April 27, 2021/ 6:00 PM - 7:15 PM

Rethinking of MA Webinar Series

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The groundbreaking interdisciplinary MA: Space-Time in Japan exhibition was curated in the late 1970s by renowned architect, Arata Isozaki. It presented Japanese artistic culture through the unifying concept of MA found in painting, photography, theater, performance, music, sculpture, architecture and daily life in Japan, making explicit an implicit indigenous notion of order and orientation found in the simultaneity of time and space.

JAPAN HOUSE Los Angeles and architecture professors Hitoshi Abe (University of California Los Angeles) and Ken Tadashi Oshima (University of Washington) are presenting a series of four webinars focusing on the application of MA in a variety of cultural spheres. The series begins with ART in the spring, followed by ARCHITECTURE in the summer. In the autumn the webinar will spotlight FOOD, followed by MUSIC in the winter.

This first webinar will examine the application of MA in the realm of contemporary art. Takashi Kudo of the international art collective, teamLab, will share video footage of three separate examples of digital installations created by the team. Professors Hitoshi Abe and Ken Tadashi Oshima, hosts of the series, will moderate the conversation with Kudo, to explore how the idea of MA, or time/space consciousness, has been incorporated into and shaped teamLab’s digital creations. The webinar will conclude with an audience Q&A.

Guest Speaker

Takashi Kudo

Takashi Kudo is Communications Director for teamLab, an international art collective, an interdisciplinary group of various specialists such as artists, programmers, engineers, CG animators, mathematicians and architects. Founded in 2001, teamLab seeks to navigate the confluence of art, science, technology, and the natural world. The collective aims to explore the relationship between the self and the world and new perceptions through art. In order to understand the world around them, people separate it into independent entities with perceived boundaries between them. teamLab seeks to transcend these boundaries in our perception of the world, of the relationship between the self and the world, and of the continuity of time. Everything exists in a long, fragile yet miraculous, borderless continuity of life.

Panelist

Hitoshi Abe

Hitoshi Abe is Principal at AHA (Atelier Hitoshi Abe), an architectural design firm based in the U.S. and Japan. He is currently an advisor to JAPAN HOUSE Los Angeles, while also a Professor in the Department of Architecture and Urban Design and Director of the Terasaki Center for Japanese Studies, both at UCLA.

Ken Tadashi Oshima

Ken Tadashi Oshima is Professor in the Department of Architecture at the University of Washington, where he teaches in the areas of trans-national architectural history, theory, and design. He has also been a visiting professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Design and taught at Columbia University and the University of British Columbia.

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