Yebisu International Festival for Art & Alternative Visions 2010

The Second Yebisu International Festival for Art & Alternative Visions 2010 starts tomorrow, Friday 19 at the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography in Ebisu. This 10-day event features a mix of just about everything you can think of (and, this being Japan, probably a lot you can’t), including film, video, photography, computer-generated imagery, two- and three-dimensional works, installations, light shows, sound works, projections, talks, performances and more.

The theme for this year’s festival is “searching songs,” with the connection explained by festival director Keiko Okamura in what could almost be the exact opposite of a revelatory manner:

Just as a song is passed from generation to generation, an image is carried by the people who see it.

Whatever. Anyway, the festival is organized into five largely media-based categories of "screenings", "exhibitions," "off site," "live events" and the "website," with the last one almost certain to be the least interesting to non-Japanese speakers. The "off site" part consists of lighting shows and more around Yebisu Garden Place in Ebisu and showing stuff on outdoor screens in Shibuya.

And don’t fret if all that snowboarding this season has left you cash strapped—apart from some of the screenings, entry is free.

LED installation by Takayuki Fujimoto, one of the artists participating in this year's Yebisu International Festival for Art & Alternative Visions

A scene from last year's event