SHIBUHOUSE at The Container Gallery

Nako-Meguro's hip gallery The Container will celebrate its one-year anniversary by hosting the first solo show of the young Japanese collective SHIBUHOUSE. The show, entitled "House 100," will open with live performances by Jack McLean and Martijn Kluit May 21.

Since its founding early last March The Container's director Shai Ohayon ran a program of well received exhibitions that featured the works of local and visiting artists such as Jack McLean, LG Williams/Estate of LG Williams and Chim↑Pom. Japan Times, Tokyo Art Beat, Metropolis, Time Out Tokyo, Glass Magazine and CNNgo reviewed or reported on The Container's activities. I wrote about the inaugural show Salt Mine for Artforum.com.

The gallery press release describes "House 100" as a performative exhibition, that will consist of a series of interviews that will be conducted with the members of the collective over the course of the show. Here is more about the show from the press release: 

Shibuhouse is a young loose collective from Tokyo Japan which was formed in 2008 and includes 20-some members. The members, who are engaged in various disciplines – from visual art practitioners, to medical students, publishers, producers, designers, film makers and musicians – all share a house together in the busy neighbourhood of Shibuya in central Tokyo.

Their interventions (such as “Bad Cloth” in 2010, which prompted the involvement of the police and the Yakuza) and their monthly house parties on the 22nd of each month, have earned the collective local notoriety and a new approach to the discourse about the relation between art and life, blurring the distinction between one’s personal life and conventional art practices.

The young loose-collective which was formed in 2008 and explores the notion of art through their shared residence in the central Tokyo neighbourhood Shibuya, gives us an opportunity to consider the borders between acts of art and simply living, through a series of interviews they are conducting for the duration of the exhibition. The interviewees are a range of artists, designers, musicians and professionals the collective selected as figures of inspiration.

 The Container is set up for the duration of the exhibition as an office, or an external representation of the collective’s residence, hosting the guests and enabling members of Shibuhouse to hang out with them in an informal environment that seeks to investigate the ideas of what is a house or home, what is a family and how these subjective definitions contribute to, or facilitate, artistic production.

The interviews, which will all be conducted inside of the actual container, will be broadcast live on the internet, with additional information and a synopsis available online through the collective’s blog and twitter account. A copy of each broadcast will remain permanently online.

Bill Berkson in Conversation with "Beat & Beyond: San Francisco Art 1950–2000" Seminar

May 2, or very last seminar meeting, we had a pleasure of Bill Berkson's company. What a great end to a great semester! Thank you, everyone!

Born in New York in 1939, Bill Berkson is a poet, critic, teacher and sometime curator, who has been active in the art and literary worlds since his early twenties. Director of Letters and Science at the San Francisco Art Institute from 1993 to 1998, he taught art history, critical writing and poetry and directed the public lectures program there from 1984 to 2007. He studied at Trinity School, The Lawrenceville School, Brown University, Columbia, the New School and New York University's Institute of Fine Arts. 

 He is the author of several books and pamphlets of poetry—including, most recently, Gloria, a portfolio of poems with etchings by Alex Katz (Arion Press, 2005), Our Friends Will Pass Among You Silently (The Owl Press, 2007) and Goods and Services (Blue Press, 2008). Other recent books are What's Your Idea of a Good Time: Letters & Interviews 1977-1985 with Bernadette Mayer (Tuumba Press, 2006; BILL with drawings by Colter Jacobsen; and Ted Berrigan with George Schneeman. A collection of his criticism, The Sweet Singer of Modernism & Other Art Writings, appeared in 2004, and Sudden Address: Selected Lectures 1981-2006 in 2007.Portrait and Dream: Selected Poems 1959-2008 will appear from Coffee House Press in Spring 2009.