- Tokyo's Representative Art Event, Attracting As Many As 700,000 Visitors -

As part of the Tokyo Culture Creation Project, the Tokyo Metropolitan Government and Tokyo Metropolitan Foundation for History and Culture will hold the largest all-night art event in Tokyo, "Roppongi Art Night 2013", on March 23-24, 2013.

An artistic-director system will be introduced for Roppongi Art Night 2013, and Katsuhiko Hibino, an artist, has been appointed to the post. "TRIP - Witness today's transformation into tomorrow." has been chosen as this year's event theme.

Based on this year's event theme "TRIP - Witness today's transformation into tomorrow.", Hibino and other artists will turn their ideas of "excursions of time and space", "elation of seeing the morning after the night before", and "thought for disaster-stricken regions beyond time and space" into some forms as well as into some actions, and a variety of programs will be constructed for visitors to make a trip, along with the artists, around the Roppongi district.

Various places in Roppongi considered as a "harbor/port/terminal", participants will witness and experience sailing into a one-night-only extraordinary trip. On the day, making the works of art by Hibino "the activist" -- molded out of his feelings for the Tohoku region -- a starting point, an "art boat" created by Hibino in collaboration with up-and-coming artists will be navigated through places all over Roppongi. Moreover, a program arisen from the relationship with the local community following observations of Roppongi as a "local" community as well as the works of installation art which make the most of Roppongi streets will be deployed in the streets.

"Roppongi Art Night" has been around for five years (the fourth event) and so far received participation of more than 200 teams of artists. The event has a high profile in various circles as Tokyo's representative art event, and it attracted as many as 700,000 visitors (the total number of visitors to all programs) in 2012.

For the full text of this PRESS RELEASE, visit: www.roppongiartnight.com/en/