MIWA NEGORO

グループ展 Parallax Trading は、ものや人の移動にまつわる物語を通して、流動的な文化のアイデンティティや、社会に潜む不可視の境界線、人種やジェンダーなどに現れる社会的枠組みを考察するものです。歴史の断片を繋ぎ新しい物語の可能性を語ること、個人の物語や土地の記憶を辿ること、また既存の制度を解体し新しい表現を探求すること、アーティストによるこれらの活動は、現在の社会状況と歴史の重層を映し出す実践であると言えます。未知への想像は時に幻想や神話、固定観念を生み出す一方、想像力こそが従来的な規範を見直し、単一では無い語り口から広がる複数の解釈をもたらすのです。そのように多声的に織りなす物語や知識が、常にダイナミックな視点を持ち続けることを、そして更新され続ける変化を受け入れ再編成していくことを可能にするはずです。様々な物語が交錯する本展は、歴史の中で政治社会的権力や属性に翻弄されて形成された事象に目を向け、その現代的意味と可能性を紐解きます。

展覧会のタイトルは、国交という関係を比喩的に引用したものです。国交や交易という政治経済的関係は、あらゆる資本の流通、つまり事物、知識、労働力の流通によって、世界の不均衡な力関係や複雑な構造を生み続けてきました。人やものの移動が日常となった現代社会においては、自己とは異なるものとの混成によって、複層的で多次元的な公共圏が形成されます。一方で、従来的な知識生産の過程が、単眼的かつ主観的な視線を繰り返し生み続けていることも事実です。国家や国籍、人種、宗教、性などの属性を超えた価値の共有がいかに考えられるか、いかに互いが対等な関係を持ち理解し合うことができるか。これらの普遍的な問いを背景に、Parallax Tradingは、日本の近代化と西洋との邂逅、東アジアにおける帝国主義的イデオロギー、他文化迎合と移民法の相反、アジア女性の身体表象とジェンダーロール、そして今生きる生の身体をケアすること、このような議題を取り上げます。

キュレーション　根来美和 (Curator in Residence, studio das weisse haus)

【クロージング】　

2018年5月18日14時

The dawn of the Japanese modernization was likely in the middle of the 19th century when the West reached the islands nation to open trade relations. As a result of the civil war, the country radically transformed its Shogunate rule into the Imperial government to compete with Western power. Such a change led to a great introduction of Japanese culture to the broader Europe, and inversely, Japan incorporated the Western ideology in its manner. World Expo in Vienna (1873) for instance was one of the steps. At the same time, the turn of the century witnessed thousands of Japanese laborers who crossed the oceans to the US, Latin America, and Southeast Asia.
On the last day of the exhibition “Parallax Trading” four artistic positions are presented which tackle with the turbulence of modern history to explore multiple stories that lurk underneath a single narrative. In conjunction with the exhibited works, the programme highlights the migratory story of individuals and knowledge transfer within the complexity of multilateral relations, which revolves around the abysses of Japanese modernity. "histories" are not merely the past but ongoing narrations.

2pm Tour with curator Miwa Negoro

3pm Lecture performance The Tower, the Expo, the Bureau, the Echo by Ralo Mayer

Ralo Mayer presents multi-layered narratives that connect seemingly unconnected elements in history. In autumn 2018 he went to Japan to look for the tower of the EXPO'70 in Osaka. The tower is to be regarded as a source of inspiration for an ecological spaceship in Saturn's orbit conserving Earth’s last trees. The tower had disappeared, but he came across a few other things: objects sent to Vienna to build the nation of Japan, or a miraculous device called Space Echo. In his lecture performance, he explores this issue and deals with a cycle of space and time that is constantly reorganizing itself, as well as serendipity as an element of artistic research.

4pm Screenings:

kimi no yo | Time goes by (2017) by Bontaro Dokuyama

Dokuyama interviews elderly people in Taiwan who experienced their childhoods under the Japanese colonial rule. The artist asks particularly how they remember Japanese songs and Imperial Rescript on Education, revealing how such a regime is embedded on one’s body and memory through a mode of songs, per se national anthem. The work raises the questions around historical amnesia, tracing the colonial wounds that remain under the surface. (24’58’’, Japanese and Chinese with English subtitles)

Anak Anak Negeri Matahari Terbit -Children from the Land of the Rising Sun- (2018) by Mei Homma

Mei Homma’s essay film traces a story of Japanese women who were trafficked in the late 19th and early 20th century to Southeast Asia. The work juxtaposes the reality of the female sex workers and the mythicized perception of Japanese women, both of which were shaped by the rising international position of Japan. Introducing the renowned Indonesian writer Pramoedya Ananta Toer’s sharp observation on Japan and a girl Maiko, a Japanese prostitute, Homma’s work highlights the forgotten bodies in the migration stories. ( 28’00’’, Japanese and Indonesian with English subtitles)

5:30pm Lecture performance Art of Japanese Bowing/ Suspended on A Historic Bowing/and something more from the series a long listening journey of a Possible thiStory especially of Japanese & Dutch & something more by mamoru in collaboration with So Oishi (DJ)

mamoru’s ongoing research project is inspired by a Dutch geography book (1669) that consists of many illustrations and stories of Japan based on collective information and imagination. The project takes the imaginary Japanese history as one of the "possible" histories and grafts them onto the contemporary ones, especially onto minor histories. Navigating through the trading posts that VOC (Dutch East Indian Company) once established, the artist explores the unexpected transmissions of cultural behavior. Combining various elements of images, texts, languages and sounds, the lecture performance suggests a polyphonic, or perhaps cacophonic, narration of stories.