Deutschland in Japan

October 8-29, 2005

Under the name “Deutschland in Japan/日本におけるドイツ”, the German embassy in Japan and other organizations are currently running an entire year of events to make Germany better known to Japanese. I was curious how this would turn out, and sampled a few of the events in October.

A Different Generation of Designers?

Conveniently located at just a few blocks from my hotel, the “Jung+Deutsch” exhibition provides samples of the work of some thirty young German designers. Most of them started their work after the fall of the wall, and most of them work in Berlin. The exhibition seems to claim that this generation is somehow fundamentally different from previous German designers, but given that the exhibition provides no comparison with previous generations, that most pieces seem modern in a vaguely Bauhaus tradition, and that most of the designers are represented with just one work, the claim is hard to verify. The entire exhibition fits into three rooms. Some of the Haltbar Murkudis clothing designs look quite attractive though.

Global Players

The “Global Players” cluster of exhibitions, with two main locations in Yokohama’s BankART museums and others in galleries scattered around Tokyo and other cities, samples work by German and Japanese artists. There’s no grand claim associated with this exhibition. In the Yokohama museums, Henrik Schrat offers an amusing take on corporate logos, Julian Rosefeldt shows alternate views of reality on two parallel video screens, Nina Fischer collects memories of the dance floor of the Palast der Republik in Berlin, and André Korpys and Markus Löffler remind viewers of their video of the ongoing nuclear threat. Together with the rest, it made for an interesting and enjoyable afternoon. The exhibition will also be shown in Germany, at Ludwig Forum Aachen.

A Little Bit of Everything

The “D-Haus” exhibition is advertised as a market place where visitors can see, touch, hear, and enjoy Germany. The advertising forgot one verb that my Japanese companions enjoyed a lot: Eat – German-style hot dogs that is. But it’s easy to forget something when so many different mini-exhibitions and organizations are lumped together in one place. One of them has a clear link to Japan: The Friedensdorf in Oberhausen, which gives children from war zones around the world a chance for a new life, may well be better known in Japan than in Germany, thanks to the support by actress Chizuru Azuma (unfortunately Japanese immigration policies don’t allow for a similar institution in Japan). Others are just snapshots of art, entertainment, and businesses in Germany, and it’s not at all clear what qualified the one furniture company to represent German furniture or what Japanese visitors might learn from the Munich children’s village. The exhibition of soccer photos from around the world is connected to Germany only through the upcoming world championship, but maybe being so international just creates its appeal.

Becher School and Beyond

“Zwischen Wirklichkeit und Bild/ドイツ写真の現在” surveys contemporary German photography. It starts with the Bechers, who created a new style of documentary photography and taught the most prominent current German photographers, and includes some of Andreas Gursky’s monumental compositions – his picture of the six-floor São Paulo subway station is my favorite of the day. But then the exhibition moves beyond the Becher school, and includes Hans-Christian Schink, who shows the transformation of East German landscapes by post-unification bridges, and Loretta Lux, whose eerie child portraits owe more to graphics software than to photographic equipment. Overall, this exhibition at the National Museum of Modern Art Tokyo is well focused, and, with eleven photographers and some 200 photographs, it satisfies.