Half a year after moving, Kyoto City University of Arts is welcoming in the first spring at its new location. The move was around a decade in the planning, during which time the question of what relocating an entire campus will bring to the area attracted a lot of attention.

In 2015, the basic concept behind the relocation was formulated, defining three roles that the university should fulfill—being a place for the arts, a university, and part of a community—and the new campus was envisioned as a terrace open to the outside world and floating above and detached from conventional values in order to change everyday perspectives and liberate and empower. In 2017, a design plan by five architecture firms (Inui Architects, RING, FUJIWALABO, o+h, Yoshimura Architects Inc.) was adopted that aspired to offer a horizontal campus that could evolve naturally like a town or city, and a framework for generating new relationships between the university and community, and between art and society. Construction of the new campus was completed in autumn 2023.

During this time, the area earmarked for the new campus continued to play host to various activities. KCUA Art Gallery held a wide range of endeavors examining the new ecosystem set to grow in this area, against a backdrop of the ways in which the region has developed until now and its rich natural environment, including several projects exploring the relocation, such as the still moving exhibition series.

Marking the second KCUA Art Gallery exhibition at the new campus, Floating and Flowing: For a New Ecosystem around KCUA examines the changing community and parallels artists’ various practices and KCUA Art Gallery’s efforts with the history of the university’s education and the artistic practices its teachers and students have produced over the years. In so doing, the exhibition creates a place for reflecting on the future ecosystems that will emerge from the interconnections of university and community, of art and society.

The Takase River passes through the grounds of the new campus.* The canal has become a symbol of the university and surrounding area’s interconnections, as seen in the construction of the Suujin Terrace on its banks as a plaza that links the campus with the outside community. The arrangement of the exhibition venue is inspired by the Takase, endeavoring to embody the principle of a terrace that straddles the boundary dividing the campus from the outside world. It forms a response by KCUA Art Gallery to the new campus and the aspirations of the architects contained within the design of the campus.

The expressive act of carefully observing and then making something is also a way of getting closer to the world and engaging in dialogue with it, one that has been handed down from generation to generation over the course of history. This exhibition will be an opportunity to interconnect the various dialogues that have taken place to date. By thinking about, nurturing, and expanding these dialogues together, we can begin new dialogues with the hopes of opening up rich possibilities for the future.

(Translated by William Andrews)

*The Takase River runs near buildings E and F, and between buildings H and J. Until it was diverted to its present course in 2002, part of the canal ran near Building C (where KCUA Art Gallery is located).