Aichi Triennale 2019

By reenacting historical events in the present, artist Fujii Hikaru structurally critiques those domains that remain invisible within society. For his work for Aichi Triennale 2019, Fujii looks back at the 20th century (an era in which totalitarianism infiltrated and mobilized even the individual's psyche) as it pertains to jō (情)--the Japanese for emotion, information, or compassion,--in order to contemplate our own time from a similar perspective.

The state-funded propaganda film Civilian Training Center in Tainan Prefecture, created in Taiwan under Japanese colonial rule, shows ten minutes and twenty-nine seconds of footage documenting a series of training and rituals that are intended to "Japanize" the Taiwanese. In the film, the individual undergoes a loss of self and the ability to feel remorse through complete disconnection from emotion--a direct embodiment of the values held up by Imperial Japan's militarism and colonialism.

How can this film be critically reenacted in the present? In answering this question, Fujii creates a stage for "transforming (or being transformed) from the state of being non-Japanese to Japanese," with young foreigners who study and work in Aichi Prefecture. The physical movements of the group and the individuals during the reenactment will be filmed and presented in the form of a five-channel video installation.

For the Extension Project, the foreigners living in Aichi will be invited into the gallery space to take part in an exhibition tour led by Fujii himself, which includes a lecture performance. Here, the exhibition is reorganized as a venue for different groups and individuals to exchange accounts of their personal experiences, creatively reshaping the relationship between the realities within and outside of the museum.

Extension Projects:
Projects including lecture-style performances by artists participating in the international contemporary art exhibition, group appreciation of work, and the provision of venues for discussion.