SAPPORO.- The Sapporo International Art Festival Executive Committee announced the initial lineup of artists participating in the Sapporo International Art Festival 2020 (SIAF2020), scheduled for December 19, 2020–February 14, 2021.

SIAF is an art festival that happens every three years in the capital city of Hokkaido, Japan against a backdrop of breathtaking natural scenery. Artists chosen by the curatorial directors Taro Amano and Agnieszka Kubicka-Dzieduszycka, in collaboration with local curators, will reflect the festival's theme Of Roots and Clouds.




Concept
SIAF2020 is a forum for inquiring into art and society. Rather than simply presenting artworks to viewers, we aim to shape the festival experience through the mutual interplay of everyone involved, in order to create an environment where thoughts and ideas can be shared, exchanged and discussed. What unique perspectives can art offer each of us in our attempt to confront society and live with others in harmony? What tools and methods can it provide that will help us to reexamine the issues plaguing our world? We hope you will join us in contemplating these questions.

Announcing the initial lineup of participating artists
In a time of climate emergency and shift to a digital realm that is built on machine learning, surveillance, and capitalism, the SIAF2020 art program offers a space to envision other scenarios. Together with the visitors and participating artists, and via artworks touching on the roots of human imagination, creativity, and technology, we would like to speculate about different approaches to the now and develop alternative strategies of coexistence with technology that can build up resistance and maybe even hope.

Like science, art has the cognitive power to comprehend the world and can propose another means of facing our problems. The various perspectives provided by the artists from Japan and overseas will encourage visitors to re-examine their daily lives and find new ways and the resilience to live through these troubled times.

Initial lineup of participating artists:
Satoru Aoyama / Julian Charrière / Cod.Act / Takuro Goto / Ryosuke Hara / Arinori Ichihara / Edward Ihnatowicz (Restoration: AGH University of Science and Technology in Krakow) / Przemysław Jasielski / Nissho Kanda / Carolin Liebl & Nikolas Schmid-Pfähler / Kotaro Migishi / Seiko Mikami / Atsuko Mochida / Satoshi Murakami / Tohru Nakazaki / Hideki Ozuchi / Klaus Pobitzer / Rainer Prohaska / Suzanne Treister