*CANDY FACTORY PROJECTS is a Japanese based platform for international collaborative art projects.
The Kitakyushu Biennial has been curated by *CANDY FACTORY PROJECTS organized by the Art Institute Kitakyushu since 2007.
The 1st Kitakyushu Biennial "CUTE or CREEPY?",
the second entitled "IMIN : Migrants, Immigrants, Emigrants, Refugees, Exiles, Expatriates and Others" October 2009.
The 3rd Kitakyushu Biennial / a sequel with the same title "IMIN" in October 2011.
For 2012-13 *CANDY FACTORY PROJECTS is taking its collaborative projects from the Kitakyushu Biennial on a World tour.
KITAKYUSHU BIENNIAL in SINGAPORE opened in April 2012 at The Private Museum Singapore.
The exhibition will comprise of multi screen installations made of re-mixes of earlier projects directed by Takuji Kogo in collaboration with Federico Baronello, Mike Bode, Young Hae Chang Heavy Industries, Charles Lim Yi Yong, John Miller, Keiichi Miyagawa and Hisao Sotoda ( Second Planet ) and Sean Snyder.
The exhibition presents the landscapes of a fabricated idea of the nation state where cultural identities have become defunct or conflictual, landscapes located on the back waters of the global economy covering such subjects as tourism on the Korean North-South divide, large scale Sicilian cherry tomato production maintained by Romanian and Tunisian migrant workers, a shopping mall in Singapore filled with foreign maids agencies or the public housing estates built around Toyota city which are today the home of many Japanese descendants from south America.
*CANDY FACTORY PROJECTS also transforms fragments of information and media into original musical projects, text messages sung by synthetic voices taken from scam messages and junk mails or personal ads from online dating sites, propaganda posters, or the transactions for land purchase for the American military bases on Okinawa and re-advertising them as promotional video clips online.
It moved to the Yokohama Triennale in 2001, the Akiyoshidai International Art Village in 2002. BOOGIE WOOGIE WONDERLAND in Yamaguchi Japan 2003, SCREAM Färgfabriken Stockholm 2004 Sweden, Art Metropole in Toronto, Canada 2004, "JAPAN" at the Rooseum Centre for Contemporary Art in Malmö, Sweden 2005, "Hyperlinks for dead links" at the Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art in Japan in 2006.
*CANDY FACTORY PROJECTS have also been presented at Media Scope-MoMA/The Museum of Modern Art New York, Seoul Museum of Art, Singapore Art museum, MAAP Multimedia Art Asian Pacific in Beijing, the Centre For Contemporary Photography in Melbourne, Walker Art Centre Minneapolis, Nam June Paik Art Centre Seoul, Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography. Web projects on the C-Theory, New Museum NY, New media Scotland, the Korean Web Art Festival and others.
古郷卓司 Takuji Kogo
organizes the *CANDY FACTORY PROJECTS.
Kogo has produced a large body of work both as a solo artist and in collaborations under *CANDY FACTORY PROJECTS and has been presented at Media Scope-MoMA/The Museum of Modern Art NewYork, Künstlerhaus Stuttgart, Rooseum Center for Contemporary Art, Media City Seoul, Singapore Art museum, Arles photo festival, MediaLab Madrid, MAAP Multimedia Art Asian Pacific in Beijing, Walker Art Centre Minneapolis, Yokohama Triennale, Nam June Paik Art Centre, Frankfurter Kunstverein, ARGOS centre for art and media Brussels, CCP Melbourne, Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography.
His ongoing solo project titled "NON_SITES" is a series of photo-sculptures, digital kaleidoscopes made by looped and mirrored sequence shots taken from moments of standardized every day life environments, such as views of fast food restaurants or street views with people of various races, public spaces or shopping malls.
Kogo has applied the same format to his many collaborative projects for *CANDY FACTORY.
Takuji Kogo lives in Fukuoka, Japan.
A selection of web-based projects can be explored at:
http://artonline.jp/candyfactory.html
Federico Baronello
is an artist and a documentary photographer (still and motion pictures).
Essentially concerned with the sociopolitical implications inherent to the aesthetic of vision, his ongoing research focuses on the effects of globalization in the Mediterranean area.
Recent exhibitions include : PPS (People and Landscapes from Sicily) at Riso contemporary art museum, Palermo; Transient Spaces at NGBK, Berlin; A Philosophical Enquiry at the galleria gentili, Prato; Portopalo, solo show at the galleria gianluca collica, Catania. His works are part of public art collections at the Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus und Kunstbau, München; Fondazione Brodbeck, Catania; the Ar t Institute Kitakyushhu, Japan.
Federico Baronello has been a member of the Candy Factory Projects since 1999 and produced-
"LIBRINO NEW TOWN PROJECT" a re-mix and Japanese dubbing of a TV documentary about squatters in abandoned public housing project in Scilia designed by the Japanese architect Kenzo Tange.
"HOW TO REACH LAMPEDUSA " a promotional video clip for the holiday resort on the border of Italy next to an african asylum seeker's detention center.
"VITTORIA" is a project about large scale Sicilian cherry tomato production backed by Romanian and Tunisian migrants.
Federico Baronello is based in Catania, Italy
Mike Bode
is a visual artist engaged in collaborative practices together with theorists, curators, film makers and other artists. He works both on large scale research based visual/architectural interventions and with the incorporation of photography and film into research driven projects. In 2008 Mike Bode received a PhD in fine art at Gothenburg University.
He has presented work and exhibited at Kunst Werke in Berlin, The Rooseum in Malmö,The Center of Contemporary Art in Vilnius, Lithuania, The Yokohama Triennial, The Nobel Museum in Stockholm, Secession in Vienna and the Kitakyushu Biennial, Japan.
Mike Bode has been a *CANDY FACTORY PROJECTS collaborator since 2000 and has worked with Takuji Kogo on several projects including "NUNOTANI BUILDING" made for the Yokohama Triennale and the Korean Web Art Festival 2001 concerning the process of transformation and dereliction of post-modern architecture in Tokyo and included in the publication "LOST IN SPACE" from Akiyoshidai International Art Village Japan.
"HOMI / TOYOTA" was made for the 2009 Kitakyushu Biennale and deals with a public housing estate built around Toyota city where many Japanese descendants from south America live.
More recently the project "BLUEBERRY LAND" follows Thai migrants blueberry pickers in Sweden set side by side with scenes from the sex tourism at a beach resort in Thailand, made for the Kitakyushu Biennale 2011.
Mike Bode is based in Stockholm, Sweden.
Young-hae Chang Heavy Industries
YHCHI have produced work in 16 different languages and have presented their text based work at: Tate, London, the Centre Pompidou, Paris, the Whitney Museum, New York, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Getty Center, Los Angeles, Moderna Museet, Stockholm, the Reina Sofia Museum, Madrid, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Barcelona, the Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, the Venice Biennial, the Fukuoka Asian Art Triennial, the São Paulo Biennial, the Kitakyushu Biennial and at the Istanbul Biennial.
YHCHI have been working with *CANDY FACTORY PROJECTS since 2001.
The first collaboration "HALBEATH" is a promotional video clip online for a shutdown microchip plant at Halbeath Scotland, a failed joint venture between Hyundai and Motorola set together with the traditional Korean song Arirang.
A recent project "STATEMENTS" uses their initial style of text animations for flash movie, but on this project they produced the animation literally following spoken words using found audio online taken from historical or politIcal statements to a pop star's counter statement for a supposed scandal.
The most recent collaborative piece for Candy Factory Projects "DEMILITARIZED ZONE BUS TOUR WITH BULGOGI LUNCH" is based on material taken from an interview by a tourist office official for a bus tour of the North and South Korean border.
YOUNG-HAE CHANG HEAVY INDUSTRIES is yhchang.com.
Its C.E.O., Young-hae Chang (Korea), and its C.I.O., Marc Voge (USA) are based in Seoul.
林育榮 Charles Lim Yi Yong
is a film maker and artist whose works have been presented at MANIFESTA 7 European Biennial of Contemporary Art 2008, Shanghai Biennale, Singapore Biennale 2011, MAAP in Singapore 2004 and Documenta 11.
His short film "All the Lines Flow Out" has been shown at the Venice film festival 2011awarded Special Mentions at the ORIZZONTI section, Tribecca film festival 2012.
He participated in the Kitakyushu Biennial / A Candy Factory Project IMIN 2009 with the project Seastories SEA STATE 2 : as naughty disappears, which concerns an island that disappeared due to the large scale land reclamation in Singapore.
Charles Lim Yi Yong and Takuji Kogo have been developing collaborative research projects about the physical border of the state of SIngapore since 2005.
They produced a collaborative piece "Life Wouldn' t Be The Same Without Safe Seas" which is a musical online video clip about Singapore Navy's missile defense and their subsequent research project about the border of Singapore and Malaysia.
Their new collaborative film "BEACHES" produced through the Kitakyushu Biennial in Singapore 2012.
Charles Lim Yi Yong is based in Singapore.
John Miller
John Millers work includes painting, sculpture, installation, photography, video, music and writing.
His artwork has been presented at the Museum Ludwig, Cologne; the Kunsthalle Zürich; Magasin-Centre National d'Art Contemporain, Grenoble; P.S. 1, New York; Musée d'art moderne et contemporain, Geneva; Gwangju Biennale, Korea and the ZKM Center for Art and Media, Karlsruhe, Germany. Miller is represented by Metro Pictures, New York; Galerie Barbara Weiss, Berlin; Meyer Riegger Galerie, Karlsruhe; Galerie Praz- Delavallade, Paris; Galerie Christian Nagel, Cologne; Galerie Johann Widauer, Innsbruck and Patrick Painter Gallery, Los Angeles.
Miller was one of Candy Factory's first guest artists in the original gallery space in Yokohama in 1998.
Since then he collaborated with Takuji Kogo on various works under the rubric Candy Factory Projects.
Their virtual band "ROBOT" produces songs whose lyrics derive from personal ads found online or in newspapers. All of Robot's music is synthetic, including the vocals.
John Miller is a Professor of Professional Practice the Art History Department at Barnard College, Columbia University. He has also taught art at the Columbia University School of the Arts, the School of Visual Art in New York, Yale University, the California Institute of the Arts, the Tyler School of Art and Cooper Union.
John Miller is based in New York and Berlin.
http://www.lownoon.com
ROBOT
http://artonline.jp/personals/
Second Planet
宮川敬一 + 外田久雄 Keiichi Miyagawa + Hisao Sotoda
Second Planet is coordinated by Keiichi Miyagawa and Hisao Sotoda.
Keiichi Miyagawa also has been running Gallery Soap since 1998 and organizes many curatorial projects in Kitakyushu inviting film makers, sociologists and journalists. He also organizes music events and runs the independent music label Soap land Records.
Keiichi Miyagawa and Takuji Kogo organized and curated the following projects :
CAMPAIGN & PRODUCTS at Kitakyushu Municipal Museum of Art 2004,
Hyper-links for dead links #Vol. 01 at Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art 2006
and co-curate the Kitakyushu Biennial since 2007.
His works are presented at Fukuoka city Museum for Arts, Kitakyushu Municipal Museum of Arts, Tokyo, National Museum of Contemporary Art, Korea, Metropolitan Museum of Photography, Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art.
Second Planet are based in kitakyushu, Japan
Gallery Soap http://g-soap.jp/
Sean Snyder
is a conceptual artist working primarily with photography, video and text that question urban space and its representations in media. Snyder uses original and reprocessed archival materials.
His works have been presented at ICA London, Artists space NY, Index, The Swedish Contemporary Art Foundation, Stockholm, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin, Tirana Biennale, Secession, Vienna, Portikus, Frankfurt am Main, Lisson Gallery, London; Galerie Neu, Berlin and Kitakyushu Biennial.
Sean Snyder and Takuji Kogo have been collaborating and researching US Military Bases in Japan and South Korea since 2001 also the DMZ border between south and north Korea producing both solo projects or collaborations.
Snyder participated Candy Factory Projects show Boogie Woogie Wonderland at Yamaguchi Japan 2003 exhibiting a research project on Okinawa.
UNTITLED : TAKUJI KOGO + SEAN SNYDER mimics a real time streaming project for the view of Iwakuni US Military Air Base, Japan broadcasted by Yamaguchi cable Television for 2005 and has been shown at Hiroshima Museum for contemporary art 2006.
They have also screened the North Korean spy film NAMELESS HEROES, AKA UNSUNG HEROES, DPRK TV SERIES for Gwangju Biennial 2006 Korea and remixed the same material published as RE:WATCH RECORD REWIND/NAMELESS HEROES, AKA UNSUNG HEROES, DPRK TV SERIES for the Kitakyushu Biennial 2007.
Sean Snyder is based in Berlin and Kiev
Kitakyushu Biennial World Tour 2
Kitakyushu Biennial in Berlin 2012
北九州国際ビエンナーレ in 伯林
at ZK/U Berlin Zentrum für Kunst und Urbanistik
Siemensstrasse 27-49 - 10551 Berlin
Exhibition : 28 September - 14 October 2012 Friday to Sunday 3pm - 9pm
Opening : 28 September 2012
北九州国際ビエンナーレ・ワールド・ツアー in 北九州
Kitakyushu Biennial World Tour in Kitakyushu
at Gallery Soap
Exhibition :15 December 2012 - 12 January 2013
Opening : 15 December 2012
財団法人吉野石膏美術振興財団
Yoshino Gypsum Art Foundation
Fukutake Foundation for the Promotion of Regional Culture
Takuji Kogo + Keiichi Miyagawa
(KItakyushu Japan)
In cooperation with
Philip Horst
Marina Sorbello
(Berlin Germany)
Organized by
Art Institute Kitakyushu
ZK/U Berlin