LONGSTAY2014

Application Overview

PARADISE AIR currently seeks artists who wish to create work while residing at PARADISE AIR in Matsudo City, Chiba Prefecture, Japan, as part of the 2014 LONG STAY Program.

During Japan’s Edo Period – while many towns developed under the rule of Feudal Lords and Samurai who worked to expand the Shogunate’s Imperial Fief – Matsudo flourished as an independent city untethered by feudalistic growth. As an inn town, the prosperity of Matsudo stemmed from the foot traffic of the Mitokaido highway, and from the nautical trade that bustled along the Edo River, but, most importantly, Matsudo has long been fabled for exceptional townsfolk. The people of Matsudo remain praised by visitors for their remarkable hospitality and obliging nature. In fact, Matsudo has such a rich history as a restful point of transit along the Mitokaido that many evacuees from the 2011 Great Tohoku Disaster headed to Matsudo without a moment’s hesitation. That refugee program was not the work of political initiative, but rather of the local town council around Matsudo Station quickly ralling the support of neighborhood leaders.

PARADISE AIR is an artist-in-residence program created in 2013 to revitalize Matsudo in light of its history as an inn town. Rakuen, the four-story-love-hotel-turned-pachinko-parlor across the street from Matsudo Station, operated for many years without any business operations on its top floor until Hamatomo Kanko Co., Ltd. offered up two of those unused rooms to begin PARADISE AIR. Two programs were borne from this initiative: LONG STAY, in which two foreign artists per year are hosted in Rakuen as they create work that engages the city of Matsudo; and SHORT STAY, a “one night, one art” program which encourages Japanese artists to stop through Matsudo to present or perform their work in exchange for lodging.

Program Theme

“HERE”

This year’s Long Stay Program will continue last year’s tradition of hosting two artists from abroad.
The current theme, “HERE,” encourages artists to incorporate Matsudo’s regional resources into a proposal that explores the town’s temporal, spatial, and/or physical “place.”

“You are HERE,” the familiar phrase emblazoned upon maps to orient a passing traveler, marks not a specific location, but rather a fleeting subjective experience. “You are HERE, in this exact location, for this exact moment.” This particular instance of presentness may serve as a point of transit between one’s origin and destination, or perhaps merely as the moment one must seize in order to travel from the past into the future.
Just as Matsudo often became the “You are HERE” for travelers along the Edo River and Mitokaido Highway, those who participate in PARADISE AIR will recognize Matsudo as their temporal and spatial “HERE” along their artistic journey. Rather than operating under the mindset of “come, create, and leave – oh, and remember to incorporate the locals!,” we encourage our artists to ask, “how may I capture this presentness,” and, “what can I do specifically because I am HERE?” Just as the map and the traveler coexist as object and subject, we are searching for proposals that uniquely focus upon the relationship between the artist and his/her residence.

• Sponsor: Matsudo Community Planning Council
• Support: Japanese Ministry of Culture (As part of the 2014 Dissemination of Japanese Culture and Measures for International Cooperation through International Cultural Exchange Program)
• Partner: Hamatomo Kanko Co., Ltd.
• Project: PARADISE AIR