NEO SHIBUYA TV: Tracing an Anonymous Curation Through Its Artists

Centered on the Shibuya scramble crossing, from Udagawachō through Jinnan, there are nine street visions operated by Shibuya Television Co., Ltd. In addition, in Shibuya Yokochō on the first floor of RAYARD MIYASHITA PARK, the same company operates eighty-five small screens. Across these ninety-four screens in total, since 28 July 2018, video works of around thirty seconds have been broadcast mixed in among the advertising slots. The project is named NEO SHIBUYA TV. The company has made its sponsorship public, but who does the programming has still not been disclosed.

This essay draws the outline of this anonymous project by tracing the words of the artists and audiences who took part. It is to be honest about the limits of the public record, and also to treat the NEO SHIBUYA TV visible from the side of artists and audiences as a primary source.

The 2018 Starting Point

The launch was Saturday, 28 July 2018, at nine in the morning. The logo design was handled by VERDY (the "youth of today" series) and Ray Martinez (SPAGHETTI BOYS; the main logo). The first installment, from 12 August, featured the Berlin-based video artist Pedro Maia. The first episode of the parallel "youth of today" series was a short video following Issei Mori of the Osaka skate team WASTED YOUTH SKATEBOARD. It is fair to say that the programming at launch leaned more toward street culture than toward pure video art.

The flagship format is called the "30seconds museum." The standard OOH ad slot is fifteen seconds, and some large outdoor signage takes a thirty-second slot. The "30seconds museum" rides on this advertising standard itself while, at double the length, emitting a weak "this is not an advertisement" signal through physical specification. The very conceit of likening street visions to a museum is written explicitly into the name.

The official account's cumulative post count was about 4,073 as of May 2026. In roughly seven years since the start, broadcast records have accumulated at a pace of about fifty a month, twelve a week.

The Programming Is Not a Single Strand

The "30seconds museum" tends to be treated as a byword for NEO SHIBUYA TV, but tracing the story highlights on the official Instagram reveals several other programming channels running in parallel.

In October 2020, a partnership with the external curatorial collective @new_media_art (running alongside @form.language) was officially announced. Two lines, NMA 30sec and NMA 15sec, were launched — and, intriguingly, the fifteen-second version preceded by about two weeks. The first artist was Matt Heinzler. From the following year, 2021, a standing tie-up "SC gallery" slot with Brooklyn's Superchief Gallery NFT ran, and works by the likes of Coby Kennedy played on the large LED at Shibuya Modi. In a highlight titled "invading," the slogan "NEO SHIBUYA TV is invading SHIBUYA" remains.

In other words, the "30seconds museum" is one strand — the longest lineage — directly run by NEO SHIBUYA TV, and lining up the NMA line and the SC gallery line, the programming operates as a bundle of at least four channels. NEO SHIBUYA TV itself still does not call itself a curator, but in the NMA line @new_media_art and @form.language, and in the SC gallery line @superchiefgallerynft, are explicitly credited as external collaborators.

NEO SHIBUYA TV Seen from the Artists' Side

The medium in which the artists' side spoke most eloquently about NEO SHIBUYA TV is a feature published by Yokogao Magazine in 2024. Yokogao adopts a structure in which the artists, not the editors, speak. The statements drawn from it come close to primary sources that give the project its outline.

To be honest, the first time they were brought to my attention was when they contacted me on Instagram in October. They mentioned they had a copy of my book so that is how they became aware of my work.

They are just as mysterious to me. I don't know a lot about them as a collective or their background, or how/why they have access to these digital billboards.

— Seana Gavin, via Yokogao Magazinesource

I love their project and curating line. It's crazy, generous, and very audacious to show videos of contemporary artists in the commercial billboard of Shibuya.

— Regina Demina, via Yokogao Magazinesource

We are in an age of screen addiction and I wanted to put Oxy on the largest screen overlooking the people of Shibuya as many of them have their heads buried in their phones. Putting this video on the phone, TV, and the ultimate screens of Tokyo that seem to watch us made the piece full circle and a reflection of the times.

— Jeron Braxton, via Yokogao Magazinesource

Lined up, the statements raise the project's outline indirectly. First, contact is on an individual DM basis (Gavin). Second, the programming entity remains invisible from both inside and outside (Gavin). Third, the very act of placing contemporary art on a commercial LED is described as "audacious" (Demina). Fourth, the artists' side creates with the scale of the screen and the foot traffic in mind (Braxton).

Outside Yokogao's reporting, too, one can trace the artists' own voices under the hashtag #neoshibuyatv. One VFX artist writes of the emotion of the moment their work was broadcast in Shibuya like this.

Ok this is WILD. My VFX montage is playing on a loop across 85 TVs in Shibuya, Tokyo, throughout a bunch of bars, restaurants & public spaces. Special thanks to @neoshibuyatv for putting this together! Arigatou!

— VFX artist self-celebration post, via Instagram #neoshibuyatvsource

Another artist chose NEO SHIBUYA TV as the Tokyo premiere venue for a new work produced in Bangkok, writing, "so happy to premiere bits of my new project 'refreshments' on some big outdoor monitors in Tokyo, courtesy of @neoshibuyatv." The production team cats.digital wrote "to become a small part of amazing Tokyo." The artists' language consistently recognizes participation in NEO SHIBUYA TV as an experience of urban participation — of "being incorporated into a part of Tokyo," of "showing in Tokyo for the first time."

Three Lines of Entry

The form of receiving contact by Instagram DM, as Gavin did, is the entry point most often made visible in reporting so far. But NEO SHIBUYA TV's operation is not only that.

On the official Instagram, an open call titled "OPEN CALL VOL.1" is actually in operation. It was announced as "Want to exhibit your art? Broadcast on 84 screens in Shibuya Yokocho... DM us your 30-second artwork. We will be accepting applications for 2 weeks from today. Winners will be announced after careful judging," and selections via open call, such as José Palacio, can be confirmed.

Instagram

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Another entry point is made explicit by the case of the Hong Kong art collective Chamber Lab in March 2026. The group held a one-week flash exhibition in Shibuya, screening across more than eighty-seven large outdoor screens, and described it as "self-initiated, realized with support from NEO Shibuya." A pattern in which the programming entity is not NEO SHIBUYA TV but the artist collective, with NEO SHIBUYA TV stepping into a supporting role of medium operation, was observed in 2026.

Instagram

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The entry points run in parallel along three lines: "an individual DM solicitation from the curators' side," "submission to and judging of an open call," and "artist-led pitches plus medium support." It can be summarized that, while the curators' anonymity is maintained, a diversification of the entry points has proceeded.

X (Twitter)

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There Is a Record on the Audience's Side Too

In February 2022, one Japanese speaker happened to look up at an NFT show then broadcasting on a Shibuya street vision, and wrote this.

屋外ビジョンをじっくり見たのは初めてでしたが、 渋谷の街中に居ながら最先端アートシーンに触れる体験はエキサイティングだった…！！ こんな番組があったなんて。

— A spectator post in Japanese, via Instagram #neoshibuyatvsource

The surprise of "I had no idea such a program existed" comes into being inseparably from the non-disclosure of the curator. That announcements appear only on the official Instagram and X turns the moment of looking up by chance on the street into a "discovery." Precisely because the programming entity is not foregrounded, only the relationship between the city and the work remains.

A message passed from one artist to another read: "they have programming for plenty of screens across Shibuya. perhaps you can have your art shown there too!" NEO SHIBUYA TV also has a route that spreads among artists by word of mouth.

Other Operators in the Same Building

Shibuya Yokochō, where NEO SHIBUYA TV's eighty-five screens run, is located on the first floor of MIYASHITA PARK. Here the operating entities are layered. The owner is Mitsui Fudosan; the building's commercial operation is Mitsui Fudosan Retail Management; the rooftop Shibuya Ward Miyashita Park is Miyashita Park Partners (Mitsui Fudosan + Seibu Landscape); the food-and-drink operation of the nineteen Shibuya Yokochō establishments is Hamakura Teki Shoten Seisakusho Co., Ltd. (headed by Yoshinobu Hamakura, the figure who launched Ebisu Yokochō in 2008); the operation of the eighty-five-screen signage inside Shibuya Yokochō is Shibuya Television; and the editorial programming that runs on top of it is NEO SHIBUYA TV. At least five programming entities coexist in the same building.

On the outdoor promenade side, which opened in February 2026, a further seventeen newly installed screens — sixteen triangular-prism faces plus one EV facade face — are added. The programming program on that side, "SCREENS CONTEXTUALIZED," is sponsored by NEORT Inc., this journal's publisher. This essay is an article that treats NEO SHIBUYA TV, a separate-line operator within the same building, and we disclose that point as a matter of our own involvement.

The Relationship with DIG SHIBUYA

NEO SHIBUYA TV is not alone in the effort to use Shibuya's street visions for art programming. DIG SHIBUYA, begun under Shibuya Ward's leadership in 2024, is a session-based festival that, over a few days each February, synchronizes multiple screens around the Shibuya scramble crossing and screens works in the late-night hours. Its curators, participating artists, and operating entity are all publicly disclosed.

The two overlap in taking Shibuya's street visions as a stage, but their designs are contrasting. DIG SHIBUYA is public, session-based, curator-explicit; NEO SHIBUYA TV is private, permanent, curator-anonymous. Yet they are not in opposition. NEO SHIBUYA TV's official Instagram announced DIG SHIBUYA's "SHIBUYA CROSSING NIGHT ART" of 14 February 2026 on its own channel, together with the name of Brandon Eversole. As efforts directed at the street vision, the two are not competitors but alternative solutions coexisting on different time axes, collaborating as needed. The lineage of NEO SHIBUYA TV — begun eight years earlier and continuing for seven years — occupies a place of its own in the history of Shibuya street-vision programming.

Questions That Remain

Let me enumerate the facts this essay could not confirm. These belong to the limits of public information, and are not filled in by conjecture.

• The actual identity of the individual or team responsible for programming (neither NEO SHIBUYA TV proper nor @new_media_art discloses personal names)
• The compensation model for artists (unpaid exposure, or fee payment)
• The time allocation between the 30seconds museum slot and the advertising slots (how advertising and art coexist on the same nine screens)
• The form of contract with Superchief Gallery NFT (commission / revenue share / co-presentation)
• The form of contract between Shibuya Television and the former KIZUNACAST (now Well-being Management Labo Inc.), which handles medium sales

NEO SHIBUYA TV has continued for seven years across Shibuya's ninety-four screens without revealing who programs it, why, or how. The entry points have multiplied, the artists involved exceed four thousand entries, and the audience notices by looking up at it by chance. The most coherent reading, at present, is that not foregrounding the programming entity is itself by design.

Sources

1. fig.001Yokogao Magazine — NEO SHIBUYA TV: The Art Project Redefining Billboards in Tokyo
2. fig.002株式会社シブヤテレビジョン公式 — NEO SHIBUYA TV プロジェクト 2018-08 発表
3. fig.003EYESCREAM — 次世代ストリートカルチャーを映す、 渋谷の街頭ビジョン番組がローンチ(2018-07-28)
4. fig.004FNMNL — NEO SHIBUYA TV 30seconds museum 始動(2018-08-15)
5. fig.005Arts Help — ICONS Partners with NEO Shibuya TV
6. fig.006NEO SHIBUYA TV 公式 Instagram
7. fig.007NEO SHIBUYA TV OPEN CALL VOL.1 公式投稿(2023)
8. fig.008Chamber Lab — Self-initiated street art flash exhibition in Shibuya (2026)
9. fig.009VFX artist self-celebration post (Instagram #neoshibuyatv)
10. fig.010Spectator post in Japanese (Instagram #neoshibuyatv, 2022)
11. fig.011Food Stadium — 渋谷横丁開業秘話 vol.1 浜倉好宣インタビュー

Operations Record

OPERATOR

Shibuya Television Co., Ltd. (NEO SHIBUYA TV)

LOCATION

Tokyo

MODEL

Operator commission — Three parallel routes — curator outreach, open calls and artist submissions; the curators remain unnamed

CADENCE

Around 50 works a month (12 a week) interleaved with advertising, in 30- and 15-second formats

SPEC

Nine street screens around the Shibuya scramble plus 85 panels in Shibuya Yokocho, RAYARD MIYASHITA PARK

SINCE

2018-07

STATUS

Active

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