What to see from now until March 2020: from traditional Japanese paintings to Renaissance masterpieces.
The Mori Art Museum in Roppongi is currently hosting ‘Future and the Arts: AI, Robotics, Cities, Life’, which runs until March 29. The museum director Fumio Nanjo, who's also an art historian and curator, tells us about the vision of the future painted by the show, the latest in a string of broadly science-themed art exhibitions he has curated for the art institution. This is Nanjo’s final show for the Mori Art Museum before stepping down from his position at the end of 2019.
Metabolism, as an architectural movement, was born in Japan after the war. Its ideology sees buildings and structures as having some sort of organic growth. In that sense, what the Metabolism architects offered to the cityscape came from a wider perspective than a simple notion of creating functionality for individuals. They presented a vision of society, of the future of city and nation, and certainly this crossed into the realm of artistic activity. What is the significance of featuring architecture, or Metabolism, in an art museum?
From the start, Mori Art Museum has had a policy of embracing fields beyond pure art. Moreover, Mori is a building company, so it’s logical that we feature architecture. But since this is an art venue and not an architectural museum, we introduce the creative, artistic side of architectural practice. We highlight the extreme examples from each era, rather than the ‘normal’.
That’s interesting. Bjarke Ingels, featured in the show, is somebody easily understood as ‘extreme’. In his novel ideas and clear vision for the future, we can feel a commonality with the Metabolism school. ‘Future and the Arts’ presents as a modern form of Metabolism – ‘Neo-Metabolism’, contemporary architecture that has become possible thanks to the latest technological advancements. Is there a fixed definition of Neo-Metabolism?
It’s said, in the architectural world, that the original Metabolism was a failure – that it presented a vision of the future that never came to be. For example, Metabolism posited that architecture would ‘multiply’; something impossible with the steel and concrete of present-day construction methods. However, we now have ‘soft technology’. IT, biotechnology and the like will likely make true Metabolism possible. That assumption was the starting point for this exhibition.
The show employs a ‘bio’ analogy for Metabolism, and suggests that these kinds of ‘soft’ technology has the potential to change the architecture and reality of our cities.
Basically, the previous era produced only ‘hard’ architecture, whereas in the present day we have architecture created using materials that are like life forms. They ‘metabolise' and ‘multiply’, then ‘photosynthesise’ with the city using their ‘oxygen’. Their environmental-friendliness can contribute to sustainability, for example, hence the thinking that a ‘New Metabolism’ in architecture might be possible.
The content of ‘Future and the Arts’ ranges from imagination in response to the city, to changes in lifestyle and society, and the expansion of the city itself. How did you research work for inclusion, and what were your criteria for potential exhibits making the final cut?
Well, this kind of exhibition hasn’t been seen before (laughs). It feels as though I selected the works to connect the story that runs through all of them, and so it’s not a ‘media art’ show. And I’ve included only material that connects directly to advice or warnings about things that may arise in our future.
Concepts like cities that float on water were proposed by the original Metabolism school too, but in the work of Bjarke Ingels, it’s said that there is a high possibility of such things becoming a reality. Aside from that, architecture is being revolutionised by developments in materials and techniques, such as bricks made with the hyphae (filaments) of mushrooms.
People might think that sounds like the stuff of sci-fi but such technologies are already being realised, aren’t they?
That’s right. This technology isn’t from the future; it exists now. If there was nothing to show, we wouldn’t have this exhibition.
