On Monday, 14 March, we welcomed Dr Christian Morgner, Director of International Communication and Culture, School of Arts, University of Leicester, for an engaging lecture on Tokyo’s Art Scene in a Global Age. Dr Morgner shared his research with us, and the presentation stimulated an interesting debate around global creative cities and contemporary art.
Dr Morgner introduced the concepts of global cities and creative cities, and pointed our attention to researcher Saskia Sassen, who considered Tokyo to be one of the main global economic cities in the world. However, Sassen’s research does not pay attention to role of creativity and culture and there is, to date, no research on contemporary Tokyo that looks into the conditions and structure of its urban creative scene.
The aims of Dr Morgner’s presentation have the following aims: 1) to obtain an understanding how the concept of the global financial city can be applied to arts, and 2) to use the empirical data in order to develop an understanding of creative practices and urban cultures that takes the role of space and architecture, cultural consumption and cultural freedom into account.
These findings were briefly tested by Dr Morgner regarding a number of other cities that have been studied, including New York City, London, Beijing, Zürich, and Paris. The main findings of this study show that the creative milieu of Tokyo can be described as being undercover, as socially and culturally hidden and inaccessible, which constrains the cross-over of practices and spaces, a lack of shaping cultural symbols, but also promotes low tolerance, which, in a nutshell, is a partial explanation why Tokyo is unable to join the league of global cultural capitals.
We thank Dr Morgner for joining us and we look forward to welcome everyone who attended the talk again in the (hopefully!) near future!
King's Asian CCI Research Society 