Avatar tours #2: Tokyo Ueno

Ueno Park is the first public Park in Japan and today hosts a zoo, several museums and many monuments and historical sites. In the frame of their walks in Ueno Park Willimann/Arai were particularly interested in the traces of Meiji Restoration – Japans modernization period after the forced opening at the end of the 19th century – in which this park had been created and whose spirit had shaped this park. In doing so, they encountered various hybrid phenomena that emerged from appropriations of Western practices, values, and institutions – as well as alternative concepts of space and time.
In a series of park tours, willimannarai guided the visitors in Tokyo physically – and the guests from Zurich in their own imagination – through Ueno Park.

The mappings of Ueno were exhibited simultaneously as part of the exhibition Am nächsten Tag ging die Sonne auf at Helmhaus Museum in Zurich, as well as at the Museum of the University of the Art in Tokyo.