Project title: Provisional Studies: Workshop #1

Transcription

Project title: Provisional Studies: Workshop #1 “1946 – 52 Occupation Era, and 1970
Between Man and Matter”
Date: December 6 – 7, 2014
Format: Action, workshop, and video documentation
Location: Municipal Museum of Art, Kyoto
Curator: Shinji Kohmoto
On the occasion of the exhibition Parasophia: Kyoto International Festival of Contemporary Culture
2015, at the Kyoto Municipal Museum of Art and other venues in Japan
Participants: Shinya Aoyama, Daisuke Awata, Kanji Azuma, Ryota Fujiguchi, Hikaru
Fujii, Takashi Fujikawa, Hoshimitsu Fujita, Tomoko Funase, Atsuki Hirai, Osao Hori, Kaya
Kawahara, Yuka Miyata, Yoshitaka Mouri, Yoshihiro Nakatani, Akiko Nakanishi, Isao Nishii, Maki
Nishiyama, Akane Okubo, Masahiro Ochi, Taiki Saito, Tatsuya Sugimoto, Yusuke Takada, Momo
Takeuchi, Kahoru Tachi, Shion Tanaka, Koki Tanaka, Kenji Tanaka, Michiko Tsuda, and Joh
Yamasaki
This project was realized with the support of Deutsche Bank and Parasophia: Kyoto International
Festival of Contemporary Culture 2015.
Christo, Wrapped Floor, Kyoto Municipal Museum of Art, 1970
© Christo, 1970
From the photo album of the Kyoto Municipal Museum of Art, ‘view of the museum just after the
release from the US occupation, 1952’
On a trip to Kyoto in the winter of 2013, I made a visit to the Kyoto Municipal Museum of Art
for an upcoming project. Even though it is called a museum, the venue now functions more
as a kind of rental space for touring blockbuster exhibitions, and currently hosts only a few
self-initiated projects each year. In that sense, the venue in its current state is not so
appealing. However, several points of interest emerged when I was told about the history of
the site. The first was that following World War II, during the period from 1946 to 1952, US
occupation forces used the museum as a barracks. In the basement of the museum, in a
small space beneath the stairs, there is even a shoeshine area that remains from that
period, along with a sign, written in English, noting the business hours.
It is said there was a basketball hoop installed in the largest gallery space, which was used
as a rec room. The curator of the project even showed me photographs from that time.
Also, after completing its assignment in Kyoto, the US 58th Signal Battalion was transferred
to Okinawa, where it remained stationed until reconsolidation in 2012. The unresolved
issues surrounding US military bases in Okinawa are an ongoing contemporary problem.
Exploring the museum’s past revealed connections with the social issues of contemporary
Japan. Every site has its own specific history, but without such chance interactions we
usually do not encounter these histories.
There is something else. Looking at archival photographs reveals how this museum once
occupied an important place in the history of contemporary art in Japan. Curated by the art
critic Yusuke Nakahara, The Tenth Tokyo Biennale, Between Man and Matter, opened in
Tokyo in May 1970. Nakahara himself said that his exhibition was influenced by Harald
Szeemann’s When Attitudes Become Form and the Whitney Museum’s Anti-Illusion:
Vorsitzender des Aufsichtsrats: Paul Achleitner
Vorstand: Jürgen Fitschen (Co-Vorsitzender), Anshuman Jain (Co-Vorsitzender), Stefan Krause, Stephan Leithner, Stuart Lewis, Rainer Neske,
Henry Ritchotte, Christian Sewing
Deutsche Bank Aktiengesellschaft mit Sitz in Frankfurt am Main, HRB Nr. 30 000, Amtsgericht Frankfurt am Main, Umsatzsteuer ID Nr. DE114103379
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Procedures / Materials, both from 1969. Alongside Carl Andre, Hans Haacke and Richard
Serra were Mono-ha artists like Katsuhiko Narita and Koji Enokura, as well as On Kawara
and Jiro Takamatsu. In June of 1970, the exhibition toured to the Kyoto Municipal Museum
of Art. I was curious to know who had exhibited in the large gallery space where the US
occupation forces had formerly played basketball. According to the photographs, it appears
that Christo covered the entire floor with fabric.
Transformed by a series of historical actions, this place has become a vector weirdly
connecting art, war, and sports all at once. Based on this history, I am planning a two-day
workshop at the Kyoto Municipal Museum of Art. There will be reenactments of basketball
games, a reading of the curator’s statement from Between Man and Matter, a lecture about
issues related to the US military presence in Japan, an action with fabrics that relates to
Christo’s installation, and discussions about issues surrounding the possibility of war in the
future. The participants will be high-school students living in Kyoto. That the participants
are high-school students is a reference to the fact that under the former Imperial Japanese
Army system, compulsory military service began at the age of nineteen. All of this will
subtly link to the social conditions of Japan in the present of 2014. I am consciously trying
to deal with issues related to war here. What kind of future will the current government’s
policy shift approving the right to collective self-defense bring about for Japan? Perhaps, in
the near future, Japan will again find itself engaged in a war, in spite of the explicit rejection
of war in Article 9 of the Japanese constitution.
August 2014
Project title: Precarious Tasks #8: Going home could not be daily routine
Date: June 2014
Format: Collective acts, video documentation
(25 min, 20 sec.; 9 min., 22 sec.; 27 min., 46 sec.; 46 min., 35 sec.; 7 min., 22 sec.)
Location: London
Curator: Matt Williams
Commissioned by Institute of Contemporary Arts, London
On the occasion of the exhibition Journal, Institute of Contemporary Arts, London
Participants: Dominique Dunne, Mala Naiker, Shona Phillips, and Steven Cummings
The action of Precarious Tasks #8: Going home could not be daily routine is about bridging
two different experiences of disaster in the UK and in Japan, both of which occurred in
2011. In one case, the riots that took place in various parts of London in August; in the
other, the earthquake and tsunami that struck Japan in March, and triggered the
Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster.
Though these events have totally different backgrounds, what interests me about both is
what happened afterwards: the formation of frameworks for post-disaster societies. In
Tokyo, the earthquake disrupted all public transportation and communication. Subways and
buses were stopped, and phone lines remained down for some time. Consequently, large
numbers of commuters decided to walk home on foot. For my friend, this meant a three to
four hour journey, while others’ routes home took up to seven hours. One year after the
earthquake, I retraced my friend’s steps, trying to connect to her journey in walking the
same route that she took that day, even though my experience would always be far from
the original.
For this project, participants living in areas of London affected by the 2011 riots were
invited to reenact this process. Asking each of the participants about where they were and
how they got home when the riots broke out, I had them retrace their paths. One
participant, who had been dining with a friend, decided that it would be safer to walk only
along major thoroughfares. Another had been escorting his girlfriend home when they
heard the news, and lectured her on not joining the demonstrations and looting.
There are of course major differences between the aftermaths of the two situations. One is
a natural disaster, and the nuclear accident that it brought about will linger years into the
future. The other was a manmade disaster brought about by the social structure. However,
I felt that the act of “returning home” could on some level connect the experiences of these
two events. What happens to our daily routines under radically different circumstances?
June 24, 2014; this text was originally written as an artist’s note for a project at the Institute
of Contemporary Arts, London. Edited by Matt Williams; revised and expanded for this
publication.
Project title: A Pottery Produced by 5 Potters at Once
(Silent Attempt)
Date: 2013
Format: Collaboration, video documentation (75 min)
Location: Studio of Wang Feng and Han Qing, Beijing
Curators: Hu Fang and Mika Kuraya
Commissioned by The Japan Foundation
Created with Vitamin Creative Space, Guangzhou, and The Pavilion,
Participants: Wang Feng, Yuan Liang, Han Qing, Duan Ran, and Tan Hongyu
This documents a number of collaborative projects undertaken at different sites by people
from various professions: five pianists attempt to compose a score together while playing
the piano all at once; nine hairdressers collaborate on cutting a model’s hair; five potters
attempt to make a single pot; five poets try to compose a single poem together.
Why did I choose people who make things to be the participants in these projects? To do
something collaboratively is an ethical proposition. Suppressing individual ego, one must
try to perform the work in accordance with others. In this process, the participants must
temporarily set aside the ideas, approaches, and practices they have cultivated to that
point, and figure out how to compromise with others. You could say the collaborative
process is one of negotiation and compromise. The microsociety that results from
collaboration requires of its participants a certain kind of ethics. Adhering to the form of
these ethics may even require one’s own transformation. Such is collaboration: both self
and other must change in order to achieve consensus.
Perhaps the reason I wanted the participants to be people who make things is because I
thought those with creative practices would be best suited for addressing this ethical form.
Each according to their own approaches, the participants all give form to music, hairstyles,
clay, and language. The differences in how they handle the materials express the
differences between each person. They also begin to reflect differences in ethos. In this
way, as they move their hands, the participants give shape to society itself. What is
documented here is the process of this kind of social sculpture, and as such it is also a
document of the failure of that process. The process of having multiple participants give
shape to society necessarily entails failure. We repeat a process of trial and error. This is
also a current issue related to how we can continue rethinking democracy.
March 2014
Project title: A Piano Played by 5 Pianists at Once
(First Attempt)
Date: 2012
Format: Collaboration, video documentation (57 min)
Location: The University Art Galleries, University of California, Irvine
Curator: Juli Carson
Commissioned by The University Art Galleries, University of California, Irvine
Participants: Adrian Foy, Kelly Moran, Devin Norris, Ben Papendrea, and Desmond Sheehan
Project title: A Behavioral Statement (or, An Unconscious Protest)
Date: October 5, 2012
Format: Collective acts, video documentation (8 min)
Location: The Japan Foundation, Tokyo
Curator: Mika Kuraya
Commissioned by The Japan Foundation
Equipment Support: ARTISTS’ GUILD
Production photography: Fujikawa Takashi
Participants: Naohisa Abe, Ning Ding, Satomi Eguchi, Yoko Fujita, Misako Futsuki,
Mihoko Himeda, Rika Hirano, Mayu Honda, Teruyuki Hoshina, Nobuaki Iizawa, Yuka Imai,
Masanobu Ito, Yuri Izumi, Miwa Kaneko, Yuta Kaneko, Yo Katsurayama, Mihoko Kobayashi,
Tetsuya Koide, Junko Kurata, Kazunori Matsunaga, Shota Miyake, Fusako Miyamori, Kaoru
Miyamoto, Juri Murakami, Yukiko Murooka, Haruka Nakajima, Tomoko Nakamura, Reiko Nariyama,
Yuka Niwayama, Akihiko Noda, Kousuke Noguchi, Ayako Ochi, Tsuyako Ogushi, Makoto Ohnishi,
Yuko Oku, Yukio Oshida, Kanae Rachi, Noriko Sato, Masaya Shimoyama, Rie Shoji, Keiji Shono,
Masayuki Suzuki, Yuko Tachibana, Makie Tahara, Masanori Takaguchi, Mana Takatori, Hidekazu
Takeda, Yasuhiro Takehara, Aya Tamura, Shin-ichi Tanaka, Maki Toshimori, Norihisa Tsukamoto,
Hiroaki Uesugi, and Yuuki Yamaguchi
We all have our own complex issues—issues peculiar to each of us, which rarely intersect
with those of anyone else. Problems are invariably accompanied by pain: pain that cannot
be shared with others. Emotions like sympathy and empathy, for instance, actually serve to
reinforce the divide between the one in pain, and the one without pain. The vector of
sympathy is always directed from the one without pain to the one in pain. The reverse is
impossible. This is why we must explore ways of connecting other than sympathy.
Over a year has passed since the March 11 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami, but the
situation continues: rubble is still being cleared, the problems of temporary housing and the
Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant remain. Since the earthquake, many artists, as well
as architects, musicians, and filmmakers have been volunteering on the ground, or taking
action that reflects their own practices. This is no temporary response, but a sustained
effort. One such project will even be presented in the Japan Pavilion at this year’s
Architecture Biennale in Venice. For the first few months after the disaster, the question
asked by many Japanese artists was, what could art do in the face of an event like this? I
think many are still asking themselves this question.
While some take direct action, others attempt to respond indirectly by pursuing their
practices in the samemanner as before. So what can I, personally, do? Or rather, the
question for me is, what has this event brought about for us? One thing is the emergence
of an acute, socially shareable context, perhaps unprecedented in Japan. Viewing
Japanese society through this context, we find that the background to our casual behaviors
has shifted since that day. For example, we might occasionally take the stairs. That is, take
the stairs rather than the lift or escalator. Previously, we could have said we were doing so
for health reasons, or to save electricity. But in today’s Japan, the simple act of going up
and down stairs can surely be read differently: as a stand against relying on electricity—
that is, nuclear power—even, of course, if this is not deliberate on the part of those in
question. Seeing the crowds of people coming down the stairs at the railway stations in
Tokyo, it struck me that they were, in a sense, protesting. Not by acting in a totally new
way, but rather by taking a fresh look at our behavior to date, distilling that information, and
reading its background differently. In this way, problems peculiar to a specific region
become universalized, until no one can ignore them.
May 2012; this text was originally written as a preparatory artist statement for the Japan
Pavilion at the 55th Venice Biennale, 2013. Translated by Pamela Miki & Associates;
revised for this publication.
Project title: Painting to the Public (Open Air)
Date: March 24, 2012
Format : Collective acts, photo documentation
Route: Meguro Museum of Art to Aoyama | Meguro Gallery, Tokyo
Created with Aoyama | Meguro, Tokyo
Photography: Takashi Fujikawa
Participants: Anonymous respondents to an SNS announcement
The act of making a painting has begun to take on new significance. Both the acts of
making and showing a painting can be performed “unplugged,” without an electric power
source. Both can be performed in natural light, which means it is possible to make a
painting without relying on nuclear power plants.
During the Meiji era, around the end of the nineteenth century, a group of Japanese artists
influenced by the famous Japanese painter Seiki Kuroda, who had studied in France,
formed what came to be known as the School of Open Air Painting, or in Japanese, the
Gaiko¯ -ha (School of Natural Light). I want to reinterpret this name to mean “painting
without using artificial light.” Reinterpret it as a word for making paintings in open-air
spaces without relying on electricity. Reinterpret it as another word for the production of
paintings after the March 11 disaster (3/11). Reinterpret it as an index for addressing
painting practice and its political significance, i.e., as a means for “airing” Japan’s problems
with radioactive contamination.
In 1964, acting as the Kankō Geijutsu Kenkyūjo (Research Center for Art Tourism), Hiroshi
Nakamura and Koichi Tateishi paraded their large-scale paintings around the vicinity of
Tokyo Station during rush hour, for a project they dubbed the Rojō hokō -ten, or Walking
Open Air Gallery.• The outdoor production of the Meiji-era School of Open Air Painting
connects to the 1964 exhibition on the street, as well as to the current context of painting
practice in post 3/11 Japan, through both language and action.
We will literally walk with our paintings in the streets. In Japan, painting has become
associated with the image of the socially indifferent, uncorrupted artist, but we can overturn
that image by going out into the streets—because now the act of making a painting, or
rather, the painting itself, has taken on political significance.
May 2012; this text was originally written as an artist statement for the project Painting to
the Public(Open Air). Edited by Pamela Miki & Associates; revised for this publication.
• This translation follows the photographer Minoru Hirata’s Chō geijutsu: Zen’ei bijutsuka
tachi no ashi ato 1 963–1969 (Art in Action: The 1960s Avantgarde Works and Profiles of
Young Japanese Artist [sic]) (Tokyo: Sangokan, 2005), p. 46.
Project title: Precarious Tasks #1: Swinging a flash light while we walk at night
Date: September 29, 2012
Format: Collective acts, photo documentation
Location: Idogaya, Yokohama
Created with blanClass, Yokohama, and The Japan Foundation
Participants: Yoko Asai, Masaharu Futoyu, Yoko Hagihara, Rikako Hirata, Taku
Hisamura, Sachie Hoshi, Rio Hosoguchi, Gohya Iijima, Hatsuko Inamura, Fumio Inoue, Tamao
Iwasa, Noriko Kamiya, Hikotaro Kanehira, Haruka Kawaguchi, Haruo Kobayashi, Junichi Kojima,
Ryota Kuraoka, Mika Kuraya, Masaki Matsumoto, Hiroaki Morita, Urara Nakamura, Masahide
Nakamura, Mihoko Nishikawa, Takahiro Ogawa, Naomi Oguchi, Hideyo Ohtsuki, Yoshitomo Ono,
Mari Saito, Yu Sakamoto, Ken Sasaki, Toshiko Sato, Isao Sato, Kariya Sayoko, Gou Shibata, Naoko
Shoji, Teppei Soutome, Keishi Suzuki, Hikaru Takata, Ryosuke Tanaka, Kei Ueda, Yoko Washio,
Mitsuhiro Yamagiwa, Kazutaka Yoshida, and Kenichi Yoshida
People temporarily assemble under special circumstances and attempt to respond to their
situation together. What kind of situation would you visualize when you hear this? You
might connect it to everyday experiences, like forming a completely new team of coworkers
in response to a commission for a new project, or asking an outside expert to help resolve
a problem that has developed in your community. Maybe you think of this special situation
as an art project. Or maybe you imagine the social conditions generated by a disaster.
Precarious Tasks was conceived as a series in which assembled participants would
experience a situation determined by hypothetical ideas and a loose framework decided by
me. For example, bringing neglected teabags that were lying around the kitchen to a
temporary gathering, and drinking the resulting blend of teas together; walking together
through the streets at night; telling someone about your name; retracing the path a friend
took when she had to walk home after the earthquake; sleeping as a group, and then
sharing your dreams; viewing the landscape together from a room that is the same height
as that reached by the waves of the tsunami; making a signal for declaring your intent to
participate in the anti-nuclear demonstrations, no matter where you are, and even if you are
not there in person; reading out all the names of the inhabitants of a city; going to a bar that
is twenty kilometers away in order to get an idea of the twenty-kilometer exclusion zone
around Fukushima, and then thinking about the nuclear problem; staying together for a
twenty-four-hour period.
The challenge here is to create an extemporaneous chain reaction for questioning how we
can rethink what is happening in Japan right now, or rather, it is a kind of preparation for
doing so. There is no predetermined endpoint for where this preparation will lead. First
assemble, then discuss and act.
August 2014
Project title: Precarious Tasks #4: Sharing dreams with others, and then making
a collective story
Date: January 25, 2013
Location: blanClass, Yokohama
Created with blanClass, Yokohama, and The Japan Foundation
Participants: Yoko Asai, Hatsuko Inamura, Tamao Iwasa, Kodama Kanazawa, Junichi
Kojima, Mika Kuraya, Chun Chih Ma, Hagoromo Okamoto, Eri Takehisa, Tae Yamagiwa, Tomomi
Yasui, and Iori Yosimoto
I met a potter in a village about two hours from Beijing, and at the very end of our meeting
she said,“ I remember this moment, us chatting and having tea together, from a dream.”
We hadn’t met before, and I had never visited that village. But somehow I had met her in
her dream. What if dreams function as a tool to share something with others? In this edition
of Precarious Tasks, in an attempt to share our dreams, we will take a nap at blanClass,
Yokohama, and afterward talk about the dreams that we had. This might mean collecting
individual stories and combining them into one story. How is it possible to share something
with others through our dreams?
Project title Precarious Tasks #7: Try to keep conscious about a specific social
issue, in this case “Anti-Nuke,” for as long as possible while you are wearing the
color yellow
Date: August 30, 2013
Location: Aoyama | Meguro, Tokyo
Created with Aoyama | Meguro, Tokyo
Participants: Anonymous respondents to an SNS announcement
Since the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster, hundreds of thousands of Japanese have
participated in protests against the use of nuclear energy. Even though more than two
years have passed, the protests continue to take place every Friday in front of the Prime
Minister’s Residence and the National Diet Building in Tokyo. Of course, even if we wanted
to, it would be difficult to participate in every Friday protest. We have our lives, our
everyday jobs. But I wonder if there is some way for us to participate in the protests while
maintaining our lives at the same time.
Since I live in LA, I cannot participate in the Friday protests in Tokyo at all. I feel distant.
However, in 2012 as the anti-nuclear movement was gaining momentum, Kenjiro Okazaki,
a leading artist and thinker based in Tokyo, tweeted the following proposal. He wrote,
“Even if you can’t join the protests on site, in simply wearing a yellow T-shirt, no matter
where you are you can show that you are protesting.” (As in Germany, yellow is the
symbolic color of the anti-nuclear movement in Japan.) This idea could be a key for
continuing to participate in the protests while still maintaining our lives, no matter where we
may be. Keeping conscious of this idea in our everyday routines is critical to this proposal.
If we are conscious that we are participating in the protests, then the everyday itself could
become a political action.
For obtaining this everyday consciousness, I’d like to introduce a historical artwork. One of
the most influential artists in post-war Japanese art, Jiro Takamatsu (1936–1998), was
interested in how we could keep fresh eyes in our daily routines. One of his instruction
pieces, Remarks (1974), is a proposal for liberating body and mind from daily routine. I will
reuse Takamatsu’s universal idea in order to update and connect the political moment of
1960s and 70s Japan to current political awareness there today.
Friday, August 30, 2013 at 5 pm in Nakameguro, Tokyo.
I prepared yellow cloth, scissors, safety pins, and drinks on a table in the gallery space. In
a gesture against electricity dependence and nuclear power, I also turned off the lights and
air conditioning, providing candles and paper fans instead. Printed on a wall was
Takamatsu’s instruction piece Remarks 5, with my own instructions added to it.•
The day was extremely hot, around 97°F/36°C. Participants came and went throughout the
day and night. They cut the yellow cloth as they liked, and then wore it. I also found that
some participants didn’t touch the yellow cloth at all, which suggests there were a number
of participants with different interests in this project. Some came to observe the gesture
against nuclear power, some came to observe a historical artwork and its reinterpretation,
and some came to observe others’ reactions to this project, while still others were just
passing by. Some participants sat and talked, some stayed for a bit and then went into
the city. However, all the participants—as well as all the people in Tokyo that day—
sweated a lot. Divided across different positions, we nevertheless experience the same
bodily responses. The project ran until midnight, but because of the heat I had to lay down
for an hour’s rest. Having embarked upon a political action and reconsideration of art
history, the bodily response of sweating was ultimately what remained
.• Jiro Takamatsu, Remarks 5 (1974): “Try to repeat the content of a specific
consciousness as many times as possible.”
I added the following to Takamatsu’s instruction “ Try to keep conscious about a specific
social issue, in this case „anti-nuke,“ as long as possible while you are wearing yellow
color.”
Project title: Precarious Tasks #9: 24 hrs Gathering
Date: June 27– 28, 2014
Format: Collective acts
Location: In and around the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London
Curator: Matt Williams
Commissioned by Institute of Contemporary, London
Participants: Hideki Aoyama, Harriet Awscombe, Julien Bader, Hattie Ball, Emilia
Bromhey, Louisa Borg-Costanzi Potts, Nick Copcutt, Elizabeth Daines, Ifor Duncan, Dominique
Dunne, Adrian Favell, Deborah Herring, Alistair Hicks, Eiko, Friedhelm Hütte, Motoko Ishibashi,
Steven Jessica Karlsen, Fidel Kenny, Adriana Lara, Macias, Maia Mackney, Susan Meehan, Monica
Merlin, Majella Munro, Yolanda O’Leary, Alyssa Ollivier, Adelina Ong, L. Phillips, Chinami Sakai,
Natsumi Sakamoto, Nick Santos-Pedro, Taiji Shelly Rae, Aruma Toyama, Meg Tsuch, Sumitra
Upham, Matt Williams, Hary Wong, Emily Wright, Freya Wright, and Hiroki Yamamoto
How do we react when disaster strikes? Do we stay where we are and assess the
situation? Observe and monitor what’s happening? When do we decide to leave and face
the consequences? On March 11, 2011 one of my friends, an artist, was at an exhibition of
his work in a gallery in downtown Tokyo. When the Tohoku earthquake struck the city he
decided to stay in the gallery building until he could find out what was happening outside. In
the end, he, an employee of the gallery, and several visitors were stuck there for a number
of days.
How was their experience of spending such a long period of time with other people,
strangers, in such an unexpected situation? On June 27, 2014 Precarious Tasks #9 tried to
approximate—but not recreate— my friend’s experience by inviting participants to spend 24
hours with me in the galleries of the ICA. During this period we partook in several events in
order to communicate our experience in this unusual situation. Participants freely came and
went, and other visitors to the ICA were welcome to join us by dropping in and out of the
events. These included publicly reading from our favorite books, and drinking tea made
from tea bags and tea leaves brought along by the participants. There were also talks,
screenings, and discussions on the themes of participation, disasters, and riots. A core
group of participants was invited to eat and then sleep over in the galleries.
Precarious Tasks #9 was not a re-enactment of a “not going home” situation, simply a way
of finding out what could—and could not—be done, said, thought, and shared in 24 hours
together.
Project title: Precarious Tasks #11: Call out all names in a city
Date: July 5, 2014
Location: Eindhoven
Curator: Nick Aikens
Created with Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven
Participants: Gidi van Boxmeer, Ulrike Erbslöh, Charles Esche, Annie Fletcher, Henk Katée, Kristy
Koop, Annebel Kuperus, Gera le Mair, Daniel Neugebauer, Sanne Resoort, Shiva Simmah Jayanath
R, Nomi Sipkes, Theo Miggelbrink, Mireille Tap, and Elly Wilberts
When a disaster occurs somewhere, we start to worry about whether or not someone we
know might be involved. We see the numbers of victims, but numbers cannot adequately
convey reality. Afterwards we see the unfamiliar names of those involved in the disaster.
Each one of those unknown names belongs to a person that lived a life, the same as
someone you know. We are stunned in the face of massive numbers of victims. There are
so many people that live in the world, but we never meet them.
In a public space, we call out as many of the names of people that live in a city as we can. I
often wonder if by chance we might meet someone when we call out his or her name.
Project title: Someone’s Junk Is Someone Else’s Treasure
Date: January 9, 2011
Format: Action, video documentation (11 min)
Components: HD video, two pencil drawings, palm fronds, and blankets
Location: Pasadena City College Flea Market
Created with The Box, Los Angeles
Through intervention into an already existing function of the city, the urban space can take
on alternative meaning. Because we habitually rely on the urban infrastructure, we think
that fundamentally there is no room for it to accommodate the unusual. Actually, this is
correct. In contemporary cities there is no allowance of excess, extending to the realm of
law. For example, in the countryside, if you want to pitch a tent and camp outside, it’s easy
to find a place to do so. But this is not the case in a city.
After coming to Los Angeles, I found I had more opportunities to visit flea markets. From
vintage clothing to dishes and records, all kinds of goods of uncertain value are sold at
these flea markets, and anybody from the managers of local vintage shops to complete
amateurs can borrow space and set up shop. What this structure of borrowing a
demarcated space to sell goods of no clear value evoked for me was the art fair. Art fairs
support the art market by bringing together all kinds of galleries. Of course the volume of
money moving through flea markets and through art fairs cannot be compared, but the
structure is the same. People tend to buy from vendors they trust, who have participated
numerous times, and conversations that communicate information about the products are
essential to the transactions. In this sense, both flea markets and art fairs exist as sites of
social exchange.
I tried to sell the most worthless thing possible in the context of the flea market. Something
that would operate right at the edge of the system. Something that anybody could pick up
anywhere, that you might find lying on the road. In Los Angeles, palm leaves are just such
a thing. After windy days they are always lying around, and everyone has to clean them up.
But people will respond if you introduce something extreme into the market. What is
documented here are the reactions of the flea market visitors to my booth.
This project has two historical references: Yoshiharu Tsuge’s manga Useless Man (1985),
the protagonist of which sells rocks by the riverbed; and David Hammons’s Bliz-aard Ball
Sale (1983), selling snowballs in New York in winter. Both are stories about trying to sell
things that anybody could pick up anywhere.
March 2014
Project title: History Is Written from Someone Else’s Perspective, Someone You
Don’t Know. Making Our Own History Requires Each of Us to Rewrite It from Our
Own Point of View
Date: 2010
Format: Drawing
Components: Pencil on paper
Size: 9 × 12 in. each (twelve drawings from a series of thirteen)
Private collection
Saburo Murakami, Passage, 1956
Yoko Ono, Clock Piece, 1963
Genpei Akasegawa, Canned Universe, 1964
Hi Red Center, Dropping Event, 1964
Hiroshi Nakamura and Koichi Tateishi, a.k.a. Research Center for Art Tourism, Walking Open Air
Gallery, 1964
Hitoshi Nomura, Tardiology, 1968 – 69
The Play, Current of Contemporary Art, 1969
Ko¯ ji Enokura, Symptom-Sea-Body (P.W.-No. 40), 1972
Jiro¯ Takamatsu, Compound, 1972
On Kawara, I Got Up At …, 1974 –75
Video Earth Tokyo, Video Picnic, 1975
Chu Enoki, Went to Hungary with HANGARI, 1977
Hiroshi Sugimoto, Radio City Music Hall, 1977
Project title: History Is Written from Someone Else’s Perspective, Someone You
Don’t Know. Making Our Own History Requires Each of Us to Rewrite It from Our
Own Point of View (Revisited)
Date: 2015
Format: Drawing
Components: Pencil on paper
Size: 9 × 12 in. each (set of ten)
Atsuko Tanaka, Work (Bell), 1955
Toshio Matsumoto and Jikken Kobo, Bicycle in Dream, 1956
Hi Red Center, One-Thousand Yen Note Trial, 1964
Nagisa Oshima, Diary of Sinjuku Thief, 1968
Takuma Nakahira, The 10th Tokyo Biennale: Between Man and Matter, 1970
Nobuo Yamanaka, To Project a Film of Filmed River on a River, 1971
Takuma Nakahira, Overflow, 1974
Kishio Suga, Differentiated Movement — Continuous Existence, 1976
The Play, Thunder, 1977
Kuniichi Shima, Event at Keihin Kyuko Line, as a workshop at B-semi Learning System, 1979
In the past I was often shown images of post-war Japanese contemporary art by foreign
curators and asked how they relate to my practice. At first I could not understand the kind
of thinking that tried to connect my practice to my identity as a Japanese person in this
way. I struggled with this, as I had actually never thought of my art as being bound by a
distinct lineage to Japan. Yet despite my initial reluctance, I recognized that since I was
born and raised in Japan, I must have received some influence from its art history. This led
me to look back in search of my local history, and precedents that could relate to my artistic
practice. I selected images of post-war Japanese contemporary art that depicted staged
events or actions performed outside the conventional exhibition space. These were actions
by artists who found alternative possibilities for thinking critically about the process of
making art in everyday activities. For example, the famous action Passage (1956) by
Saburo Murakami of the Gutai Art Association; or the outdoor project Current of
Contemporary Art (1969), for which the artist collective The Play rode a raft shaped like a
giant arrow; and the Video Picnic (1975) of Video Earth Tokyo, involving passengers on a
train in Tokyo. While these were instances of institutional critique, they also provided a
means for viewing our everyday lives from a different angle. In this way, I found links to my
current practice in post-war Japanese art. In essence, this was an act of reconstructing my
own personal art history.
But ultimately where is there a truly objective history? Historians conduct research, gather
materials and do their best to write a history that is rooted in fact. However, there are
necessarily facts that get overlooked by the historians, who certainly have their own biases.
If all the history books in the world are fundamentally reflective of this arbitrariness, then
perhaps it is upon each of us to write our own individual histories. Perhaps the aggregate of
all these individual histories, when assembled together, will just begin to approach the idea
of an objective history.
September 2014; based on an artist statement written for the project in August 2010.
Project title: Soaps in Their Hands
Date: 2008
Format: Collaboration, photo documentation
Location: Artist’s family home, Mashiko, Tochigi Prefecture
Participants: Artist’s parents
This is a photograph of the bathroom in my family home. What I would like to be noted are
the numerous used-up pieces of soap collected in the dish. As the soap becomes small
and difficult to use, a replacement is brought out, and then at some point these used-up
soaps, all about the same size, are left on the dish. When I was still living with my parents I
would get rid of these soaps, or try to re-use them by squeezing several together into a
single lump, but since leaving home I have returned to find the same situation every time I
go back to visit.
One day I found new meaning in this sight. These soaps were in a sense an accumulation
of “useless shapes,” and behind their formation as such were the four hands of my parents
Put another way, you could call this a sculptural practice as collaborative work. Of course it
is not conscious, but a kind of formative sensibility has emerged from within my parents’
unconscious actions.
My relationship to this soap could be likened to the relationship between art critic and
artwork. How can I describe the change in perspective that occurred through these soaps?
Instead of using language to describe this experience, I have tried to do so through my art
practice ever since. Reclaiming everyday actions, as such, as sculptural practice.
March 2014
Project title: Everything Is Everything
Date: 2006
Format: Action, video documentation (eight videos, between one and two min each),
installation
Location: Taipei
Participants: Hideki Aoyama, Teppei Soutome, and Koki Tanaka
Everyday we make plans and then attempt to engineer our lives in accordance with those
plans. In most cases the plans fail, and do not go the way we envision. This is not to say
that we should live our lives without plans. Were we to do so, we would soon find ourselves
at a dead-end. As such, the important thing is the wisdom to find solutions on a case-bycase basis. Problems become apparent in each instance, and we can only lead our lives by
dealing with each problem as it comes.
Suppose we understand each of the objects around us as a life problem that requires
confronting and solving. How would we go about dealing with such problems? Would we
apply a completely new idea to solving them, or would we try using an established method?
And it is certainly possible to deal with them in a completely indifferent way. Without
worrying about the original utility built into an object (and there are actually some things
that do not suggest any utility based on their appearance), we could carry out the actions
that it affords. If you wanted to crush it in your hand, you could do so; if you wanted to toss
it, you could toss it. If you wanted to pile it up, you could do so, and if you wanted to fold it
up, you could fold it.This is not about a new way of seeing the object. These actions are in
fact already integrated into the objects. What this sequence of actions reflects is nothing
more than an honest attitude toward the objects. It is neither deliberate nor aimless. It is an
approach that falls somewhere between the two. This is the definition of an alternative.
August 2014
Project title: Take Some Plastic Cups and Just Fall It Down Many Times until All the
Cups Standing Up
Date: 2007
Format: Action, video documentation (40 sec)
Location: Apartment, Paris
When an incident occurs that we think could only happen once, we call it an accident. But if
we suppose that no incident in this world is ever repeated, then all moments, all incidents,
are accidents.
The observation of everyday accidents: when we see steam rising from a new electric
stove after some water happens to spill on it; or when some plastic cups falling from a table
all happen to land standing up; or when we see toilet paper unspooling as it rolls across the
floor, we probably feel these are trivial things. The specifics of video make it well suited for
documenting such chance events. Video is an apparatus that can preserve all accidents,
and repeat them over and over.
March 2014
Project title: Painting to the Public (Toyota Camry 1998, Los Angeles)
Date: 2012 – 14
Format: Unannounced performance
Components: Painting (20 × 24 inches), video documentation (22 sec)
Project title: Painting to the Public
Date: 2004 – 14
Format: Research photographs
Project title: Each and Every
Date: 2003
Format: Video documentation (30 min loop)
Location: Zensai Ya Restaurant TANTO, Tokamachi, Niigata
Participant: Kazuya Shimizu
Project title: Walking Through
Date: 2009
Format: Action, video documentation (55 min)
Location: Guangzhou
Created with Vitamin Creative Space, Guangzhou
Project title: Beer
Date: 2004
Format: Action, video documentation (39 sec)
Project title: Precarious Tasks #14: Collective knowledge for an equal society
Date: 2015
Format: Collective Acts
Location: Everywhere
Sometimes we effortlessly come together as a society, with all of us moving in the same
direction. But sometimes we drift apart. When that happens we won’t listen to what we
don’t want to hear, and we make snap decisions before slowing down to think. This may
happen when we face something really awful, like the recent Charlie Hebdo massacre. But
can’t we still simply exist together as individuals, even if we hate each other? Is that
impossible?
We live in an unequal society. Economical inequality is a serious problem, but we are also
divided by other issues like gender, religion, ethnicity, culture, social situation, and context.
These factors divide us into narrow minded groups and do not allow us the freedom to
pause and rethink our situation. Is there is anything we can do to repair the devastated
social bond of equality? Can we be more generous to each other? Of course this is no easy
task. I actually don’t know what to do, but I believe there must be something, some sort of
hint somewhere that will help us. It doesn’t need to be a brilliant idea, it may be something
small, something difficult to discern, perhaps even a trivial part of our everyday lives. It
could be anywhere: in a magazine, a comic book, in poetry, popular music, a photo album,
a cook book, or a computer manual. Could you give me a hand in finding it? Send me
anything you think might be a hint for helping our society recover, please make notes or
underline passages in a book, then send scans or copies of these to me.

Project title: Provisional Studies: Workshop #1

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