctoberbest Kurosh ima " for the interior wall of Sunset House. Shodosh1ma, Jap O Yourb) One of the la~t notes still visible on the north wall of Sunset House ba1, 2011.
commu nity's song-an d-dance closing ceremo ny, reads,_ "~olkso ng oftheCome visit this great place of Konou ra/fhe sound _o f pilgnm s' bells echoes oura:mini Fuji in Spring ... Let's you and I embark on a tnp togethe r/We will make frommemori es!" Shodos hima, Japan, 2011.
&reat

Ko:e

spirits at the site came to life. The exterio r of the mud walls, which would normal!
have been expose d for only a numbe r of hours, were ke~t open for w~eks as peopl~
contrib uted wishes, dreams , and hopes for the futu~e. This ~as a creative method ofvisualizing historic voices from the past that are at nsk of bemg forgott en, and aw
to collectively reflect on the future potenti al of the site. Wishes were only tempora ~ly· ed w1thm· · t he yak tta. wa IIs o f t he house. Asnay
visible and were subseq uently containoutside r invited into the commu nity by the public educat ion sector of the island tow:
counci l, I could bring people from rivalin g towns, differe nt age groups , and competitive schools togethe r, to contrib ute to the project . For examp le, in one workshop
two elderly women who both loved the project but despise d each other showed up'.
One served tea while the other retreat ed near the door to observ e, withou t exiting.
This taught me that conflicts exist not only in the visible forms of discrimination that
I grew up with in New York City, but also within commu nities in less visible ways,alesson that I continu e to work with in other art project s. 22
Artistic practic e opens dialogu e with and within commu nities. lntercultural dialogue is not just about Japane se, Americ an, Korean , Chines e, or French cultures interactin g, but is also about bridges betwee n the elderly and youth, men and women,
those born on the island and those who moved from other places, and among othersubgro ups often conglo merate d into "locals." Every third year I observ ed artists on
an interna tional stage when the trienni al would open. Yet, I found rich textures ofintercu ltural dialogu e with and within local commu nities in the years the triennial
was not held. I saw the social landsca pe shift throug h the season s and learned thestructu re was formerly used as a gatheri ng place for employ ees of a basalt stone
quarry known as the Mutsu mi Clubho use throug h the 1970s. The presence I had felt
on the initial visit was confirm ed as the house returne d to its origins as a gathefi?gP_la~e f?r ~ocals, visitors, and guests to engage with one anothe r (Figure 6.3). Whi_lesittmg mside ~he house, one youthf ul islande r who had just returne d from living 111
Central ~enc a named Ayako Fujii said, "As a child, I wanted nothin g more than coleave th~ island to live in a city. Now that I have seen that way of life, I see the appealof loca~ island culture and traditio ns. ,,23 Our activiti es within the house recirculate~memories of th e hands of those that had constru cted and recons tructed the ho~safter a landslide decade s earlier. I hope that circula ting these imagin ative possibilines
from the past could help shape an alterna tive future.

The language of participation is cloake d in risk
as mor_e people gather the chances of danger increase
alongside communication comes the risk of dama eperson_al and commu nal wound s surfaceg
As artists engage co··
mmunzttes, we have responsibilities24

(im)Possibilities of Cultural Collectivity

97(caption 011 next page)98 James Jackn with Yasuo Hirai, Mich

Figure 6.3 a) "Small Islands with Big Visions" roundtable_ discussioat Sunset Ho~se in auru elleLim, Yoshitaka Mori, Yoshiak_i Kawata and t~landers
during the Setouchi lntemattonal Art Festival Z016. Pho~o: Lmdsey D ~n,b) Sunset House, 2016, interior view. Basalt ston~s, upcycled gra~te ~ain grinder::~lt.

w/ceramic shards_in foreground; upcycl~~ tatami, tea table, historic telev~sion
documentary video co-created by participants and basalt dust arc shape inside rearh'th th e surround.mg skY·
wall connecting the house w1

im/Possibility
Being multilin gual, I am sensitiv e to the layered meanin gs of. familiar and un.
familia r words. While workin g on Sunset House, I would at times contemplateI
simple and complic ated words in both Japane se and English , to the point where
could think about little else. During this time, I discove red letters exchanged between the philoso pher Martin Heideg ger (1889- 1976) and scholar of German
25
literatu re Tomio Tezuka (1903-1983). In my reading , their exchan ge of ideas
provide d ways of thinkin g through the space betwee n languag es. I discovered thepossibi lity that languag e could express the imposs ibility of words corresponding
with memori es, though ts, dreams , and feelings. Along the pathwa y of making thiswork, the site hosted many exchang es in languag e: from casual convers ations and26
informa l tea gatheri ngs to popula r musica l events and scholar ly roundtables.
While reflecting upon convers ations with people on Shodos hima, the latent memories of our words felt true to the languag e of particip ation. Because the words
were not visible, there was a necessit y for them to be felt. Thus, words would
remain inside of its walls, undern eath the garden , and serve as witness es to all of
our contrib utions seen clearly with the heart. The house would be kept alive withthe words themselves contain ed within.
Langua ge itself creates and sustains this house of being, forming the subtitle forthis artwork , "the house as languag e of being." In their letters, Tezuka andHeidegger reflected on the meanin g of words in both Germa n and Japanes e. Theirconcept of "langua ge as the house of being" deeply influen ced me while I was
reading them in English, my native languag e. In the work, Sunset House, I havereversed "langua ge" and "house ." This is because the house does not exist as aphilosophical tool fo~ cont~m plating languag e in the project of Sunset Ho~se.
5~a~her, here o~ the 1slan_d 1t 1s the languag e of being, by townsp eople, artIS~ ,v1s1tors, and distant audiences, that sustain s the physica l house. The material
str~cture of t~e house is_a vessel for words that cross nationa l, urban-r ural, andsto r~soc~o-econo~ic bounda nes to become a collecti ve space for reflection andtellmg. Architectural materia ls such as mud walls yak,.ta granite ' basalt ' tacam1,
h .
'
'
k
and
. . oho appear_to eep the house togethe r; but symbol ically and metap ys1·
II bambhca y it is t e collective languag e that holds th. h. h ords,
er.
toget
ouse
is
.
.
This language is compos ed ofcreative m1scom munica tions, acciden ts wit w ..
. .
d I f 1
. If W1"thout rb1s
. l
u commu nication circulat ed in the phy s1ca
an paystructu re ttse .
II · )anguage, t h e house will sl I d. .
be seen.
co ect1vefow Y 1s mtegra te mto the earth as canh b •id··m so ~any ot er u1 mgs dotting the Japanes e countr side 2 7 The insertion o. When con·•.Y
papers mto the walls and writing on the st ones h as activate.
d the site.
·d d · d. 'dh rdsh1P 5•.
s1 ere m 1v1 ually, these acts embody pe rsona 1 t h oughts and pnvatekYad II • l hthToge er an co ect1ve y, t ey breathe new life into the house, lifting it into rhe s .

(im)Possibilities of Cultural Collectivity

99.
· ·ng here is part of an ecological netwo rk of relati ons, stimu lated
by
h
issue
aris1
. .
Th
Eac
gh h .
.
k nd nurtu red or destroyed by part1c
1pants.
rou
t e mtersect1on,the.arrwor· k s are ma d e b.
da weaving of local and global cultur es, new 1m
etweencolhs10n, anarsh realities and soft dreams.
.
.
.
h ft he second triennial, the house was repair ed, and comm umty
leadersmA er t· ·. l.
vested in the project. I learne d frohm myf m1t1~dexpenenhces to con~u lt t hem ffrel . thus I have shared sketc es o my t eas at t e comm umty
cente r or
qd~ent ~'on at 'an stages since. I have learne d to trust decisions madetogeth er, so
1scuss1.
f·ationsoverthedesign
,
mater
ials,
and
scope
o the artwo rk have been madetInego
· . C ommu mcat1· · on h as b rok
t of collaboration with t h e comm unity
en d own at~u es and we have passed throu gh many emoti onal uphea vals over theyears. I am
t:1 not a local and never will be. I am not alone in this regard :one forty-year:esident, married to a local islander, repor ted to me that he is also
consi dered an
outsider and will remain that way because he is origin ally from Kobe ,which is just a
couple of hours away by boat. There are long- stand ing rivalries amon
g neigh borin g
towns, personal feuds that go back gener ations , conflicts over land
use betwe enresidents and the government, and a whole village of many , many strong voices andcontradictory opinions. Durin g the third year of the work , while offeri
ng the shedfor shared dialogue between those who would not sit togeth er in thesame room
under any other circumstance, I felt that Sunset House would stop being
an artwo rk
without the insertion of these difficulties and hards hips.
The garden became a collective space for sharin g these frustr ations. Local andnon-local participants wrote their difficulties, challenges, and hardfeelings on theunderside of granite stones and then arran ged them by handin the garde n(Figure 6.4 ). These messages broug ht nouri shme nt to an area used forthe past two
decades to burn garbage. The turnin g over of these granit e stones from a local
quarry revitalized the site. Its life comes from what alread y exists there,
yet often
remains invisible. Throu gh partic ipatio n, the langu age of being, which
can only
be seen during certai n period s, can be felt anytim e at the site. The
artwo rk was
created in a temporarily synergistic effort by comm unity reside nts,
town officers,
the Triennale
organizers, and myself, and sustai ned for a decad e throu gh shared28
language. The messages conta ined withi n the house and the larger
messages for
redra~ing hierarchies of cente r and periph ery remai n. Retur ningto the initia l
heSt1on posed at the start: what metho ds do my artwo rks show forunder stand ing
t e ~orld? Intimate relations in a small share d house can impac
t globa l under standing if we t a k e respon ·b·1· f· s an d comm it. to t h e comm unitie
s1 1 1ty or our action.. s;e .~ork with. A comm itmen t to comm unitie s requir es embra cing
uncer tainty as
ecisions are made according to non-h ierarc hical metho ds.

There was a time, not long ago, when "Asian Amer icans " did not exist.29-Hel en Zia, 2006.

Conclusion.. D· nal Dancing
urattoihis chapte .
.
in As· h r aims to contn bute to the wave of knowledge about what
Amer ican Art
and~~ ~, do_es, and might mean in the future. What is the "Ame rican
Asian story "Perhap[ano:s It ~att~ r today ?30 An. alternative to h_egemony is ur~en
tly neede d now.
xammatton of my praxis and other artists based outsid e of Amer ica
will100 James Jack

Figure 6.4 James Jack, Sunset House: The House as Language of Being, 2010-2020. Granite,basalt, ubame oak tree, yakita clapboards, mud walls with granite and basalt dust,
wishes, hopes, dreams, tatami, pine, broken ceramics, 40-minute digital video,
hardships, fears and challenges. Photo: Shintaro Miyawaki.

contribute to an expanded lexicon of cultural practice in the future. In the current
global art scenes linked by a network of digital platforms, what is more important isself-consciousness of belonging, which involves countries where artists reside andinteract, their praxis with local and global audiences, and their web of mutual relations. This shift of thinking aids artists, thinkers, and cultural practitioners in critically evaluating their praxis and artworks-a theoretical method we can employ.
While retaining awareness of distinctions between American and Asian contexts, I
find a resonance between what we are now attempting to describe and what Asian
Americans felt did not exist. 31
Attention should be paid to the problematic, hierarchical legacy of artwo~ks
created with a U.S.-centric approach in Asia, and those created in North Amencathen shipped to Asia for dissemination. Based on exhibitions, publications, andtcritical perspectives on exchanges between East and West throughout the paS
century, we must now move towards defining artistic praxis as interrelations not
between two places, but between artists and audiences who reside in two or m~replaces. Crossings between Asian artists and America or American artists and Asia,
can complicate discourses based on an artist's birthplace and citizenship. I ear~esdy ask myself whether I practice "American art" in Japan-an archipelago on_c_ e:Western edge of the Paci~c Rim_. No matter h?w 'tong J engage with communit:~m Japan, townspeople snll consider me a foreigner-a non-local like the husba
from Kobe.

(im) Possibilities of Cultural Collectivity 101
ording to curator Masahiro Ushiroshoji, Asia redefined itself on its own terms
Acc. ' s modern age, when learning· about to cIose on As1a
· 1s
. he 1990s: "The curtain
in t the 'West' was insisted upon as an absolute value. In keeping with this the'from. transcended." 32 America. _aIso bemg
. art 1s
· d' o f As1anframework of the .' mod~rn per10
now redefine itself m terms relevant to the discourse of transnational art praxis.
h b d
1· d . .
canThis chapter has out 1~e a~t1st1~ approac es ase on a c?llectivity informed by myknowledge of inter-As1~n d1vers1ty today. If the s~ortcommgs of multiculturalism inAmerica, as aptly descnbed by curator ~usette ~m, are applied to American artists
practicing i~ Asia, I proP,f;e an adaptation that m~ludes "decentrali~ation_matters"
In other words, breakmg down centralized hierarchies
and "inclus10n matters.
gives birth to ways of ~orki~g with _com~un_ities ~here artists are in residence andengaged in longue duree pr~Jects while usmg mclus1ve methods of participation that
foster intimate forms of social change.
The spaces between "living," spoken words and "dead," written scripts, areactivated at Sunset House. The issues arising here from one durational American
artist's praxis in Asia today diversifies the directionality of artistic influence todate.34 In spite of increasing attention paid to socially-engaged art in Asia, there
is still a need for a more expansive lexicon of diverse practitioners in the regionof Pacific Asia beyond the ethnonational political hegemony. As increasingly
global visitors meet local people in art sites such as Setouchi, social interaction is
not only about finding commonalities or feel-good art, but also about dealing
with conflict and understanding distinction s-and discovering methods for socialchange in one's own community. Artworks alone do not replace social welfare,reverse the concentration of economic and cultural resources in urban areas, or
35
alter extreme rates of population decline.
Sunset House is one site which demonstrates how cultural hierarchies arebroken down, and a collective language is made possible, when diverse audiences
nurture and cultivate horizontal relationships within complex social landscapes.
While nationalism, isolationism, and exceptionalism unfurl along with the pandemic, artistic sites like these include not only cultures circumscribed within
national borders, but also cultures shared between islands and migrant people. In
the uncertain future of both this artwork and the world at large, I am remindedthat existence of this structure rests not on its astute walls, floor and roof, but on
its relationships with the local people who care, amend, and ~reathe with _it. And
they have transformed me as an artist; I now react to emotional turmoil more
slowly, and am more conversant with local materials, surroundings, and where~ ~ork now. Remaining in harmony with the peo~le and t~e place in whic~ itxists, the artwork can be an archive for collective emotions and ecologicaltestimonials-for that which is possible impossible and more, tangled in a net of'• •C
ontmumg relations.

Notes
st ?1emo, "Thoughts upon leaving the island," February 14, 2013 i3 Art!
.
Arti st conversation with Satsuki Kuroshima, August 2, ~01 2,tnt!n searching for the language of American Asian Art, I am indebted t~ arttS s ~nd ~cholars
in th e field of Asian American Art including Robert Lee, Ma_rgo ~-achJda, Kar~~ HJga,_ a~d0thers who articulated the framework for their own works, 1dent1t1es, a nd positions w1thm
co ntemporary art.

102 James Jack. ,discus s 'As1aessly' h'10 H ayas h'I " cau ti'ons us not to readilhy and effortl· n M JC•.
d·
4 A rt h 1stona
1
· ...
and
ated
should pa use before t e woeJ 1sk art1cuthProl 0
.
'
h
we
,
p
conce
e
t
d
1scuss
h
uld
we
. ng
s o
uted issu'bl sO that we can take a c Ioser boo at t e convol.
1
t he pause f or as Iong as poss1 t e,thatd csiltnternaater
was
was create d by Europ e,as autproces'A . ' .
ze by
.
b
t
th
s
well
W
h
p
d
h
conce
a
at an . . . . Sta ts
a uilds a self,,I
est , ~s .
those in Asia as a conce pt that count ers t eof co-exi
JO 8 1 •Count
Seetures.
cu
sting
d 'verse range
• h.
fA •
e,or
'd
d .
F
J
defi ne d 1 ea o s1a wit m a I
tiona~
lnterna
at1on
oun
apan
o:
You Say Asia: Asian Art after Postm odern ism (Toky..
..
.
Symp osium Repor t, 2008) , 204-0 5.
1mng homogene·
tota
a
ng
positiarily
necess
ut
witho
tives
collecpeak of
5 "O
ida, "Reframing AI~
ne n:1a} ~ d I or their partic ular conce rns." See Marg o Machs1aor Anoth er·· Asian Ameri can Art Now (New York: Asia Soc·iety,amon ? i~, ~v1 Quanes w'ay
w,m,
A menca·· ora t h'JS t ory me th o d oJogies
incl ude2006) , 19..
ed from comm unity
borrow
·
d
t
•
.
k
eg1es
stra
t1ve
ooperaC
6
ns an .open. processes
t d'scus s artwo rk ideas ' open wor .-in-pr ogress·.
h sessio.
conve rsation s o 1
s: Widening
umt1e
Comm
for decision-making. Laurie R. Serika ku, "Oral H1st~ ry m Et me.
71.
the Focus, " The Oral Histor y Revie w 17, no. 1 (Spn~ ~' 1 ?,89):
Reviewtional
Educa
rd
Harva
s,
urnt1e7 Eve Tuck, "Susp ending Dama ge: A Letter to Comm.
.
.
.
79, no. 3 (Fall 2009): 409.
can government's
Amen
the_
t
agams
.
sta~d
a
takmg
m
8 For example, J joined schola rs
cultur al reform disrupt
decades-long ban on Fram Kitaga wa's entran ~e. H!s idea~ for socioshared hope, agrarianofacy
diplomthe grip of Ameri can milita rism in postw ar Asia, with a
Conference This
UW's
for
revolution and collective dream s. Jen Grave s, "Keyn ote Speak er
The Stranger, November
Week on S~cially Engag ed Art in Japan Is Denie d Visa, He Says,"11, 2015.
Yasuy o Kudo and Hiroko
9 To unders tand the contex ts for social ly-eng aged art in Asia, seeengeijido iito wo ika ni
Shimizu, SEA Raund o toku kirokushii: Ateisu to ha ima, sosha ri
s Grasping Sociallytoraeteiru no ka? {"SEA Round table Recor d: In What Way are Artist
Nakam ura et al.,
ia
M
;
2019)
r,
Engaged Art?") (Tokyo: Art & Society Resea rch Centeof Region andngOpeni
Sosharu iito rabo: Chiiki to shaka i wo hiraku ["Soci al Art Lab:
Participative Processes:
Society"} (Tokyo: Suiyosha Press, 2018) ; and Jay Koh, Art-L ed
nki: University of the
Dialogue & Subjectivity. within Perfor mance s in the Every day (Helsi
Arts Helsinki, 2015).
rural art festival in Japan
10 The Echigo-Tsumar i Art T rienna le was the first large- scalein his home prefecture,comm encing in 1994 with Gener al Direc tor Fram Kitag awa
and privat e sectors collaNiigat a. The first Trienn ale was held in 2000, with the public"colle ctive" approach (intheborati ng from its 2009 iterati on, in which I partic ipated . On
ry art, see Susann~Ja~ane!e: kyodo, ~ffh, literally, "~ork ing togeth er") in conte mpora
in the Echigo-Tsuman
Klien, Collab oratio n or confro ntatio n? Local and non-lo cal actors
James Jack, "Art from
Trienn~le," Conte mpora ry Japan 22, no. 1-2 (2010): 153-7 8; andSeto Inland Sea," intheWhat 1s Already There on Naosh ima and Other Island s in
Toby Slade (New York
Introducing Japanese Popular Culture, eds. Alisa Freed man andand Londo n: Routledge, 2018).
wa Fram no 40 ne;::11 Fram Kitag: wa, Kibo no biju~su, kyodo no yume: Kitaga
Kitaga wa 1965-2005 /)1965- 2005[ Art of Hope, Collective Dream : Forty years of Fram
The Echigo-Tsumari Art(T~kyo: Kadok awa, 2005); and Fram Kitaga wa Art Place Japan ·o Matsu o and Brad
Trtennale and the Visio~ to Recon nect Art and Natur e, trans. Amik.
2015)
Press,
Monsm a (N~w Yor½: Prmc_et_on ~rchit ectura ley, Richa rd Streitmatt~r12 Other Amen can artists res1dmg m Asia includ e Micha el Chern
ain residence borh ~Tran, Wasw o X. :'7asw o an~ Ashley Bicke rton; artists who maint d Abrah am David
Jap~n _and the Urnted States mclud e Shing o Franc is' Sarah Brayer, an
Chnst1an.
artists and poets in Japan
13 Sam Fra_ncis'_ lifel~n~ f~iendships and family relatio ns with critics
act on artists including
along with his art1st~c i?fluence from Japan ese cultur e and direct im
differe nt from orher
Atsu~ o Tana_ka, Kishi~ _Suga, and Aiko Miyaw aki is mark edt
The space ofYd S
Amer~can arttsts who visited Japan in the Postw ar p 1• d Ri hi;,ie?
Effusion: Sam Francis in Japan (Zuric h: Scheidegger ; ipi~ss , c2 ;~0):(im) Possibilities of Cultural Collectivity] 03

include Hugh MacDiarmid's poems inspiring the Scottish Renaissance in the
14 Exa mP 1esd Herb Kane's paintings inspiring the second Hawaiian Renaissance in the 1970s.
0193· a soc1a· I practice· artist· w h o engages· s anr Healoha Johnston wrote, "J ames Jac k 1s
15 curatod histories tie· d to p Iace as a way to concentrate on instances.
f. . c hangeo pos1t1ve
layhi~re d through community-led initiatives." See the wall text of the exhibition Molokaiac
eve at the Honolulu Mu~e_u ~ o f Art (Apn·1 25- Sept:m b er 16, 2018).
'
Window
In the late 1980s, creative act1v1aes ~egan on t~e near~y 1slan? of Naoshima, initiated by
16 the late Tetsuhiko Fukutake, who bmlt a caml?s~t~ for mt~~n~t1onal
students t? visit in theurnmer and followed by art and cultural act1v1t1es by So1ch1ro Fukutake which continues d y aher his retirement from Benessee Holdings.
~hi: approach was embodied _in Akimoto's exhib~tions, The Standard (2001) and17
Naoshima Standard 2 (20~~) which became a found~t!on for The Naos~ima Plan (2011).
American art in Setouch1 includes Walter de Maria s and George Rickey's sculptural
works, 2D works by Andy Warhol and Robert Rauschenberg, and site-specific works byJames Turrell, Mike and Doug Star1;1; slow pr<;>cess-base~, participato~ an~ sociallyengaged works are made almost exclusively by artists based m Japanand slightly increasing
numbers from Asia primarily under the curation of Kitagawa.
18 Namely, Kagawa Prefecture and Art Front Gallery.
19 Large-scale rural art festivals with a shared methodology are currently held in Niigata (est.
2000), Gunma (est. 2007), Okinawa (est. 2012), Shizuoka (est. 2014), Chiba (est. 2014),
Nagano (est. 2017), and Ishikawa (est. 2017) in Japan, as well as in Madou (est. 2017) in
Taiwan and developments are underway in China.
20 Blog entry by the late Shinichi Anzai (1960-2014), Anchan no burogu jyazu furutososha ni
shite Todai ;un kyoiu Anzai Shiniichi no kuto no hibi!? ["Jazz Flutist Performer Anchan's
Blog!? Daily Struggles of University of Tokyo Associate Professor Shinichi Anzai"] http://
ameblo.jp/laboriosus/the rne-10018005558.html (accessed September 6, 2013 ), translation
by author.
21 Artist memo, "Island thoughts," May 31, 2013.
22 This methodology of working through seemingly invisible conflict towards justice for those
who are left out of dominant narratives has been an important facet of my work in
Southeast Asia that deals with decolonizing place.
23 Ayako Fujii, interview in Sunset House co-created documentary video, 2013. Fujii began
working at the local town office and went on to work for the Setouchi Triennale committee
offices in Kagawa Prefecture.
24 Artist memo, September 2014, written after a young volunteer drowned while helping
artist Hideyuki Usui install a work titled Fart of the Gods in Konoura harbor.
25 The phrase "language as the house of being" comes from Heidegger's "Letter on
Humanism" (Brief tiber den Humanismus) in Basic Writings, ed. David Farrell Krell, trans.
Frank A. Capuzzi (New York: Harper & Row, 1977). See Martin Heidegger, On the Way
to Language, trans. Peter D. Hertz (San Francisco: Harper a~d Row, 1971) . .
26 Two ~xamples of events I organized include:
Musical Gathering (2013), featurmg Makoto
N?nu, _Bruce Huebner, Ryu Furusawa, Akira Tanabe, local residents and S"'!all lslan~s
Wt~h Big Visions (2016), a round table discussion involving the author, Yoshitaka Mon,.
. .
27 ~che!I~ Lim, a_nd local residents.
. e dismtegration of architectural structures m the Japanese countryside is ofren considered unfortunate, but these structures show us the limits of the constructed environmentand hu~an-centric thinking. Studies of ruins and the followers who obsess over them show~~:rnauv_e ways of thinking about high-speed growth models of ind~stry and ~hat t~ey
e hehmd. See Tim Edensor "The Ghosts of Industrial Ruins: Ordering and D1sordermg~emory in Excessive Space" 'Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 23, no. 6t~~OS): 829-49; and Tong_Lam, "Japan Lost and Found: Modern Ruins as the Debris of
28 SunsHigh-Speed. Growt~,'.' 1~ Introducing Japanese !'opular Culture, 386-98.
Ka et House 1s transmonmg away from collective management by t~e to~n office,gawa Prefecture the artist and Art Front Gallery to return to Satsuki s children and
g_ran_dchildren who 'currently envision building a second home for holiday gatherings at thesite in the near future. Members of the elderly association that have cared for the garden
and Watched over the site are ageing with one key member now suffering from Alzheimer's,I

104 James Jackand others becoming less and less mobile. Supp<:>rt from th e prefecture _that supported twork has shifted away from the island to the city of Takamatsu and m 2020 sohethe onset of the pandemic the garden stones were all removed from the site lea~i~ after..
g thehouse .m a state o f trans1t1on
now.
.
.
,, .
.
29 Helen Zia "Asian American: An Evolving Consciousness, m One Way or Another• A .
'· ~an
American Art Now, 10.
.
.
.
30 Robert Lee wrote about me "Th.is is the other side of the com, not an Asian Americ b
an American Asian story ,,' See ARTRAIN exhibit catalogue, 2008, http://artasiarnan. \Jt.
encaorg/artist/detail/164.
.
.
.
·
31 For example citizenship in Asia is less permeable m many Asian nations than in the U 1.
States as an~estry is more important than birth right or residence. In other words ~ed
Japan~se is based on whether or not you have Japanese ancestors, not where yo~ ;~~~
born or where you currently reside.
.
.
.
. . ,, _32 Masahiro Ushiroshoji "Realism as an Attitude: Asian Art m the Nmet1es, m 4th Fuku kAsian Art Show (Fukuoka: Fuk~oka Art Muse~m, 1994), 38; Pa~~i~k D. Flores,
Curatorial Turn in Southeast Asia and the Afterlife of the Modern, m Count 1O Befi
you Say Asia: Asian Art After Postmodernism, 222.
ore
33 Susette Min, "At the end of the day, multicultu~alism was le~s ab?ut ~ comprehensive
analysis of race and raci~m and more about~ ~uestion of belong.mg, d1vertmg deep analysis
about race and racism mto debates of political correctness and common core values
Race matters .... Representation matters." See "The Last Asian American Exhibition..i~the Whole Entire World," One Way or Another, 38-9.
34 Exhibitions highlighting directional influence from West to East are numerous, and now
there are examples reversing the binary. See Alexandra Munroe, Third Mind: American
Artists Contemplate Asia, 1869-1989 (New York: Guggenheim Museum, 2009).
However, more complex, heterogeneous models of bi/tri/hybrid/rnixed cultural identities,
mobility and durational residence are needed to discuss artistic praxis occurring in Asia
such as Wei-Hsiu Tung, Art for Social Change and Cultural Awakening: An Anthropology
of Residence in Taiwan (Lanham, Maryland: Lexington Books, 2013).
35 For critical views on the danger of artists being seen as a replacement for social welfare, see
Adrian Favell's talk "Sociology and Social Aesthetics: Japan as a Source of New Art Theory
and Practice," Socially Engaged Art in Japan: Questions for Contemporary Policy andPractice, symposium organized by Justin Jesty, University of Washington, Seattle,
November 12-14, 2015.

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