Appendix : Art Setouchi 2022 05.Scenery (Japan)

2022-12-27

The attraction of the art festival is that it includes various types of art. Above all, artworks that incorporate places and landscapes look especial because they cannot be transferred to other sites and can be experienced only in that place.

See sunset waves from the ferry returning from Ibukijima island to Kannonji. The landscape looks like an Impressionist painting, although it has not been retouched.
https://goo.gl/maps/rfSmrWm8bsNUT2Gi6

Mention Setouchi, the sea comes to mind. Various artists created artworks on the relationship with the sea. In Megiima Island, an old building was renovated to put small shop-like art by artists in it and was named Megijima Island Shopping Street. It was an excellent project by director Fram Kitagawa. One of them was an installation by Junko Gomi in which various objects lined up on the desk sparkled like wave crests and continued to the sea beyond the window. In Nicolas Darot's artwork on the same island, various elements moved with the sound of a music box against the background of the sea. The speed and interval of the movement were slow, synchronizing with the slow flow of time in the Seto Inland Sea. It created a relationship with the landscape that included time. Oscar Oiwa recreated the scenery of the sea on window glasses looking down the sea on Ogijima island, and KASA, a unit of a Japanese and a Russian, layered the nets used by fishermen in the classrooms of an old school overlooking the sea on Ibukijima island to reproduce the scenery of the sea. Manal AlDowayan's artwork, which used a former shipyard open to the sea on Ibukijima island, was a remnant of a sea-themed performance. I would not understand it unless I watched the performance video, but her artwork with the performance was one of the best artworks this year.

The Art Setouchi is different from other art festivals since visitors circulate not by car but by public ferry. Unlike the scenery seen through the car window, visitors are immersed in a vast landscape that changes one after another on the deck, bathing in the sunshine and sea breeze. The transfer time is just healing to make their sense gentle like the calm sea. I felt that various artworks were trailers of actual scenery of the sea. When visitors circulated the island until closing during the autumn session, they rode on a ferry at sunset time. The sea itself turns into just an art.