14th Art Division Critiques

Losing categorical validity

The categories for entries to the Japan Media Arts Festival might have been a tentative decision. It may reflect the fact that the term "Media Art" itself is a transient term.
In other words, two ways of categorization exist without confirming logical consistency.
One is the categorization by the technology used to create the work, and the other is categorization by content. As a result, some categories lose their validity.The Website genre, for instance, in terms of the Internet, the spread of smart phones and other technologies has forced the demise of tradition where people viewed the Internet from a single desktop. Clearly, the problem that technological development creates is not the technology itself, but the power of a format where content genres are roped off and categorized. For example, still life painting and landscape painting are different genres even though they use the same painting techniques and each necessitated a disparate process of cultural orchestration in order to be realized.
The digital photograph genre does not exist anymore. We need to focus on the history of photography-no, perhaps it is the history of "images" that begs focus.

Profile

OKAZAKl Kenjiro

Professor, International Center for Human Sciences, Kinki University

Born in Tokyo, 1955. OKAZAKI Kenjiro is a visual artist and critic who has been exhibitinghis works in various international exhibitions since he was invited to the Paris Biennale in1982. In 2002, he held a largescale solo exhibition at the Sezon Museum of Modern Art. He hasalso been constantly at the forefront of radical art activities, such as being the director of theJapanese Pavilion of the 8th Venice Biennale of Architecture in 2002, and collaborating with thecontemporary choreographer Trisha BROWN. His major books include "Renaissance Keiken noJoken" (Renaissance: The Condition of Experience, Chikuma Shobo) and "Rerorero-kun" (writtenjointly with PARK Kyong-Mi, published by Shogakukan). He is a professor and Deputy Director ofthe International Center for Human Sciences at Kinki University.