TOKYO FRANK: June 2005

Ken Chiba at Yokohama

Yokohama reception

Emma and Professor Charles at Yokohama

Close up of Rosies work

Liz's work for Yokohama

The Gallery owner in his flowershop with his motorbike

Mikes video and Rosie and Liz's work at Yokohama

Jemimas Photos at Yokohama

Ollies piece at Yokohama

Yokohama Performance filkmed by Yuichi.

I go - I come back again.

Just a chance to mention the reception at Gallery Jin in Yokohama. We were pleased to see Ken Chiba once again and the artist he shares his Ginza gallery with, Keiko Kamma.The man who runs the gallery, (from the flower shop round the corner) made us very welcome and the little reception spilled out onto the streets. Yuichi, a graduate from Trent two years ago and now living in Yokohama, came along. He has a show at the gallery next year.
Johnny and Koyangi did a noise piece with their gear scattered across the floor of the minute gallery. Remarkably everything had stayed on the wall for the previous two days of the show. Someone was interested in purchasing Rosies piece of work about Nottingham and Tokyo. Professor Charles and his wife came along and we said cheerio as I headed off across Tokyo for the last time to pack for the flight today.
The project has got off to a good start. We have laid the basis for further co-operation and development of collaborative work between Nottingham Trent University students and Musabi students. It is really now up to the students to develop the creative work which will give rthe project its meaning. In the area of sound and noise there is already an international common culture around certain shared approaches to production and technology, and it was perhaps in that area that the most direct collaborative work was immediately prodced. Performance work seems to be at different points within the two countries and there may also be a difference in approach between fine art performance which comes from a visual position and performance which derives from a more theatrical and music based tradition. But there was much to like and learn on both sides and I can see stronger collaborative developments emerging there. In photography and visual arts, where the work is often internally directed, collaboration does not necessarily come natural and requires an explicit effort on the part of the artist to open up their thinking and create and engage in collaborative structures. It is there that perhaps the slowest emergence of new exchange practices and collaborations will happen-but they could be ome of the most interesting.
Finally, one of the things it as been useful to observe from this project is how misleading it often is to generalise about one particular culture or approach. As soon as you start to get into formulating strategies around ideas like `this is the way the British think` or `the Japanese approach is so and so` you come a cropper when you try and apply it to individual work. Obviously there are different cultural contexts which both countries have, but one can easily exaggerate the way that these determine the actual production of work.

Farewell Blog

This is probably the last blog I do as I go back to UK on Friday. The students are staying for 2 more days and I have handed the blog over to them to finish. I am sure they will do it very nicely.
Cheers Frank

Plan of Musabi show