Poetics of Relation - resonanz

Project video:

https://youtu.be/9hmsEkvWGPc

【concept】

― Why is it so hard for people just to be with one another?

This question lies at the very core of my practice.

Today, our “relationships” are quietly approaching their demise.

Beyond deconstruction and criticism of the Other, I seek to propose an alternative way of being.

This work emerges from my daily life in a shared house—our home—which I came to reencounter in the wake of my mother’s passing.

People from all over Japan visit this house daily to gather around the table with its residents.  Even in everyday life with frictions and imbalances sometimes, we occasionally encounter moments where the boundaries between self and other begin to dissolve.

What arises there is a space of being-with (共在), untethered from blood ties or any social background.

In the days after my mother’s death, it was not family or relatives but the housemates who remained by her side—and mine.

I was saved by them. And more than that, I witnessed many others, unknowingly, being saved by the very presence of our home.

It was only later that I realized, this might be something quietly disappearing from the world.

In contemporary society, violence through anonymity, disembodied communication, the optimization and self-surveillance of the individual, algorithmic isolation through filter bubbles, and the rise of xenophobic narratives—

all contribute to the proliferation of “faceless relations.”

The world just like Hartmut Rosa describes—of acceleration and instrumentalization—has arrived.

We are headed toward a  “alienation(Hegel).”

It is precisely in such a time that we must reconsider what it means to be in a "living relationship".

In his theoretical framework, Hartmut Rosa introduces Resonanz (resonance) as a key concept in response to alienation, defining it as a relational mode characterized by sensitivity, responsivity, transformability, and non-controllability.

I attempt to spatially and structurally reconfigure this idea of resonance as an experiential installation.

【Composition】

The work consists of two rooms, separated by a single wall and identically arranged.

In one room, only objects—furniture and daily items—are placed.

In the other, within the same spatial layout, several residents of the shared house and I live and receive others as we would in daily life.

I imagine this space as one in which we brew coffee, share sweets, dine lightly with wine, speak with quiet tension, relax, and begin to exchange casual conversations.

Viewers may find themselves coincidentally beside strangers, sharing moments of presence—whether in silence or in dialogue, with or without eye contact, all states equally permitted.

In the quiet that unfolds, the air becomes the site of something nascent: the beginning of relation.

Gradually, the very question of whether this can be considered an artwork or not.

What remains is a trace of something undeniable: I was with someone.

The other room, though identical in form, remains devoid of encounter—and thus reverts to a mere space.

This juxtaposition becomes a structural proposition:

that it is not objects, but the event and act of relation that constitute artistic value.

Here, the work challenges the very definition of art through a reversal of form and emergence.

Admittedly, given the temporal and spatial constraints of the exhibition, it may not be possible to reach the depth of dissolution between self and other that I sometimes experience in daily life.

But even so, within the space, all identities—artist, viewer, juror—are momentarily suspended(bracketing), and we face only the cup of coffee, the meal, and the human being across from us.

It unfolds as an enacted reality, vitally present within the exhibition context, no longer as a mere everyday occurrence but as something that arises within the very framework of exhibition.

I call this form of relation, the Poetics of Relation, borrowing the term from Édouard Glissant.

This notion refers to a mode of being-with that precedes language: the quiet appearance of presence, of encounter.

Where relational aesthetics has emphasized the being of relation, I propose a shift toward its happening—toward emergence.

This shift entails a displacement of the institutional axis:

from “viewing” to “being-with,” from “thinking” to “attunement,” from “documentation” to “transformation.”

The creation of events with strong situatedness generates within the exhibition space a fundamental non-recordability—an aliveness inherent to the event that alters its form the very moment it is observed.

【Within the context of art】

This is not an escape from the institution, nor a criticism from the outside.

Rather, it is an attempt to introduce a crack from within.

Not deconstruction, but re-relationing—a constructive critique.

It offers an alternative form of experience that is generated and lived inside the institution.

In this way, being-with itself becomes an alternative, yet critical, counteraction toward the world and toward art.

To gently bring the Poetics of Relation—those quiet, breathing interstices—into the institutional framework.

This is how I continue to affirm the significance of the practice that has kept me alive.

It is my way of being with the world, here, now.

【Note: About the video submitted for this application】

Please note that the accompanying videos and photographs are offered only as supplementary references, in response to institutional requirements.

They are not the artwork itself, but merely traces of its periphery.

The core of this work lies in phenomena that occur through strong situatedness and resonance, which cannot be mediated through media.