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Japan’s Toilennale is like the Venice Biennale, but for toilets
United Kingdom Architecture News - Jun 21, 2014 - 12:55 2218 views
To promote the Toilennale, Oita, Japan, staged a bathroom-cleaning performance last week.Photo courtesy Oita Toilennale Executive Committee
From Venice to New York, the world has no shortage of art biennales and triennales. But Oita, a medium-sized manufacturing city in the southwest of Japan, hopes to make its mark next summer as the host of the first Toilennale—an arts festival celebrating toilets.
The city is commissioning artists and designers to turn 12 of its public lavatories into working art installations with sculptures, murals, and interactive displays. Theatrical performances will be staged inside some of the bathrooms (in stores and public spaces), and a collection of toilets created by outsider artists will be exhibited throughout downtown. For souvenirs, the city plans to sell tiny replicas of “Fountain,” Marcel Duchamp’s famous urinal readymade.
Public bathrooms (often dreaded by tourists) are an unusual municipal selling point, but Eisuke Sato, who sits on the Oita Toilennale Executive Committee, says they were a logical place to look as the city council seeks to boost tourism. Toilets hold a special place (paywall) in modern Japanese life; three-quarters of homes(paywall) are outfitted with high-tech bidet-style models. The country’s largest toilet manufacturer, Toto, has a factory in Oita. And avant-garde public bathroomshave recently been popping up around the country, including one in Oita’s Wakakusa Park that became a local attraction after a pair of video artists gave it an interactive display....Continue Reading
> via Quartz