I am truly and deeply thrilled that on 150 years of friendship between Germany and Japan, we will be holding the Dortmund Exhibition 2011 of the Japan Media Arts Festival, in cooperation with HMKV in Dortmunder U.
This international exhibition is designed to introduce Japanese media arts to audiences world-wide. Exhibited works include award-winning works from the Japan Media Arts Festival, which has been held annually since 1997.
In recent years,Japanese media arts such as interactive art, games, animation and manga (comics) have found wide popularity in countries around the world. The exhibition of these works is a momentous opportunity to showcase Japan’s current culture to people everywhere. The exhibition will demonstrate Japan’s latest culture and media arts in the context of strengthening its connection with German culture. In addition to the exhibition of artworks and films, the festival will also feature workshops and symposia. It is my hope that this event will engage Japan and Germany further in mutually beneficial cultural exchange.
Lastly, I would like to sincerely thank everyone in Germany and Japan, whose support has made this important event possible.

Seiichi Kondo
Commissioner for Cultural Affairs

Following Beijing, Shanghai, Singapore, Vienna and Istanbul, the Dortmunder U — Centre for Art and Creativity 2011 is the sixth station of the Japan Media Arts Festival Overseas. This year the festival presents, as part of the 150-year friendship between Japan and Germany, a thematic focus in the Dortmunder U dealing with Japanese culture and its most outstanding artistic representatives.
The prestigious Japan Media Arts Festival has been held in Tokyo since 1997, annually presenting the newest works of Japanese contemporary and popular culture in an extensive show. For the past few years, these works have been shown outside Japan as well — in exhibitions with high profile programmes of media arts, entertainment, manga and anime. I am very happy that during a visit to the ISEA2010 RUHR, the Japanese Ministry of Culture (Bunka-cho) decided on Dortmund as a festival site for 2011 and I look forward to an excellent artistic programme from the land of media art, Japan!
In addition to large-scale installations, digital art, videos and photographs, works of Japanese popular culture such as toys, manga and computer games are also being presented. Moreover, the Japan Media Arts Festival as well as the currently running HMKV exhibition Proto Anime Cut — Space and Visions in Japanese Animation both pay tribute to German-Japanese friendship. Both exhibitions are accompanied by a varied supporting programme. Along with workshops, guided tours and lectures, there is also, offered over the course of the festival, an extensive film programme which includes recent anime productions.
HMKV was founded in 1996 and sees itself as a platform for the production, presentation and exchange of contemporary (media) art. Media art is here not understood as a technically determined, ‘high fun factor’ genre, but rather as contemporary art, which content-wise and conceptually looks into our heavily medial and technological based present, which is being radically transformed by new media and technology. With that, the HMKV occupies a singular position in NRW — and in Germany. The exhibitions of HMKV achieve regional, national and international recognition. The American art magazine, Artforum, counted the exhibition Arctic Perspective — in the PHOENIX Hall Dortmund — among the ‘Best Exhibitions 2010’. In 2011 HMKV was nominated, for the third time, for the Art Association Prize of the Arbeitsge- meinschaft Deutscher Kunstvereine (ADKV) and ART COLOGNE. And finally, the association received the JUMP Annual Sponsorship Award for Art Associations of the Art Foundation NRW for its dedicated work in 2011.
In the name of the Hartware MedienKunstVerein I’d like to express sincere thanks to the main sponsors of HMKV — the cultural office of the City of Dortmund, the Ministry of Family, Children, Youth, Culture and Sports of North Rhine-Westphalia and Sparkasse Dortmund — for their continuous support of our work.
This year’s ‘Overseas Exhibition’ of the Japan Media Arts Festival is organised by the Hartware MedienKunstVerein (HMKV) and the Agency for Cultural Affairs. This international project falls under the aegis of the Japanese Consulate General Düsseldorf. Further, the festival is held in cooperation with the Japan Foundation, the Goethe-Institute Tokyo and as part of ‘150 Years of German-Japanese Friendship’.

Dr. Inke Arns
Artistic Director Hartware MedienKunstVerein (HMKV)