Depth of the “Jury Issue”

This was my first time serving as a jury member. Being a novice and still in training, I hesitated to be on the jury. However, I decided to join since it is said that women tend to underestimate themselves, and I, as a female artist, had been interested in the jury issue, in particular the gender balance, in the past few years. The judging process was extremely hard. Partly due to the coronavirus pandemic, my patience was tested especially with the lengthy video works and the larger quantity than in the past. I wondered why I was judging the Entertainment Division to begin with. The high-quality contemporary art and documentaries submitted to the Entertainment Division made me contemplate what constitutes "quality entertainment in Media Arts," and I am still eager to discuss this with many people. Nevertheless, there were many works that I recommended with confidence. Replacements is a contemporary-art-like work, carefully made of hand-drawn-style VR animation. The viewers experience conservative beliefs and capitalism that slowly but heavily loom over the seemingly peaceful everyday life, as well as how globalization transforms our lives and landscapes. Personally, I enjoyed ON-GAKU: OUR SOUND as entertainment. The animation is impressively entertaining and skillful, and most of all, I was filled with admiration for the artist's guts to create an animation film all on his own. My other favorite is Jury Selection, BestFriends.com, which cleverly associates the Zoom screen composition with a science fiction idea, has good acting, and is interesting as a drama. My idea of a good jury member is someone who digs up hidden quality works and introduces them to the world, but I wonder if I properly did so. There may be some excellent works that were overlooked. Since I am an unprolific artist myself, I know the necessity of closely examining individual works, but it requires knowledge of previous works across various genres and knowledge of the world in general. I hope that more women and social minorities will join the jury next year.