【Main Program】
■Symposium: “Transdisciplinary art and the creation of ‘aida’”
March 19 (Tue.), 14:00-17:00
Venue: Akita City Cultural Creation Centre, 1st Floor


In “Transdisciplinary art and the creation of ‘aida’,” the four students in the AUA Doctoral Program will be joined by Michiko Haga, an art mediator from the same generation, as they present their research reports. During the general discussion “On the present and future of ‘Trans/Trance’,” they will be further joined by members of the graduate school faculty, to consider the new artistic fields being created “between” their respective areas of expertise.


1. About “Transdisciplinary art and the creation of ‘aida’”: Taisuke KARASAWA (Philosopher) *
2. An overview of the Conference, the Graduate School, and the Doctoral Program: Koji IIGURA (Software engineer) *
3. Keynote speech “Intermedia and solemnity”: Michiko HAGA (Art mediator)
4-1. Research report “Artistic practices for sound and listening”: Kazuyuki MIYAMOTO (Doctoral Program 3rd year)
4-2. Research report “Thinking about others through local cinema: New Galicia Cinema as a stepping stone”: Fumito FUJIKAWA (Doctoral Program 1st year)
4-3. Research report “Arts-based research as poetic inquiry”: Miki SASAKI (Doctoral Program 2nd year)
4-4. Research report “Art and Buddhism as the practice of “muen”: The case of Oten’in Temple”: Mitsuki AKITA (Doctoral Program 2nd year)
5. General discussion “On the present and future of ‘Trans/Trance’”
Facilitator: Toshiaki ISHIKURA (Anthropologist)*
Commentators: Michiko HAGA (Art mediator), Hiroshi FUJI (Artist)*

*AUA Graduate School faculty member


Michiko HAGA
Art mediator. Born in Okayama Prefecture in 1985. Graduated from the Graduate School of Human and Environmental Studies, Kyoto University, in 2011. Her essay “Love in ‘The two Koheis’” was selected for Honorable Mention in the magazine Bijutsu Techo’s 16th Art Criticism Competition. She has organized and coordinated numerous exhibitions, including: “THE BOX OF MEMORY-Yukio Fujimoto” (kumagusuku / 2015); “Kokufu Osamu's ‘Engine in the water’ re-creation project” (2017-Present); and “LIGHT AND SEA” (Choshoin Temple, Gallery PARC / 2019). She is currently an adjunct researcher at the Archival Research Center, Kyoto City University of Arts, and an instructor at Jodo Fukugoh Writing School in Kyoto.

【Overview of the Doctoral Program Exhibition】
2022 will be the inaugural year of the AUA Graduate School of Transdisciplinary Arts Doctoral Program Exhibition. This exhibition, planned and organized by the students of the Doctoral Program, will introduce a diversity of approaches to transdisciplinary art through artistic and research activities that reflect each individual’s primary field of study.

Akita City Cultural Creation Centre 1st Floor
〒010-0875　Senshumeitokumachi 3-16, Akita City

　　　　　The transdisciplinary arts aim to create new social values and fields of expression through the parallel workings of “internal movement” – broadening one’s own skills and talents through interaction with unfamiliar disciplines – and “external movement” – intervening in the larger society to actively promote new ways of combining its varied elements. In the expressive activities we call “contemporary art,” these things are already being consciously addressed by many artists and researchers. This is the context in which we have been reconsidering just what exactly “transdisciplinary art” is.
　　　　　As we moved back and forth between our respective research fields during our one-year joint research group, we realized that "transdisciplinary art" is not something that can be clearly differentiated into specialties.
　　　　　The psychiatrist Bin Kimura has used the term “aida” (between-ness) to describe not only the space separating multiple things or concepts, but a vertical relationship to a universal “life itself” which allows human beings to sustain our individual subjectivities. We, too, assume that “transdisciplinary art” is not limited to the internal/external overlapping of different domains, but is also an activity which generates a vertical “aida” from this internal/external movement.
　　　　　Kazuyuki MIYAMOTO’s installation works focus on physicality in order to recapture as a single whole the various sounds of nature that lie hidden around us. Mitsuki AKITA attempts to open a “circuit” to the world of “muen” (lit. “unconnected”; spirits of the deceased who left behind no known relatives) by rereading Buddhism from an artistic perspective. Miki SASAKI examines the reconfiguration of private and poetic perspectives in the social world through research that accumulates the private and poetic texts and photographs of various individuals. Fumito FUJIKAWA seeks to build relationships with others, including non-humans, through locally-made videos.
　　　　　We believe that what we have discovered in our search for “aida” is not only “Trans” (in the sense of “transcendence” or “transgression”) but also “Trance” (in the sense of “reverie” or “illusion”). And by transcending and transiting the boundaries of this multifaceted world, we redefine “Trans/Trance" as a state in which we seem to drift across the line between reality and illusion.
　　　　　Through an on-again, off-again process of revealing the various “Trans/Trans” that appear in our lives, we hope to point the way towards the creation of new artistic fields.


(From the students of the AUA Doctoral Program)

• Conference on Transdisciplinary Arts 2022: Trans/Trance-disciplinary Art

【Date/Time】
March 18 (Fri.) – March 20 (Sun.), 2022
09:00-18:00

【Admission】
Free

【Venue】
Akita City Cultural Creation Centre 1st Floor
〒010-0875　Senshumeitokumachi 3-16, Akita City

【Inquiries】　
Graduate School of Transdisciplinary Arts, Akita University of Art　
Mail：ICTA2022@akibi.ac.jp
Tel ：018-888-8100