Scene/Asia Annual Symposium 2016: Trans-forming Scenes: Reconstituting Democracy
14/07/2016On February 16th, 2016, the first annual symposium of Scene/Asia, which launched last year, was held at SHIBAURA HOUSE in Tokyo. The theme of the symposium was “Trans-forming Scenes: Reconstituting Democracy.” Kyoko Iwaki, the chief director of the project, gave an opening speech, explaining the theme for 2015-2016. From the very beginning, the task of Scene/Asia was to create a platform that allows us to collectively view the ongoing situation of the art world in Asia, with Asian colleagues. The keyword “democracy” appeared through a series of discussions. The topic did not appear all of a sudden, but gradually materialized as participants discussed various events and issues across Asia. The topic suggests the project’s focus on dissecting the imported western concept of “democracy,” and to reinterpret and re-implement the term that fits the lives in multiple places in Asia. The theme, “transforming scenes,” suggests that the whole picture of Asia is never a fixed picture but consists of countless individual small shifts. The transformation, so to speak, is not a revolutionary change in which people uniformly move towards one direction. Rather, the focus of Scene/Asia is on small transformations, which eventually leads to a big flow. In addition, the project does not take a canonical academic approach centering on literary analysis, but will travel across Asia intensively conducting fieldwork-based research. In contrast to Okakura Tenshin, Scene/Asia does not assume that “Asia is one,” especially when it comes to analyzing how capitalism and democracy are implemented in respective regions. It will rephrase, reconsider, and reinterpret Asia. One important thing to note is that it has a partner from China, where, of course, democratic political system does not exist. Indeed, it may not be correct to include China even within the frame of capitalist “democracy.” However, when we dissect democracy and … Continue reading Scene/Asia Annual Symposium 2016: Trans-forming Scenes: Reconstituting Democracy
