Fourteenth International Conference on Design Principles & Practices

Abstract

In 2018-2019, faculty members of the Advanced Institute of Industrial Technologies (AIIT) in Tokyo and Virginia Commonwealth University (VCUarts Qatar) in Doha collaborated on two exhibitions exploring the relationship between these two apparently faraway countries. It emerged that Qatar and Japan share strong commercial ties. After the Fukushima disaster (2011), Japan shut down most nuclear plants and sought for alternative sources of energy. Japan became the largest buyer of Liquid Natural Gas from Qatar. Although agreements appear to be mostly economic, the trade between the two countries impacts their lifestyles, economies, and political powers. This collaboration produced art installations visually exploring this seemingly invisible relationship between Japan and Qatar. The goal of the installations was not informative, but rather to raise awareness on the topic while exposing the audience to ambiguous, inspiring, and yet meaningful, images. The installations finally took the form of performative and reiterative printing processes, with 40 printers suspended in the exhibition space. The printers would operate in a choreographed manner, naturally shaking and swinging while printing images scraped from the web. Ultimately, the installations produced collages illustrating LNG as a complex connecting element between the two countries. This paper chronicles on the process leading to the exhibitions. The authors reflect on the role of art in visualizing and exposing the general public to geopolitical matters. Economic and political macrosystems are normally distanced from people’s life, but instead they affect it and manifest themselves into only apparently mundane aspects of a country daily life and its identity.