101TOKYO Opening

I had the great pleasure of attending last night’s opening reception for the inaugural 101TOKYO contemporary art fair. The event runs until April 6, and is being held at the Rensei Chugakkou in Akihabara.

101TOKYO Opening

It was a joy to take in, and I’m stunned at what the organizers were able to achieve, especially considering that this is a brand new event. Congrats to everyone involved!

101TOKYO Opening

One of the things I enjoyed the most was the way the main exhibition space was designed. Ben Nagaoka — the man behind the awesome Uroko House — wanted to create a space with no corridors, and managed to build a grid-like structure with openings where they connect, inviting everyone to actively walk through each stall, instead of idly walking by as often happens in events like these.

101TOKYO Opening

I’ve created a Flickr photoset with a few more photos from the evening.

Category: Art • Events

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Jean Snow lives and breathes design, pop culture, and gaming in Tokyo -- sustained by an unhealthy addiction to magazines and frequent visits to his favorites cafes. He has reported on these obsessions for the following online/offline publications: Time, Inside (Australian Design Review), Gizmodo, Gridskipper, Kotaku, Tokyo Q, Superfuture, OK Fred, Arthur Frommer's Budget Travel, I.D. (International Design), Metropolis, Azure, MoCo Loco, Kateigaho International Edition, Game|Life, and The Japan Times. He also manages the gallery space at Cafe Pause.

Jean Snow is a daily contributor to Wired magazine's game blog, Game|Life, covering game news from Japan and beyond.

Arcade Mania is currently on sale through Amazon Japan, with the same edition available for pre-order on Amazon US (to be released January, 2009).

Tokyolife: Art and Design covers Tokyo's cultural output of the past few years, covering the works of over 80 influential creatives. Jean Snow provided coordination assistance.

The Superfuture Superguides are a series of PDF travel guides to some of your favorites cities, updated monthly, and obsessively compiling the best places to shop, eat, and drink. The Tokyo guide is edited by Jean Snow.

He is also the design/culture editor at Neojaponisme, a web journal covering social and cultural aspects of Japan. Read the manifesto, by founder and chief editor W. David Marx, here.

PauseTalk is a regular series of events that take place at Cafe Pause on the first Monday of every month, with a start time of 20:00. The idea is to create a forum where Tokyo-based creatives can get together and discuss their own projects, as well as cultural currents of the city. The next edition happens October 6.