Art is about the Future; Otherwise, Nothing

Abstract

What I am going to focus on in this essay is the meaning of the future, in regard to questions of technology, media and arts, reconsidered in the social and political contexts of the post-war Japan. It is an attempt to show how the present Japanese culture, especially in relation to those issues of art, technology and the future, has been ≫coded≪ for the past sixty years. What I would like to suggest is that we might be made incapable to understand the proper meaning of the future today, in spite of the fact that our society of global capitalism is full of futuristic hyperbolae. We live in a society where a social hope for justice and democracy is systematically replaced by technological and industrial predictions. Our view over the future is miserably limited. In order to understand this limitation, it is inevitable to consider the historical context of at least sixty-five years since the end of wwii, which seems, in most cases, to have been plainly ignored in discussions about media arts. Reviving the actuality of the past like Hiroshima, however, I believe my approach is not retrospective but prospective. I hope a refreshed look over the past will help clarify confusions we have about such concepts as ≫art≪, ≫ media art ≪ and ≫ media geijutsu ≪ (a recently coined Japanese legal concept including film, comics, animation and digital artworks).