Have you ever thought about “the smell of a country” ? And what kind of smell is “the smell of Japan” ? One Korean student says that it is the smell of “tatami”. Behind each image one might have, there is a special personal episode connected with it. Members of the Immigration Museum Tokyo make their art works based on the individual stories they heard from foreigners.
Different members participate in the project ? students, company employees, dancers. They conducted research and had numerous meetings with the foreign residents living in Tokyo, and created their art projects in the form of photo and video exhibitions. The various experiences of the members and communication with the foreigners helped them to find new values.

Dates/Times: Feb 15 (Sat) – 23 (Sun) 13:00 – 19:00
Venue: Studio Hinode apartment, #103 Hinode apartment Building 1, 27 Hinode-cho, Adachi-ku.
5 minutes on foot from Senju Station (East Exit)
Admission: Free

Ryuhei Uemoto＋Katanova Kateryna
My “Eye” Land
It is an exhibition-mix of “photos” and “twitters” that reflect the everyday life of one foreign girl that lives in one-room apartment in the suburbs of Tokyo and “sounds”, that she used to hear in her country when she was a child. You can try to imagine how she will tell in future about the place where she lives now.

Tomomi Ide+Toshiharu Tsurumaki+Yukako Ban
L’effet Proust de Tokyo
This art work started from the words of one foreigner “When I hear the songs of Hikaru Utada it smells “tatami”. New experience and new smells connected directly inside her and are expressed in the form of sense of incongruity. Some unordinary smell experiences are presented here.

Eugene Okano+Yuri Sato+Kazuyuki Miyamoto
Sky ear
The main theme of the art work is “mishearing”. The members of this group changed its original meaning “imagine that one hear sounds and vices that don`t exist” into “imagine that one hear the words and phrases of unknown language as of familiar one” and gathered “mishearings” from the foreigners. The members of this group exhibit the video art work with the episodes that introduce “the words of the same pronunciation but different meaning in Japanese and native languages and the words the pronunciation and meaning of which are similar in both languages”. You may even laugh unconsciously watching the video so don`t miss to enjoy the “mishearings”.

Technical Support: Keitetsu Murai

Date/Time: Feb 17 (Mon) 18:30 – 19:30
Admission: Free (Reservations required, participants are free to come and go during the event.)
Number of Participants: 15
Guests: Fumie Ohashi, Fuyuki Makino (Assistant Professor, Waseda University Graduate School of Asia-Pacific Studies)
Interviewer: Shigeaki Iwai (Artist/Director, Pilot Project for the Immigration Museum TOKYO)

What do foreign residents living here in Tokyo think and feel in their everyday lives? It may be possible to go over the stereotypes and one-side cultural exchanges and to widen Japanese and foreigner views of the world by researching the everyday life of Japanese (local) and those changes that happen in the life of foreigners living in Japan (international) . Japanese people can share the cultural background of the foreigners if they learn about the situations in which foreigners feel incongruous or surprised as well as about the ideas they implement to adapt to the environment. (Shigeaki Iwai)

Iwai Shigeaki (Artist/Director, Immigration Museum TOKYO Pilot Program)
Iwai has continued to produce a variety of visual expressions that are composites of video, sound and text based on his research of specific communities in Japan, as well as in Europe, Australia and South East Asia which he began conducting in 1990. In recent years, alongside these activities, he has been hosting workshops for all generations and conducting research on multiculturalism.

Art Access Adachi: Downtown Senju-Connecting through Sound Art Office
Tel: 03-6806-1740/13:00 – 18:00 (except Tue and Thu)
E-Mail: info@aaa-senju.com

Organizers:
Tokyo Metropolitan Government
Tokyo Culture Creation Project Office (Tokyo Metropolitan Foundation for History and Culture)
Tokyo University of the Arts, Faculty of Music
YARUNE (NPO)
Adachi City