Shakai No Geijutsu / Geijutsu to iu Shakai (Arts of/as the Society: Recreation of the Relationship Between Society and Art)

This book grew out of the activities of a project, started in 2015, known as “Art of Society Forum” led by Akihiro Kitada (Professor in the Interfaculty Initiative for Information Studies). Through numerous fora, symposia and lecture series in 2015, this project has been a source of much active discussion on the interaction between art and society. The chapters of the book follow the topics of the fora conducted in 2015.
 
“Socially engaged art” is a worldwide trend. In Japan, particularly since the year 2000, art projects and festivals involving local citizens have dramatically increased in number. It is now increasingly difficult to evaluate art from a purely aesthetic perspective.
 
In this context, art is sometimes pressed into service as an instrument for the revitalization of local communities. In many cases, art is simply used to perform functions that could just as well have been fulfilled by something else. In order to grasp the unique functions of art that cannot be substituted by something else, it is necessary to consider not only the independence of art but also the practical functions of art in society. In the recent trend of local art festivals and socially engaged art, the way in which art relates to society (as indeed it must in some way other) is very much called into question.
 
This book offers a view of the art world from the perspective of the humanities and social sciences. It interrogates the society of the art world itself and the relationship between that art world and the wider society. By providing a platform for interactive debate among artists, curators, critics and scholars, it seeks to create new vocabularies for the practice and criticism of art. In doing so, it furthers the goal of the “Art of Society Forum” to examine the way in which art and society reflect each other from a wide ranging multidisciplinary perspective.
 
Since 2017, the work of the “Art of Society Forum” has been continued by the AMSEA (Art Management of Socially Engaged Art) project at the University of Tokyo.
 

(Written by Akihiro Kitada, Professor, / Keiko Takeda, Associate Professor, Interfaculty Initiative in Information Studies / 2017)