Judge's review

Considering the record earthquake in combination with the theme focusing on the format of the exhibition itself, I was a little worried as to how many submissions we would receive this time, but in the end I think the jury selected proposals that lived up to our expectations.
Art these days is required to display a "world-view". Being innovative, nice to look at, or exciting alone is not enough. The central question is why this type of art is needed in this time and at this place. It was the earnestness of the applicants' approach to this issue that ultimately determined the outcome. One aspect that the three exhibition proposals selected this time all share is the point that they are too large to fit into a small gallery space in both a spatial and temporal sense. I'm very much looking forward to seeing how each of these plans comes to fruition in the form of an exhibition.

Yoshitaka Mouri
 (Associate Professor of Media Department of Musical Creativity and the Environment Tokyo University of the Arts, Sociologist)

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Exhibitions are media.
They are not mere spaces or places for presenting artworks. An "exhibition" is an opportunity to do a variety of things for sending out message, appealing, and thinking about what is on one's mind. I felt that such possibilities could be explored more this time. While many of the proposals came from artists who basically expected to show their own works, exhibitions can in fact be dynamic affairs that bring together multiple artists and artworks, engaging in a locally and temporally relevant dialogue in pursuit of a specific theme.
Now that we have experienced loss and an ongoing critical situation brought along by the recent disaster, the exhibition as a social platform could in my view be used as an opportunity for further constructive participation from artists.

Yukie Kamiya
(Chief Curator, Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art)

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I was concerned about the general lack of awareness in terms of actual exhibition plans, which is the subject of this program after all. In short, I didn't see many ambitious proposals that were based on carefully worked-out curational concepts. On the other side, however, we luckily had a number of proposals that offered glimpses of artistic visions and a firm intention to respond to the reality outside. At the present stage, most of the proposals are still little more than loose connections between conscious artists presented in an exhibition format, but I am quite confident that these plans will be refined with clear curational ideas for the respective main exhibitions.

Yohei Kurose
(Artist, Art Critic, Representative of Chaos＊Lounge)

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Upon joining the jury for this installment, I realized that the definition of art after (the earthquake on) 3.11, and the question what a public place is, were the issues on the agenda (also of the seminars). The proposals that passed the first screening were obviously built on much more carefully considered plans and purposes than the submissions entered in previous installments. While clear answers were still to be found, the proposals generally reflected an eagerness to address things the respective creators were thinking or feeling like reconsidering right now, much rather than simply visually attractive shows.
The three finalists in particular had one common theme, as they were all dealing with a newly discovered sense of time after the disaster. Hiroshi Ashikaga's proposal was based on pinhole camera photographs of the sun at Matsushima, as an artistic rendition of the Buddhist idea of the kalpa, meaning a very long period of time. Hiroki Hirota's proposal was an experiment with time occupying a place, and the community that comes into being there, while the Ensemble for Experimental Music and Theater proposed a repeated 24/7 playback of a tune called "Sapporo" during the entire exhibition period. I am hoping that the notions of time that emerge and can be sensed from these three proposals are going to reach out into the reality that each visitor to the exhibition is presently facing.

Kayoko Iemura
(Program Director, TWS)