THEME
the illusion of illusion of civilization (een illusie van civilisatie)
The official assignment was defined as follows. 'The East West
Forum is intended to be a confrontation between Dutch and Japanese
sculpture on the theme of the integration of sculpture/project into
the landscape or sculpture/project in the urban environment. The
projects must be adapted to the site chosen in advance. This site
creates the conditions for the generation of sculpture. The artists
must work in collaboration'.
It was excepted that the artists would work together and eventually
arrive at a common project. The organizers of the symposium wrote in
1982: 'There are two reasons why we have opted for a confrontation
between Dutch and Japanese sculptors. The first is that there have
already been a number of exhibitions in the Netherlands recently of
sculptures without any overall context. The second is to be found in
the Japanese tradition of putting personal creativity at the service
of a group or an idea. The bringing together of the two traditions,
individualism and teamwork, seemed to us an interesting basis for a
symposium...'
As has already been said, it proved a difficult task, both because
of the aggressive character of the terrain on which the sculptors
had to work and because there was an obvious confrontation between
two clearly different cultures, which was made even more acute by
the fact that the whole group fell apart in the main into
craftsmen-artists and conceptual artists. These differences are also
became clearly visible in the projects eventually realized. One of
the Japanese artists said of the East West Forum afterwards, 'This
was the most curious symposium I have taken part in up to now.' It
was curious mainly because of the somewhat unusual process, whereby
after many discussions a vague denominator was found — 'the illusion
of illusion of civilization (een illusie van civilisatie)' — which everyone was allowed to interpret in their
own way, but also because the chosen groups of artists were so
obviously different from each other both in their conception of
sculpture and in their method.
Whatever differences there had been between the individual sculptors
in the many symposia held up to then, there was in general always a
consensus of thought and action in respect of the commission given
or goal to be achieved. It is even possible in this sense to speak
of a 'symposium experience', which was also to be found at Dordrecht
among the Japanese, but not among the Dutch. The challenge of the
'bringing together of two traditions — individualism and teamwork'
proved at Dordrecht to be a theoretical one rather than one
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