The Aichi Triennale

By Adam Miller

If you like your art quirky and abstract you will find much to like...

Summer in Nagoya is one of the most trying times of the year, with humidity and heat teaming up to make you the sweatiest person alive.  It is also hard to compete with people that seem to have more money than God and manage to fit in a world trip before summer ends.  Stories such as “…and then I sky dived into the pacific were I swam with endangered dolphins, whilst sipping dry martinis” will make any Nagoya night out of tebasaki and karaoke seem a more than extra lame.  But I bring good news. A colossal art event begins this month. It is an event so renowned that it draws some of the world’s finest artists and stage performers.  It also brings in hordes of art lovers, so get your tickets early to avoid disappointment.

For those that don’t know, Aichi Triennale is an annual arts event that is cutting edge, often abstract and extremely enjoyable for art lovers and noobs alike.  This year the theme is “Arts and Cities,” and all of the art pieces will adhere (however loosely) to that theme.  The festival runs from  August 21st to October 31st and is split into 3 main sections.  The International Arts Exhibition will focus on paintings, photography, videos, installations and sculptures, by dozens of artists from around the globe. It runs throughout the Triennale at the Aichi Arts Center as well as at the Nagoya City Art Museum. This exhibition will even crop up at various public venues, such as Oasis 21. 

Advance tickets are  ¥1,400  (¥1000 for University Students, ¥500 for High School Students). However, if you wait and get them at the door, it will set you back ¥1,800 (¥1,300 for University Students, ¥700 for High School Students).

The second part of the festival is Performing Arts, which includes not only Japanese pieces, but a selection of some of the  most intriguing and celebrated performances from around the world.  On the Japanese front, there is “In the Heart of a Forest” by Oriza Hirata and Ishiguro Laboratory (Osaka University), which combines the acting chops of both humans and “intelligent” robots.  Hirata is not only a playwright and director, but also a professor at Osaka University. His aim is to show that considering robots as actors is not such an enormous leap. While I doubt that these 2 cool, yellow bots will be collecting Academy Awards any time soon – watching “In the Heart of a Forest” may convince you that this is the future of the stage.  You can see Hirata and his mechanical mates from the 21st to the 24th of August. 

Hiroaki Umeda is also attempting to break the mold with his “Adapting for Distortion / Haptic” a very physical piece that utilizes sound and space to show the audience the weird and wonderful things that air pressure, water and gravity can achieve.  Catch “Adapting for Distortion / Haptic” on September 11th and 12th.  Both of the Japanese pieces cost ¥3,000 for adults and ¥2,000 for students. 

Last up for the native pieces is a production by the Tokyo based group “Chelfitsch” (the childish pronunciation of selfish… apparently) headed by playwright and director Toshiki Okada.  The group are said to be leading the wave of young drama in Japan, and they have put together a new piece “We Are The Undamaged Others” especially for Aichi Triennale 2010.  They are on stage for the last weekend of September (24th to the 26th) and tickets cost ¥3,500.

Meanwhile in the gaijin corner there are some real heavy weights, with Belgium born Jan Fabre coming in with “Another Sleepy Dusty Delta Day”, a solo-dance-production that is having its Japanese début at the festival.  It is a twisted story of love and death, beauty and cruelty, cheese and crackers… and it is on stage for the 18th, 19th and 20th of September. Tickets will cost ¥5,000 (¥3,000 for students).  September 3rd and 4th will host one of the odder entries this year, “Long sky-blue woolen coat, worn with a large roll-neck jumper, peach leather trousers and red nubuck pointed high-heel shoes” by the Euro-duo Delgado Fuchs.  Spanish-born Marco Delgado and Swiss Nadine Fuchs team up to give an extremely physical performance that attempts to make the audience rethink their ideas about the human body. It will no doubt make people rethink their exercise regime as well. Both Delgado and Fuchs are stunningly chiseled and toned, whilst being next to naked for the majority of the performance.  Tickets will be ¥3,500 but students yet again luck out with the discounted price of ¥2,000.

The real pièce de résistance is Produce Opera presents “Le Contes D’Hoffmann” a classical opera that has been revamped for the festival with the seasoned conductor Asher Fisch and stage director Jun Aguni.  The opera is split into 5 sections (3 acts plus an epilogue and prologue) and is sung in French, with Japanese subtitles.  The story follows the tales of a tipsy story teller, who reminisces about his past loves; he tells 3 separate tales, each with its own style and story, but they are all tied together with a sense of allure and fantasy.  Any opera fan should take the time to see this world-class production that runs between September 18th and 20th. There are 5 different types of tickets available, and they range in price from ¥3,000 to  ¥13,000.

Trying to fit in the entirety of all that is on the Aichi Trennale 2010 schedule is all but impossible, there is much more information about all of the works being presented at their amazingly detailed English-language website http://aichitriennale.jp/en/ The website gives you details on every art piece and artist, but you can also book your tickets for any performance you wish to attend.  They update the site daily and some tickets are already sold out, so it is best to be organized and get your tickets sooner rather than later!

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