Bring ETAT closer to everyone’s heart

Everyone does what one can do. I believe that my role is to communicate the attraction of this art festival to young female audience. I can upload and update my social accounts or organise guided tours to which I invite my fans to join and visit the festival together. I feel pleased to see there are quite a few people who visited the festival through my initiative.

What is important is how much they could feel close to the festival. Even it is located within a reasonable distance to visit, people never visit a place if it is felt far away. However, it makes your heart closer when you find out if someone you know has visited the place. It could turn someone’s business into something that of your interest. I believe that me becoming “a someone familiar” for those girls is what I can do as the official supporter.

I participated in “Kokoro Ugoku Tsumari” (Tsumari moves your heart”) – a series of photo posting campaign using Instagram on Niigata Nippo in 2018 from the planning phase. I am keen to create the best possible occasion among given opportunities rather than just doing what I like to do. Most of the participating artists do create site-specific artworks for Echigo-Tsumari. I want to make sure to value chance encounters at certain time and place. 

“ETAT” may appear to be “solemn” because of how it is called or where it is held but I hope it becomes a place where people would feel free to visit. Of course it has its distinctive charm as being located in the mountains. I would like to see people visiting Echigo-Tsumari with an excitement as they may feel when going to the Fuji-Rock Festival. Both events are actually taking place in Niigata. I would say, “Fuji Rock Festival is great and you must well visit the art festival, too if you come to this direction”.

At ETAT, you can look at artworks as an unpretentious myself. I believe that it is important that it happens outside of the framework of your daily life. It is not too close but not that far away – just a little trip away. The total hours I spend on going there and back release me from the usual thought process and such journey becomes a complete story beginning with prologue and ending with epilogue.

On the way back to home, I try to remember memories of experiences that related to each of the artwork I visited: which could be people I met from one place to the other or rain it fell onto during our visit. The significant value of this art festival is to be able to take away not just the experience of seeing artworks but also memories associated with such experiences. I will continue to collect such “treasures” to myself in coming years.

Whether you engage with local people or Echigo-Tsumari as a place is up to you. However, rather than being passive and waiting to be entertained, I can guarantee you will have fun for sure if you proactively engage and enjoy. Such spirit will definitely give you more than what you would have expected.