Participated in Artist in Residence Program 2024 “SPINNING SCAPES”

I was in high school, preparing for the university entrance exams with the hope of becoming a photographer, when I learnt about the Department of Intermedia Art at Tokyo University of the Arts. I was interested in the wide range of media choices the department offered, including photography, and I enrolled there. Before I knew it, my work became focused on visual media in general (including photography). A major turning point in my creative practice came in graduate school, when my advisor taught me about the field of ‘cultural anthropology’. Working in contemporary art, I was becoming uncomfortable with what I sensed to be a growing detachment of ‘art’ from ‘human life’. After being exposed to the ideas of cultural anthropology in graduate school, I felt that I had found an important solution and approach to the question of what ‘art’ meant for me. I think I had made a loose connection between my interest in cultural anthropology and the ‘documentary’ form, which I had been interested in since my teens, and from there I began the process of transforming this connection into my own unique style of art.

At the time, I had actually been thinking about using the Tsugaru Straits as a theme for my next work, so there was a connection with Aomori. This was also at a time when I had been thinking about branching out into different formats like workshops and performances. The application guidelines, which encouraged active engagement with local residents and students, suggested an opportunity for me to take my work in such new directions. In addition, I had never participated in a residence programme before, and I felt that doing so in an environment with a coherent, well-organised system – one which incorporates collaboration with curators, exhibitions, and public relations – would help me to broaden the scope of my practice, expand the range of my expression, and, ultimately, give something back to the people who support me in my work. Of course, ACAC’s residency programmes also have a high reputation among art professionals, and I was sure that being able to focus on my work while being immersed in that environment would be quite rewarding for me.

I had previous experience living on-site in specific locations, conducting field research while interacting with the people who lived there. However, this was the first time I had ever joined together with local residents to create something as part of a collaborative ‘workshop’, which for this AIR involved writing and singing a chorus piece about the Tsugaru Straits. I enlisted the help of musician KOMATSU Kazumichi for track production and composition support, and invited the citizens of Oma Town to participate. In my practice, I always place great importance on making sure that those involved feel as comfortable as possible, and that their involvement is essential. However, in an area where interest in art had not been especially high to begin with, it was extremely difficult to bring everyone together towards a shared purpose and motivate their creative impulses. I was pouring energy into everything, including my research, but it took a huge amount of energy to gather participants for the workshop. How could I get people interested? How could I make them feel personally invested? How could I make it enjoyable for them? How could I make it meaningful for them?
As I gathered participants, answering these questions required a process of socialising the meaning of making art, along with the crucial process of removing any self-indulgence from artistic production. Meanwhile, I realised that attempts to enhance the work sometimes conflicted with attempts to directly incorporate the actual voices and opinions of the local residents. As I made my choices, wavering between these two poles, I sensed that the ‘meanings and priorities of what I do through art’ were beginning to become clear. The points of emphasis differed between the song, the photographs, the videos, and every other element of the work, but I think that I made some adjustments in the final stages in order to achieve a kind of ‘universalization’. What should I do to give the work something that can resonate with anyone, even someone far away from Aomori, who had nothing to do with making it? I feel like there were moments like this, which reaffirmed for me the significance of having consistently chosen ‘art’ over ‘documentary’.

This was the first time that I had created a work which incorporated the physical body of the spectator into its structure, insofar as the video which had to be projected onto someone’s back in order to be seen clearly. But I got the impression that the people who only saw it secondhand on social media enjoyed it as well. I felt that it was important to get creative with the structure of the exhibition in order to achieve the ‘universalization’ that I mentioned earlier, so it was encouraging to have those positive reactions even from people who didn’t actually see the work in person. With art museums outside the big cities, sometimes the exhibition periods are short, and of course the very nature of an exhibition implies that only those who can come are able to see it. I believe that, particularly in today’s digital society, the exhibition is facing a crisis of meaning in this sense. Despite all this, I felt a renewed determination to continue producing and creating works that can form some sort of connection with society; works that people can take something home from even if they couldn’t actually come to see them in person.
There were a few other unexpected but pleasant surprises. The visitors devised their own ways of viewing and moving between the different artists’ pieces; for example, some of them used the magnifying glasses prepared for Béatrice DIDIER’s work to look at my slide photographs. I was delighted to see just how diverse the ways of appreciating art could be, even transcending the intentions of the works’ creators. And it was also a joy to witness the unique chemistry that can only be produced in group exhibitions, as opposed to solo ones.

The time I shared with the artists and curators in the Residential Hall at ACAC really left an impression on me. It was a bit of a strange time: the Hall had a real international feel, and I always had to communicate in English, so at times I felt like I couldn’t quite pin down exactly where I was. Added to that was the remoteness of the environment – in the middle of the forest during the time of year with heavy snowfall – and that stimulated a sense of the wild within me. The time we spent eating and living together was wonderful; we could leave our respective social positions behind for a moment, and just build closer relationships on a human level. Of course, we could also learn more about each other’s work and research, and broaden our views of the world. I thought a lot about snow when I was staying at the Residential Hall, and those thoughts led to the work I produced during my next residency at a different facility.

Actually, when I was having trouble gathering volunteers to participate in the songwriting workshop, there were times when I felt that perhaps I didn’t need to go so far out of my way to hold the workshop in such circumstances. (The necessity of the workshop rested on the self-motivation of the participants, so I really didn’t want to force anyone to do it.) However, the guest judge, KONDO Ryosuke, gave me some words of encouragement, saying that he thought it would be a shame if that decision were to deprive the work of an opportunity for further development. And when those who finally ended up participating told me afterwards that they enjoyed the workshop, and were glad that they had participated, I was really happy that I stuck with it. When you take charge of something and push it forward, you need to consider the many people who are involved, all the more so when you are working with people who are not normally familiar with art. Am I forcing anyone to do too much? Am I hurting anyone’s feelings? It is essential to carefully consider questions like this, but on the other hand, encouraging people to just get up and go for it might also be the push that provides them with the opportunity for some new insight. This experience has given me the drive to keep going, to look at these challenges optimistically as someone responsible for creating such opportunities (while first, of course, always aiming to provide something compelling enough to elicit spontaneous participation).

Translation: Ethan SAMES