In the “Exhibition Summary” of “The 1st Tokorozawa Biennial of Contemporary Art Siding Rail Road 2009”, held following the pre-exhibition last year, there was a brief description concerning the aim of this exhibition. Particularly, the following phrase included in the summary made me wonder about its meaning:

“We wish both artists and writers to participate in this exhibition on the same horizon as colleagues who express something.”^*1

“We would like all members involved in the field of art, such as critics, museum staff, scholars, thinkers and others, as well as artists to join this exhibition on the same horizon to create the show as a ‘place to express’. After the end of the exhibition period, we will issue a catalogue which we expect to fulfill two roles, namely, as a record of the exhibits and as a critical magazine.”

     Thus, the above-mentioned “express something on the same horizon” seems to indicate that writers, including critics and curators, are requested to contribute texts for the catalogue. This is a way of participating in the exhibition as “recipients”, not as curators. Indeed, the main feature of this exhibition was that it was held under the concept of making not only “artists” but also “recipients” take part in it assertively, while it represented itself as an “artists-led exhibition”. Nevertheless, it is be undeniable that the above concept was not actually implemented. Why was this?

     One of the most important reasons for this is that artists and writers did not seem to “participate (in this exhibition) on the same horizon”. At the moment, the latest catalogue of the exhibition has not yet been published. Therefore, let me refer to last year’s version. As a whole, there seems to be no consistency among the texts written by its fifteen authors, which makes me wonder if there was any criteria for ｓｅｌｅｃｔing the texts to be inserted in the catalogue. One comment is inserted after the part concerning each exhibitor. Nonetheless, as all the texts were compiled in the order of the names of artists and authors who wrote them, there is no direct connection between parts in which there are descriptions about certain artists (eg. “Makoto Ito”), and writings which are inserted after these parts (eg. “Memo of Japanese Contemporary Art ’91”, Masahiro Aoki).

     The catalogue seems to lack consistency also in terms of the style of its writing. For instance, Shigeo Chiba wrote “‘Africa’ as a question”, Hikaru Harada contributed the double-page article entitled “Mutterings of a Museum Staff Member/Museum Staff Mutterings??”, which was written in the form of essay, Ryo Sawayama wrote “Nenten-suru Chokoku” and Toshiaki Minemura submitted the article named “The Theory of Tomio Miki, prologue: Cutting of ‘Expression’”, which is short but classified as a research paper. As the exhibition itself was not held based on a specific theme, the texts also do not focus on any specific subject. How should we then categorize this book? Should it be considered as a catalogue compiled with a focus on exhibits? Or, should it be deemed a critical magazine which is used by each writer to present their research outcomes? Probably, the exhibition organizer may answer that it can be classified into either group. If so, what does “participating (in this exhibition) on the same horizon” mean? I feel there is a certain ambiguous perspective in the concept of this exhibition in that the organizer seems to assume that all people who show their own thoughts about “art” should be considered to be on the “same horizon” in that their thoughts can be categorized as “expressions” whether they are shown in the form of artists’ “works” or writers’ “texts”. The authors who submitted their writings for the book are said to have been ｓｅｌｅｃｔed “without limitation as much as possible”, which seems to contribute to restricting the readership only to people who are involved in the field of “art”. This would be the reason then that this book seems not to capture to all the recipients’ feelings. I would prefer to read a book which provides us with articles in which the authors and artists are discussing and debating certain creations. Nevertheless, in reality, I cannot find any communication between the exhibitors and the authors in this book.

     Indeed, this exhibition was held with the aim of presenting artworks which were created mainly by artists living in Tokorozawa City and of showing their exhibits to not only art experts but to “outsiders” as well. Despite this, as can be seen in the following situation “outside” of the exhibition, it was clear that the “Siding Rail Road” exhibition was not opened to “outsiders”. The venue for this exhibition, about two minutes’ walk from Tokorozawa Station on the Seibu-Ikebukuro Line/Seibu-Shinjuku Line, was used originally as Seibu Railway’s Tokorozawa rail sheds. Nevertheless, I was unable to find any posters on the way to the venue from the station. In fact, the exhibition site was not so far from the nearest station and we could find a map in front of the station. Therefore, it would have been possible for us to reach the venue without referring to any maps if we had known that the exhibition site was located at the place which had formerly been used as the Tokorozawa rail sheds. In addition, there was a police station nearby. Accordingly, if you did not know how to get to the venue, you could ask a police officer to give the directions. Nonetheless, despite this, I was unable to find any posters for this exhibition even at the nearest station, though, in the summary, it was boldly stated that, “We would like to create this exhibition as a magnetic field which has so much attraction as to draw everyone to it who is interested in art”. This would indicate that the exhibition organizer would have been satisfied if it could attract “only people who could get to the venue for themselves”. Indeed there might be a possibility that I had overlooked any posters, but as far as I could see on the way to the venue from the station platform, there was almost none which informed us of the “Siding Rail Road” exhibition other than the posters which were pasted on the wall of the parking outside of the exhibition site [fig. 1]. Such a lack of public relations effort shows that the organizer had no will to expand the exhibition “outward”. Needless to say, this might be due to budgetary considerations. Nevertheless, there would have been some other possible ways to inform the public of the exhibition, such as asking neighborhood shops to put up posters for the exhibition, whether they could afford to do this or not. Such approaches could be realized if only the organizer had had the ability to come up with such ideas and to make efforts to carry them out.

     Ultimately, this exhibition fell short of my expectations in that I could not find any organic linkage between “artists” and “writers” with regard to the exhibition and, as a whole, this exhibition seemed to convey us only a “self-expression” within the field of “art”. If this exhibition had been held on the grounds of “lamenting that a part of artworks have been commoditized and commercialized and used as entertainments” and “wishing to resume the emotional pleasure which is created through our mental activities at the bottom of our hearts”, it should have reviewed the fact that the exhibition showed the viewers only “self-expression”. In some respects, this exhibition made me feel that it was held only for a group of chosen people, and as I have commented above, that the exhibition organizer seemed to be satisfied if it could attract “only people who could get to the venue for themselves”. The organizer may have not yet recognized to what extent “art” has lost touch with the world under the name of the postwar “art”. We do not always need to go “outward” with the aim of “commercializing” art, but should also not seclude art from the world outside.
(Translated by Nozomi Nakayama)

*1

I referred to the “Exhibition Summary” in the official website of “The 1st Tokorozawa Biennial of Contemporary Art Siding Rail Road 2009”.
http://tokorozawa-biennial.com/statement.html
All the extracts in this article were cited from the above site.