Alabama A&M University Amabie Japanese Art and Coronavirus Pandemic Paper As COVID-19 spreads across the world, different communities in different countrie

Alabama A&M University Amabie Japanese Art and Coronavirus Pandemic Paper As COVID-19 spreads across the world, different communities in different
countries have responded to the crisis in different ways with varying results. This
includes people involved with the arts, including artists, curators, museum and
commercial gallery directors, art writers, art teachers, and government officials who
oversee bureaus, institutions, and policies related to the arts. Museums have closed,
exhibitions have been cancelled or postponed, galleries have set up virtual online viewing
rooms, and emergency funds for the arts have been distributed, while artists, curators, and
art writers search for ways to respond to the crisis by making work that thematizes the
pandemic and/or by creating and participating in networks to help each other, their
families, and members of the community where they reside. Japan is no different.
This assignment requires you to research online the ways in which individuals and
institutions related to culture and the arts have responded to the coronavirus pandemic in
Japan. To get you going, I am attaching two articles: the first from The Japan Times (the
leading English-language newspaper in Japan), dated April 2nd, that reports on how
individuals began posting memes on social media in response to Prime Minister Abe
Shinzo’s initial announcement that the Japanese government would be distributing two
reusable cloth masks to all families, with no additional promise of more substantive help
in terms of emergency payouts or job security guarantees. The second from The New
Yorker, dated April 9th, is about how images of a supernatural creature known as the
Amabie thought to protect against pandemics are being disseminated by professional and
amateur artists. Like all matters related to COVID-19, both are developing stories. The
Japanese government has since promised various forms of aid, while the cultural
response evolves and expands practically daily.
You are required to write on a specific topic. However, I recommend that you first search
broadly on the subject of COVID-19 in Japan. By searching broadly, you will familiarize
yourself with the general issues (The Japan Times is a good place to start) and the variety
of cultural/artistic responses to the pandemic, as well as learn keywords and hashtags to
widen and deepen your research.You should explore articles online as well as postings in
social media. Those of you who read Japanese may conduct your research also in
Japanese, but there is enough material in English for language not to be an issue. The list
in the first paragraph above (memes, museum closings, virtual exhibitions, mutual aid
networks, et cetera) should give you hints about the kinds of things to search for. Please
note here that “art” and “culture” are widely defined: your subjects do not have to be
individuals who professionally identify as “artists” or who are employed by museums,
galleries, art departments, or art magazines. They can be any person or any entity
(institutions, networks, et cetera) that makes creative images that are visual or that
organizes events/infrastructure that can be understood as cultural or artistic. The
dissolution of the boundary between art and everyday life initiated by the avant-garde is
now a commonplace thing thanks to social media and easy-to-use photo and video apps.
Anyone can be an “artist” who chooses to be.
After familiarizing yourself with the subject broadly, CHOOSE A SPECIFIC TOPIC. For
example, Abenomask or Amabie (like in the attached sample articles), other social media
responses and hashtags (you will find others if you search seriously), or museum/ gallery
closures and virtual exhibitions, just to name the most obvious. Next, identify THREE
DIFFERENT examples of responses within your chosen topic: meme A, meme B, meme
C, for example, or museum/gallery A, museum/gallery B, museum/gallery C. If you
choose Abenomask or Amabie, you will NOT be allowed to use the examples in the
attached articles (you will have to find other ones) and your analysis needs to go beyond
what is stated by their authors. Once you identify your topic and examples, you must
write a 3-page article that 1) introduces the subject generally, 2) presents the examples
individually, and assesses their effectiveness in responding to the crisis and in
relationship to one another, and 3) closes with a paragraph about how your examples
relate to the history of Japanese art, particularly (but not necessarily only) of the modern
and contemporary periods.