BSIM (the BEPPU Subterranean Innards Museum), 2011, digital image, © Kenji Yamada
TalkWednesday 27 July 2016
6:00pm – 8:00pm
Artist Talk: The Future of Public Art
Lecture Theatre, Chelsea College of Arts, 16 John Islip Street London, SW1P 4JU (Nearest station: Pimlico)
Organised by the Daiwa Anglo-Japanese Foundation
This event will be held at the Chelsea College of Arts. [Directions]
In today’s ever-changing world, how exactly has our view of publicness, commons and common spaces evolved?
Artist Kenji Yamada and curator Jason Waite are interested in exploring the intricate details of spaces closed off from society and historical places that have evolved from cultural forces. In this talk, they will discuss possible approaches to publicness as well as potential futures in our socio-cultural world.
This talk is being held in the context of Kenji Yamada’s new exhibition Smurfed Remain, on show from 25 to 29 July 2016 at the Morgue Gallery, Chelsea College of Arts. Through an exploration of Yamada’s work and practice, they will discuss the future of our relationship with images and information in the post-Snowden era and the evolution of publicness in the field of social innovation.
Jason Waite, co-curator of the Don’t Follow the Wind exhibition held in the radioactive uninhabited exclusion zone of Fukushima, will also discuss how a project of deterritorialising communities and culture is effected at the intersection of contamination and capital.
Kenji Yamada’s Exhibition Smurfed Remain will be exhibited at the Morgue Gallery, Chelsea College of Arts, from 25 to 29 July 2016.
The Future of Public Art: Facebook Event Download event audio hereAbout the contributors
Kenji Yamada
Kenji Yamada is an artist who explores conflict between historical ruins and modern constructions. He is interested in paradoxes emerging from the application and misuse of remains and heritage sites, including war ruins. After the Tohoku Earthquake and Tsunami in March 2011, he has continued examining his approaches to the global world as a nomadic and social being, like environmental refugees in different parts of the world. His expressions evoke his audience’s fundamental sensibility to see through social environments and phenomena and at the same time awaken an accidental imagination in them. Yamada expands the critical points and limitations through numerous phases in order to highlight the grey area for innovative thoughts. Yamada currently holds posts at Tokyo University of Arts as an assistant professor and at Central Saint Martins as a distinguished associate lecturer. He currently lives and works in Tokyo and London.
Jason Waite
Jason Waite is an independent curator. He has co-curated Don’t Follow the Wind, an ongoing project inside the uninhabited Fukushima exclusion zone. His other recent exhibitions include The Real Thing? Palais de Tokyo, Paris,Maintenance Required, The Kitchen, New York, andWhite Paper: The Law by Adelita Husni-Bey Art, Design and Theory, Utrecht. He has previously worked at Cittadellarte-Fondazione Pistoletto, Biella and Casco – Office for Art, Design and Theory, Utrecht. He holds an M.A. in Art and Politics from Goldsmiths University and was a Helen Rubinstein Curatorial Fellow at the Whitney Museum Independent Study Program, New York from 2012 to 2013.