artistic venture at the point of intersection between art and society

ARTiT is the first bilingual (Japanese/English) Magazine about contemporary art in Japan. Editor and publisher in chief is the journalist and net-activist Tetsuya Ozaki, who also runs the webzine and cultural search engine

Arts Initiative Tokyo (AIT) is a non commercial platform for education. It makes art more accessible to the public and puts it in a social or political context. Six young curators and cultural organisers form the core of this, the first initiative of it´s kind in Tokyo and develop a responsability for the knowledge, which is not offered by conventional art education.

Peter Bellars, the Tokyo based british artist makes works on Japanese society that are critical but humorous. Par of the Course is a playful comment on the Japanese education system. The Minigolf course and it´s different levels let the players experience the increasing difficulties of entrance exams.

The project TRaP (Tokyo Rabbit Paradise) by the artists' initiative CommandN presents video works by 46 Tokyo based artists, and is devised to give the viewers a new, varied and different angle on Tokyo. It intends to show that Tokyo offers far more than the miserable rabbit-hutch existence that is often portrayed. Despite the lack of space, Tokyo is nothing less than a "Rabbit Paradise" - a wonderful, exciting place to be. Tokyo, one of the most expensive cities in the world, is also, to the artists participating here, one of the most interesting.
(http://www.commandn.net/E/whatnew.htm)

Clean Brothers is a group of cleaning activists, working in Osaka. The project uses a form of non monetary economy to gain access to studio and exhibition space for young artists. It is a strategy for becoming independent from private or public funding. Also it offers an alternative to the rental gallery system.

One of the newest projecs of Hiroshi Fuji, is the so called Vinyl Plastics Connection. The theme is the value system of late Capitalism. The artist collects, separates and cleans household waste, such as fast food boxes, plastic bottles, styropor etc. Later Hiroshi Fuji recycles these materials in his projects.

In Makoto Ishiwatas interactive installation Vacuum Packing! the consumer himself becomes the product. The visitor can experience very intensively how it feels to be vaccum packed. A second installation I am a target consists of a target figure with integrated video camera, a gun with a laser pointer and a mask. The shooting range turns into a place of self destruction and the shooter becomes a victim himself.

P3 Art and Environment is a research and production institute engaged in the field of art and environment. P3's activities are carried out under the theme of "Mind and Landscape." The organization seeks to explore dynamic interformative processes that take place between humans and their environment/society. With this theme, P3 produces installations with various artists focusing on non-material elements such as sound, light, visual images and information. P3's activities are not limited to exhibitions but expand into publishing, architecture, urban and landscape projects on computer networks. The exhibition shows a wall documentation including the art work What's in a name? by Shigeaki Iwai, 2002.

Under the headline Autonomy and Political Action REINIGUNGSGESELLSCHAFT carried out a field research on contemporary initiatives and projects from Japan in October/November 2003. The different types of organisations are artist co-operatives, fictional enterprises and networking conceptual artists. The resulting 30 minute long video describes the effects of a growing pressure to economise on autonomous forms of organising and production in the field of art. This topic is the basic theme of the exhibition.

The video works of TANY aare dedicated to a critical view of the role of women in a patriarchic society. In her work She Loves Sex- She Hates Sex TANY creates characters of six women who have extreme ideas about sex and acts them herself.

The radical and active dreamer Noboru Tsubaki runs the UN Application Project. Tsubaki says: "I organized the UN Application to approach solutions to difficult problems in the world. I am an artist, and I think art has to shoulder our responsibilities as we pursue our human dreams. Why a New UN? I think the United Nations is going to lose its function soon and the New UN is consistent with my art. My UN Application team creates new prototype machines one after another." The Exhibition features RADICAL DIALOGUE by Noboru Tsubaki, a box,including two films:
Gold by Noboru Tsubaki, 2004, 16min 58sec
Doll by Noboru Tsubaki, 2004, 16min 58sec and 20 posters with portraits and interview statements, 2004.

Video Act! is an independent network for distribution of Japanese independent video production. The activist Yutaka Tsuchiya's new film Peep TV Show is about a goth-lolita girl and an internet-voyeur, meeting in the post 9-11-world of Tokyo, determined by surveilance and paranoia. Another film The New God portraits Karin Amamiya , lead singer of ultra-nationalist hardcore punk band The Revolutionary Truth. Other featured works in the exhibition: From kuukyo by Yutaka Tsuchiya, 1990, 3min 30sec, The Room of DRUG by Yutaka Tsuchiya, 1992, 5min, Identity? by Yutaka Tsuchiya, 1993, 3min, What Do You Think about the War Responsibility of Emperor Hirohito? by Yutaka Tsuchiya, 1997, 53min, Brain Washing by Video Press, 1994, 20min, Watching From Behind by Video Press, 1998, 30min, Nippon / War / Myself, produced by VIDEO ACT!

Kenji Yanobe visited the ruins of Tschernobyl eleven years after the catastrophy, wearing a radiation safe Atom Suit. He used the same Atom Suit for his Tower of the Sun Hijacking Project, when he climbed the Tower of the EXPO-1970 area in Osaka, experiencing himself the feelings of the "eye ball man" who carried out a hunger strike on the top of the tower in 1970. Works: Megalomania by Kenji Yanobe, DVD, 2003, 4min, Tower of the Sun Hijacking Project by Kenji Yanobe, Film by Kenji Aoki, 2004, 28min (exklusively, German Version)