Erimi Fujiwara

My name is Erimi Fujiwara. I have been assigned to give an “Introduction to Arts Journalism.” I studied art history and aesthetics at university, but I dared not to decide on an academic career and became involved in the writing, translating, and editing of art-related articles. I am specializing in fields ranging from western art history to contemporary art, but also interested in Japanese art, history and culture of other countries, as well as subcultures such as manga and anime.

You may find yourself wondering what “art journalism” is. And maybe some of you think it sounds difficult to understand. But in this lecture, I would like to put in perspective the history of hitherto existing relations between formative expressions and words or between “what was expressed / those who expressed it” and “words to analyze and understand it or to convey it to others.”

The beginning of journalism is the same as that of mass media. In the 19th century. But it was in an earlier time, in Italy in the 16th century, that people started writing about art. Now the discourses on art are divided into some categories (academic paper, art criticism, and art journalism) but were not yet in the 16th century.

Then what has created such divisions as paper, criticism, and journalism? And what makes each one different? The answer has a lot to do with historical transition and changes in society. For example, until the Meiji period, there was neither the term nor the concept of “art” in Japan. The term and concept of what is now called “painting,” “sculpture,” or “Japanese-style painting” were gradually formed in the rapidly-modernized society.

While taking a slow trip with you from 16th century Italy through 19th century France and Japan to the present, I would like to think together about “how artworks and words have been linked with each other” or sometimes about “how new expressions were born out of a state of conflict and such a struggle.”


Erimi Fujiwara (Teaching subjects: Introduction to Arts Journalism; Contemporary Culture (for graduate students), etc.)
M.A. Art journalist.

Recent Link : twitter




Keisuke Ozawa

After studying French literature at university, because of my increasing interest in contemporary art, I went on to graduate school and finished M.A. in contemporary art theory while studying other academic fields than art. Then I got acquainted with people who had a common interest in the relationship between art and society, and in 2001 we set up a school, MAD (Making Art Different), which is a kind of private school teaching the diversity and complexity of contemporary art. In the following year, 2002, we set up an NPO called Arts Initiative Tokyo [AIT], where we run an artist-in-residence program and curate exhibitions, symposiums, and talks. Now, working mainly as a member of AIT, I am also engaged in other activities such as managing Art Fair Tokyo and writing.

At AIT, I’m making a program for MAD with Roger McDonald and giving a lecture myself. We are currently offering five courses such as “Curation” and “Art + Communication,” each program of which aims to improve our understanding of the “present age” through what is thought in academic fields such as philosophy, ideology, and sociology, think about the visual culture and contemporariness (hipness) of art as well as film, architecture, advertisement, or design, and express them in the form of words, artworks, or exhibitions.

This attitude is also reflected in the exhibition program at AIT. To provide an opportunity to think about the properties of museum, a cultural facility of modern civilization to accumulate universal values, we carried out an experimental project, “16 Hour Museum” (Hillside Terrace, AIT, Super Deluxe, etc. / 2007), which was open limited hours for a limited time only, offering an opportunity for viewers to make a constant change to the program and the space, as well as featuring temporary expressions. Then, at “Museum of Okinawan Time” (Museum of Okinawan Time etc. / 2007), which was set up jointly with the NPO Maejima Art Center, we used the local market necessary for daily life as a base to carry out exhibitions, bars, lectures, talks, and other programs with the rhythm of life there from around noon to dawn. Furthermore, we also held the “Green Practice” (Hillside Terrace / 2008) in which we focused on the “practice” aspect of art and thought about a new approach to the environment.

I would like you students to question a given framework of “art” and explore the “hipness” of an expression or the way to associate it with a society through a wide range of knowledge and physical experience. Thank you very much in advance.


M.A. Curator
Co-founder of the NPO Arts Initiative Tokyo [AIT]

Recent Link : AIT




Mizuki Endo

Do you know the word curator?
In general, it refers to a “museum officer” who is working for an art gallery or museum, but to plan and organize art-related programs, mainly exhibitions, is referred to as “curation” and a person in charge of that work as a curator. I call myself an independent curator. It means that I am not a curator who belongs to an institution such as an art museum or an art center.

Curation includes not only planning and organizing exhibitions, but also holding events, recording and archiving them, writing and publishing, conducting research and fieldwork, as well as doing many other practical things. Each of them stands between “art” and “society,” playing an important role as a medium.

You may be able to imagine an artist “creating” works or an audience “looking” at them. However, art doesn’t always take an easily understandable form like a painting or a sculpture. That is because as with any “society”, “art” has become so diversified. And curation, a complex set of activities to bring together those various aspects, has been playing an important role in recent years.

Now, as a lecturer, I find myself wondering if I can mediate the interaction between a student and a society, viewing him or her as a work of art. I think students are very free because they have enough time and ambitions to move about in search of excitement. I wish I could go back to that. I feel it is very meaningful to locate student will, student freedom, and student ethics in a society. Although you all have a limited amount of time to be a student, you may be able to leave the fact of your being a student on the world in different ways. And that is the way you will give hope to future students.

Please come to study at our university and have a wonderful time with a quality in itself rather than just spend your salad days lacking in experience before going out to society. I would like you to be proud of being a student. Instead of just following social values, discover values that pose a challenge to society. If you can do that, art will always be an inseparable part of your life.


Kyushu University. Graduate School, Accomplished credits for doctoral program.
Independent curator

Recent Link : ARTiT blog




Takemi Kuresawa

I have been working mainly as an art critic for the last dozen years or so. There are many different types of art critics. Although many of us are mainly engaged in art exhibition planning or a panel of judges, I think myself it is more important than anything to write and publish books. Here, I would like to introduce my two books which were released last year.

One is a book titled “100 Keywords for Contemporary Art” (Chikuma shinsho). Just as the title indicates, this is a glossary which has made a careful selection of 100 words for understanding contemporary art and given brief instructions to them.

As the first step in writing this book, I divided the whole into two parts: movements and concepts. That was because I felt there was a need to understand clearly not only various movements like such and such an “ism” or “art” but also thoughts and concepts behind them. I was not sure if this relatively rare policy would be understood, but fortunately this book was well received by many readers, and it has been decided that the translation will be published in Taiwan. As an author, it is a great pleasure for me to release a book that reaches across borders to foreign readers. Because it is an inexpensive paperback pocket edition which students can easily buy with their allowance, I would really like you students to read it, too.

The other is a monograph written about a creator, titled “Le Corbusier” (Asahi sensho). Although Le Corbusier is a hero who is regarded as the greatest architect of the 20th century, he was actually a person of many talents including as an artist, designer, and editor. This book is an attempt to unveil the multi-talented personality of Le Corbusier mainly through the lens of media theory. And as a result of on-the-ground research, it also gives a detailed introduction to the international project to register his best known work as a World Heritage Site, which yielded disappointing results last year.

As symbolized by my writing a monograph on the architect, my concerns extend far beyond “art” in the narrow sense. I hope I can share many of them with you young students looking to a future rich in possibilities. It will give me much pleasure if I can fuel the spark of your imagination and excite your intellectual curiosity through classroom lectures and a little piece of communication.


After graduating from university and having many twists and turns, became an art critic. Also interested in architecture, design, subculture, etc.

Recent Link : wikipedia