リレー・エッセイ

タイトル：
Chen’s minds on sendai * mediatheque
To map your own exhibition with smt
投稿日：
2008年11月20日
＊インターンシップ期間中の研究・調査成果を、エッセイとしてご紹介しています。

　Each exhibition is like a map. Each exhibition map is a drawing about the people’s history, group memories and individual experiences. And the process of exhibition planning is just like the mapping work. People use paintings, photos, other works and equipments to map out the storyline of an exhibition. Take the exhibition “The history of art and city ? Paris, New York, and Tokyo and Shangshai” of sendai mediatheque for example, the design concept of exhibition environment originates from the smt curator’s experience. He have mentioned that utilize the scenes of streets in the four cities to design the exhibition orientation, such as streets in New York City is just like the form of a chess board, and in Paris are like radiates from the centre. Though the design idea was not applied to the exhibition at that time, this experience just gave an interesting demonstration of an exhibition and its mapping work.
　In sendai mediatheque, people have the same opportunity to take part in the mapping works in their own way, whether they are curators or not. That is, people are able to carry out their own exhibition projects in the smt’s gallery spaces. In order to match the various needs of people, smt designed different galleries separately on the 5th and 6th floor, such as the ceilings, the lightings and other equipment. Especially the names of the two galleries, smt gave a name to their gallery according to their heights from the ground to the ceiling. The gallery on the 5th floor is Gallery 3300 that means the ceiling height is 3.3 meters, and the other on the 6th floor is Gallery 4200 that means the ceiling height is 4.2 meters. Compare the interior design of Gallery 3300 and Gallery 4200, I found Gallery 4200 has no fixed walls, but a floor place 1095 meter square. And Gallery 3300 is divided into three small galleries, just like small “white tubes” with fixed walls. That is the reason why the smt curators prefer Gallery 4200, such a free-free space, to hold their exhibition to my mind.
　In addition, the smt curators organize many exhibitions for a whole year, like “Cultural typhoon 2008 in Sendai” and “Art Collaboration between Australia and Japan.” In the process of exhibition, the smt curators present their art concept and research completely, make a close connection with the artists or other institutes, utilize their abilities to executive their exhibition projects, such as research, creativity, energy and management, and so on. To my mind, the exhibition process is also the creation of artwork with such complicated elements as budgets, resources and people’s imagination.
　By the way, I found that there is a secret weapon smt have to control the exhibition atmosphere precisely. It is the “architect’s model of the 6th floor” that shows what the interior design looks like or how the orientation works in the whole exhibition environment. As the smt curators uses the model to arrange the artworks or the lights in the tiny exhibition environment, just like the mapping work as I mentioned.
　In my opinion, the exhibition spaces are like stages for curators and other people. They have the opportunity to perform their own views, present their concepts or organize their artwork in three dimension forms. And smt, as a medium of communication, make an attempt to embrace people’s art views from the favor of tradition art to the preference of digital art. That’s why I say, “to map your own exhibition with smt.”

Jouyuan CHEN (smtインターンシップ生)