Basic Information

Participants: Five master’s students of Global Art Practice
Locations: Venice (Italy) and Kassel and Münster (Germany)
Period: Jun 15-July 1, 2017

Achievements

Students of Global Art Practice (GAP), a graduate program at Tokyo University of the Arts (Tokyo Geidai) that aims to nurture global artists, have been on a two-week study tour in Europe. The GAP students visited Venice in Italy and the German cities of Kassel and Münster. In these cities known as the venues of major international exhibitions, they gained first-hand experience in contemporary art that embraces a diverse range of artistic expressions through communication with such artists, and also looked into a large number of contemporary art works.

At the Fondazione Querini Stampalia, a cultural institution in Venice, the students attended a session by an Italian conceptual artist Maria Morganti, who was exhibiting works concurrently with the world renowned exhibition of the Venice Biennale. Ms. Morganti explained the concept of her works as well as the processes of planning and production.

In Kassel, the GAP students were joined by a group of graduate students led by Prof. Liz Bachhuber and Prof. Michael Lüthy of Bauhaus University Weimar, one of the partner institutions of TUA, and participated in a research workshop on documenta 14. documenta is an exhibition of contemporary art which takes place every five years in Kassel. This year was the fourteenth edition of the exhibition, which was especially co-hosted by Kassel and Athens, Greece. At the outset of the workshop, the GAP students learned from Prof. Bachhuber about the background and the history of documenta, as well as its international and geopolitical characteristics, which facilitated their understanding of the context specific to the German exhibition.

They later moved to Münster to experience contemporary art in the culturally enriched urban settings. Prof. Bachhuber explained the outline of Sculpture Projects Münster, an internationally renowned project devoted to art in public spaces. They toured around to see the sculptures that have been installed in different places of the city for the past ten years.

The study tour outside Japan allowed the students to realize the importance of skills that are indispensable in pursuing global career in the field contemporary art, such as English as the most common language and knowledge that encompasses a variety of subjects. Their preliminary study on the exhibitions helped them to appreciate the actual exhibits at multiple levels, allowing them to understand that research is directly linked to production.