BERLIN–TOKYO EXPRESS

Nov 04 2024
AWC Team

A free, hop-on, hop-off bus service makes navigating Tokyo’s art scene easier than ever before. This service links all of Art Week Tokyo’s venues and special platforms across multiple routes. Buses run every 15 minutes from 10 AM to 6 PM and can be boarded at any stop. If only every city could engage the same way with every networking initiative in its art scene! If you are in town, just approach the Art Week Tokyo staff at your first point of embarkation to get started! The artists Malte Bartsch, Lucia Kempkes, Andreas Mühe, Ayumi Paul, Santiago Sierra, and Danh Vo will transform selected buses into moving micro-exhibitions, and Mai Ueda will extend the project to an activation at the AWT Bar.

The title of this project builds on the historical partnership between Berlin and Tokyo, evoking a cultural dialogue through contemporary art. The "Berlin-Tokyo-Express" itself conjures a sense of movement, serving as a bridge between two bustling metropolises, whose artistic and cultural stories interweave through this transit-inspired platform. This apparently simple metaphor of mobility, coupled with the allure of modern dreams, reveals a deeper reflection on how art connects cities, places, and people, turning the spinning coordinates of the art market into poetic expressions across continents.

Historically, the Berlin-Tokyo cultural partnership has deep roots. Established 30 years ago, at a time when the world was transitioning from the Cold War, this connection represented a bridge between two cities, both symbols of modernity and reconstruction after war time destruction. Today, this relationship transcends geopolitics and economics, drawing strength from fluid exchanges of art. The "Berlin Tokyo Express" honors this connection by unveiling the threads that connect the two cities, threads that are activated and brought to life by the participating artists.

This collaboration is more than just an exhibition; it is a poetic journey where the AWT Bus becomes a site of reflection. As passengers travel between galleries, they find themselves in a liminal space, physically in transit but mentally immersed in an artistic dialogue, where boundaries blur and meanings transform. The French anthropologist Marc Augé once described buses and transit zones as "non-places", spaces devoid of cultural or historical meaning, where people pass through without making a personal connection. However, when transformed by art, these “non-places” become reflective spaces where fleeting encounters can lead to deeper engagement. Through the works of these artists, the AWT Bus turns into a stage, a transient yet intense experiential space, where the ride itself becomes an encounter with memory, mobility, and identity.

Take, for instance, Malte Bartsch's Time Machine. This artwork materializes time, inviting passengers to become aware of their temporary positioning in the space. A ticket issued by a machine records the moments spent on the bus, turning the ephemerality of the experience of travel into a tangible object, a symbolic receipt of one's journey through the city and personal time.

Similarly, Lucia Kempkes’ stone paper artworks, designed to decay under sunlight, touch on the fragility of even the most seemingly permanent things. Her interventions on bus upholstery, adorned with chewing gum, engage with notions of everyday vandalism and aesthetic intentionality, subtly highlighting cultural differences and collective perceptions.

Thus, the "Berlin Tokyo Express" not only explores the cities, but also the delicate exchanges between them. It opens up a unique artistic journey that breaks the physical boundaries of space, transforming each bus into a vessel of discovery, where passengers contemplate their place in a constantly moving global world. This exhibition reveals that in the fleeting space between destinations, a deeper reflection on art, history, and identity can emerge.

"Berlin Tokyo Express" is a project initiated by Lutz Henke, Director of Arts and Culture at Visit Berlin.

ROUTE A

A1 National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo → A2 Mizuma Art Gallery → A3 Waitingroom → A4 Talion Gallery → A5 Fig. and Misako & Rosen → A6 XYZ collective → A7 Kayokoyuki → A8 SCAI The Bathhouse

fig. 1

MALTE BARTSCH

Time Machine is an ongoing project that was first realized in 2013. To date, Malte Bartsch, a Berlin-based sculptor and installation artist, has installed and networked 25 of his Time Machine devices at locations around the world. The Time Machine is mounted on a wall where it can be operated by viewers. When the small red button is pushed, the machine issues a receipt indicating the duration of the activation in seconds along with the location, date, and time. Each receipt also bears a unique sequential number generated through the synchronization/networking of all the devices. Time Machine invites reflection on contemporary phenomena such as time loss, working hours, compensation, and connectivity. Every Time Machine activation around the world is registered in a comprehensive online database at tm.maltebartsch.de.

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ROUTE B

B1 AWT Video (SMBC East Tower) → B2 National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo → B3 Taguchi Fine Art → B4 Mujin-to Production → B5 Kana Kawanishi Gallery → B6 Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo → B7 Hagiwara Projects → B8 Transfer Point (Nihonbashi Crossing) → B9 Artizon Museum | Tomio Koyama Gallery → B10 Gallery Koyanagi | Chanel Nexus Hall → B11 Ginza Maison Hermès Le Forum (Ginza) → B12 Shiseido Gallery and Tokyo Gallery+BTAP → B13 Transfer Point (Nihonbashi Crossing)

fig. 2

SANTIAGO SIERRA

Berlin Recorded Through Silos 9 and 16 (2022)—Sound pieces are an important part of the oeuvre of Santiago Sierra, an artist whose work is distinguished for exposing the violence and injustice of Western modernity. In 2022 the artist embarked on a sound experiment in Berlin, intending to record “silence” and press it on a vinyl record. The recording locations were two empty grain silos in the middle of the city. However, the concrete structures – originally conceived as a secret reserve for West Berlin – amplified the city’s soundscape in the recordings, fostering the imagined or conjured Berlin.

85 Teeth of War Refugees from Yemen and Syria (2023)—Showing your teeth is a primal gesture that connects the animal kingdom to human societies. Santiago Sierra has been photographing the teeth of workers and marginalized groups since 2008. The photographs are intended to be widely shown, including at public sites. This time Sierra is collaborating with the fashion collective Les Six to present a selection of photographs from his latest teeth-based campaign on apparel worn by staff working on AWT Bus Route B.

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ROUTE C

C1 AWT Focus (Okura Museum of Art) → C2 PGI → C3 Take Ninagawa → C4 Kaikai Kiki Gallery → C5 Transfer Point (Tengenjibashi Crossing) → C6 MEM → C7 Tokyo Photographic Art Museum → C8 Poetic Scape → C9 Leesaya (Meguro) → C10 Kosaku Kanechika | Takuro Someya Contemporary Art → C11 Tokyo Metropolitan Teien Art Museum → C12 Transfer Point (Tengenjibashi Crossing) → C13 Misa Shin Gallery → C14 Pace

fig. 3

LUCIA KEMPKES

A Stream of Thoughts to Detach Us from the Current (2024) is the contribution of Lucia Kempkes, an artist that dedicates herself to examining how our relationships with landscapes evolve online and offline, and who explores the transient nature of being in motion in the work, which is underscored by our memories and expectations of places as we watch a landscape rushing by. The installation features objects made out of stone paper, including replicas of car and bus decorations, such as adhesive car sunshades that display changing scenes of desirable destinations. These objects dissolve slowly under UVB light, evoking the fleeting nature of our perception while in motion. The centerpieces are paintings created from chewing gum on bus plush, representing childhood memories and the thoughts that form while waiting for something to happen. Kempkes’s work invites us to reflect on our past, present, and future while embracing the transient nature of our experiences during travel.

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ROUTE D

D1 AWT Bar → D2 Fergus McCaffrey | Prada Aoyama → D3 Watari-um → D4 Ken Nakahashi → D5 Tokyo Opera City Art Gallery → D6 Gallery 38 → D7 Nanzuka Underground → D8 Blum → D9 AWT Bar → D10 National Art Center, Tokyo | nca|nichido contemporary art → D11 Mori Art Museum → D12 Snow Contemporary

fig. 4

AYUMI PAUL

Forms of Breath, newly commissioned by the Georg Kolbe Museum in Berlin in 2024, consists of 12 stools crafted from a single piece of precious pear wood accompanied by washi paper and 12 breathing exercises by Ayumi Paul, whose practice is grounded in an observational approach that acknowledges the interconnectedness of all things. Together, these elements form a spatial installation. Visitors move the stools around the museum, creating ever-evolving forms and constellations. For Art Week Tokyo, eight of the exercises from Forms of Breath are quietly positioned in the bus windows, reflecting the artist's intent to extend the work beyond its original context. Paul’s works serve as reminders of the beauty and complexity of life, both around and within us, of which we become an integral part simply by breathing in and out.

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ROUTE E

fig. 5

DANH VO

Flowers are a longstanding theme in the work of Danh Vo, perhaps because they reflect colonialism’s strange power to appropriate and monopolize beauty. Expressing an openness to personal relationships and fortuitous encounters, Danh Vo’s projects emerge via objects and images that have accrued meanings, whether by means of their history of ownership, their proximity to certain events, or their currency as universal icons. Vo’s work becomes an expanding and diversifying series of experiments, questioning what happens if he brings one set of elements together, then another, then another. Early on, Vo made tiles and wallpaper printed with drawings of flowers by the Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus. More recently he has taken photographs of flowers growing in his gardens at Güldendhof, outside Berlin, as well as darker images taken at a flower shop owned by a German-Vietnamese family in Berlin. Flowers past, flowers present, flowers foreign, flowers domestic: the histories of the movement, growth, and evolution of these plants are as complex and entwined as the roots of human culture itself. Linnaeus invented the binomial classification system, imposing his logic on plants around the world. Flowers thus reflect power in terms of how they are named and where they travel, yet flowers have a resilient dimension and can also act as an aesthetic refuge from the world.

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ROUTE F

F1 AWT Focus (Okura Museum of Art) → F2 AWT Video (SMBC East Tower)

fig. 6

ANDREAS MÜHE

Bunkers, as monumental concrete structures, shape Europe’s landscape from Germany to the French coast, often serving as eerie reminders of the Nazi “Fortress Europe”. These oversized, intensely hardened structures, found even in city centers, are rooted in a dark past, yet their pure utility and archaic form disconnect them from time and place. Paradoxically, they embody the flow of history, representing both attack and protection. While French coastal bunkers are now playgrounds, new bunkers continue to be built for war elsewhere. In Bunker – Real Historical Space (2024), the photographer Andreas Mühe transforms these massive bunkers into small, soft, toy-like objects. Created by Kösener Spielzeug Manufaktur, these “cuddly bunkers” fill exhibition spaces like a sea of minute, harmless creatures. Known for addressing controversial historical themes, Mühe uses large-format analog photography to create meticulously staged compositions. Mühe’s transformation reduces the weight and roughness of the bunker to something pliant, tactile, and playful, while retaining evocations of the latent tension of the form’s historical significance and its potential for the toys to form an “army” of bunkers.

AWT BAR

fig. 7

MAI UEDA

Mai Ueda cherishes art as life and life as art. She seeks to encourage people to feel for themselves. In Tokyo, she will present a special tea ceremony, To See Wind, at AWT Bar using teabowls made by the artist, and Ueda’s frequent collaborator, Rirkrit Tiravanija. Writes Ueda:

Mai will serve tea that makes participants feel that the process that has led them to this place [is] akin to walking through a roji, a tea garden that allows one to leave ordinary life behind to join the time and space of the tearoom. Each sip of tea will feel like sitting in a session of zazen [meditation] and hearing the bell ring. Each person can leave the tearoom with an experience that is slightly different from before they have arrived at this moment.

Times

Friday, November 8, 12 noon

Saturday, November 9, 11 AM

The duration of the tea ceremony is about 120 minutes. Capacity is tightly limited.

IMAGE CREDITS

fig. 1: Malte Bartsch, time machine. (c) Edward Greiner.
fig. 2: Berlin Recorded Through Silos 9 and 16 (2022), Santiago Sierra.
fig. 3: Portrait Lucia Kempkes. Photo credit: Lucia Kempkes.
fig. 4: Portrait Ayumi Paul, 2022. Foto: Debora Mittelstaedt, courtesy of Ayumi Paul.
fig. 5: Danh Vo. Photo credit: Nick Ash.
fig. 6: Andreas Muehe. Exhibition view Kunsthaus Dahlem. © Gunter Lepkowski.
fig. 7: Portrait Mai Ueda. Photo credit: Rirkrit Tiravanija.