(With) Without Records (2017) is the continuation of a collaborative artwork YOSHIHIDE OTOMO has led since 2005, with this iteration created with the input of AOYAMA YASUTOMO and TAKAYUKI ITO. The foyer of the Glass Pyramid in Moerenuma Park was filled with “prepared” records and record players, supported on stands above visitors’ heads, down low, as well as on the floor. Walking through the record players, activated at different intervals and at different volumes, was similar to walking through the forest of Moerenuma Park just outside. All photos by Emily Wakeling for ArtAsiaPacific.

Sep 04 2017

Highlights from Sapporo International Art Festival 2017

by Emily Wakeling

Under the directorship of musician Yoshihide Otomo, this year’s Sapporo International Art Festival (SIAF) 2017 is an art event with a heavy emphasis on the role of sound in contemporary Japanese art. Active across pop, jazz and experimental music genres, Otomo is also a high-profile composer for film and TV music scores. Since 2011, he has been focusing on unique public participatory projects, such as his concert series “Project Fukushima!” In 30 years of creative practice, he has been heavily interested in communal collaboration.

Though it was spread out over roughly 30 different sites in Sapporo, SIAF 2017 had two main sites. At Moerenuma Park, Otomo paid homage to its architect and designer, Isamu Noguchi. In his catalog essay, Otomo tells the story of Noguchi visiting the site in 1947, when it was a landfill. Noguchi made it his mission to revive the site with art. This, Otomo writes, was his inspiration for the festival’s direction. Like Noguchi, he resolved to revive the park by further expanding the definitions of art and sound. Twenty-four kilometers southward, at Sapporo Art Park, the theme of regeneration continued with a presentation of mid- and late-career artists whose work can, as described in the exhibition outline, “bring back the past.” In all, one question relayed the theme of this event: How do we define “art festival”? The answer is certainly something onto which the SIAF 2017 aimed to hang its own brand, with its heavy inclusion of sound, music and collaboration.

RYUSUKE ITO’s solo work on the Sapporo Art Museum’s second level incorporated NAM JUNE PAIK’s 1993 sculpture, K-567, to thematically link to Ito’s interest in robots’ practicality (or lack thereof). Ito’s video in the background is Stratigraphy (2017), which is live-streamed footage shot by a video camera set up in the gallery space, rendering the imagery useless, and even deceptive, to viewers.

The SAPPORO O-FUROSHIKI TEAM brought an ongoing community art project to numerous sites of central Sapporo. The O-Furoshiki Project was first founded by Yoshihide Otomo, Michiro Endo and Ryoichi Wago in response to the 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami. Furoshiki are a type of multi-purpose Japanese towel. Out of concerns for the levels of radiation contained in Fukushima’s soil at the site of the 2011 event, the project produced a gigantic 6,000-square-meter furoshiki to be laid on the ground like a gigantic picnic blanket. The squares of fabric are sourced from participants all over the country, and sometimes carry special messages of support for the people of Fukushima.

AKIO SUZUKI’s Oto-Date project began in 1996. The symbol on each floor marker, which resembles a pair of feet or ears, marks a point where the artist wants viewers to stand and listen carefully to the surrounding sounds. As well as SIAF displaying an archive of flyers, photographs and catalogs from past iterations of Oto-Date, Suzuki has contributed a new rendering of the project by installing listening points across the grounds of Sapporo Art Park, including these inside the Sapporo Art Museum.

YOSUKE FUJITA’s amplification of insect sounds are set among the forests of Sapporo Art Park. Fujita’s career spans many fields: he produces films and animation music, and also creates sound and art installations. The artist fashions new instruments in order to capture the sounds of water, fire and living creatures.

The Sapporo International Art Festival 2017 runs until October 1, 2017.

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Five levels above a busy pachinko and slot machine parlor, TETSUYA UMEDA’s installation, Things That Don’t Know (2017) uses the space’s neglected atmosphere as its basis. Like Suzuki, Umeda’s work requires curious and purposeful listening. As visitors walk through this space, various noises draw one’s attention to kinetic artworks among the abandoned and dusty fittings.

EYƎ, artist and leader of the Japanese experimental band Boredoms, had an almost completely dark sound installation held inside the art park’s Craft Hall. Once visitors’ eyes had adjusted to the lack of light, Dot Kai Dot (DKD) (2017) became a vision of a vast, subtly glittering universe visible across the walls and floor. The artist’s music composition is intended to decenter the performer, in which sound is presented as an enveloping experience and visitors can wander the room for shifting audio experiences.

For the duration of SIAF, the Shiryokan (former Sapporo Court of Appeals) is presenting archives related to the festival’s exhibiting and performing sound artists. It also has meeting spaces, creative laboratories, as well as this freestyle collaborative project space by music duo TENNISCOATS.

As well as a number of montage works of photo and video by master editor CHRISTIAN MARCLAY, the Sapporo Art Museum holds a room devoted to an archive of Marclay’s career of performances and recordings in Japan, including a number of live improvisations with Otomo and other SIAF artists.

Ulo Ulo Ulo (2017) by HIRAKI SAWA is a two-screen video installation. His dream-like imagery is accompanied by music composed by Asuna and the muffled noise of an underwater microphone. After two figures cut a hole in the thick Hokkaido ice, a camera and light follow a fishing line down into the freezing water, recording a survival practice that has probably existed in this region of Japan since the prehistoric Jomon period (c. 14,000–300 BCE).

One of the largest and most noteworthy collaborations made for the festival was by YUKO MOHRI, a returning artist from the previous iteration of SIAF in 2014. Overlooking a view of the forest, Breath or Echo (2017) features music, kinetic sculptures made from pianos, lampposts and other found objects, and a recording of spoken poetry. The poem, “Winds of the Four Seasons,” is written in Japanese by indigenous artist Bikky Sunazawa and recited in English by Norwegian artist and composer Camille Norment. The music, composed by the director of SIAF 2014, Ryuichi Sakamoto, is delivered via the automatized pianos.