Theme announced for Yokohama Triennale 2014

At a press conference held May 21 by the organizers of the 2014 Yokohama Triennale, artistic director Yasumasa Morimura announced the theme of the exhibition, “ART Farhrenheit 451 : Sailing into the sea of oblivion.” Making reference to Ray Bradbury’s novel, Fahrenheit 451, set in a dystopian future in which books are outlawed, Morimura’s exhibition theme explores not memory, but rather forgetting as an axis for exploring concepts of the fleeting and insignificant, the un-narratable, and other things that constantly escape memory. In his press statement, Morimura cited the “exiles” in Fahrenheit 451, who have each memorized entire books as a means to preserve literature for posterity, as an example of the forgotten, in that their actions have erased them from functioning society. According to Morimura, this tension between the remembered and the forgotten necessarily informs our lives and our relations to knowledge: “the world of memory is only a small island in the vast ‘sea of oblivion’.” As such, Morimura suggests that a radical new perspective might become possible in shifting the focus of attention from memory to the forgotten. Not limited to works of the past, and eschewing the simple unearthing of forgotten history, the exhibition will also address the memory of the future, and an artistic attitude of resistance, even if it has no practical benefit to the world at large and is perhaps destined to be forgotten.

Participating artists will be announced at a separate press conference to be held later this year.

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