As if volume and variety weren’t enough, all of the artists were asked to make new work. Though this is unusual, expensive and complicated, it ensures that even jaded art jetsetters won’t want to miss the Triennale.

Moreover, with the Triennale’s being in Japan, 45 percent of the artists are Asian, 30 of those, Japanese. Except for the work of a few people-Yayoi Kusama’s “infinity net” paintings, Yoko Ono’s Fluxus experiments, Takashi Murakami’s semen-lasso whirling manga cowboy and Yoshitomo Nara’s dour, knife-wielding kiddies-Japanese contemporary art has been, until recently, largely overlooked both at home and abroad. Most Japanese artists still gain international recognition as expatriates living in New York (Kusama), Cologne (Nara), or other major art centers. Likewise, the general availability of quality contemporary art exhibitions in Japan has long been inadequate.


Genesis

Several years ago, the Japan Foundation (the cultural division of the Japanese Foreign Ministry), determined to remedy this situation, formed a study group of curators, professors and bureaucrats to outline the who, where, why and how of holding a periodic international contemporary art exhibition. Their mission: to promote and export native talent, import the best new art to Japan, spur free and critical thinking and, overall, boost interest in contemporary art in Japan.

The symbolic aka renga, the Red Brick Warehouse No. 1

Yokohama, a town of 3.2 million often dismissed as a suburb of Tokyo, was chosen because it had a convenient location, ample space, a symbolic old, red-brick (aka renga) warehouse and money. Other cities were impractical for various reasons. Cramped Tokyo, the obvious choice for many, was bankrupt at the time of initial planning. Kyoto was good in theory-steeped in both traditional arts and radicalism (the birthplace of bosozuku motorcycle gangs and live houses)-but lacked appropriate facilities. Yokohama, on the other hand, is open, especially around the main venues in Minato Mirai 21, has European-style buildings as proof of an international history, and is easily accessed by the target audience of Tokyo and Yokohama's combined 15 million inhabitants.

To choose 110 artists representative of the diversity in current contemporary art, the organizers hired four curators-all men in their early 50s. Though anachronistically a-plural, the panel is varied. Shinji Kohmoto, senior curator at the National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto, was responsible for the recent “Visions of the Body: Fashion or Invisible Corset?” Nobuo Nakamura is director of the Center for Contemporary Art CCA Kitakyushu, an art institute, and has written several books on art. Independent curator Fumio Nanjo has worked on public art projects, e.g. Shinjuku I-Land, and has been a commissioner for the Taipei Biennale and the Japanese commissioner for the Venice Biennale. Akira Tatehata, professor of contemporary art theory and criticism at Tama Art University, has also been Japanese commissioner of the Venice Biennale and used to be a curator at the National Museum of Art, Osaka.

Finding agreement among them was like a four-bride wedding-messy. Nanjo confesses, “of course it’s difficult... but if we completely agree, it’s not a collaboration.” Even collaboration wasn’t a gimme: The biggest conflict was whether the Triennale should be four separate shows or one big art mosh-pit.

“Mega-Wave” is a little of both. All four agreed on the first 30 artists. They split the remaining 80 choices equally. According to the theme “Asia as Cultural Passage,” Tatehata invited mainly Asian artists like Thai Navin Rawanchaikul (mobile gallery in a Bangkok taxi), and Chinese Cai Guo Qiang (traditional fireworks, kites, and Jacuzzi rock gardens). “Asia,” he says, “doesn’t exist as a fixed idea but is ambiguous, open, always shifting.” Nanjo took a journalistic approach, searching for unknown artists or people exploring the borders of art. For example, Masanori Oda, a Japanese ethnologist who will create an installation from the refuse of other artists and Frenchman Laurent Moriceau, who will collaborate with Japanese fashion collective 20471120. Nakamura sees the Triennale as “a starting point” for meeting and discussion. He followed his CCA interdisciplinary approach, choosing 28 international artists (like Yugoslav-born performance artist Marina Abramovic and Swiss video-maker Pipilotti Rist), architects and musicians under the theme “Future for Today.” Dubious of globalization and collective identities, Kohmoto’s “Advancing Matrix” uses biological metaphors to consider alternative social systems, like Noboru Tsubaki and Hiashi Muroi’s gargantuan inflated cricket nesting in the folds of the Inter-Continental Hotel, or pioneer experimental musician Yasunao Tone’s cell/parasite audio installation.

On the waterfront

The curatorial disagreement spilled from artist selection to the installation of the work-to mix the curators’ themes or separate them? The solution, again a little of both, was partly determined by the available space. For example, low ceilings in the brick warehouse allowed only 25 artists-almost exactly accommodating Kohmoto’s program. Other historic, Western-style buildings-the Port of Yokohama Archives and the Port of Yokohama Memorial Hall-and two galleries inside Queen’s Square Mall house only one or two artists each.

About 70 percent of the artwork, though, will be clustered in small spaces off a “main street” promenade inside the tail-finned Pacifico Yokohama Exhibition Hall, Minato Mirai 21’s waterfront convention center. Formerly docks and warehouses, futuristic redevelopment district Minato Mirai (literally “Port Future”) has been the site of feverish construction for several years. The result-part Akira, part Disney-is a fantasy of giant indoor malls, Japan’s tallest building (Landmark Tower), the sail-shaped Inter-Continental hotel and Kenzo Tange’s Yokohama Museum of Art. The art route-from the old town buildings, along the waterfront, past a port-side amusement park and malls to Minato Mirai-is an architectural timeline through the last 100 years or so of Yokohama’s maturation, linking the exotic, international history with the postmodern Japanese.

But the superficial exuberance of heterogeneous architectural novelty belies a deep-seated impotence and lack of direction in Japanese society. “Due to the educational system,” notes Tatehata, “the younger generation has lost its power, curiosity and eccentricity.” Nanjo says that the recent spate of wanton mayhem-stabbing children at school, hijacking buses-shows that “young people want to do something but don’t have models to show them what.” He continues, “We are in the mega-wave... we are in the middle of drastic changes... particularly in Japan.”



The curators, however, are as optimistic about the onsen-like regenerative properties contemporary art will infuse into Triennale-goers as they are emphatic about the need for change. More than just another entertainment option, they hope their “Mega-Wave,” their tsunami of possibility, can wrench young Japanese people from the undertow of apathy and rote thinking, give them a sense of purpose and, as Mr Nanjo says, “show them how to be creative, see things differently, and reconstruct society.”



Yokohama 2001: International Triennale of Contemporary Art

Sept 2-Nov 11. Daily 10am-6pm (admission until 5pm). Fridays until 8pm (admission until 7pm). Closed Sept 11, 25, Oct 9 and 23. Tel: 03-3272-8600 (Japanese only). Nearest stn: Sakuragicho (Tokyu Toyoko, JR Negishi, Yokohama city Subway lines). An information counter in front of the station will distribute bilingual maps. Tickets are available at regular outlets or at the door. Adm: Adults JY2000, students JY1500, seniors JY1000, children JY500. (Discounted advance tickets available through PIA, Family Mart, Lawson, JTB and other outlets through Sept 1). A variety of symposia, workshops and other events will also be held. Check the website for details: www.jpf.go.jp/yt2001/