The latest from the City of Yokohama’s urban renewal initiative Creative City Yokohama is the CREAM International Festival for Arts and Media. With BankART1929 and the Shinko Pier forming the main venues, the festival is spread around with various satellite exhibitions taking place in the recently regenerated former red-light district Koganecho, and even the polar bear house of the city zoo – confirming the people of Yokohama’s unique skill at instigating innovative new uses of existing city spaces.
Not to be missed is the Lab Space at the end of the Shinko Pier venue, which brings together various groups and individual artists with a focus on interaction through workshops, discussions, lectures, and an open café area. Highlights include an extensive collection of artworks and documents from the Japanese artist-activist collective Remo and the recent experiments of Graffiti Research Lab (GRL), an organization dedicated to making new tools and techniques available for urban communication and public interventions around the world.
The problem the festival faces with being so dispersed is that it is extremely difficult for visitors who aren’t local residents to navigate their way around. Suitable signage, connecting transportation and concise information about the different spaces would help overcome this, but they all seem to be lacking at CREAM 2009, leaving many visitors confused or frustrated.
This is one of the points that has been raised in the debate that has been taking place in the wake of the controversial media preview, where Masaki Fujihata – participating artist, member of the festival committee and professor at Tokyo University of Fine Arts – formally withdrew his participation and handed out a written statement of complaint about the CREAM Director and various facets of the way the festival had been put together (more details on that here).
But despite the Fujihata controversy, the problems with the scattered venues and the wishy-washyness of the overarching “Deep Images” theme, the range of artists and standard of works (with several highlights listed below) make CREAM a worthwhile daytrip out of Tokyo. Perhaps it is just better to consider it as a series of exhibitions rather than an overarching festival with some connecting idea behind it, and to use it as an excuse to get aquatinted with the city of Yokohama, one of Japan’s most interesting new hubs for contemporary art (more on that here).
Behind the scenes of Indonesian artist Eko Nugrohu’s electrically powered shadow puppets.
Horticulture by Osaka-based artist-activist collective Remo.
Shiga Leiko’s Canary (2007), a slideshow of her powerful photography.
Alfredo Jaar’s representative work The Sound of Silence (2006).
From Duane Hopkins captivating multi-screen video installation Sunday (2009).
(Above and below) SHIMURABROS. and Taro Izumi’s mixed-media invasion of the Polar Bear House at the Nogeyama Zoological Garden.
An animalistic audiovisual installation from Makoto Nomura and Yukihiro Nomura, held in an old streetcar at the Nogeyama Zoological Garden.
Your blog is awesome.
Comment by Galdr Starlight ☆ ガルヅル · スターライト — November 22, 2009 @ 2:02 amThank you for sharing all this hyper stuff.
[...] With the third Yokohama Triennale having taken place late last year, and the city is now also playing host to a new major festival called CREAM, which confirms the people of Yokohama’s unique skill at instigating innovative new uses of existing city spaces. With BankART1929 and the Shinko Pier forming the main venues, the art and media festival is spread around with various satellite exhibitions taking place in the aforementioned Koganecho district, and even the polar bear house of the city zoo (see my review of the festival here). [...]
Pingback by Big In Japan — November 25, 2009 @ 4:42 am