Director : Yasushi Kishimoto
KYOTO ART TODAY is the video archives series of the exhibitions of contemporary art produced in cooperation with the artists and the galleries in Kyoto. The recording was started in 1992 and completed with the 29th volume in 1999. Each volume is about 35〜90 minutes, attached the leaflet of artist's profile, published as a video package in one ratio for two or three months. And in all, more than 500 exhibitions and the activities of 300 artists have recorded. We also produce the version divided each volume for a library for 15-20 minutes.
In Kyoto, there are many art colleges, and many artists of contemporary come to appear, many of them have relation to this city. So galleries and museums center around downtown. But in such street galleries, the scale of exhibition is small, the period of that is short, and only a few people visit. It's the actual condition in Kyoto. We, the galleries of contemporary art, taking it seriously, organized the network to record the coming scenes of art on video and send that to the world. That's how KYOTO ART TODAY started.
Any artist can join in KYOTO ART TODAY, but for quality of the video, on condition that he is recommended by the directors of the galleries joining. And for the cost of materials, the gallery and artist get also one video each. At first, the machinery and materials was not good, and the quality of picture was unsatiafactory. But the libraries, museums, curators, and collectors who understand the importance of the recording constantly have bought the videos regularly to support us.
We could get a subsidy from a foundation, and trying it to be more rich in content by the original reporting etc. Also giving the informations more extensively, holding the showing of the videos. We are carefuful to make a video of exibitions from a neutral viewpoint. We don't add any commentary avoiding the people's preconception to that. Only the comment of the artist and the sound of the place. In case of no sound, the original sound of minimal style. It is impossible to cover an exibition perfectoly, but if the people who watched the KYOTO ART TODAY are interested in the artists or their works and want to visit an exibition to watch the real works next time, we can say that our purpose is achieved.
Unfortunately, this activities have not yet known well. But believing more people will understand such activities, which will be an important part of contemporary art in the near future, we produce KYOTO ART TODAY.
