Paper short abstract:

How did the materiality of exhibition conditions in early 20th century lead to new visual norms and a redefinition of Japanese calligraphy?

Paper long abstract:

Featuring row upon row of perfectly lined up characters, exhibition works in calligraphy can seem strangely uniform. This is due to the fact that the production of these works is planned by organizers down to the smallest detail, leaving little place to personal inspiration.

This characteristic can be traced back to the early 20th century, when selective exhibitions replaced literati meetings as the chief mode of circulation for calligraphy.

After delineating the context of this change, we will study its influence on the way calligraphy works were created and perceived.

Our reflexion is based on a case study of the 8th exhibition of the Taitô shodô-in, which took place in Tôkyô between January 8 and January 18, 1938.

Discussing this exhibition, we will rely on the analysis provided by a contemporary, calligrapher Ôike Seiran, before examining the increased importance of visual norm in later decades.

Paper short abstract:

By considering the broader social and historical circumstances that have instigated the emergence and evolution of conceptual art in Japan, this paper places special emphasis on the artistic lagacy of a diverse group of artists that participated in the international Fluxus movement

Paper long abstract:

This paper examines the emergence of a generation of postwar Japanese artists who made significant contributions to the international art scene in the 60's and the 70's. By adopting diverse artistic strategies and visual expressions they operated within a broader international framework that originated and emphasised artistic responses to questions much present today - the problems of race, national and social conditioning, and above all - the questions of origin, center and the deconstruction of artistic object. The emergence of new ideas of deconstruction, accompanied by a sudden relativisation of formerly appreciated values in the interpretation of art, has also led to a proliferation of styles, discourses and bizarre side effects - from random accumulation and experimentation with the new digital media, to ideas that were completely subjugated to the control of mathematical reasoning. What entailed was a devaluation of art itself, as its independence has been called into question - a fact that can determine its fate. Namely, if everything created yesterday ends up despised and rejected tomorrow, it will surely be forgotten in the future. This shared psychological reaction constructed a belief that art and its practice must become subject to urgent and immediate reconsideration - influenced also by a deep-rooted and widespread notion that all art is created in the spirit of the times, which is fickle and inconsistent, and therefore condemned to serve as disposable. The pioneering Japanese conceptual artist shared the idea that the only form of art worth pursuing is critical and engaged. This is reflected in the apparent paradox of experiencing the artistic truth as a collaborative action, established firstly through confrontation with the truth in a work of art, then through dialogue, dispute and discussion in a wider circle. By examining the work of Japanese artist and their legacy in the global context, this modest contribution hopes to facilitate a consideration of some wider issues, such as the relationship between art theory and practice, the concept of stylisation and spontaneity in artistic transposition of reality, questions of the typical and individual in artistic expressions, and other related topics.

Paper short abstract:

Paying attention to the material dimension of the cinematographic medium, my paper aims at questioning the formalist studies of Ozu's filmmaking and their emphasis on the register of mastery, arguing that it is best accounted for in terms of cinema's expressive means rendered inoperative.

Paper long abstract:

Echoing Ozu Yasujirô's undoubtedly unique filmmaking, many accounts of his cinema approach it according to a formalist point of view, describing it in terms of style and striving to identify its features. Such an approach notably informs David Bordwell's 1988 study, Ozu and the Poetics of Cinema - even if it also replaces, in terms typical of the cultural turn, Ozu's production in the historical context of the emergence of a popular mediatic sphere in a modernizing Japan. Stemming from his understanding of the "rules" of cinema and their possible transgression, Bordwell's formalist description of Ozu's "poetics" conceives of his filmmaking in the voluntarist terms of "choice" and of "control" of cinema's expressive means.

My paper aims at questioning such an emphasis on the register of mastery when considering Ozu's work, especially since it derives from a focus on narrative, filmic images being regarded as vehicles, more or less skillful, for its unfolding. On the contrary, the purpose here will be to draw the consequences, for Ozu's filmmaking, of the fact that, as a medium, cinema is at once material and immaterial, both technical and aesthetic. This material and technical dimension implies that cinema should not be seen as a mere tool meant at representing the world. Films in fact proceed from a material engagement with its ways of "thinking" and "feeling," as Thomas Lamarre puts it (2009. The Anime Machine. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, p.xxxiii), that jeopardizes any desire for complete control.

And indeed, Ozu's films offer a reflection, displayed at the very surface of their images, on the (im)powers of cinematographic creation. In Hasumi Shigehiko's words, this amounts to Ozu's attention to "the limits of cinema," his filmmaking being situated on the hinge of the pure expressive powers of cinema and their impotence. Drawing on Giorgio Agamben's reflection on mannerism, I will indeed argue that, far from a depiction in terms of control, self-consciousness and transgression, Ozu's filmmaking is best accounted for in terms of the medium's capacity of expression rendered inoperative.