TrAIN

Events

• 

  Forgotten Japonisme The Taste for Japanese Art in Britain and the USA 1920s-1950s

  Conference

  Friday 09 July 2010, 10:00 to 17:15
  Saturday 10 July 2010, 10:00 to 17:15
  

  This conference with international renowned speakers from Japan, USA and UK will consider, among other questions, the received view of the West as the sole purveyor of modernity in art, Japanese inspiration within the development of modernism in the West, and the relationship between the taste for Chinese and Japanese art during this period. The boundaries of the notions of the West and also of Japonisme will be tested.

  We are pleased to announce the keynote speaker for the Forgotten Japonisme conference will be Professor Shigemi Inaga of the International Research Center for Japanese Studies, Kyoto, Japan who is an expert on comparative literature and culture and on history of cultural exchange, including Japonisme. He is the author of a number of award-winning scholarly books.

  Other speakers include:
  Professor Stan Abe of Duke University, North Carolina, USA who specialises in Chinese art, theory and criticism. His research focuses particularly on Chinese Buddhist art, and the role of China and Japan in Early Rockefeller Collecting.
  Author of Longfellow’s Tattoos: Tourism, Collecting, and Japan, Dr Christine Guth leads the Asian Specialism on the V&A/RCA MA History of Design Course.
  Dr Angus Lockyer, Lecturer in the History of Japan and Chair of the Japan Research Centre at SOAS, University of London.
  Dr Sarah Teasley, historian of Japanese design and tutor in the Departments of History of Design and Critical & Historical Studies at the RCA.

  Members of the Forgotten Japonisme project:
  Professor Toshio Watanabe, Principle Investigator
  Dr Yuko Kikuchi, Co-investigator
  Rebecca Salter, Co-investigator
  Dr Julian Stair, Co-investigator
  Professor Yasuko Suga, Tsuda University, Tokyo, External team member
  Dr Sachiko Oguma, Guest Researcher, The National Museum of Western Art, Tokyo, External team member
  Dr Anna Basham, AHRC Research Fellow
  Helena Capkova, AHRC PhD Research Student
  Piotr Splawski, AHRC PhD Research Student

  Pricing:
  2 days at full price £40 (lunch not included)
  1 day at full price £25 (lunch not included)
  2 days concession* £15 (lunch not included)
  1 day concession* £10 (lunch not included)

  *Eligible are students, unemployed and 65+

  Book tickets

  For questions please contact Eva Broer

  Programme

  Friday 9 July 2010

  Morning Chair: Professor Deborah Cherry, University of Amsterdam, Associate Director of TrAIN and Co-director of Critical Curating, Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts London.

  10.00 – 10.20 Registration

  10.20 – 10.30 Introduction by Professor Toshio Watanabe

  10.30 – 11.15 Keynote speaker Professor Shigemi Inaga:
  Question of Oriental Aesthetics: antithesis to Design?

  11.15 – 11.30 Coffee

  11.30 – 12.00 Rebecca Salter: ‘Object as Metaphor’ – anthropologist collector of Japanese artefacts, Frederick Starr

  12.00 – 12.30 Dr Sachiko Oguma: The Distribution of Japanese Artefacts in the USA from 1900s to 1960s

  12.30 – 13.00 Professor Stanley Abe:
  A Modern Taste for Chinese and Japanese Art

  13.00 – 14.30 Lunch

  Afternoon Chair: Dr Nicole Coolidge Rousmaniere, Director of the Sainsbury Institute
for the Study of Japanese Arts and Cultures (SISJAC)

  14.30 – 15.00 Dr Julian Stair: Japanning the Sung: The Emergence and Impact of Japonisme in Interwar English Studio Ceramics

  15.00 – 15.30 Dr Anna Basham: Wells Coates’ Modernist Japonisme: Dovetailing East and West in 1930s Britain

  15.30 – 15.45 Tea

  15.45 – 16.15 Helena Čapková: St. Luke’s International Hospital: a transnational project in the heart of modern Tokyo

  16.15 – 16.45 Piotr Spławski: From Japonisme to a Paradigm Shift in American Art Education: Arthur Wesley Dow’s Educational Vision Becomes Paradigmatic

  16.45 – 17.15 Dr Christine Guth:
  The Forgotten Japonisme of Pearl Buck’s The Big Wave

  17.15 Close

  Saturday 10 July 2010

  Chair: Professor Oriana Baddeley, Deputy Director of TrAIN and Associate Dean of Research CCW (Camberwell, Chelsea and Wimbledon), University of the Arts London.

  10.00 – 10.20 Registration

  10.20 – 10.30 Introduction by Professor Toshio Watanabe

  10.30 – 11.00 Professor Yasuko Suga: Promotion of Modern Japonisme: national representation through ‘sangyô-kôgei’

  11.00 – 11.30 Dr Yuko Kikuchi:
  American Occupation and Cold War Japonisme: containment and mixed marriage in design and film

  11.30 – 11.45 Coffee

  11.45 – 12.15 Dr Sarah Teasley:
  When is Toshiba not ‘Japanese design’? The postwar politics of design, craft and Japaneseness

  12.15 – 12.45 Dr Angus Lockyer: Forgettable Japan? A refuge from the world on show, before and after the war

  12.45 – 14.15 Lunch

  14.15 – 14.45 Professor Toshio Watanabe: Transnational Identity of a Garden: Gardens of Manzanar Internment Camp, California and Queen Lili’uokalani Garden at Hilo, Hawai’i

  14.45 – 15.00 Annotated Bibliography and Chronologies
  Presentation by Dr Anna Basham

  15.00 – 15.15 Tea

  15.15 – 17.15 Panel discussion

  17.15 Close

  International conference at the Sackler Centre, V&A Museum, London.

• 

  »Are you recording?«

  Exhibition Opening

  Wednesday 21 July 2010, 17:00 to 20:00
  

  Sandra Schäfer with Nacir Alqas, Elfe Brandenburger, Aiqela Rezaie, Saba Sahar and Diana Saqeb

  Exhibition concept in collaboration with Lena Ziese

  Private View July 21st, 17:00-20:00
  July 22nd, 2010, 11:00-20:00

  In the exhibition »Are you recording?« the artist Sandra Schäfer presents her collaborative film practice with the Berlin-based filmmaker Elfe Brandenburger and filmmakers and actresses in Kabul. Schäfer contextualizes this practice with a a text-image-collage, photographs from her serial Urban settings and other kinds too, and a selection of films that were produced in Afghanistan since 1990.

  The film Passing the Rainbow, shot in Kabul by Sandra Schäfer and Elfe Brandenburger in 2007, deals with performative strategies that undermine the rigid gender norms in Afghan society: on the level of cinematographic stagings, in politics and in everyday life. Life and character collide and overlap, as do playfulness and activism. The production of the film is adjusted by the protoganists to meet their own conditions in order, within that framework, to make a public statement. They act as co-producers of the image, shaping the content of scenes and moving in and out of the role of director.

  The film Passing the Rainbow will be presented in an installation together with three other films. Two of them were also made in 2007, during the so called ‘process of democratization’ after 2002: 25 Darsad (25 Percent) by Diana Saqeb and Nejat (The Rescue) by Saba Sahar. With the short film Sayeh (Shadow) by Nacir Alqas, from 1990, an arc will be traced through the short history of Afghan cinema. Nacir Alqas, who was able, after a two-year ban, to finally shoot Sayeh in Kabul in 1990, tells, in his film, the story of a war widow whose new husband refuses to accept her son from her first marriage. The seemingly documentary setting and the lead actress’s dramatic work recall the films of Italian neorealism. In 25 Darsad the filmmaker Diana Saqeb portrays, in a documentary style, the daily life of different women MP’s. She joins them both during their political work and private duties at home. The director Saba Sahar shot her film Nejat in the popular Pakistani ‘Lollywood-style’ with sophisticated martial arts scenes. This genre is particular popular amongst the male audience in Afghanistan. Saba Sahar plays the leading role of an undercover police woman. Like her protagonist, the director’s day job is with the police.

  In her text-image-collage Sandra Schäfer reflects on the cinematic practices and the creative process behind Passing the Rainbow as well as the perception of Diana Saqeb’s film 25 Darsad in Kabul. The photos from the series Urban settings and other kinds too deal with the idea of setting reality as a stage. The pictures shown in this exhibition were taken in Kabul between 2002 and 2008. Schäfer’s selection reflects the conviction that it is impossible to convey a comprehensive image of a city. Rather the photos show how public and private spaces are inscribed with specific gestures.

  In her artistic work, Sandra Schäfer has previously dealt with themes of representation of gender, urbanity and (post-) colonialism. She has been involved in different collaborative projects with filmmakers, activists and theoreticians. Schäfer has visited Kabul and Tehran frequently since November 2002 to do research with Elfe Brandenburger for the film Passing the Rainbow and the film festival Kabul/Teheran: 1979ff. In 2007 she co-curated the film festival SPLICE IN; on gender and politics in Afghanistan, its neighbors and Europe, which took place in Kassel, Berlin and Hamburg. In 2008 the festival continued in Kabul under the title SECOND TAKE, in cooperation with BASA-Film and Afghan Film in Kabul. Schäfer also co-edited Kabul/Teheran 1979ff: Filmlandschaften, Städte unter Stress und Migration (Film Landscapes, Cities under Stress and Migration), a metroZones book published in 2006 by b_books-Verlag in Berlin. In 2009 her book stagings. Kabul, Film & Production of Representation was published in the same publishing house. The mobile cinema screenings will travel to Barcelona and Madrid in autumn 2010. Sandra Schäfer is currently fellow artist with Künstlerschloss Balmoral/TrAIN at Chelsea College in London.
  www.mazefilm.de

  Thanks to Jochen Becker, Eva Broer, Gerard Choy, Geoff Forster, Emma Hedditch, Britta Lorch, Barbara Nicholls, Karin Rebbert, Rob Rankine, Duncan Smith, Lena Ziese.
  This exhibition is supported by Künstlerschloss Balmoral, TrAIN and acava.

  Triangle Gallery, Chelsea College of Art and Design