During the second period of stay I brought up the topic of how history had been repeated due to democracy. I did so because the date of the final presentation was March 11th, 2013. On that same day in 2011, a part of Japanese history was reset, and many things were planned and valued anew from March 12th. And then in the 2012 lower-house election, Shinzo Abe was elected prime minister once again. Five years ago in 2007, when he was prime minister, March 11th had been just an ordinary day.

For my presentation, I prepared newspaper editions from March 11th, 2007 – the Asahi Newspaper, the Mainichi Newspaper, the Yomiuri Newspaper and the Nikkei Newspaper. I divided my presentation into two parts: The newspapers were first exhibited and then later read out by the attendees. The participants read the name of the newspaper, the date and article chosen by themselves. Through this, March 11th, 2007, was repeatedly emphasized, bringing to the fore little by little the difference between the years. For example, in international politics at that time, America was still under the Bush regime, mobile phones were a comparatively older design, and advertisements for construction companies were still full of hope. Questions were also raised about resolutions for the issue of the wartime comfort women and the attitudes of China.

When I heard the people reading out the texts, I not only felt a kind of nostalgia, I was also astonished how many things I had forgotten. We tend to think our memory is perfect when we evaluate things, but this is a strange thing to think. Nobody knows what he or she was doing five years ago on a certain day.

On March 11th, 2011, a part of Japanese history was reset, but this sort of resetting is exactly what art creators have to attempt to do in their work. They can pull audiences into a situation, where planning and evaluation are conducted anew and the creators themselves are reset every time, collecting new material and then engaging with the next work. Through the residency, the artists and curators were “reset” to a certain extent. Due to this I hope for dialogue on what kind of new works they will create in the future.

During our short stay in Tokyo, we visited the Japanese parliament, the Yasukuni Shrine and the Imperial Palace. And by coincidence, we could also see the Japanese election. Below, I have listed the slogans of each party and the number of seats in parliament, they achieved.
What they all have in common is that they all emphasize that only they can solve all the complicated problems of Japan.

(294) Liberal Democratic Party of Japan:Take back Japan!
(57) Democratic Party of Japan: Making Decisions to Get Things Moving
(54) Japan Restoration Party: Restoration Now!
(31) New Komeito: Rebuild Japan
(18) Your Party: Fighting for Reform
(9) Tomorrow Party of Japan: For a Tomorrow with Hope for Everyone
(8) Japanese Communist Party: Making Proposals, Taking Action
(2) Social Democratic Party: Rebuild Life
(1) People’s New Party: Japan – Restart!
(1) New Party DAICHI. The Oath of New Party DAICHI (number one)
(0) New Renaissance Party: For a Japan to be Proud of in the Whole World！
(0) New Japan Party: For Amagasaki. For Japan.

Believing in democracy and counting on the institutions of the democratic system is considered one of the most common values today. It is also a symbol of progress. Thus, if a country does not apply the democratic system, this country is viewed as being behind the times and not modern. But can we really say that the “democratic” is actually so “avant-garde”?

The second argument from this short stay is “should a contemporary art practitioner long for being a architect of the age of imperialism? Take Matsunosuke Moriyama (1869-1949) and Georges-Eugene Haussmann (1809-1891) for example. Moriyama was involved with Taiwan’s architecture and city planning; Haussmann changed the shape of Paris. Through the strength of politics and imperialism, both of them implemented their creative ideals. With no doubt they contributed to big changes in the societies of their time. Creating something in this way from the very beginning, and achieving concrete results, could affect people and even very touching.

However, the value of contemporary art lies not in providing methods for solving problems. If that would be the business of contemporary art, it would like many political parties declare its manifesto in public spaces and simply believe that art can solve the problems of the country. Also, contemporary art functions without relying on power. The architecture of the age of imperialism does not criticise imperialism in the least, and the pyramidal shape at the forefront of the Japanese parliament building forms a motif of praise of power. But the value of contemporary art should lie in its critical nature.

Contemporary art is not deal with imperialism, but with the principles of democracy that came after the collapse of imperialism. After the end of World War II, the concept of democracy penetrated Asian countries, but actually it just built up a system of capitalism under the name of “freedom”. And the true meaning of the “democratic” does not lie in the destruction of empires and the emphasis of values of the individual; it lies in emphasizing the consciousness of the mass. Since voting is the only practice we can perform, it leads to violence and both sides competing for profits. In the midst of this system, the exception of contemporary art becomes extremely important because it does not count the criticism of individuals in numbers, but remains as testimony for historical reference.

The conclusion is although there are many historical examples, what we can say from the result of the Japanese election is that history repeats itself due to democracy.