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.