Art For All: My Night Cruising at Roppongi Art Night
Written by: Jane.kxl
Imagine yourself strolling around the metropolis area with your friends and seeing something else other than buildings or the usual city hustle bustle — you see families and lovers engaging with artworks, salary men smiling and tapping along to performances, and colourful balloons decorating your previously lifeless economic establishments.
As a participator in the Keio University Art Center’s collaborative programme with Roppongi Art Night 2019, I was blessed to have the opportunity to witness and experience that at the Roppongi Art Night 2019. Prior to the event, I attended a workshop in a form of mini-lecture and interview with a representative from the Administration Office to learn about the organization process, background, and vision for the Roppongi Art Night event. During that workshop, we were given the chance to interview the secretary general of the Roppongi Art Night on matters like finance, the rebranding of the city, and the role of art in Japan. When asked about the vision for the event, the representative from the Administration Office said they are hoping to “bring the museum out of the museum”, and I think they did just that. There were installations and exhibitions all around the Roppongi area, and most of them were free of charge and accessible to everyone. They provided guidance and talks in different foreign languages like English, Mandarin, and Korean, in order to accommodate tourists and other non-Japanese visitors. To ensure their inclusiveness, they also had assisted tours for the disabled. My friends and I were amazed at how considerate the organizations were in making sure the arts were accessible to all. However, despite all three of us being foreigners who didn’t speak Japanese that well, we decided not to attend the guidance or talks for the sake of freedom.
We arrived at the Roppongi Hills around 5:30 pm — just in time to attend the opening speeches and special performance. The performance consisted of two parts: visual and audio; and both were phenomenal. Before the performance started, I was standing at the side of the main stage, and witnessed the whole preparation process of the performers. There were two xylophone players inside the giant puppets, and one other musician (playing an uncommon string instrument) inside a giant snow globe. During the performance, the musicians would move along with the music, one rocking back and forth, and the other two creating an illusion that the puppets were performing. In the background, you could even see the giant fruits installation by Choi Jeong Hwa (more on the artist later in the article). It created a near magical imagery, resembling a scene straight out of a children’s picture book. I felt like a kid watching my imagination of the dinner table come into life.
After the performance, we visited some other displays and exhibitions in the Roppongi Hills area. One of the most famous ones is the Red Ball Project, which was installed near the Mori Art Museum and attracted many people. Unfortunately, since it was located at a crowded aisle, we couldn’t examine it closer for more than 3 seconds before being asked to move along, let alone taking photos with it. In fact, the overcrowding problem was the only thing hindering us from enjoying our evening as much as we hoped to. At some of the more popular installations, there were even queues longer than a 2-hour wait! In order to be time-efficient, we decided to simply take a picture of the exterior and move on.
After strolling around the Roppongi Hills area, we began walking towards the balloon installation. On our way over, we were surprised at the amount of people in the Roppongi area. There were also many other smaller installations around, which seemed to be enjoyed and loved by the people filling up the streets. It was visually refreshing as I’ve never seen such enthusiasm in Roppongi (except on late weekend nights). The mixture of audio from people excitedly conversing about the artworks and local business owners advertising their collaboration with the Roppongi Art Night created a feeling resembling a giant summer festival.
As we were reaching the balloon installation, we heard laughter from people of all ages as they struggled to fill their balloons with air and molding them into interesting shapes. I also had trouble creating impressive shapes with my balloon, but I definitely had fun nonetheless, and I guess that was the purpose of the Art Night — to encourage the interaction between individuals and their creative selves.
Choi Jeong Hwa, one of the featured artists for Roppongi Art Night 2019, is a Korean artist in the creative fields of visual art, graphic design, industrial design and architecture. He has received awards with his contemporary art pieces, and has participated in art festivals worldwide, including countries like Australia, UK, France, and Germany. Choi has expressed his love for mundane, everyday materials like plastics and trash as his inspiration on many occasions, and aims to bridge the separation between art and the public with his art. When talking about why he uses materials seemingly valueless for his art works, he said, “my general motto is: it is beautiful, but worthless.”He sees himself as a mediator between “the sacred and the worldly”, as he works to convey the spirituality and power of his materials through his pieces.
On the streets of Roppongi that night, arts didn’t feel like an elevated and separated form of entertainment from the public. The art pieces were not kept in museums or indoor exhibitions, but were accessible to all, and amongst the hustle bustle. Like Choi Jeong Hwa once said, “materials have life. In this sense, ordinary material things in our lives have importance.”
As I hung my poor excuse of a balloon art up there like hundreds of people before I did, I truly understood what “everything is art, and everyone is an artist”meant.
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Jane.kxl was born in Hong Kong and brought up in Toronto, Canada. She spent two years studying in Kingston, Ontario, before coming to Tokyo as an exchange student at Keio University, in Minato City. She is currently living in Asakusa, an area in Taito-ku rich in Japanese culture and tradition. She is a Language and Cultural Studies major, and often expresses her interests in arts and cultures in various art forms.
