Who are we on social media? Following the idea that identities are being created through narrating them, the Goethe-Institut in East Asia explores this question until the end of 2022. Instagram magazine metttazzzine features interviews with digital natives while metttafestival combines scientific and artistic explorations of the topic.
metttazzzine and metttafestival are transregional projects under the lead of the Goethe-Institut Tokyo in cooperation with nine other Goethe-Instituts in East Asia and South East Asia. Our partner is Tokyo College, the interdisciplinary think tank of the University of Tokyo.
B1, 13:30-14:20 JST
Opening lecture “Who are we on social media?”
Michael FACIUS
greeting by Peter ANDERS (Director, Goethe-Institut Tokyo)
B1, 14:30-15:50 JST
Intro talk “tttriptychon: social media as an artist's tool”
Marie HAHNE, Michael FACIUS, moderation: Hannah JANZ
+ Performance “5番のマリー / Marie No.5”
Marie HAHNE
B1, 16:00-16:40 JST
Talk “Language and Identity”
Naoko HOSOKAWA
B1, 15:30-16:10 JST
Screening: “Identities through the lense of puppetry”
Yuki TERADA
B1, 16:40-18:00 JST
Closing discussion "The text that wrote me - Narrating digital identities"
Senthuran VARATHARAJAH, Tomoko SHIMIZU, moderation: aliwen
B1
metttazzzine video installation with interviews
Kai MAETANI: video installation, paper prints: “Scape”, ongoing performance using video “Undecided”
Marie HAHNE: Interactive installation “5番のマリー / Marie No.5”
Sota KODERA: Painting “evol2 (罅)”
2F
Anais KARENIN and WATANABE Shiori: Solo Works, Live installation “Evolving Plants"
Maria TELEGINA and Simon DE DEYNE: Multiplayer word association game “言葉のネット / Small World of Words”
DAY 1 - Saturday Oct 1
********************************************************************************** B1, 13:30-14:20 JST
Opening lecture “Who are we on social media?”
Michael FACIUS (Associate Professor, Tokyo College)
with a greeting by Peter ANDERS (Director, Goethe-Institut Tokyo)
English, simultaneous interpretation into Japanese
Livestreaming on Facebook (English) with the Goethe-Institut in Tokyo, Seoul, Jakarta, Twitter (Japanese)
Who are we on social media? The input lecture will introduce the audience to recent ideas and theories in the field of identity studies, with a focus on their digital expressions on social media platforms. The presented theories serve as a framework for the festival, enabling the audience to observe the festival’s contributions critically throughout its progress and leading up to the closing discussion that will review the festival’s outcome, too.
B1, 14:30-15:50 JST
Intro talk “tttriptychon: social media as an artist's tool”
Marie HAHNE, Michael FACIUS, moderation: Hannah JANZ Performance “5番のマリー / Marie No.5”
Marie HAHNE
English, Japanese
Instagram Live with the Goethe-Institut in Tokyo, Seoul, Jakarta
Among other media, Marie Hahne is using her Instagram profile to intertwine her artistic expression with stories about herself, creating a plethora of personas and layers of self that are closely and losely connected. A talk with the artist will focus on the ways in which she uses the digital platform as a tool to materialize this vision of multiple Maries. The talk is followed by Marie Hahne’s performance in close interaction with her installation “5番のマリー / Marie No.5”.
B1, 16:00-16:40 JST
Talk “Language and Identity”
Naoko HOSOKAWA
“metagrid” visualizes deconstruction and proposes a tangible and perceptive way for setting structures in research and life. “metagrid” will initially be a still installation - through the workshop, it will incorporate material, human, and space agencies. People will be invited to entirely change the grid by proposing new systems of organisation, classification, and understanding of history, thus proposing new ways to see identities.
B1, 17:00-18:30 JST
Reading and discussion: “before the signs increase”
Senthuran VARATHARAJAH
German, translation and consecutive interpretation: English, Japanese
Senthuran Varatharajah’s debut novel “before the signs increase” (Vor der Zunahme der Zeichen, 2016) tells the story of two young people who talk about their families’ experiences of flight migration - on Facebook, without ever meeting in real life. The author will read from this text at the festival and talk with the audience about the narrative potential and aesthetical challenges posed by writing on, with, and about social media.
B1, 19:00-20:30 JST
Conversation “Queer digital identities”
Sota KODERA, Shohei MIYACHI, Kai MAETANI, Yuki NAGAO, moderation: aliwen Performance “Untitled”
Shohei MIYACHI
Please note that this event is not suitable for minors due to explicit language. You might be asked for age verification at the entry.
English, Japanese with consecutive interpretation
Japanese society today is both a beacon of prosperous stability and safety, as well as stagnantly in denial of the civic and legislative needs of the queer community. The artists will talk about the questions: Can queer artists in Japan today freely express their desires and sex-gender identity? Can we speak of Contemporary Queer Art in Japan?
After the conversation, Shohei MIYACHI will conduct a performance that consists of his body and self-portrait prints of himself. He will physically interact with the prints and talk to them as if they are real human beings. The artist’s idea is to have an intimate conversation with himself in order to explore different sides of his identities.
********************************************************************************** DAY 2 - Saturday Oct 2
Using any combination of the materials provided, the viewers can imagine and construct a physical representation of their 'persona' to place on the network. They can consider their connection with the network as an individual, their relationship with others, and their existence as one among many.
B1, 14:00-14:45 JST
Presentation “Artwork, Accessibility, and Assistive Technology in Japan”
Mark BOOKMAN
English with consecutive interpretation into Japanese
Mark Bookman provides a personal account of accessibility in Japan as an American wheelchair user, the impact of these experiences on his identity performance, and the role of digital media. As a framing device for the other artistic performances, he will also introduce the history behind Japan’s current disability policies. The nodule “(Dis)Connect” continues with the performance by Kazuhiko HIWA.
Japanese with consecutive interpretation into English
Working on the theme of physicality and its impact on identity, the artist uses a "play" intervention during their performance to reexamine various boundaries, relationships, and accessibility, also referring to their installation “hiwadrome” that consists of 22 wheelchairs. The nodule “(Dis)Connect” continues with the Café Philosophique by Flavia BALDARI.
Flavia BALDARI's philosophy café will offer a participatory live reflection on the on-site installations with a focus on identity, art, and body. The audience can join in and learn new techniques of observing and critical thinking in a cooperative setting.
B1, 15:30-16:10 JST
Talk: “Identities through the lens of puppetry”
Yuki TERADA
English, Japanese
B1, 16:40-18:00 JST
Closing discussion "The text that wrote me - Narrating digital identities"
Senthuran VARATHARAJAH (author), Tomoko SHIMIZU (Associate Professor, University Tokyo of the Arts), moderation: aliwen
English, Japanese with simultaneous interpretation
Available as video in English, Japanese after the festival
“I wanted to know how aesthetically my writing would look like if you would translate the poetics into photography.” (Senthuran Varatharajah on metttazzzine)
We post and share our stories, curating our digital identities – but why and how do we do it? Following the idea that identities are created by narrating them, the closing talk examines the dynamics and aesthetics behind this process, focussing on media discourse. The outcomes of the festival up until the closing talk will also be reviewed, thus completing the circle of the research based reflection.
********************************************************************************** @metttazzzine
Video installation with interviews
How do young people on transnational life paths narrate their identities in social media? To answer this question, Instagram magazine @metttazzzine has produced 15 interviews with digital natives from the fields of art, activism, and media, who use social media in innovative and creative ways. The interviews will be screened during the festival. @metttazzzine and #metttafestival are transregional sister projects under the lead of the Goethe-Institut Tokyo in cooperation with other Goethe-Instituts in East Asia and South East Asia.
Kai MAETANI: Scape (video installation, paper prints), Undecided (ongoing performance using video)
Monochrome images of landscapes and plants will be projected onto Maetani’s body for the video installation. For the performance, his self-portrait will be taken using a film camera and an iPhone, in various places during the two days of metttafestival. They will be screened in real time onto a screen at BUoY. Photos taken during the festival will be published on @metttazzzine.
Marie HAHNE: 5番のマリー / Marie No.5
Installation with sound and text
“50 billion cells die in our body every day - that means every 7 years we shed our old self and start over. As I just turned 29 this summer, I am currently existing as 5番のマリー / Marie No.5. In this performance I want to explore the impact of this notion on the concept of self, names, and identity.”
Anais KARENIN and WATANABE Shiori: Evolving Plants
Live installation
A collaboration between the two artists, the installation uses river water and medicinal plants collected from the area around the exhibition space to compose a system of bacterias, plants, and charcoal to purify water. From this, a remedy will be developed using traditional pre-Columbian knowledges from South America. The artwork creates a healing system that engages many organisms, cosmologies, places, and situations, posing questions of collective whole(some)ness, self-healing, and connecting knowledge.
Angus SCHAEFER’S works will explore the reciprocal interaction between the physical and virtual body. His creative process will be asking these questions: What does it mean to exist simultaneously in many places, on many screens, in many identities? What is the virtual body and where is it? How does our virtual body affect our physical body?
Ginga KONDO: Notification (video), Multiple Identities, Seperated (sculptures)Notification, video
Ginga KONDO’s artworks explore the gaps between her own identity of being a queer, Japanese, female, more pansexual than lesbian, disability: ME/CFS, and another identity as a wheelchair user forced to be open to the public.
The “hiwadrome” series of wheelchair sculptures is developed site specifically for metttafestival, using 22 wheelchairs. Instead of a sculptural approach as usual for the series, it is set up like a barricade to influence the viewer's movement. Kazuhiko HIWA will also conduct a performance during which they will also address their installation.
Maria TELEGINA and Simon DE DEYNE : 言葉のネット / Small World of Words
Multiplayer word association game
English, Japanese
Visitors can participate in this multiplayer word association game. The goal of this game is to explore how we understand each other and whether groups of people (e.g., identifying as men or women) have the same understanding of concepts. For metttafestival, the game will focus on identity concepts.
Please note the following when visiting the venue.
- Please purchase tickets online in advance of your visit.
- Please note that the event will be streamed and recorded at each venue on the day of the event. If you do not wish to be filmed, please inform us at the reception desk on the day of the event.
- There are stairs in BUoY (no elevator). If you have any questions or concerns about the event, please contact us at the e-mail address bibliothek-tokyo@goethe.de.
The hybrid festival as reflexive counterpart of metttazzzine will take place on October 1&2 at BUoY in Tokyo's Kitasenju district and will bring together academic and artistic positions. Large parts of the symposium will be broadcast with the support of other Goethe-Instituts in East Asia and South East Asia to enable cross-regional participation.
Partner Tokyo College, the interdisciplinary think tank of the University of Tokyo, will present current research on identity topics in dense, entertaining formats and relate these to the interviews from metttazzzine as well as to the artistic contributions on site. The closing talk "Narrating Identities" will reflect the festival by illuminating how identities are created through narrative processes on digital platforms. The artistic contributions under the curatorial direction of aliwen enrich the reflection of digital identities and transnational experiences with further facets.
@metttazzzine
How do young people on transnational life paths narrate their identity in social media? How do they use digital technology and the platforms to do so? What are the positive and negative impacts of a performance in the digital realm on individual identity developments?
The Instagram magazine @metttazzzine seeks answers to these questions by combining interviews and multimedia fragments into a colourful kaleidoscope of digital, transnational biographies. These are posted weekly.
metttazzzine features digital natives from the fields of art, activism, and media who live between Asia and Germany and who use social media in innovative and creative ways. Their networks are connected through the project and they will carry the topics of metttazzzine back into their own communities. The magazine also aims to put the great added value of transnational experiences between cultures into the spotlight.
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About the project
metttazzzine and metttafestival are transregional projects under the lead of the Goethe-Institut Tokyo in cooperation with nine other Goethe-Instituts in East Asia and South East Asia. Our partner is Tokyo College, the interdisciplinary think tank of the University of Tokyo.
