Tokyo-Norwich, United Kingdom-Japan, Asia-Europe, NSAD-ASABI - where are we? How do we locate ourselves? We can be in one place and yet our coordinates locate us elsewhere. Coordinates are as conceptual as they are physical, are of the imagination as much as they are geographical. We locate ourselves through networks of meaning: ‘NSAD is by a river’, ‘here is my email address’, ‘this is the translation’, ‘that’s where I got lost’, and there is the global positioning system (gps) to tell us exactly where we are at any one time – to reassure us that we are only in exactly one place at one time.

This online catalogue exists in a location but not in a place. It is located in what Manuel Castells has characterised as the ‘space of flows’, a result of the ‘organisational logic’ of the network society that is reconstructing the social meaning of space and reconfiguring the ‘space of places’. New social groups, communities, alliances emerge in the space of flows that don’t exist in any one place. Some see this as a threat and suggest that a negative effect of globalisation will be that everywhere will be more like everywhere else. However, a positive aspect of this phenomenon is that similarities between cultures, experiences and places will be recognised and differences will be celebrated, explored and made the basis of new experience. This is an intention and an ambition of the Locus exhibitions, which are in ‘places’ – installed at Norwich School of Art and Design and at the Visions Gallery. They are the result of collaboration between two Schools of Art and Design. Artists in each exhibition have been selected by each college from submitted staff portfolios, so that NSAD selected the ASABI artists to exhibit in Norwich and ASABI selected the NSAD artists to exhibit in Tokyo. The exhibitions are coterminous and coincide with the first staff exchange of artists from the two Schools of Art and Design, with Megumi Baba working at NSAD from 8 March to 16 April, and Stella Whalley visiting ASABI from 16 April to 15 May 2004. These are the first manifestations of a collaborative partnership that will explore the creative potential of both the space of flows and the space of places in the future. As Theodore Levitt advised in 1983: ‘Think global. Act local.’

Simon Willmoth
Director of Graduate Studies and Research
Norwich School of Art and Design