There are a few things to consider before heading out for some art, but the weather is not usually paramount. The Northern Alps Art Festival, though, is a Fram Kitagawa event — if you can even get there, you better pack an umbrella and bring shoes with some tread.
The festival, which opened Sept. 13, is based out of Omachi, a city of just 25,881 people in Nagano Prefecture. It’s a considerable journey from the closest shinkansen stop, some two or three hours by two trains, but, again, this being a Kitagawa affair, the remoteness, the inconvenience — the way’s the thing.
Located in a town bordered by some of the highest mountains in Japan, the triennale is on its third edition, with new works by 36 artists, nearly half of whom are women (a welcome improvement on the scant female representation at the Oku-Noto Triennale this time last year). Rugged twisting roads lead to installations tucked beside dams and inside shrines and forests. You’d think that Kitagawa, the impresario who oversees the 24-year-old Echigo Tsumari Art Field and the Setouchi Triennale (among other such inconvenient art events), might eventually tire of his ever expanding, publicly funded, site-specific hyper-local revitalization art empire, and that maybe visitors would, too. But this festival has a surprise guest collaborator — namely, weather — working its steady but inconsistent hand, and the experience manages to stay self-regenerating and therefore unpredictable.
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