Noi Sawaragi

The sublime and the everyday – Chelfitsch: The Sonic Life of a Giant Tortoise Chelfitsch – Performance still of The Sonic Life of a Giant Tortoise (2008) at Kanagawa Arts Theatre, February 1, 2011. Photo Kikuko Usuyama. When I triedView More >

A deep, black hole inside of ‘me’ (Part II) In his previous column, Noi Sawaragi introduced concerns about the differences between art and theatre, presence and absence in relation to Norimizu Ameya’s The shape of me, simultaneously presented at multipleView More >

A deep, black hole inside of ‘me’ (Part I) All images: Installation views of Norimizu Ameya’s The shape of me (2010) at Festival/Tokyo 10. All images courtesy Festival/Tokyo 10. © Yohta Kataoka. Norimizu Ameya’s The shape of me was anView More >

The invisible union of flesh and eye: Jun Tsuzuki’s ‘New Eidos’ All images: Installation view of ” New Eidos” (2010) at Recto Verso Gallery, Tokyo. Inside a cube-shaped exhibition space so small two or three people would probably fill it,View More >

Viewing the Setouchi International Art Festival (Part II) Yasuhiro Suzuki – Ship of the Zipper (2010) By now it’s significantly cooler, but the Seto Inland Sea was still gripped by a heat wave when I visited in early September, andView More >

Viewing the Setouchi International Art Festival (Part I) Shodoshima. Photo Osamu Nakamura. From July to October this year seven islands – Naoshima, Teshima, Shodoshima, Ogijima, Megijima, Oshima, Inujima – at the eastern end of Japan’s Inland Sea played host toView More >

New songs without words: Yurie Nagashima’s ‘SWISS+’ All images: Installation view of “SWISS+” (2010) at SCAI The Bathhouse 2F View Room. Photos Keizo Kioku, courtesy SCAI The Bathhouse. It was 1994 when I first met Yurie Nagashima, soon after sheView More >

Chaos, Destruction, Recurring Chaosmos – Beyond the ‘Hametsu*Lounge’ Installation view of “Hametsu*Lounge” (2010) at Nanzuka Agenda Shibuya. Courtesy Nanzuka Underground. Following on from my review of the recent “Chaos*Lounge” exhibition at Takahashi Collection Hibiya in Part 6 of this series,View More >

To Whom Does Art Belong? On the forced resignation of Fram Kitagawa (Part II) In Part I of this two-part essay on the current conditions for exhibiting contemporary art in Japan, Noi Sawaragi reviewed the historical relationship between fine artView More >

To Whom Does Art Belong? On the forced resignation of Fram Kitagawa (Part I) As I write, the forced resignation this March of Fram Kitagawa as director at the Niigata City Art Museum, a position he assumed in 2007 afterView More >