1. Introduction
/ 2. About IMA Project / 3.
About Mejunje / 4. Events in
Hayama / 5. Exhibition at waitingroom
waitingroom
is pleased to present the first AIR (Artist in Residence) project
called IMA Project, "Ola ~ Living Scenery
seen through Senses", in collaboration
with habitable,
a space in Hayama. We invite
an artist-unit called Mejunje from Argentina and organize workshops
and
open house
events at
the Hayama Art and Music Festival.
Mejunje often
creates installation work with materials found in local community.
At this project, they will live and work in a house with a family
(parents and a child) in Hayama where there are mountains and
ocean, and
will
create their
art work insipired by the area and people in the neighborhood.
This is the
Artist in Residence project that happens not at the institution
but at the local house where ordinary family lives. We
named this project that is directly connected to home and living
as IMA Project. "IMA" is the word for "Living Room" in
Japanese so it means that the artists will be living and working
in the living room, making
art, walking around the area and interacting to people in the
neighborhood.
We
organize the workshops and open house events to present this
project to public at the
Hayama Art and Music Festival through 4/24 (Sat.) to 5/16 (Sun.),
2010.
This is our
first time to organize "Artist in Residence" program
so that we are also not sure what will happen. We hope that it
will offer a positive perspective for the relationship between
living and art.
At most of
the Artist in Residence (AIR) program, "Artist" who
stays at a public institution to live, work and exhibit, is the
subject. However, at the IMA project, "People
who live with artists + Home + Local Community" that are
environments around artwork and artist, are also the subjects.
In short, it is focusing on the matter that "communication
through home and living makes art (Interchange Makes Art = IMA).
This time,
IMA (living room) of habitable in Hayama where we can find mountains,
ocean, beach and many other natures will be the stage of this
IMA Project. We will see how Mejunje interacts to
habitants at habitable, neighbors, and local community and what
they think.
The audiences will be offered to see and experience how Mejunje
interacts to habitants at habitable, neighbors, and local community.
Let's look at the "Living Scenery" where arts will
be created through many different kinds of experiences.
(Photos above
are from the documentation of the past exhibition, Yunmee
Kyong Solo Exhibition, at habitable.)
Mejunje
is the collaborative research project of Argentine artists
Mercedes Villalba (born in 1983) and
Julian Gatto (born in 1979). Since they have many common
interests and activities — namely
drawing, gardening, carpentry, writing poetry, taking walks,
peeping into other people’s gardens to see how they
tend them, etc — Mejunje instantly became a multidisciplinary
project of ‘knowledge-gathering’. In these
times were the emphasis of ‘valuable’ knowledge
is all about specificity and compartmentation, they feel
that perhaps it is necessary to go back to knowing ‘a
little bit of everything’— this might be the
key to more sustainable, independent and responsible processes
for art making and living in general. This is why the output
of their work can take many shapes: workshops, installations,
publications, drawings, poems, video, etc.
Gatto
was graduated from Cooper Union (NY) and have been showing
in Europe, US and Japan. Villalba is presently coursing
studies in Social and Cultural Anthropology and have been
part of different projects mainly in Europe. They were
both part of the Research Residence Program at the Tokyo
Wonder Site, Creator-in-Residence, Tokyo, Japan, in 2009.
www.mejunjeando.com.ar |
left:
Mercedes Villalba
right: Julian Gatto
|
The title "Ola" includes the both meaning of "wave (ola)" and "hello
(hola)"
in Spanish and it was titled in conjunction to the theme of this
year's Hayama Art and Music Festival, "Ocean and Beach".
We are organizing the two different types of events, Open House and
Workshop, at habitable
in Hayama. We would like to offer the audiences to experience the
world of Mejunje as well as the interest of IMA (Living Room)
through those events.
Installation
view of the show in Buenos Aires |
The
IMA (Living Room) of habitable will be open for public
and audiences
will see what is created through the artists' and habitants' living
there. Not the final product
but the work-in-progress and sources of production will
be presented so that the audiences
can have a glimpse of how their work is created at the
actual production site. By asking questions and sharing
ideas with
artists and habitants, the audiences are offered to be
part of the process of art-making. (There will be
an interpreter at the site.) It is
not a gallery show but a lively moment and a real site of the
art-making where the audiences can experience the artists'
experiences directly.
A sellection
of their past work (drawings and sculptures) will be exhibited
as well at this open house event. |
 |
There
will be workshops for both kids and adults. Mejunje
will teach how to make sculpture with
the found materials in the local community
and also will be doing some drawing sessions.
There
will also be
a couple of Mejunje's artist's friends to
do the collaborative workshops, from food, art and etc... |
| Workshop
view from the past project in Buenos Aires. |
<IMA Project 01: Mejunje
"Ola - Living Scenery seen through Senses">
Duration : 4/24 (Sat.) - 5/16 (Sun.), 2010 mainly on Weekends
and Holidays
Location : habitable
Address : 914-1 Isshiki, Hayama-cho, Miura-Gun, Kanagawa Prefecture,
Japan
Contact : Please contact info@waitingroom.jp or
03-3424-7779 for more info about the project.
Please contact info@habitable.jp or
046-807-5202 for the access.
<Hayama Art
and Music Festival>
Duration : 4/24 (Sat.) - 5/16 (Sun.), 2010
Sponsor : Hayama Art and Music Festival Association
Support : Hayama-Cho, Educational Association of Hayama-Cho and Zushi
http://www.hayama-artfes.net
<habitable>
habitable is a project, considering a relation between people and a way of living,
through art and design exhibitions. The projects occur in the living room
of a house in Hayama.
A collaboration with waitingroom started in February 2010.
It is run by Mie Manabe, Taichi Manabe, Takeshi Ishibashi
habitable.jp
Mejunje "Ola -
Living Scenery seen through Senses"
IMA Project Result Exhibition @waitingroom (title undecided)
*Works created at habitable will be exhibited with other drawing
and painting works.
Duration : 5/22 (Sat.)
- 7/17 (Sat.), 2010
Opening Reception : 5/22 (Sat.) 6pm-8pm
Open Hours : Fridays and Saturdays Only 1pm-7pm
Location : waitingroom
Address : Maison Shoka 101, Sangenjaya, Setagaya, Tokyo, Japan
Contact : info@waitingroom.jp or 03-3424-7779
http://www.waitingroom.jp
Download the Press Release
HERE
1.
Introduction / 2. About IMA Project / 3.
About Mejunje / 4. Events in Hayama / 5.
Exhibition at waitingroom
|
