“Making” realized that trip
KEINO Yuka

The implementation method of our artist-in-residence program was updated in 2020. Now artists/participants can choose the period of their stay according to the content of their projects that they want to realize with ACAC and hold their solo exhibitions of their projects (although holding an exhibition is not mandatory). The year 2022 was the third year with that method, and the idea for the program’s theme “Making Things” was taken from Tim INGOLD’s book, MAKING: Anthropology, Archaeology, Art and Architecture (2013, its Japanese version was published in 2017 from Sayusha) as was noted in our program’s statement. Ingold questions potential of “making” while he has dialogues and answers questions in the material world. The program concept shifted to “things” rather than “making” after we had dialogues with guest judge Hiraku Suzuki. The origin of the word “thing” comes from “meeting” or “assembly” for people to solve a problem, and it was in concert with our situation of restriction on people’s movement and the physical division of countries due to the worldwide spread of COVID19 and the ongoing war (as of January 2023) after Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24, 2022.
　　What was different for 2022 compared to the last two years under the influence of the corona virus was that the international restrictions on movement was softened under the measures of “living with corona” and artists based abroad can actually come to Japan. About one year ago, public facilities were closed to prevent the spread of the virus in Aomori Prefecture due to the increase in the number of patients, so the present situation seems miraculous. Basically, we very much liked overseas artists to choose the length of their stay just like artists from Japan, but at the point of March 2022 when we were preparing for the application procedures of the program, we did not know when the situation would change suddenly. Thus, we set the time limit of one month stay for the overseas artists so that we could cope with the postponement of their trip to Japan or in case they have to return to their home countries. A big change that COVID19 brought to us was easier exchange of information with people living overseas via online communications and meetings. As ACAC is difficult to access in terms of location, we were attracted to and saw potential in such communications, and we provided one quota for an overseas artist participating online.
　　After about two years and a half, Vanessa ENRÍQUEZ came to Aomori from abroad and stayed here for a month to work, and it made us become aware of important things when thinking about what a residence program was, although it was quite simple. Usually, the curators provide artists with full support such as driving them to wherever they need to go, and we talk about things other than their residency like our personal lives, backgrounds, private issues and problems, which are different from mere exchange of information, and it was a precious time in which we could get to know unexpected side of a person or perspective they had. In the moment of looking at the scenery in Aomori, we were certainly going on the same trip together. One month is short. The shared time, however, was not confined to the residency production at the site, and it seemed to have built mutual understanding between individuals, who wanted to continue to express while living in different scenery and environment. It also nurtured love and emotions for people and places, while the people included the residency artists. Natan DIACON-FURTADO, who participated in the online residency, had been developing his projects in relations with others, and conveyed his excitement about creating with the other participants despite the time difference. While there was certainly a language barrier and our communication was limited because he was not here, participants of his workshop spontaneously tried to read the intension of the artist, and a kind of imagination and the resulting gap as the participants tried to manage it talking with each other seemed to have made it more interesting. Through the works of the participants in the workshop and the exhibition, we sometimes realized why the artist was interested in the online communications with them.
　　In our program, implementation of an exhibition is optional, but most artists have held exhibitions in the past because there is the gallery space designed by ANDO Tadao and we feel that we want to show their activities to as many people as possible. Although the participating artists’ media, materials, and their exhibitions within the phases of their projects differed, they shared common attitudes of trying to shed light on their steps in the world they live in, trying to touch the depth of the world via opening themselves to the other, through literally “making” something in the environment including the ACAC site, architecture, and the land of Aomori. Some people questioned why we persistently held several “solo exhibitions” in the connected Gallery A space. While we take it seriously as to how we convey and open each painstaking project to the viewer, we would like to continue the ACAC’s trip with someone.

The Gathering and Separating of Differences
MURAKAMI Aya

Since the pandemic began in 2020, we curators had been searching for the best way to carry out our residence program remotely; for us, Natan DIACON-FURTADO’s project was a revelation. In his lighthearted workshop and exhibition, participants were invited, after a few words of guidance, to discover and create their own patterns. From time to time, Diacon-Furtado would check in via monitor or through communication with staff, a kind of experimental setup which not only allowed him to make the project collaborative, but also made up for his physical absence from the venue.
  In YOSHIDA Shinya’s Something that holds death, the image of a Jomon-era (ca 14,000-300 BCE) jar-coffin containing a woman’s remains was shown alongside that of another kind of “coffin”: a canister used for the temporary storage of nuclear waste. At first glance this seemed to be a playful juxtaposition, but buried just beneath the surface of the tranquil monochrome screen was the anger of someone who had seen his home prefecture become an unwilling tool of national policy. Retold as allegory, the story that emerged from these two intersecting realities caught viewers off guard, lending a strangeness to the truths of our modern age.
  Vanessa ENRÍQUEZ’s work, made out of VHS tape, offered a multitude of perspectives. The parabolic arcs induced by gravity could be described as drawings in space, or – if seen as surfaces – even as sculptures, the thickness of their lines changing depending on the angle of viewing. Enríquez used everything around her as cues for her drawings, her curiosity evinced by the additional works she created as the exhibition progressed.
  HASHIMOTO Akiko presented an installation structured around pencil drawings, utilizing the different ceiling heights of ACAC’s galleries and even the light and shadows coming through the windows to connect the “here” of the exhibition space with the “somewhere else” of her drawings. To increase the points of contact with visitors, she also conducted private tours which included a special encounter with a glass spoon. There was an almost ceremonial mood as one was called out of the gallery space and into the imaginary world of her drawings, creating an intimate moment between person, space, and artwork.
  MAEDA Kohei likened the foothills of the surrounding Hakkoda Mountains to the “feet” of a mountain god, and thus viewed his project as a kind of “foot massage.” Just like the reflection of the toucher and the touched that occurs in reflexology (a kind of communication), Maeda’s various exercises, in which participants gathered to “warm” the feet of the mountains, in turn called forth the earth-shaking power of Hakkoda.
  This year’s residence program not only succeeded in bringing artists and ordinary citizens together across national borders; for the artists themselves, it also served as a stop on their separate journeys to new and different places. We at ACAC, who offer the open AIR program to help individual projects such as these stand out, can say that the results have turned out just as we had hoped. To gather here also means to separate, and likewise to leave here also means to gather again with different people.

The Acts Repeated Here
TAKEDA Ayari

By nature, artist-in-residence programs require the meeting and movement of people. And movement is also a fact of life for the artists who participate in them.
  Beginning in 2022, with the gradual easing of the restrictions that were put in place to prevent the spread of COVID, the barriers to meeting and movement also began to fall. But we had grown accustomed to this unstable situation, and it had become difficult to think back on the ways of meeting and moving which had been so commonplace before the pandemic in the same way. So what, then, should an AIR that serves as a vessel for such meeting and movement look like? I, having just begun my first year at ACAC, felt that I had to view it as both a vehicle and a vessel in order to find the answer.
  For the first time in about two and a half years, we were able to invite artists from overseas. This year’s program featured five artists: three from inside Japan, and two from outside, one of whom participated remotely.
  The latter, Natan DIACON-FURTADO, led off the program. He responded to the problem of his physical absence from ACAC by using art as a medium for inspiring collaboration. Beginning in October, his “Fieldwork at ACAC: Collaborative Exhibition Lab” invited visitors to change the appearance of the exhibition space by repositioning various structures – called “modules” – which had been placed around the room, thereby contrasting the scenery he had created against that created by the visitors’ indeterminate actions. Although Diacon-Furtado was not here in person, I cannot go without mentioning the staff who courteously relayed his directions to the visitors; I suppose this was another way in which his art became a medium for collaboration.
  From October, the other artists came to begin their residencies. While not strictly required in the AIR program, all of this year’s artists wished to hold exhibitions, and those who participated in person spent their first days at ACAC getting ready. Some worked in the gallery and the Creative Hall, while others set out to conduct research throughout the prefecture. Naturally, each of their activities proceeded in different directions, but always ended up returning to ACAC in the form of exhibitions or other events. These activities may begin a movement from one place to the next, as each is succeeded by another.
  The artists who gather here, and the people who come to participate in their projects, create temporary fractal structures before moving on to other places when the program ends. This moving, meeting, and moving again is what brings ACAC to life.
  We must keep thinking about how and what our program should be; at the same time, this metabolism, this repeated moving and meeting of people, means that ACAC will probably remain in a state of constant change.