Invention of Memory, and Light

“Thy word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path”. (The Old Testament, Psalms, 119:105). Isabella BIRD, known for writing Unbeaten Tracks in Japan (1880) in which she chronicled her experiences travelling around Japan during the early Meiji period, quoted this biblical phrase when she was in Kuroishi in Aomori Prefecture. She was eager to see Tanabata (Star Festival) and Nebuta Nagashi (Floating Lantern Festival) but was having difficulty making her way there in the darkness as, at the time, Kuroishi had no street lights. She recalled the phrase when an innkeeper lit a lantern. Around the same time that Bird lived, NIETZSCHE had declared that “God is dead” (The Gay Science (1882)), coming to the realization that there is no absolute perspective or value. What is the light that guides us and illuminates the obscure ground we live on in the 21st century? We need to find it by ourselves.

　　During her 40-day artist residency at the Aomori Contemporary Art Centre (ACAC), MURAKAMI Miki frequently visited the mountains and scenic areas of Aomori Prefecture. On each visit, she drove her car, then walked to her destination or the summit from the tourist parking lot.

　　Murakami focused on a number of aspects as she visited several places: the open-air sculptures scattered throughout the forest near ACAC and the surrounding mountain environments; Antoine BOURDELLE’s statue of Adam MICKIEWICZ, installed at the Aomori Public University and pointing to the Hakkoda Mountains; the story of Princess Anju in the legend of Sansho Dayu on Mount Iwaki; sacred mountains, once forbidden to women due to mountain worship, and its remnant, Ubaishi, a rock that marked the sacred boundary. Murakami also visited volcanoes, hot springs, Mount Osore, the war cenotaph, and a Self-Defense Force radar base, as well as researching “Green Tuff”, an orogenic movement that occurred about 26 million to 5 million years ago, and the geological formations and landforms that resulted from it. Murakami travelled along the paths that Isabella Bird used and noted the landmarks and guideposts that record events and indicate who has passed by, including bears. She also visited The Statue of Maidens, by TAKAMURA Kotaro, located on the shore of Lake Towada, which was a major tourist attraction after the war.

　　Murakami chose the lecture performance as her means of sharing the experience of reaching and passing through each location, then moving on to the next one. She chose to emphasise the experience itself, rather than the reason she went to each place. According to Rike FRANK’s discussion about the gallery performance of American poet, and pioneer of the Lecture Performance, David ANTIN, “modes of communication, forms of subjectivity and mediation are nevertheless indubitably at the heart of the event: or, to put it another way, the focus is on processes of ‘remembering recording representing’.” (*1)
　　In her lecture performance (which could be called a ‘tour performance’ since the audience re-experiences the location with Murakami), a copy of a map of Aomori Prefecture was placed in front of Murakami, and a thin plastic sheet (similar to a garbage bag) was laid on top of it. The screen on the back of the room showed a slideshow of Murakami’s photographs, taken in various locations with a film camera. A small monitor on the side of the room shows changes on the desk, projected by a close-up video camera.

　　Murakami performed several characteristic acts as she described her experiences, including blowing a Japanese knotweed whistle, which she’d used to let bears know where she was. She used vinyl to model the shape of the mountains she climbed. She chewed gum as she talked, then spat it out, and used the gum as a bonding agent when she placed objects on the vinyl- map. These objects were clay material Murakami collected from the mountains she visited and later fired into pottery, arbitrarily shaped to loosely symbolize various regions, such as the oddly-shaped rocks in Hotokegaura.

　　The repeating sound of the bear whistle pierced the space momentarily, then disappeared. The piles of vinyl quickly changed shape, with their original form eventually becoming unrecognizable. Wet with saliva, the chewing gum became more than a mere medium, while the clay objects stood upright for a moment or two before they tumbled. In other words, everything was portrayed as a cycle of constant change. Conversely, many things that appear unchanged were also readily inserted. These things are words written by people from the past, who once stood in the same place as Murakami or in a similar environment.

　　These words, referred to by Murakami on the spot, became at the same time, like a kind of ‘guidepost’ that made her experience more concrete through the past presence of others. This could be seen not only in the quoted texts, but also in her insatiable interest in the objects erected on the surface of the earth, such as monuments, outdoor sculptures and rocks placed by humans, which were peppered throughout the lecture performance. However, even outdoor sculptures, which we may think remain forever unchanged, deteriorate, and we, the readers of the text, change as well. Moreover, by setting herself apart from the tourists, Murakami captured the objects in her compositions and took self-portraits. She photographed them as “proof” of her presence. Either that, or she used photographs as memory devices.(*2)

　　Now, let’s consider the consistent interest in, or commitment to, ‘sculpture’ that Murakami may have had. Having majored in sculpture at university and graduate school, Murakami dealt with the ‘memory’ of herself and others in her creative activities. She also turned her attention to ‘sculpture’ formed and installed in man-made structures and nature, as she did in A piece for cake. (2017), when she referred to historical tomb mounds. Again, “guideposts”, in the form of outdoor public sculptures, such as The Statue of Maidens, appeared throughout the performance. In addition to the visible “guideposts”, mountain-climbing routes that have been trodden by many people can also be considered as jointly shaped. In this regard, what we recognize and set foot on as “mountains” can be seen as “sculptures” of nature from an artificial perspective.

　　In a sense, Murakami accepted those shaped by countless others to be of equal value and invented a place to “remember, record, and represent” her own experiences, using the lecture performance as a memory device for her journey and making it accessible by others. While receiving illumination from the physical legacies of those in the past, Murakami also emits her own light, which will, one day guide another …

　　The question still lingers: Why does Murakami climb mountains? Shigeko KUBOTA, who, since the 1970s, had also been exploring the experience of herself and the viewers, and developed the medium of “video sculpture”, responded to the same question as follows:
“Why do I climb the mountain? Not because it is there, – a colonialist/imperialist notion – but to perceive. To see.” (*3)

*1 Rike Frank, “When Form Starts Talking: On Lecture-Performances”, Afterall Summer Issue 33, 2013, pp.4-15.
*2 “Photographs are not so much instrument of memory as an invention of it or a replacement.” Susan SONTAG, On Photography, 1977, Penguin, p.165.
*3 Shigeko Kubota, Video Sculpture, 1991, New York: American Museum of Moving Image, translated by Manabu Kondo (from the caption of the exhibition Viva Video!: The Art and Life of Shigeko Kubota at the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo)

Photo: OYAMADA Kuniya
Text by KEINO Yuka, Curator of Aomori Contemporary Art Centre, Aomori Public University