The Yokohama Triennale and art's new quietness

[imomus]

Not so much coverage of the Yokohama Triennale this week in The Moment as coverage of the coverage.



When I mentioned on Tuesday that I was writing this, a Yokohama resident called Kusagauma responded by saying:

"Dear Momus, couldn't you please refrain from writing about art shows that you haven't actually seen yourself? In particular a rather controversial show like this one." He turns out to be called Jan Fornell and to have written an extensive and interesting critique of the Triennale on his own blog (in Japanese only). Basically he found the Triennale dull and elitist, lacking in populist focal points like the huge grasshopper stuck, in 2001, on the side of the Continental Hotel.

Jan and I have been debating this point fiercely. My position is that art is allowed to be introverted and difficult and obscure and even boring, with moments of poetry or obscenity or awkwardness or pretension or whatever. What it shouldn't do -- in a desperate attempt to attract bigger audiences or more local resonance -- is reproduce the flash and clamour of commercial media.

It's interesting that Jan lays some of the blame at the foot of the 2007 Documenta -- another show I gave a rave review without having experienced at first hand. I love everything I've seen and read about the obliqueness and quirkiness of that Documenta, and if Yokohama is copying it (just as the last Berlin Biennial seemed to be) it seems that it really does represent a "new quietness" in art.

But basically, any show that includes Cerith Wyn Evans and Throbbing Gristle, Miranda July, Luke Fowler and Tsunoda Toshiya, Cameron Jamie, Terence Koh, Jonathan Meese, Jim O'Rourke, Nick Relph and Oliver Payne, Tino Sehgal, dancers Kitamari and Saburo Teshigawara, and Pop, the "flesh-searing" music project of Zbigniew Karkowski and Peter Rehberg (who runs Mego in Vienna) gets a thumbs up from me. The Luke Fowler and Tsunoda Toshiya pairing alone makes this a red-letter biennial in my book.

Comments

OK, let's move the debate here then

[(Anonymous)]

My position is that art is allowed to be introverted and difficult and obscure and even boring, with moments of poetry or obscenity or awkwardness or pretension or whatever.

Absolutely, I totally agree. However, what I'm trying to say is that the Yokohama Triennale is to a large extent financed with tax money, and they will need some 200,000 people to pay 1800 yen each to enter in order to break even, and they simply won't get that by showing almost exclusively introverted, difficult, obscure or boring art! Forgive me for saying so, but putting on a show that appeals to you, second-hand, sitting in Berlin, is totally irrelevant! What matters is what the potential audience thinks, and that audience will to a very large extent be local. If they don't manage to attract a sufficient audience, the local authorities will be extremely reluctant to fork out the money the next time, and the Yokohama Triennale will go out not with a bang, or even a whimper, but with a "So what?"

I'm certainly not suggesting pandering to the lowest common denominator, but a bit of humour in the selection of works and artists wouldn't have hurt. Or how about allocating some of the money spent on ultimately disappointing works by "big name" New York artists to young Japanese artists instead, to see what they would have been able to do with a larger budget? But none of that, unfortunately.
While you may have found the grasshopper the weakest piece in 2001, it was genuinely popular and did draw in the crowds. I can't think of any piece in the current Triennale serving a similar function. Terence Koh's parade that you mention was performed on the invitation-only opening night (what could be more elitist than that?) and I didn't see it. Fujiko Nakaya's fog is great (as I wrote in my review) (and the atmosphere of the fog is damp!) and so is Tino Sehgal's dance piece (which I wasn't allowed to photograph, and consequently didn't mention), but they are both in Sankeien, which is a lovely park but very far removed from the other venues (at least 30 minutes by bus) and rather difficult to get to. (This also means that many visitors will miss these works completely.)

Also, I'm not blaming last year's Documenta, which I also experienced first hand (http://kusagauma.blogspot.com/2007/07/documenta.html). That was in many ways an extremely infuriating show, but perhaps for that very reason it turned out to be quite memorable as well. What I was saying was that the curators of the Triennale might have been aiming for something similar, but if so they haven't really succeeded, neither artwise nor, of course, in creating a major tourist attraction.

Re: OK, let's move the debate here then

[kumakouji.livejournal.com]

"hat I'm trying to say is that the Yokohama Triennale is to a large extent financed with tax money, and they will need some 200,000 people to pay 1800 yen each to enter in order to break even, and they simply won't get that by showing almost exclusively introverted, difficult, obscure or boring art!"

You're making the assumption that it even needs to break even or continue in its current form.

The local authorities might believe that even though it loses money, its of enough cultural importance to warrant funding. That's one option.

Or the organisers and artists might be aware that this Triennale is going to lose money, but regardless put it on for the sake of the art, aware of the fact they wont be able to repeat the event in the long run.

"Terence Koh's parade that you mention was performed on the invitation-only opening night (what could be more elitist than that?)"

I'll agree with you on this one -- if this event was funded by tax money there shouldnt have been any "invitation only" performances.

Re: OK, let's move the debate here then

[imomus.livejournal.com]

You're making the assumption that it even needs to break even or continue in its current form.

Exactly. I don't think tax-payers' money should be wasted on funding things which could survive on commercial terms in the free market. Subsidy is all about making things possible despite the fact that they're loss-making, surely?

Re: OK, let's move the debate here then

[(Anonymous)]

That is a bit naive, don't you think? This is not Europe, nor the bubble era. Relying heavily on subsidies means relying on the whims of the politicians who happen to be in charge, and in the current economic climate in Japan and with the current administration, contemporary art is not exactly a top priority. It's probably no problem if the Triennale itself runs at a loss, as long as it generates revenue elsewhere, for example by attracting visitors to Yokohama who spend their money in hotels, restaurants, etc. But if the Triennale is not "attractive" enough, that won't happen either.

I guess we have to wait and see. The Triennale has only just started and has two months to go, so there is still hope. There is still a lot of things the organizers could do to improve the situation, starting with trying to explain the works to their own staff, so that they in turn can engage in some sort of dialog with the visitors rather than just answering "I have no idea" to all questions.

As for the "new quietness", this seems like a minor misunderstanding. I interpret Mizusawa as saying that appreciating good art takes time, and that the aim was to create a space where quiet contemplation was possible. Sounds noble, but once again I doubt that they have succeeded (with the notable exception of Sankeien). It's not the case that the works themselves are particularly quiet or calm. For example, both main venues feature huge and shrill (and no doubt hugely expensive) multi-screen installations by Mike Kelley and Paul McCarthy respectively, works that I personally found both silly and dated.

Re: OK, let's move the debate here then

[akabe.livejournal.com]

obviously a big part of the problem is that,in spite of the fact that it's produced some amazing contemporary art(ists) for the past century or so japan doesn't really have the infrastructure, the base of the pyramid of which the bi(oops, tri-)enale should be the apex. only art-insiders (and foreigners) go to galleries, people go -in the millions- to the big museums for the food or , interestingly, the architecture. the echigo bienale is a joke, right? or a reincarnation of those incredibl(e/y lewd) museums that popped up all over the country side during the bubble.

the situation is somewhat different to the istambul or bangladesh or whatever bienale and it's very much a clasic case of every place being different but japan is more different. (( however, the proper thing for a non-japanese person to do when faced with this is not to stop at the 'weird japan' stage but use their little insight they might have of japan to understand things elswhere from a slightly fresher angle. japan , particularly in its fucked-up-ness, is often ahead of the rest of the world - like those catfish popular during edo times who feel earthquakes just a fraction of a second before everyone else. ))