Friday, April 22, 2016

Meow Wolf: a Disneyland of the weird and fascinating

I had one of the most amazing art experiences of my life in Santa Fe this week--an experience that had nothing to do with some of the iconic images of Santa Fe: Native American pottery, silverware, turquoise, pastel adobe walls, Georgia O'Keeffe's flowers and landscapes. It happened at the newest art installation in that city, intriguingly named Meow Wolf, which opened last month in a former bowling alley. Not quite sure what to expect--having only the recommendation of a friend of a friend who insisted it's a DO NOT MISS experience--I arrived with Berta and Jackie, prepared to enter an "interactive" magical world. Two hours later, somewhat dazed and filled with appreciative wonder, we left The House of Eternal Return, the first permanent exhibit in this space, created during the past  two years by a cooperative of 135 artists and story makers.

The bright lobby, which includes large spaces for making art, didn't quite prepare us for our trip through--well, other dimensions of time and space. Entering the exhibit, we were presented with the front of a very ordinary Victorian-style house. Entering the circa-1970s interior, we could see signs that something extraordinary happened to the fictional family that lived here. There are clues to the family's interests and special powers in each of the rooms, but we didn't linger there. Instead we discovered that we could enter other dimensions in a number of ways: walking through the refrigerator or a back door or an upstairs passage, or as I did, by crawling through the fireplace.

Inside were two floors of interwoven lights, sets, spaces to explore, things to touch. Soon after entering, I walked through this neon-lit dinosaur skeleton. On the floor were drumsticks. Why not pick them up, strike them somewhere and try to get a sound?




It didn't take long before we were in an undersea enchanted forest, looking up, around the through.


Exiting, I found this inviting small space.


There are no plaques explaining anything or crediting individual artists. The art is the experience, and you are invited to create it, and the others visiting that day become part of that too.



Above are my companions, Roberta and Jackie. Below is what attracted Roberta's notice. Our gaze could go anywhere, up, down, to the side. So different from traditional museum experiences.


Touching was allowed and moving things around. Kid visitors caught on to this quickly.


My favorite space was an octagon-shaped, rigid-board tent. Crawl inside onto the artificial grass floor and look and listen. You'll see intermittently-glowing eyes or insect shapes along with a tape of night sounds. There were other soundscapes: red beams of light that could be played like a harp.

Sometimes, like artists often want you to do, you see familiar things from different angles and out of context. Note these wheels and axle.



Passing into one of the many nooks and crannies, I peered through a window and saw this bird vision.


For more on the future of Meow Wolf and the originators' for this space, take a look at this article by Annalee Newitz in ars technica.

Just a day before my friends and I had visited the wonderful Museum for International Folk Art in Santa Fe. The exhibits were mainly a labor of delight by the Girard family, who collected scenes and figures from around the world. We stared, fascinated at the displays behind glass and read the history of each piece. A place for this art too, with all of its detail, creativity and beauty. Yet, somehow it's Meow Wolf that haunts me today, a couple of days after our visit. It's the folk art of the present, Jackie mused, and I agree. Perhaps the future too.

Sunday, April 17, 2016

Visit to Tamagawa, Part II: Reunions and memories

Life at Tamagawa University was more than a stroll through forested bliss, as I hinted at in my last blog. Memories of my students and colleagues are just as salient as those of trees--more so, actually. I was happy to relive some of those during my recent visit to Japan. My first tour of the campus last month was with former colleagues, and among the first people I saw were Hirobumi Matsumoto, now the director of the Center for International Programs, and Keiko Sato, a former student who also works there. Here we are in the lobby of Building 5. I first met Matsumoto-sensei when he was a student and I was a freshman teacher. As we are Facebook friends, I've followed his career with pleasure, seeing the gifts he brings to the university's evolving program. As always, a face-to-face reunion brings joys Facebook just can't match. It was a treat to see Ms. Sato for the first time in 6 years.



Soon afterwards I met Ethel Ogane-sensei, who I first met when she joined the full time faculty of the Business Department. She has her office in the new Center for English as a Lingua Franca now, and I was so happy to see her thriving there. Sylvie Suzuki-sensei, another former colleague joined us for a tour of the new center and later dinner at a local Italian restaurant.




For working teachers, it was that happy time of year just before the new school year starts and after the work of the previous one is finished. Graduations are in March in Japan, and the new school year begins in April, which continues to seem like the natural time for a school year to begin, just like the growth of plants.

Just a few days later I visited the campus again, this time with a group of students who were in my junior/senior seminar. They graduated in 2005, and now 10 years later, those who could make our date, came together for a reunion. Before I show you our group picture (alas, not inclusive) taken on April 2 this year, here's how they looked 10 years ago on their graduation day. (An aside: I always enjoyed graduation day fashions, with everyone appearing in beautiful colors and individual choices--something worth noting as the country is often stereotyped as conformist.)



And now jump to 2016. Here we are in front of the building where we used to study together.



Most are moms now--or will be soon. This year, Yoko came with her daughter, (and her husband) as did Shiori. Mami brought her two sons, and she'll give birth to a third child this year. Asami left her young son at home with her husband, but had pictures and stories to share. Rika and Maiko will both be moms later this year for the first time, and Hiroko will celebrate her wedding. Graduation was the start of new adult lives and now parenthood is giving those lives a new dimension.

Not all reunions took place on campus. Phil Rowland-sensei, who taught many of the same classes I did, met me at a coffee shop near the day care center where he was due to pick up his 3-year-old daughter, Haruko Sophie. I was happy to hear he's pleased with his courses and with his poetry. A book of his poems will come out soon and he continues to edit Noon, an online journal of the short poem. Regrettably, I didn't take a picture of him, and my hopes of doing so were thwarted when I walked over to the day care center with him. Little Sophie was feeling shy that day, so no pic was snapped, but I left with the tender mental image of Phil holding her, her bare foot dangling free, as he got ready to put on her shoes. A sweet parent he's become as well as an excellent colleague for his Tamagawa peers today.

Another reunion off-campus was with Renate Tamamushi, a retired German teacher who graciously hosted me for a week at her place, and Gillian Shaw, who taught English at Tamagawa for many years. We met at one of my favorite restaurant haunts in Shin-Yurigaoka: The Harvest, a buffet of local, organic dishes. Here we are, posing outside after a delicious and filling dinner.



A heartfelt thank you, one and all, for the old memories I share with you as well as the new ones made on this visit. For all those in the Tamagawa community who I didn't have a chance to see, thanks to you as well. Looking forward to next time!




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Saturday, April 16, 2016

A stroll through Tamagawa University

One of the things I loved about the Tamagawa University campus, where I worked for more than 15 years, was its beauty. Walking through the gate, I would see to my left a pond with a small fountain, surrounded by trees. Walking slightly uphill along a curving path, I would pass many more trees, diversely planted to show off cherry blossoms in the spring and intense colors in the fall. There were no leaf blowers. Staff members took turns raking leaves with a bamboo broom. I appreciated the silence those autumn mornings. Of course, there were classroom buildings and then further on a small tea house with a thatched roof. 



Sometimes I took breaks mid-day as well. There was a little stream near the tea house and a statue of the Buddhist deity Benten.


Not far away was a small white wooden chapel—the school founder having been a Christian lay minister. And if I walked even further back, an imposing statue of Beethoven, another small pond and somewhat neglected area of grass and flowers. Not a student haunt. Perfect for a short stroll. 

Just behind the chapel was the music building labeled with the Biblical phrase, "No Vision, the people perish". (Often shortened in the phrase, "Meet me at No Vision at noon.") Finally, I came to the building housing Foreign Language Department, as it was known when I arrived as a part-time English teacher in the early 90s. By the time I left, it was the Department of Comparative Cultures.

I have many memories of my years at Tamagawa, but 6 years after retiring from my job there, it’s the beauty and tranquility of my surroundings that come to mind first. Thanks for nature preservation goes to the founder, Kuniyoshi Obara, who was committed to zenjin kyoiku (education of the whole person.) He believed that education was more than just study or job preparation. It was something that involved the heart, soul and body as well as the mind. When he started an elementary school on the campus in the 1920s, it was what we’d call today an alternative school. Students lived there and school life was a broad mix of study, living on site, taking care of the grounds, as well as tending plants and other projects. Gradually, Tamagawa evolved into a kindergarten through university campus. As with all alternative movements, Tamagawa's zenjin kyoiku gradually became something different in a continually changing Japan.

Fast forward to 2016.  I already knew that Tamagawa was in the midst of a building and renovation boom when I visited last month, my first visit in 5 years. I already knew that the school's famous Christmas tree had been felled to accommodate a grand new building housing a state-of-the-art library, administrative offices, cafeterias and more. “No vision”, the old music/concert building, is being remodeled into a state-of-the-art facility as well, and most important to me, the building where I worked for many years has had a total makeover. 

The Christmas tree, circa 2010:


The new administration building, now sitting on the same site:


I confess to a conservative streak—that impulse to value the old over the new when the old carries my history and memories.  Especially when symbols, like the Christmas tree, are involved. A light show in front of the new building replaced that Tamagawa tradition last year. Perhaps the new display was more impressive—or not. Symbol aside, many trees still remain on campus—a good thing indeed.

Entering Building 5, where I taught for 15 years, I was disoriented—that feeling that comes when the familiar is disguised but still you know you’re in physical space you once knew very well. The building is now a center for English as a lingua franca, a term usually used in countries with a number of indigenous languages and a need to use English as a language of communication. Perhaps not entirely accurate for Japan, but I like the concept. To consider English as a foreign language sets up an opposition between native and foreign. The term lingua franca connotes a tool, a linguistic addition. Already English language instruction had been consolidated into a center open to students from various colleges in the university system. Last year my old department morphed again, this time into The Department of English Education. All students will be expected to study in another country for a time through one of the university’s partner programs. 

Photos of the interior of the new ELF Study Hall 2016 (Building 5):






View from a upper floor of Building 5, facing the new concert hall in progress:


“Surely this will be a good place for learning,” says my former colleague, Prof. Sylvie Suzuki. A former teacher of French and very proficient linguist, she was transferred to the Tourism Department after Tamagawa stopped offering majors in other languages. On the day I visited, she and another former colleague met me in the Center for English as a Lingua Franca. On the ground floor, there’s a multi-purpose room that offers places for small group work and discussion, a wired space to practice presentations, a coffee and tea bar, and comfortable seating. Colors are designed to match psychological states, such as calmness or creativity. There’s a lot of natural light, and as always, nature’s display outside large windows. All signs in the building are in English. The floors have been renumbered—somewhat disorienting. This, the former first floor, is now the second.

Across the aisle is an independent study area with spaces for tutor-student conferences. Already these one-on-ones are quite popular, I learn. We move upstairs—via an elevator, a new feature. I visit the “third” floor where my office once was and meet several of the faculty members. Serving many more students, the faculty is larger and more ethnically diverse than it was when I taught there. Everything is new, including the bathrooms: one for gents, one for ladies, and one “for everybody”. We continue to other floors, where classrooms have been upgraded and seating has become more flexible. I feel a strange mixture of envy and sincere pleasure in seeing these positive changes. Yet, another conservative impulse springs up--the desire to defend the value of the old structure. The changes here hold much promise, but there are trade-offs, as there always are. I regret that German, French, Spanish and Chinese language departments do not have a place here anymore. I remember the colleagues who taught those languages and the students who chose them. Now the focus is on English, and choice will bring a new set of benefits and challenges.

I leave the campus as the day fades. Past the concert hall construction, which obscures my glimpse of Benten, past the tea house, classroom buildings, trees and then the pond with it’s imposing new building, lit for the evening and the future.