Mario Vielgrader himself probably would not have expected this: When the director of the Austrian Cultural Forum in Tokyo and his team developed the idea for the online platform „#JapanRevisited202x: then-now-after“ a few weeks after the outbreak of the corona crisis, the project was conceived as a contribution planned with the comparatively modest means of a cultural forum to send at least some art projects by Austrian artists with a connection to Japan via an online platform halfway around the world to Japan under the conditions of worldwide travel restrictions. On the homepage www.ja- panrevisited.at set up for the project, a call was published for artists to submit projects that deal with the memories of the present and the prospects for a future after the crisis. The response was enormous, 237 artists submitted 223 projects. Among them were established artists such as Edgar Honetschläger, Claudia Larcher and Johann Lurf.
In the end, 102 projects by 111 artists were selected, which will now be presented on the online platform and in 2021 as part of an exhibition in Tokyo.
The photo series by Sonja Stummerer and Martin Hablesreiter alias „honey & bunny“ is one of these works. The Japanese architect Isozaki Arata inspired Stummerer and Hablesreiter to explore the global connections between world nutrition, the climate crisis and food design. „Every bite is a political act,“ says Sonja Stummerer. This is also reflected in the photo series of „honey & bunny“.
The range of works presented in the project „#JapanRevisited202x“ is wide. It goes right through the genres and themes. From photography, video art, music projects, architectural studies and online performances to literature. And they all have something in common: they draw their ideas from a cultural dialogue between Austria and Japan. Ideas that cannot be stopped. Not even by travel restrictions.
JapanRevisited2020x
www.japanrevisited.at
