Pat's Blog

At last the long awaited Setouchi Triennale Art Festival is underway, the summer part anyway and it’s certainly summer here in Kagawa right now. http://setouchi-artfest.jp/en/



This session kicked off in the Sunport’s Art Plaza near the central station with ‘The Bangladesh Project’ with themes of boat building, the sea, and its transporting power, which can carry flotsam & jetsam that drift all around the world sometimes with messages and clues as to other worlds & cultures. I’ve have firsthand experience of this as a young student on a wild and remote Tasmanian area named Ocean Beach, over 60 miles long. Finding a plastic detergent bottle that fascinated me as I didn’t know it was from a place called Japan, and couldn’t read the katakana and realize it had made its way all the way down to 40 degrees south. It might have been thrown from a Japanese trawler fishing in the southern hemisphere? I don’t know.



The themes are ethnic-centered and interesting. Many Bangladeshi artisans are here working with their traditional crafts and this is a long event in the Sunport area of Takamatsu right near the central JR station. From July 20th~September 1st



There were symposiums and performances and ‘The Quintessence of Bangladesh paintings’ show at the Takamatsu Museum. Entrance JPY 300. Entrance free with a triennale passport.



A great many dignitaries were in attendance including ambassadors and diplomats and the music was great.



This is a worthwhile event but there’s a part of me that is uneasy about it simply because if the prefecture wishes to be taken seriously as a contender in the international arts arena, something it is well capable of doing, then perhaps there should be a separation of ‘cultural events’ like this one and more visceral - intellectual art performances/exhibits. With this exhibition the separation has disappeared and both are blurred. That’s not snobbishness; just my ten-cent’s worth after many years involvement with the visual arts.



In Sunport Takamatsu the wonderful facilities for international shipping are all but unused for over ten years now, and there’s really no more excuse for this being the case. If cobwebs could grow on port facilities and water they would here. Offering incentives & the attraction of reduced berthing fees international passenger carrying lines can be lured from the Yokohama/Kobe/Hiroshima run to visit. No doubt about that at all.


When you’re visiting there are guides and locations everywhere in the city particularly the station area and port areas to help you get around. Brochures for this event are available at all the same Takamatsu information centers and at the stations. I’ll be back soon with more about this and hopefully be able to give you the help you need to visit us. See you soon and stay cool.

http://wikitravel.org/en/Takamatsu


http://www.city.takamatsu.kagawa.jp/english/

http://www.my-kagawa.jp/special/visitor/kanko/index.htm

http://www.i-pal.or.jp/profile/topics/kagawas-welcome-card.html