A request for supporting ICC's continuation

I've heard about that the museum for Internet/Media art in Tokyo, ICC is facing a challenge of keeping their operation.

Here is a translation of a request for supporting ICC's continuation. The translation was done by an American whoman who has sympathy for this request.

****************from here****************

NTT InterCommunication Center [ICC]*'s closing at the end of the fiscal year 2005 was mentioned by its sponsor NTT East in early March 2005. Due to the fact that there has been no official announcement by the company, it has been difficult for ICC's staffs to publicize this fact; however, considering the current situation surrounding ICC and the other media centers, we the curatorial team of ICC felt it was necesssary to publicly discuss about the social significance of such institutions, and decided to directly appeal to your kind consideration over this message.

■ICC's closing

Since the pre-opening event of 1991, ICC has continuously functioned as a center for various experiments in arts and technologies, presenting the actualities of media arts through the 90s' until today. After the official opening of the center in Spring 1997, ICC has been recognized as one of the major media art center along ZKM (Karlsruhe, Germany) and Ars Electronica Center (Austria). ICC has since then acted as an important core for the development of media art within Japan and the surrounding Asian regions.

ICC has contributed internationally to the nurturing of media art and the media culture for many years. In addition to propelling transnational exchanges, ICC has taken an important educative role especially for university students. Moreover, we can observe an increasing number of media art / informational design curriculum in various university in the past recent years. With the rise of an ever-widening network of media cretors, the presence of media centers is needed more than ever for a broader range of society.

The end of ICC's trative function for public media culture will definitively lead to both huge cultural and social loss not only for Japan, but also for the international scene of media art and culture. Furthermore, ICC holds a permanent collection in addition to its activity archive in preparation, and solutions must be designed in order to preserve these cultural resources and to assure a long-term access to them. ICC's sponsor, NTT East Japan, is facing a great social responsibility to sustain this common wealth for the future generations.

We now wish to collect your approvals and supports for continuing ICC.

■Request for your supporting message and opinions

For the continuation of ICC, we need to discuss and confirm ICC's role and contribution. Not limiting the issue to a economic range, we would appreciate your supportive messages and opinions about ICC and the media culture's future. We will welcome any media to pick up this issue so that the maximum of people would know about this situation.

○Please send your email as a reply to this message. Please tell us your name, your organization, your email address and your comment.

19th of July 2005, ICC Curatorial Team

*ICC: Started as Japan's 100th anniversary of telephone enterprise in 1990 by the Nippon Telegraph and Telecommunication (current NTT). ICC has been publishing the in-house magazine "InterCommunication" from 1992. Since the opening in April 1997, has organized numerous exhibitions, concerts, workshops and artistic supports. After the division of NTT, ICC was put under the direction of NTT East, and underwent a scaling down renewal in April 2004. Afterward, ICC's activity was mainly limited to program exhibitions. In April 2005, ICC Cafe and Library were closed down and ICC Membership was terminated. The schedule after 2006 is not yet determined.

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Bluey@INCOGNITO

Thank you so much for your time!

It was a wonderful interview.

Here is an article. People really like it.

MSN article of Bluey