The Value of Art after March 11? Or perhaps ‘The Value of Art in a disaster?’
One of the questions that has been reverberating around the On Site Lab as we think about New Community Design in the context of the March 11 triple disaster for Japan is whether or not art, and by extension artists, have anything of value to offer. When over 500km of coastal areas of Japan are still devastated by the tsunami, and many, many people have lost their homes and livelihood. When Fukushima nuclear power station still teeters on the edge of scientists’ capacity to keep the plant under ‘control’. When over 15,000 people have died and over 3,000 are still missing… ART?!
As an artist I am biased. I think Art is of value and importance in daily life but also in these terrible situations partly out of instinct. And partly because I wouldn’t bother to sweat it (or the accompanied mostly unpaid lifestyle) unless I had a certain conviction that what I was doing was useful.
One of the exciting things that has opened up for me in the last few days, is hearing Japanese people dealing with the reality of the March 11 disaster really fleshing out why they think art is important.
On Sunday 18th (day 2 of the lab) Eiji Hato, Professor of Urban Engineering at the University of Tokyo came to talk to us. Hato San (San is a term of respect) is involved in disaster planning for the city of Tokyo, and in the reconstruction planning of Rikuzentakata area. Obviously this involves vast amounts of logistics and scenario visualisation, reviewing the data gathered from the disaster itself as well as extensive community engagement. Difficult job. Hato San spoke very eloquently about the role art and creativity can play. When asked directly about the value of art post 3.11 he spoke about the need of ‘expression’ for people affected. Japanese culture is very private and public emotion is rarely shown (a generalisation but one that seems to hold some truth). He felt strongly about the need for some avenue for people affected to express themselves. I suppose this is a kind of art therapy argument for art – but it was exciting to hear a urban-planner talk about it’s importance. In a sense, with all it’s logistical complication, building infrastructure is perhaps easier than rebuilding people.
Then on Tues 20th, artist and film-maker Hikaru Fujii ( http://hikarufujii.com/ ) came and presented two of projects – video works made with a homeless community in Tokyo, and one about Project Fukushima – a project to run a festival focused on music in Fukushima city itself.
In the mission statement for Project Fukushima it states:
“Some may feel that this is no time for a festival, given that Fukushima is faced not only with the damage of the earthquake and tsunami, but also with a crippled nuclear power plant for which solutions are no where in sight.
Despite that, or rather precisely for that reason, we believe that we need music and poetry and art that hold the potential of pointing us to a possible viewpoint on and direction for how to confront reality.”
Says it all really.
Find out more about Project Fukushima on :
http://www.pj-fukushima.jp/en/project.html
Started by Michiro Endo, Otomo Yoshihide and Ryoichi Wago, the first Project Fukushima festival took place in August 2011.
