Hakata Drive-in II
2003
Traffic: Art Exchange between Fukuoka and Kitakyushu
Fukuoka Art Museum, Fukuoka and Kitakyushu Municipal Museum of Art, Kitakyushu, Japan

In a site-specific project relating to the city, Hakata Drive-in II incorporated the history of the now defunct old tram in Hakata, the old district of Fukuoka, by utilising the suspended passenger handles on the Fukuoka subway system which typically has small spaces for advertising. Selected from interviews conducted with old retired tram drivers about the history of the city and associated topics, the public installation posted individual short sentences on each handle through the length of six train carriages and five different trains. On the reverse of handles were images of the old trams and the cityscape in the past. In the museum itself, the project presented documentation of the train installation alongside 40 small frames of comic paintings featuring Navin and his little daughter Mari travelling through time to discover more about the history of trams in Fukuoka. The project was called the second chapter of Hakata Drive-in because it continued featuring history of Fukuoka through conversations with experienced tram and taxi drivers. A mobile classroom to local history, it also pertained to an immigrant attempting to assimilate into a local context.
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