OrNamenTTokYo

In response to the fragmentary, localised, decentralised, unregulated and often fragile nature of current creative practices that engage with new narratives of activism and politics, the project OrNamenTTokYo sets out to investigate the materialities that process these issues by way of ‘commonalities’. Using as a starting point the proposition of common versus the regulated or proprietary, OrNamenTTokYo aims at provoking and undoing this established and widely disseminated dichotomy. Liberating the relationship between common and regulation this way, OrNamenTTokYo looks at how these terms share a possibility for deviation, and how they propose an ability or ‘appropriateness’ of improving the understanding and articulation of contemporary forms of acting, producing and distributing, and potentially allowing new kinds of creative practices to emerge. Accumulating today’s materials and imaginary politics of these forms, the project engages with sites of precarity, friendship, micro-organisations, anti-systemic movements, the infiltration of legality in everyday life, and media as a by-product.

Situated in Tokyo, OrNamenTTokYo examines the in/significance of the ‘common’ in Japan, how the common is manifest there and how it subsequently contributes to our understanding of the current social, i.e. public, and active, i.e. creative, space. While the notion of ‘common’ forms an extensive field of research in the Western context, its manifestation and realisation in Japan remains elusive and not fully explored. Ranging from ideas around ‘possession or manifestation of common attributes’, and ‘sharing features or characteristics’, the common addresses themes such as the constitution (or lack of constitution) of a united intellectual consciousness, or communal spirit in relation to social, geographical and institutional reinvention.