A neighborhood providing a place for artists: Art, community, attachment and tension

The project “Fantasia! Fantasia!: a community where lifestyles are made real” continues to organize programs dealing with community history through the eyes of the artist. In 2019 artist collective Olta was invited to research history around Sumida-ku, resulting in an exhibition held in 2020. And in 2021 guest artist Yui Usui collaborated with Kobokan Community Center on workshops aimed at children attending gakudo clubs (after-school clubs for elementary school children). Kobokan is a “settlement house” that has carried out work related to the Taisho-era reformist social movement the Settlement Movement for over a hundred years since the Center’s founding.

For over ten years, numerous artists from outside Sumida-ku have been visiting the area in a variety of guises, producing and unveiling a plethora of creative works. Ima theater, a performance project invited to work on this Learning Lab series, likewise organizes creative activities guided by memories of place in the changing Sumida district, launching collaborative projects with specialists in different fields and presenting a variety of pieces based on existing “venues” or “places,” and what goes on there. Ima members have also visited many areas other than Sumida-ku, but naturally it is not just a question of creatively representing the feelings and experiences members have when visiting a certain place as traveling artists and meeting the local people.
In these sessions we would like to join Ima members in thinking about the sense of attachment or feelings of tension that develop towards a place precisely because one is only staying there temporarily as an artist.

About Learning Lab
Learning forum for thinking together about ways to enrich everyday life
Learning Lab is a lecture program aimed at creating a cycle in which changes to the cultural ecosystem of communities enrich the life of each. It is being held as part of“Fantasia! Fantasia!: a community where lifestyles are made real,” a project in which the whole city is imagined as a single learning forum.