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Post-Disaster Recovery Through Art a Case Study of Reborn-Art Festival in Ishinomaki, Japan

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Post-Disaster Recovery Through Art a Case Study of Reborn-Art Festival in Ishinomaki, Japan Post-Disaster Recovery Through Art A case study of Reborn-Art Festival in Ishinomaki, Japan A Master’s Thesis for the Degree Master of Arts (120 Credits) in Visual Culture Eimi Ann Tagore-Erwin Division of Art History and Visual Studies Department of Arts and Cultural Sciences Lund University KOVM12, Master Thesis, 15 credits Supervisor: Max Liljefors Spring semester 2018 Acknowledgments I gratefully acknowledge the generosity of the Asian Studies Program at the University of Hawai'i at Mānoa, the patience and support of my supervisor and fellow colleagues at Lund University, and the continued love and encouragement of my family and partner. I also thank all the wonderful people in Ishinomaki, Tokyo, and New York who have so generously donated their time to answer my many questions and further my understanding of this project. Without your help, this thesis would not have been possible. ii Abstract This thesis closely examines Reborn-Art Festival, a new arts and culture festival inaugurated during the summer of 2017 in one of the regions hardest hit by the triple disaster that devastated the northeastern coastline of Japan in 2011. In the face of an unspeakable tragedy like the Great East Japan Earthquake art may not seem like a central concern, but this thesis focuses on that subject specifically, investigating the ways in which art has become part of the healing process in the small community of Ishinomaki by way of the large-scale festival. The proliferation of ‘contemporary art festivals for revitalization’ in rural areas of Japan have become an increasingly researched phenomenon due to their engagement with machizukuri, or community-building. This analysis of Reborn-Art Festival furthers understanding of art’s potential to regenerate communities by providing opportunity for social interaction and avenues to combat depopulation. In addition, the festival’s post-disaster context provides necessary insights into art practice as the socio-cultural work of processing the human experience of disaster and aiding in empathic understanding of trauma. The festival’s organizational dimensions as well as individual artworks within it are considered primarily via interviews with five participating artists, the festival’s executive director and volunteer director, and through interaction with various community members and festival attendees during fieldwork conducted in Japan. Community-oriented art initiatives have been criticized in Japanese and Euro-American art circles for their heteronomy and instrumentalism, making it difficult to contextualize initiatives like Reborn-Art Festival within the realm of socially engaged art. However, through investigation of the social engagement and collaborative qualities of the artworks exhibited within it, it becomes clear that a comprehensive definition of ‘socially engaged art’ cannot be fixed as the success of such artworks are heavily dependent on their context. Key words Great East Japan Earthquake, art festival, machizukuri, trauma, socially engaged art, revitalization iii Table of Contents LIST OF FIGURES ................................................................................................................. V GLOSSARY ............................................................................................................................. VI INTRODUCTION ...................................................................................................................1 Research Question .............................................................................................................................. 3 Method .............................................................................................................................................. 4 Empirical Materials ........................................................................................................................... 4 Previous Research ............................................................................................................................... 9 Theory and Approach ....................................................................................................................... 10 Disposition ...................................................................................................................................... 11 CHAPTER 1: THE CASE FOR MACHIZUKURI: COMMUNITY-BUILDING ........... 13 THE IMPORTANCE OF KIZUNA: CONNECTION ............................................................................... 13 MACHIZUKURI AND RURAL REVITALIZATION THROUGH ART ...................................................... 14 REBORN-ART FESTIVAL AS MACHIZUKURI ..................................................................................... 16 Symbol of community: Kohei Nawa .................................................................................................... 22 Large-scale collaboration: Tatsuo Miyajima, and Kyun-Chome ............................................................ 24 Small-scale Connections: Masaru Iwai and Zakkubalan ..................................................................... 29 A NEW HOPE ..................................................................................................................................... 31 CHAPTER 2: THE CASE FOR EMPATHY: ART AND TRAUMA ............................... 33 THE SOCIO-CULTURAL WORK OF PROCESSING DISASTER .............................................................. 33 EMPATHIZING WITH TRAUMA THROUGH ART IN REBORN-ART FESTIVAL .................................. 35 ‘Sea of Time - Tōhoku’: addressing ritual, memorial, and embodied loss ................................................ 37 ‘Utsusemi Crush!’: rendering trauma intelligible through associations .................................................... 41 ‘Dumparium’: addressing ways of facing nature in the future ................................................................ 45 ‘Seachange’: rendering trauma intelligible through narrative .................................................................. 48 THE QUESTION OF SOCIAL ENGAGEMENT ..................................................................................... 51 CHAPTER 3: CONTENDING WITH SOCIALLY ENGAGED ART CRITICISM ...... 53 REBORN-ART FESTIVAL IN A WIDER CONTEXT ............................................................................. 53 THE DEBATE: BISHOP VS KESTER ................................................................................................... 55 Addressing autonomy ........................................................................................................................ 58 Addressing instrumentalism............................................................................................................... 61 Addressing the artworks ................................................................................................................... 63 THE PARADIGM SHIFT ...................................................................................................................... 66 CONCLUSION ...................................................................................................................... 68 BIBLIOGRAPHY ................................................................................................................... 72 iv List of Figures Figure 1. ‘White Deer (Oshika)’, Kohei Nawa, Press Image. ……………………………………4 Figure 2. ‘Sea of time - Tōhoku’, Tatsuo Miyajima, interior view. ……………………………….5 Figure 3. ‘Deleting Them with the Sky in Ishinomaki’, Kyun-Chome, installation view. …………6 Figure 4. Utsusemi Crush!’, Kyun-Chome, film still. …………………………………………….7 Figure 5. ‘Dumparium’, Masaru Iwai, installation view. …………………………………………7 Figure 6. ‘Seachange’, Zakkubalan, film still. ……………………………………………………8 Figure 7. Online crowdfunding platform for ‘Sea of time - Tōhoku’……………………………26 Figure 8. Utsusemi Crush!’, Kyun-Chome, film still. …………………………………………...42 Figure 9. ‘Dumparium’, Masaru Iwai, view from interior. …………………………………...….46 Figure 10. ‘Seachange’, Zakkubalan, film still. …………………………………………….……48 v Glossary Japanese terms and phrases • āto purojekuto: A transliteration of the English phrase, ‘Art Project’. In Japan, socially engaged art practices are commonly referred to as Art Projects. • Hito no ikiru-jutsu: The art of living. • kizuna: Social bond, or connections between people. • machizukuri: A term that refers to the practice of community-building or town- building, usually in less populated areas of Japan. • Onaji kama no meshi o kuu: A Japanese proverb meaning, ‘to eat from the same bowl’. It implies close friendship or family, all eating under one roof. • sōsharī engējudo āto: A transliteration of the English phrase, ‘socially engaged art’. • shika: deer. • Tōhoku: The northeastern region of Japan’s largest island, Honshu. It traditionally includes 6 prefectures: Fukushima, Miyagi, Yamagata, Iwate, Akita, and Aomori. • tōjisha: directly impacted person. Acronyms • RAF: Reborn-Art Festival • ETAT: Echigo-Tsumari International Art Triennale • SEA: socially engaged art vi Introduction Seven years have passed since the Great East Japan Earthquake, the devastating triple disaster that took place on March 11, 2011 – a date that continues to denote tragedy and loss for the nation and worldwide. On that day, an earthquake measuring 9.0 on the Richter scale struck the ocean east of Japan’s Tōhoku region, propelling a black wall of churning seawater inland along the nation’s Pacific coastline
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