GENERAL INFORMATION

Held every two years, the Tokyo Biennale is an international art festival that sets the city of Tokyo as its main stage. The festival is a new type of event that aims to dig deep into the city, as it is created together with the area’s local citizens, as well as a wide variety of artists and creators from around the world.

　　　

VISION

Art x Community x Industry
A new city and culture to call our own, built by our own hands in our own place.

The Tokyo Biennale aims at creating activities to become events shared by everyone through many kinds of encounters made between us all. New groups of people have gathered in the area comprising of local citizens with deep roots, as well as those from all over Japan and the entire world. While all kinds of people are living, working, and enjoying the cosmopolitan city of Tokyo, art is what connects them from across different backgrounds as it brings to life our neighborhoods’ histories and draws out the future. From here, the concept of “us” emerges and each person may even discover a new “me.” Under the theme of “Create Linkage,” the key words are “art x community x industry” as we work with people in the area to build our own culture in our own place with activities surrounding the concepts of “HISTORY & FUTURE,” “EDUCATION,” “WELL-BEING,” and “RESILIENCY.” The Tokyo Biennale is a celebration for the new city and culture that we ourselves will build.

HISTORY & FUTURE
The future cannot be discussed without knowing the memories left in the places where we live. Starting with bringing up the memories from Edo’s history and culture, problems in contemporary society will be drawn out in order to think about the future. In turn, the future will be visualized through memories hidden in history.

EDUCATION
Tokyo Biennale will become the catalyst for actualizing STEAM (skills of science, technology, engineering, art, and mathematics), which integrates fields that are usually held separate in our education system. Through the programming, students of all types of fields will cooperate and become involved with local citizens, which will result in the nurturing of human resources adept at problem-solving.

WELL-BEING
WELL-BEING refers to the good physical, emotional, and social state of individuals. In society, this is the continued state of political, economic, cultural, and environmental wellness. Tokyo Biennale will think in-depth about both the WELL-BEING of “me” and “us.”

RESILIENCY
The old saying goes that “Fires and fights are Edo’s flowers,” referring to the town firemen at the core of the disaster prevention community. Edo’s disaster prevention holds deep roots in its local communities. Through Tokyo Biennale, connections between local communities will be revived as a measure towards a society capable of action in cases of disaster.

TOKYO BIENNALE 2023 THEME

Create Linkage

It was 1993, and I was in the Ginza area of Tokyo, working on a guerrilla art project. I quietly placed a solid iron sculpture on the side of a back alley in the 8-Chome district. It was about 50 cm tall and too heavy for one person to lift. I set up the sculpture in order to understand the tolerance of the space on the side of the street. However, after placing the object, I became concerned about the possibility of it being moved or even removed, so I chained it to a sign pole. An ordinary roadside was thus transformed into a place with a considerable sense of tension. By placing something extremely private in a public space, I wanted to explore the relationship between the two.
Many years later, now I understand that in order for a personal act to be fully accepted in a public space, many connections have to be made. Negotiations and considerations are needed with related organizations, including getting permission from sidewalk administration, confirming the intentions of neighboring building managers, shop owner associations or city councils; also to be considered are safety management measures in the event of a disaster, funding of the installation as well as the history and public image of the area. One could place an object guerrilla-style without worrying about these relationships, but if one coordinated and connected the many stakeholders in the location, then it could be installed in a way that was also legally acceptable. Perhaps it was because back then these relationships didn’t come to mind, that I was able to act so boldly.

————Remarks by Masato Nakamura in 2022, from a conversation with Min Nishihara regarding the exhibition “THE GINBURART”(1933)

The fact that the subtle tension over a single work of art creates a new value in the public space of the city means not only a new immediate linkage, but also a discovery of the overall relationships within the city, to which it connects and which it thus changes. The appearance of something “individual” within the city will be seen as a new experience or event different from how it was before. The establishing of new relationships through exposure of hard-to-see connections changes the nature of the “individuality,” and will allow it to be accepted as something socially concrete.

The theme of the second Tokyo Biennale 2023 is “Create Linkage.” Linkage is a “relationship” that is found not only in human relations, but also in the ever-changing physical world we live in, in which all kinds of entities, including places, time, people, organisms, plants, events, things, and information, are intricately related to each other.
One of the social roles of art today may be its ability to relate to changes in the social environment due to the Corona pandemic from a free perspective. Based on this trust in the “power of connection” through art, the Tokyo Biennale 2023 will be a place where artists, companies, communities, participants and visitors become aware of the “linkages” that surround them and create new connections to join in.
The Tokyo Biennale aims to become the foundation of activities to create linkages that will last for the next 100 years, as these linkages through art shed light on the formation process of the underlying culture of Edo Tokyo and the local communities.

General Directors
Masato Nakamura
Min Nishihara

GENERAL DIRECTORS

TEAM