Sonali Joshi

Initially conceived to coincide with the Tokyo 2020 Olympics, this curated programmed took architecture and the environment as its central themes to explore human relationships to the built and natural environments. Reflecting on catastrophe, regeneration and recovery, not least in the year of the 10th anniversary of the Tohuku earthquake, tsunami and Fukushima nuclear disaster, the project looked at Japanese post-war history and contemporary society through the prism of the designed environment on one hand and the natural environment on the other.

Taking place the following year in 2021, the project inevitably took on fresh relevance in light of the pandemic – in rethinking our relationship to space, collective gathering and the built environment around us, pointing to broader discourses concerning our place as humans in an ever-changing world.

Featuring archival works, documentary and artists’ moving image, key explorations into the built and natural environments will be framed through historical, current and future contexts – the impact of war, post-war regeneration, natural and man-made catastrophes, reconstruction and renewal, urban and rural development, the urban experience and the future of cities.

​The programme screened as part of Japan 2021: 100 years of Japanese Cinema, a UK-wide film season supported by National Lottery and BFI Film Audience Network.

I drew particular inspiration from the Setouchi Triennale for this project, which I had visited on several occasions in 2019 (and which I returned to for its last edition in 2022). The islands of the Inland Sea where the Triennale takes place have undergone significant redevelopment over the years, from a once industrial and rural landscape, to abandoned, desolate land, to regenerated island communities in which art is now embedded. I am fascinated by this ‘repurposing’ of land, buildings and structures in a way as to revitalise these communities and bring public art and architecture to wider audiences.