EN
‘Radial felicity for our past and future’
Workshop Planning / Exhibition / Performance
Residence program, PLUS: A Project for an Aging World
Curation: Taifun Project (Düsseldorf, Germany)
Aug. – Nov. 2021
The German – Japanese co-research project in Düsseldorf. The project artists and researchers proposed alternative perspective on ‘Ageing’. I joined as a graphic designer.
Is the time not a lineal and absolute fact, but an embodied cognition in radiation? And does these time recognition effect on how we receive the ageing in our society?
It was the question came up to my mind. In this residence program, I proposed the idea through non-verbal forms, material making, workshops, exhibition and performance;
1. Charcoal making from found aged woods in Pyrénées
2. Duo blind drawing workshops with these charcoals at several nursing homes in Düsseldorf
3. Interpretation workshop with drawings. Nursing home residences Interpreted drawings in words, colours and their own voice.
4. Documentary videos on drawings, exhibition and a voice and movement performance by myself.
The final day of the residence, I had a dream. The night sky was filled with old womens’ voices. I was a sound wave itself there. When I try to listen to their voices, I started fusing into their voices. It felt a slight fear but soon I started feeling comfortable to be disappeared. It was maybe the biggest gift given by the people I met in this residence program.
JA
「祝祭の射程」
Workshop Planning / Exhibition / Performance
Residence program, PLUS: A Project for an Aging World
Aug. – Nov. 2021
デュッセルドルフで開催された、日独共同のレジデンスプログラム「PLUS: A Project for an Aging World」は、「老い」を科学、哲学、社会学、芸術など様々な観点から考察し、議論や作品の形で社会に投げかける研究プロジェクトで、私はデザイナーとして参加しました。
時間は、線的で絶対的な現象ではなく、放射状に拡張された身体性（とその認知）なのではないか？というのが私自身への問いかけでした。そして、この時間認識は「老い」をいかにして個人や社会が認知・受容するかに影響を及ぼすのではないでしょうか？レジデンス滞在では、こうした考えを、ワークショップや展示、パフォーマンスといった、以下の4つのプロセスで、言葉以外の様々な形で構成・表現しました。
1. ピレネー山脈の森から採取した古木から、木炭を製作
2. デュッセルドルフのいくつかの老人ホームにて、製作した木炭を使ったデュオ・ドローイングのワークショップを実施
3. それらのドローイングを、老人ホーム間で交換し、視覚的な情報を、言葉、コンポジション、色、音声に翻訳し、参加者自身の表現として再生するワークショップの実施
4. ここまでの成果をまとめた映像作品、インスタレーションの展示、また、私自身が滞在中に贈与された体験を、「所作と声」に変換して再生するパフォーマンス
最後の日の夜は、不思議な夢をみました。夜空は、たくさんの老人の声で満たされています。私はその声を聞こうとすると、音の中に広がって消えてしまいます。私の存在は、音そのものでした。しかし、老人の声を聞くうちに、自分の存在は音の中に溶解してゆきました。かすかな畏れはすぐに、心地よさに変容してゆきました。この不思議な夢を見たことが、レジデンスの一番大きな成果かもしれません。
Festivity of our past felicitates our future.
Now, a point we are standing is the centre to the future and past.
Festivity draws a circle around us.
I will talk to you about our forest. As the metaphor of society. I’m making living on graphic design.
Not only deciding colour and shape. I listen to my client and realise something emerging inside of their heart. To communicate with others.
Some decades ago, my first client was a very kind man who was working on funeral planning and grief support with full of flowers. I was fascinated and put full energy into it for 5 years.
But I couldn’t deny a big doubt inside of me. Why our funeral is industrialised far away from family and friends? We should get back this important festivity for our past to our future. But how?
I have tried to face this question through many of my projects with many beautiful people since then.
So now, how can we see the ageing world?
What is ageing? What is time?
Ageing is simply a gradually slow change of our life form. But many people has fear of death, or discrimination from their society — an unproductive old person!
Maybe we see our individual too much based on an isolated spot.
Like a poor skinny tall cider tree who should stand alone without any co-living creatures supporting her ground.
Let’s look at our society as a healthy forest. A parent tree is deeply connected to her/his child trees through bacterias and fungus underground. If we define the forest itself as one life form, just like jellyfish or we humans formed with 60 trillion cells and surrounding microbiome, the death of the parent tree is not a death in solitude, but a process of the energy succession to other trees and creatures. And this succession process has been going on since we are born.
Not only the physical heat and energy as organics but our spirituality — culture, dignity, gaze and shape, —this uncountable spiritual richness is slowly fusing in between us. That is our society in the process of ageing. Just the same as the entropy in an Expanding Universe.
For this project, I designed some workshops to reach another perspective to see our society as a warm forest.
1. Charcoal making
2. Duo Blind Drawing workshop
It was a blind duo drawing with single charcoal. I fired some charcoals made of Pyrenean forest old trees almost being resolved into the earth. Charcoal is a conserved energy form of the forest. This workshop was done at Caritas and Diakonie, nursing homes in Düsseldorf. 2 people sit facing each other at the table. A White paper and charcoal on it. They close their eyes, place fingers on single charcoal and start drawing. They need to reach further on the paper without any conflict. Which allows a sympathetic energy flow in between them. With their eyes closed, a piece of paper transforms into a deep night forest. Soon they cross each individual border. This cross-marginal movement leaves energetic strokes on the paper.
3. Workshop: Interpretation and sympathy with the 5 senses
In this workshop, the nursing home residences explored how we can inhale others artwork, discover a connection to our 5 senses and exhale as our own artwork.
We explored what kind of colour, material, sound, rhythm, words and smell do we feel from the monochrome charcoal drawings created by other people at other nursing homes. It was the observation, practice and discussion of this translation process in our mind.
We started with a simple Haiku poem session. Choose 3 words on a small piece of paper and place them on the drawing. The second work was with the colour. And the third work was with their own voice. All participants found drawings of a water flow and waves on the sea. They sang the sea freely, without any prejudgement of their voice. Just enjoyed the beauty of their nature.
5. The final exhibition and performance
‘TIME SHIFTS’
3-day group performance and exhibition
Yuko Kaseki, Klaus Boegel, Miki Kadokura, Jan Grashof, Motonori Inagaki
1 – 3 October 2021
Weltkunstzimmer, Düsseldorf
I placed myself as a person equal to the audience. I walked around drawings very carefully, with full intention. Engaged me into the circle. Clearing myself and received each drawing through breathing. I voiced 6 times to expand myself to the past and future. To respect drawings and to whom engaged to. It was a formula to re-generate our my time scale.
