'Something else is possible': The experience of art during a festival in rural Japan

This paper discusses the experience of art focusing on an art festival in remote rural Japan. Drawing on the success of similar ‘open’ art festivals in Japan (i.e. beyond metropolitan galleries, art museums and city... [ view full abstract ]

This paper discusses the experience of art focusing on an art festival in remote rural Japan. Drawing on the success of similar ‘open’ art festivals in Japan (i.e. beyond metropolitan galleries, art museums and city ‘creative hubs’), for the first time, over the period of 7 weeks, the Oku-Noto Trienale animated the small town of Suzu and the wider region of the Noto Peninsula in one of the most isolated regions in Japan, the Ishikawa Prefecture. In the backdrop of severe rural depopulation and economic decline, the paper explores how the festival utilised community spaces (i.e. closed schools, abandoned houses and huts, closed cafes, derelict train lines and train/bus stations) and how this might have offered a new reflexive language in the discussion of rural futures in Japan and internationally. Theoretically the paper draws on relational approaches of the art experience as already discussed by Crawshaw and Gkartzios (2016, Journal of Rural Studies), paying particular attention to the relation between the rural community and nature. Methodologically, the paper draws on an ethnographic diary during attending the festival and travelling through Oku-Noto to experience the artworks, structured written reflections obtained by other visitors of the festival, as well as in-depth interviews with a series of festival stakeholders (i.e. curators, art professionals, local policy makers and community groups actively involved in the art festival). Borrowing the title from a particular artwork entitled ‘something else is possible’ by Tobias Rehberger, the paper argues that the art festival offers original understandings about our relationship with nature, and about the role of art in rural development, missing in rural studies literature and policy making due to limited exposure of Japan (and Japanese rural studies) in western academic accounts.