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TeamLab

Posted on by nr

NR · WORLD
Published · Online

Feature · TeamLab
Words · Nicola Barrett

“We human beings have emotions and we also have something we can’t explain with words – it’s cool, it’s beautiful and it’s fun”

Brightly coloured flora paints itself across the heads of gallery visitors while children, and sometimes adults, chase otherworldly fauna as they dance across the walls of the space. You might walk into one room and find yourself knee-deep in water, projections of vibrant carp swimming around your legs. Walk into another and you are surrounded by green lily pads, some as tall as your head. One thing for sure is nothing is ever the same, and you never quite know what you can expect to find in each room, in each exhibition.

Make no mistake, while teamLab was first formed in Japan in 2001 by Toshiyuki Inoko and a group of his friends, it is now an international art collective made up of “an interdisciplinary group of various specialists such as artists, programmers, engineers, CG animators, mathematicians and architects whose collaborative practice seeks to navigate the confluence of art, science, technology, and the natural world.”

Transcending boundaries is a key concept for teamLab as it states that “in order to understand the world around them, people separate it into independent entities with perceived boundaries between them.” Digital technology allows people to express themselves creatively in a way that is free from physical constraint and the boundary between the viewer and artwork can become blurred. NR Magazine joined teamLab in conversation.

Do you consider teamLab’s work as a form of therapy and a way for visitors to navigate the collective trauma of living in a post-capitalist society that imposes a number of boundaries on us?

A: We are not sure what our output is classified as – we only seek to create what we believe in, regardless of the genre it turns out to be.

Art is something we can’t explain with words and history will decide whether our output qualifies as art. If we can change people’s minds, then it’s art. Art raises questions and design provides answers. We human beings have emotions and we also have something we can’t explain with words – it’s cool, it’s beautiful and it’s fun. What our exhibitions do is underpin the impossibility to “have.” None of our visitors can own the artworks: they can’t “have” but they can “be” (following Shakespeare’s immortal quote, “To be or not to be”). Today’s society drives us to “have” which imposes limits and division. This simple structure of capitalism binds us, but the internet and the digital world beyond have no limitations. At the same time, you don’t technically own anything on Google or Facebook, but you are part of the community. Therefore, you can’t “have” but you can “be.” Our artwork is shared the same way. We wanted to make something that will reach people’s hearts.

teamLab encourages visitors to interact with the artworks and capture their experiences for social media. However, do you think there is a danger of people focusing too much on getting the ‘perfect shot’ and not truly experiencing the work?

A: We don’t “encourage” people to use social media.

But at the same time, we think that the act of expressing oneself is not a bad thing.

Shooting photos or videos and even sharing those with people all over the world is also one mode of self expression, right?

It is a natural human desire to share emotions or something that is moving and inspiring. However, the “experience” cannot be cut out.

Through smartphones or TVs, people can understand only with their heads. Knowledge may be gained, but the sense of values and perceptions cannot be changed or broadened. Only through the actual, physical experience of the world or artworks, people can start to recognise things differently. Even if people look at teamLab’s works on Instagram, their values will not be broadened.

teamLab wants to continue creating experiences that cannot be shared with just photos or videos.

Our interest is not the technology itself, but instead, we’re trying to explore the concept of “digital” and how it can enhance art.

Most of the Silicon Valley-originated technology is an extension of someone’s mind. Facebook, Twitter, these digital domains see the “self” as the principle. These are meant to be used personally.

What teamLab wants to do is to enhance the physical space itself using art. It doesn’t necessarily have to be yourself that intervenes with it. It can be other people or a group of people that vaguely includes you. And instead of a personal use, we want to make it usable by multiple people.

By digitising the space, we can indirectly change the relationships between people inside. If the presence of others can trigger the space to change, they’d become a part of the artwork. And if that change is beautiful, the presence of others can be something beautiful as well. By connecting digital technology and art, we think the presence of others can be made more positive.

How has the pandemic affected the collective and has it changed how teamLab approaches exhibiting art?

A: Right now, we are isolated due to our fear of the virus. But in order to overcome that, whether you are in lockdown or not, we hope to encourage you to realise that there never are and never were boundaries, that we are connected to the world just by existing in it, and that we don’t have to try to connect with others by rejecting them.

The fact that we can connect with each other, regardless of where we live or anything else, is a message that affirms human existence from the ground up. We would be happy if humans could accidentally connect with others and derive positive value from that.

Humanity has faced many problems over its history, but we do not believe that these problems have ever been solved by division.

The birth of civilised nations and the spread of infectious diseases were both the result of globalisation and the loss of world boundaries, but humanity has solved this problem not by dividing people, but by working together to develop drugs and vaccines, advance medical technology, and improve sanitation.

We believe that people need to remember the benefits of history and science because if we only look superficially at the immediate events of the current coronavirus pandemic, we promote emotional division.

Art and culture have expanded humanity’s “standards of beauty.” Art presents a new standard of beauty that has changed the way people see the world and, to put it plainly, has allowed them to see flowers as beautiful. teamLab’s artworks are also designed to help people experience the beauty of a world without boundaries and the beauty of anti-division.

Humans are driven by beauty. Corporate organisations seem to be driven by logic and language, but when we look at individuals, they often determine their actions based on their sense of beauty. For example, a person’s choice of a profession is heavily influenced by aesthetics, not rationality. The way in which “standards of beauty” are applied changes a person.

Everything in the world is built on a borderless, interconnected continuity. We believe that human beings should be celebrated for being connected to others and to the world and that experiencing a “world without boundaries” can change our values and behaviours and help us to move humanity in a positive direction.

This is a fundamental affirmation of human life.

We have created an artwork that allows people to experience being connected to others and the world, even in the comfort of their homes. Flowers Bombing Home is an artwork that transforms the television in your home into an artwork. The novel coronavirus has forced the world to become more isolated, causing people to become confined to their homes. This project was created to help us realise that our existence is connected to the world and to celebrate the fact that the world is connected.

However, as we mentioned, we believe that our art is meant to be experienced in person in a shared, physical space. So as the world opens up again, we are excited to welcome visitors back into our exhibitions, where they can explore the continuity of life and time.

Are there any new technologies that teamLab is particularly excited about and is planning on incorporating into the artwork?

A: Technology is just a tool, like paint.

Although it’s a tool, it does greatly affect the creation, just like how the Western landscape painting developed because it became possible to bring paints outdoors.

What really makes teamLab unique is not the technological advancement, but rather the fact that teamLab has become able to do truly massive art projects simultaneously worldwide in-house at a high speed – to the extent that no one has been able to do before.

We could say that technology is the core of our work, but it is not the most important part. It is still just a material or a tool for creating art.

We have been creating art using digital technology since the year 2001 with the aim of changing people’s values and contributing to societal progress. Although we initially had no idea where we could exhibit our art or how we could support the team financially, we also strongly believed in and were genuinely interested in the power of digital technology and creativity. We wanted to keep creating new things regardless of genre limitations, and we did.

Digital technology allows artistic expression to be released from the material world, gaining the ability to change form freely. The environments where viewers and artworks are placed together allow us to decide how to express those changes.

In art installations with the viewers on one side and interactive artworks on the other, the artworks themselves undergo changes caused by the presence and behaviour of the viewers. This has the effect of blurring the boundary lines between the two sides. The viewers actually become part of the artworks themselves. The relationship between the artwork and the individual then becomes a relationship between the artwork and the group. Whether or not another viewer was present within that space five minutes before, or the particular behaviour exhibited by the person next to you, suddenly becomes an element of great importance. At the very least, compared to traditional art viewing, people will become more aware of those around them. Art now has the ability to influence the relationship between the people standing in front of the artworks.

You have created an interactive at-home art installation, that people can access around the world, can you tell us more about that work?

A: The novel coronavirus has forced the world to become more isolated, causing people to become confined to their homes. This project was created to help us realise that our existence is connected to the world and to celebrate the fact that the world is connected.

The television in your home becomes art. Watch at home, participate at home, and connect with the world. People from around the world draw flowers, creating a single artwork that blooms in homes around the world.

Draw a flower on a piece of paper, your smartphone, or computer, and upload it. The flowers you draw and the flowers drawn by others bloom and scatter in real time on the YouTube Live Stream. If you connect your home television to YouTube, your television turns into art. As the petals scatter, the various flowers form a single new artwork together.

When a new flower is born, the name of the town where the flower was drawn is shown.

You can also download Your Flower Art, which combines the flowers you draw with those drawn by people around the world.

The flowers that people draw around the world will bloom until the end of the coronavirus. When the coronavirus ends, they will bloom and scatter all at once in various places all over the world. And, in the future, perhaps the flowers will continue to bloom forever as an artwork for people to remember this era.

It is stated that teamLabs work fuses together art and science but can you ever really have one without the other?

A: We have always liked science and art. We want to know the world, want to know humans, and want to know what the world is for humans.

Science raises the resolution of the world. When humans want to know the world, they recognise it by separating things. In order to understand the phenomena of this world, people separate things one after another.

For example, the universe and the earth are continuous, however, humans recognise the earth by separating it from the universe. To understand the forest, humans break it down into trees, separating the tree from the whole. Humans then cut the tree into cells to recognise the tree, cut the cells into molecules to recognise the cells, and cut the molecules into atoms to understand the molecules, and so on. That is science, and that is how science increases the resolution of the world.

But in the end, no matter how much humans divide things into pieces, they cannot understand the entirety. Even though what people really want to know is the world, the more they separate, the farther they become from the overall perception.

Humans, if left alone, recognise what is essentially continuous as separate and independent. Everything exists in a long, fragile yet miraculous continuity over an extremely long period of time, but human beings cannot recognise it without separating it into parts. People try to grasp the entirety by making each thing separate and independent.

Even though we are nothing but part of the world, we feel as if there is a boundary between the world and ourselves, as if we are living independently. We have always been interested in finding out why humans feel this way.

The continuity of life and death has been repeated for more than 4 billion years. However, for humans, even 100 years ago is a fictional world. I was interested in why humans have this perception.

How can we go beyond the boundaries of recognition? Through art, we wanted to transcend the boundaries of our own recognition. We wanted to transcend human characteristics or tendencies in order to recognise the continuity.

Art is a search for what the world is for humans. Art expands and enhances “beauty.” Art has changed the way people perceive the world.

Groups move by logic, but individuals decide their actions by beauty. Individuals’ behaviours are determined not by rationality but by aesthetics. In other words, “beauty” is the fundamental root of human behaviour. Art expands the notion of “beauty”. Art is what expands people’s aesthetics, that is, changes people’s behaviour.

It may be the whole world or only a part of the entirety, but it is art that captures and expresses it without dividing it. Art is a process to approach the whole. And by sharing it with others, the way people perceive the world changes. Through the enjoyment of art, the notion of “beautiful” expands and spreads, which in turn changes people’s perceptions of the world.

Everything exists in a long, fragile yet miraculous continuity over an extremely long period of time. teamLab’s exhibitions aim to create an experience through which visitors recognise this continuity itself as beautiful, hence changing or increasing the way humans perceive the world.

So we can say that there is no boundary between science and art in our activity. Both of them are ways in which to recognise the world, and both are important to our aim.

Is there a specific teamLab work that stands out from the rest and if so why?

A: Our most recent works often stand out because our output is a result of accumulated knowledge and experiences.

But of our many exhibitions worldwide, one that holds a special place in our hearts is the annual outdoor exhibition teamLab: A Forest Where Gods Live in Mifuneyama Rakuen in Kyushu.

The 500,000 square meter Mifuneyama Rakuen Park was created in 1845, during the end of the Edo period. Sitting on the borderline of the park is the famous 3,000-year-old sacred Okusu tree of Takeo Shrine. Also in the heart of the garden is another 300-year-old sacred tree. Knowing the significance of this, our forebears turned a portion of this forest into a garden, utilising the trees of the natural forest. The border between the garden and the wild forest is ambiguous, and when wandering through the garden, before they know it, people will find themselves entering the woods and animal trails. Enshrined in the forest is the Inari Daimyojin deity surrounded by a collection of boulders almost supernatural in their formation. 1,300 years ago, the famous priest Gyoki came to Mifuneyama and carved 500 Arhats. Within the forest caves, there are Buddha Figures that Gyoki directly carved into the rock face that still remain today.

The forest, rocks, and caves of Mifuneyama Rakuen have formed over a long time, and people in every age have sought meaning in them over the millennia. The park that we know today sits on top of this history. It is the ongoing relationship between nature and humans that has made the border between the forest and garden ambiguous, keeping this cultural heritage beautiful and pleasing.

Lost in nature, where the boundaries between man-made gardens and forests are unclear, we are able to feel like we exist in a continuous, borderless relationship between nature and humans. It is for this reason that teamLab decided to create an exhibition in this vast, labyrinthine space so that people will become lost and immersed in the exhibition and in nature.

We exist as a part of an eternal continuity of life and death, a process that has been continuing for an overwhelmingly long time. It is hard for us, however, to sense this in our everyday lives, perhaps because humans cannot easily conceptualise time for periods longer than their own lives. There is a boundary in our understanding of the continuity of time.

When exploring the forest, the shapes of the giant rocks, caves, and the forest allow us to better perceive and understand that overwhelmingly long time over which it all was formed. These forms can transcend the boundaries of our understanding of the continuity of time.

teamLab’s project, Digitized Nature, explores how nature can become art. The concept of the project is that non-material digital technology can turn nature into art without harming it.

These artworks explore how the forms of the forest and garden can be used as they are to create artworks that make it possible to create a place where we can transcend the boundary in our understanding of the continuity of time and feel the long, long continuity of life. Even in the present day, we can experiment with expressing this “Continuous Life” and continue to accumulate meaning in Mifuneyama Rakuen.

Have you found that digital interactive work has become more popular in recent years and if so why do you think that is the case?

A: To be honest, we do not know.

All we can say is that teamLab believes digital technology can expand art and that art made in this way can create new relationships between people.

Digital technology enables complex detail and freedom for change. Before people started accepting digital technology, information and artistic expression had to be presented in some physical form. Creative expression has existed through static media for most of human history, often using physical objects such as canvas and paint. The advent of digital technology allows human expression to become free from these physical constraints, enabling it to exist independently and evolve freely.

No longer limited to physical media, digital technology has made it possible for artworks to expand physically. Since art created using digital technology can easily expand, it provides us with a greater degree of autonomy within the space. We are now able to manipulate and use much larger spaces, and viewers are able to experience the artwork more directly.

The characteristics of digital technology allow artworks to express the capacity for change much more freely. Viewers, in interaction with their environment, can instigate perpetual change in an artwork. Through an interactive relationship between the viewers and the artwork, viewers become an intrinsic part of that artwork.

In interactive artworks that teamLab creates, because viewers’ movement or even their presence transforms the artwork, the boundaries between the work and viewers become ambiguous. Viewers become a part of the work. This changes the relationship between an artwork and an individual into a relationship between an artwork and a group of individuals. A viewer who was present 5 minutes ago, or how the person next to you is behaving now, suddenly becomes important. Unlike a viewer who stands in front of a conventional painting, a viewer immersed in an interactive artwork becomes more aware of other people’s presence.

Unlike a physical painting on a canvas, the non-material digital technology can liberate art from the physical. Furthermore, because of its ability to transform itself freely, it can transcend boundaries. By using such digital technology, we believe art can expand the beautiful. And by making interactive art, you and others’ presence becomes an element to transform an artwork, hence creating a new relationship between people within the same space. By applying such art to the unique environment, we wanted to create a space where you can feel that you are connected with other people in the world.

All we do is create what we believe in – our hope is that our output reaches people’s hearts and changes their ways of thinking or behaviour. Popularity is just a byproduct of that. We never consider popularity when working, all we focus on is creating something we believe in.

What advice do you have for young creatives who are interested in working with digital and interactive works?

A: teamLab was started by a group of friends who simply enjoyed spending time together, and it has continued to grow and change. If you only think in practical terms, logically, you will fail. It is good to start with the things you enjoy in life.

We aim to create artworks and experiences that allow people to experience the beauty of the world with their hearts and their bodies. In the 20th century, we were taught to only understand the world through our “heads,” but it is important to experience things with our hearts and our bodies. Do not think you can understand the world just through the internet.

Is teamLab working on anything at the moment and what plans does the collective have for the future?

A: You can find the information about upcoming exhibitions worldwide on our website – please check there for the latest updates!

Credits

Images · teamLAB
https://www.teamlab.art/

Hajime Sorayama

Posted on by nr

NR Vol. 14 Identity · Autumn Winter 2021
Published · Print Page 488

Feature · Hajime Sorayama
Words · Nicola Barrett

“The reason why other works are regarded as vulgar is because they lack love and ability”

“Ugh, I’m sick of dating apps.” A friend slams their phone down in disgust. “It would be so much easier if we could just get a robot boyfriend.” “A sexy robot,” I reply, laughing, but privately thinking that it sounds much easier than navigating Hinge. For Hajime Sorayama the concept of the ‘sexy robot’ is not merely a passing joke between friends but his life’s work. Most well known for his hyperrealistic illustrations of eroticised feminine robots, Sorayama describes his highly detailed style as ‘superrealism’ stating that he “deals with the technical issue of how close one can get to one’s object.”

As a kid, Soryama states that he was always picking up scraps of metal from the lathe factory and had a love of shiny things. “They say only crows and humans are awed by shiny things. That’s why I like to create reflectivity and transparency in my artwork. It’s easy to produce those effects in a video, but not on a flat surface.” He is quite open about his metal fetish stating that  “Even Nobel winners are often people who nobody quite ‘gets.’ You should be proud to be an outsider.”

Influenced by the American pin-up girl Sorayama’s work explore’s taboo, fetishism, bondage and genetic manipulation by presenting images of unattainable idealised women and he has risen from cult fame to internationally recognised artist as a pioneer of the sci-fi erotica genre. His work extends far beyond the Japanese art scene and his influence can be seen in media ranging from Hollywood films to advertising, robotic dogs or dinosaurs and beyond. NR Magazine joins the artist in conversation.

What does identity mean to you as an artist?

I’ve been working as an artist for about 30 years, and I’ve always done what I like. I think that the style that you are comfortable with is what leads to your individuality, wouldn’t you agree?

Do you think viewers connect with your work because there is a collective desire for escapism in this post-capitalist society and people find the alien and uncanny comfortingly different?

I communicate with fans through my various works. That’s why I don’t give them titles. If you share the same values as I do, you can understand what I am trying to say by looking at the work and feeling it.

If people who feel stuck in the same societal norms don’t try to escape, I don’t think anything will change, whether it is capitalism or post-capitalism. If you don’t take action yourself, changing your environment won’t change your life either. This kind of goes back to the answer I gave to question one…

You have stated that you are not interested in the future yet your work imagines a future where women are no longer under the patriarchy and are viewed as goddesses. Have you also considered a future where robot x human and AI virtual relationships are a possibility?

I don’t think the future will come when humans and robots or AI will be on equal footing. It is self-evident that humans have the upper hand. The disparity between men and women is a different story. I don’t think it makes sense to make minor discriminations among the same species. We are all primates.

“I think there can be romantic feelings between humans and robots or AI. We also have lust and attachment to inorganic objects.”

Are there any sci-fi films or books that you are particularly drawn to or enjoy?

You may or may not have heard of a book by Junichiro Tanizaki. He authored a book about how close one’s fetish is to insanity. I also like “Blade Runner”. It’s about the love between a human and a machine. Beyond this, I also like the story of Pugmalion in Greek mythology, who became so fetishistic that he even had a child with a stone statue he created.

Do you think aesthetic cybernetic body modifications will become common in the near future? If you were to design body modifications what would you create?

First of all,

“I don’t think becoming a cyborg will become a common practice. This is because there is no such thing as something that everyone finds equally beautiful.”

People instinctively want to be popular in a wide and shallow range, so beauty that is specialized in one direction will never become common. I think there are people who might become cyborgs purely as a personal hobby. It’s a person’s personality that dictates whether they like it or not.

If I were to design a body modification, I don’t know what the person likes or if they enjoy it, thus I think they should do what they want.

One issue with creating ‘realistic’ robots is the ‘uncanny valley’ phenomenon. Is this something you considered when creating your sexy robots? Do you think robot designs in the future will be similar to your robots because of this?

The “uncanny valley” phenomenon occurs because of the lack of love in the motif. I think this is a problem that can be easily overcome with love and ability. Dolls and robots are just like dead bodies. I’m trying to breathe life into them. I think the robot of the future will not look like my robot. Each of us has our own fetishes.

You worked with SONY on the concept design for their robotic pet AIBO. Do you see yourself working in other robot designs in the future as technology advances?

I would like to try it. But I think I will be turned down. Because what I want to complete is not profitable. For example, just by looking at the first motif prepared by a company, I know the result. It’s not good, and I don’t want to do it.

There is something of an inside joke in the art community, particularly amongst illustrators, that if you learn how to draw fetish art you’ll never have to worry about money. You yourself have stated that you have a metal fetish and that is seen in your work. Why do you think your work is considered fine art while other similar art is considered lowbrow?

The reason why other works are regarded as vulgar is because they lack love and ability.

What advice do you have for young creatives looking to explore technology and eroticism in their work?

Do you like women? If it’s something you like, you can do it even if you die! Can you keep doing it for 30 or 40 years? I think it’s good if you like it that much.

Are you working on any projects at the moment and what plans do you have for the future?

It’s a secret. I’m working on something that will surprise everyone. I just hope the world will be okay with it.

Credits

Images · HAJIME SORAYAMA
www.sorayama.jp/

Isamu Noguchi

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NR · WORLD
Published · Online

Feature · Isamu Noguchi
Words · Nicola Barrett

“to be hybrid is to be the future”

The art world, unfortunately, has a certain reputation for snobbery. Everything that is deemed as ‘art’ must, of course, be well thought out, aesthetically intriguing and completely unaffordable for anyone who isn’t part of ‘the rich’. Anything that is actually affordable for people who aren’t part of that income bracket is deemed as ‘low art’. Low art is defined as “for the masses, accessible and easily consumable.”

Over the years this definition has often been criticised alongside the common phrase “art for art’s sake” which was born from definitions like these and “is so culturally pervasive that many people accept it as the “correct” way to classify art.” Thus, it is rather surprising to see such definitions being alluded to in reviews of Noguchi’s exhibition at the Barbican as the artist himself was not a proponent of “art for art’s sake” according to Barbican curator Florence Ostende.

Japanese American designer and sculptor Isamu Noguchi was of “the most experimental and pioneering artists of the 20th century”. His exhibition at the Barbican displays over a hundred and fifty works from his career which spans over six decades and explores his life, work and creative method. The best way to describe him is a ‘creative polymath’ as his work straddled a multitude of disciplines.

The exhibition itself is on two levels and upon entering the space you are directed upstairs. This first section is divided into spacious alcoves and display different periods of the artists work. There is a slight feeling of disconnect here and one finds oneself peering over the railing to the floor below, which appears from above far more engaging. However, this part of the exhibition provides an important overview for those who are not so familiar with Noguchi’s work. It maps the artist’s collaborations with the likes of Brâncuși, Martha Graham and R. Buckminster Fuller, in addition to charting Noguchi’s activist work, protesting racist lynchings, America’s internment of its Japanese American citizens during World War II, and fascism.

However, it is on the first level that the exhibition becomes a real delight, a rambling hodgepodge of stone and metal sculptures and his world-famous Akari lamps that makes one itch to play amongst this minimalist wonderland. Noguchi was committed to creating accessible public art and playgrounds, or playscapes, were a fascination for him. He designed these playgrounds as a way to “encourage creative interaction as a way of learning.” Indeed this interest in play and playfulness is echoed in the exhibition’s main space.

The star of the show is certainly the Akira lamps handing like softly glowing space ships, seemingly emerging from the floor like some strange luminous creature and arranged in clumps like brightly coloured mushrooms. Noguchi designed them after visiting struggling post-war Japan as a way to revitalise the economy. He took the Japanese bamboo and rice paper lanterns and modernised them as a way to bring industry back to the war-torn country.

These lamps became popular in Britain in the sixties and are still available, albeit in a slightly changed form, in IKEA. Because of this they are instantly recognisable and have led to some likening the Barbican exhibition to a ‘high-end lighting showroom.’ However, this brings us back to the discussion of ‘art for art’s sake.’  As I wandered around the exhibition I was drawn back to childhood memories of visiting B&Q with my parents, (they were the only shop in my hometown that had escalators and thus was an infinitely entertaining playground). Playground is the keyword here, I was allowed to roam the aisle alone in delicious freedom and explore this wonderland of light, metal, wood and a multitude of other textures, shapes and materials. To my childlike understanding, all of this was art. Interestingly Noguchi’s philosophy was rather similar. In creating the Akari lamps he aimed to “bring sculpture to everyday households”.

In our current environment of late-stage capitalism, Noguchi’s quiet and thoughtful philosophy’s on purpose, sustainability and environment are perhaps exactly what the art world needs. He saw commercial forms of design “as a way of escaping the art market and working with more freedom and fewer constraints.” While we might criticise the society we live in unfortunately we must still exist within it, however Noguchi “believed in the idea that even in mass-production, individuality is still possible.”  We must adapt and innovate within the framework we have because after all, to quote the artist, “to be hybrid is to be the future.”

Credits

Images · Isamu Noguchi
Noguchi at the Barbican is open from Thu 30 Sep 2021 —Sun 9 Jan 2022. For more information visit https://www.barbican.org.uk/whats-on/2021/event/noguchi
 

Photos

  1. Portrait of Isamu Noguchi, American sculptor, the latter’s special assistant planner, July 4, 1947 in New York City. (Photo by Arnold Newman Properties/Getty Images)
  2. Bronze plate
  4. Noguchi, Isamu (1904-1988): Humpty Dumpty. 1946. Ribbon slate. Overall: 59 ◊ 20 3\4 ◊ 17 1\2in. (149.9 ◊ 52.7 ◊ 44.5 cm). Purchase. Inv. N.: 47.7a-e New York Whitney Museum of American Art *** Permission for usage must be provided in writing from Scala.
  5. Terracotta and plaster

Kensuke Koike

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NR · WORLD
Published · Online

Feature · Kensuke Koike
Words · Nicola Barrett

“Single Image Processing”

Born in Japan and now based in Venice, Kensuke Koike works with a surrealist playfulness to challenge the possibility of creating images. In deconstructing and re-forming vintage and archival photographs into carefully distorted pieces, Koike breathes a new life into found photography. There is a sculptural quality to Koike’s work, and his reconfigured photographs and postcards have a humorous, yet perplexing energy instilled in them. 

Koike’s practice focusses on the possibility of reinvention within an image and involves using analogue collage techniques and working solely with the existing elements of an image. The result is an impressive body of work with unique and contemporary visual narratives that the artist has defined as ‘single image processing’. In using found objects and reviving vintage photographs in this way, Koike creates a dynamic way of working, with each piece exposing different facets of the culture and truth of image making.

Koike seeks to create meaning from an existing object, and his use of found images in combination with the handmade formation of each piece feels incredibly nostalgic and gives a surrealist twist to a vintage era. Koike is more than a just a collage artist – he is as much a videographer, a sculptor, and a puzzle maker – and the videos he makes and shares digitally show his interest in contemporary creative methods. Koike also includes performative elements in his work. It is in this variation of his practice that and understanding of both the humour and reverence with which Koike creates his vision can be found.

Credits

Images · KENSUKE KOIKE
and THE PHOTOGRAPHERS GALLERY

Discover more here thephotographersgallery.org.uk
Kensuke Koike’s work can be found here kensukekoike.com

The Photographers’ Gallery in London presents ‘Re-composed’ until 27th June, where a unique selection of Koike’s work is available to purchase.

Motoi Yamamoto

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NR · WORLD
Published · Online

Feature · Motoi Yamamoto
Words · Nicola Barrett

“Our lives, that we live here now, it is always wrapped up in ephemerality”

Soft white piles of salt weave across the floor in delicate and intricate patterns that fill entire rooms. These transient installations are the result of hours of painstaking work from artist Motoi Yamamoto, for whom these creations are a way to remember his sister, who he lost in 1994 to a brain tumour, and his wife, who passed away in 2016 due to breast cancer.

Yamamoto states that he “keeps creating so that I will not forget memories of my family.” He considers the long hours he spends on each artwork as a way to help him to retain those memories. “I look for a convincing form of acceptance to come to terms with the parting of ways.”

On the last day of each exhibition, Yamamoto invites the public to help him destroy the artwork, gather up the piles of salt, and then return them to the sea. The cyclical nature of this act is inherently spiritual and references the cultural use of salt in Japanese traditions such as funerals. NR Magazine spoke to the artist about his practice.

I’ve noticed that you use a fine white seas salt to create your works, have you ever considered using other types of salt like pink rock salt which typically has larger crystals? 

I’ve only used it once in the past. In 2011, I used pink Himalayan rock salt in a large-scale solo exhibition in a museum. It was a work that looks like a Japanese rock garden. But one of the major reasons I use salt is its transparent whiteness and beauty as a crystal, so I think I will continue to use salt that looks white in the future.

Do you consider the process behind your work as a form of therapy that can help you work through and deal with the trauma of personal loss? 

The reason why I make art is to realise the farewell to the precious persons in a convincing way. I keep making art so that I don’t forget memories of those precious people.

“I see my work as ‘a mechanism to fight against the self-defence instinct of oblivion’.”

Salt has a particularly traditional and spiritual significance in Japanese culture, but also in many other cultures and practices around the world. What do you think it is about salt that makes it a globally significant and spiritual substance? 

Salt is a food necessary to support people’s lives. It is familiar but takes a considerable amount of time and effort to collect, which makes it both rare and essential. Another major advantage of salt is that food can be preserved and stored for a long time by salting. These are important functions of salt that support our life.

You have spoken about how you spend much of your time raising your daughter and that you want your work to look to the future. Do you involve your daughter in your art practice and does her view of the world offer you inspiration for your work? 

Basically, making art is a means to solve my own problems. But as she grew up, I sort of adopted changes in her will and mind and opened up opportunities to think about my work together with her. For example, one of the major reasons why I use blue as the underlying part of my work comes from the words my wife spoke before she died, but I asked my daughter about how bright and vivid the blue colour should be, and I decided to use the colour she chose for the work I am going to show this fall.

Both the process you use to create your works and then the returning of the salt to the sea when the installation is over, have an element of ritual to them. Do you think these acts could be considered a form of performance art? 

Certainly, there are performance elements in “public production” and “project to return to the sea”. However, it only looks like a performance as a result if you try to categorise it. It’s not my intention to establish it as a performance.

The patterns that make up your work are very organic in their form, is there a particular reason behind this? How do you plan out the designs?

The labyrinth-like complex shape was originally triggered by the winding form of the brain as my sister died of a brain tumour. And labyrinths have a meaning of rebirth. I began to draw the swirling works “Floating Garden” because the form of a vortex has a similar meaning to that of a labyrinth, mainly in East Asia.

What was the most challenging installation you worked on and why? How did you overcome these challenges? 

One of the most difficult works was a solo exhibition at a church in Cologne in 2010 in cooperation with MIKO SATO GALLERY. From 5:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m., I worked more than 14 hours a day. Because I decided that the area originally planned was not enough to face the majestic space, it was necessary to take far more time than initially planned. With the help of the gallerist, the director, and many others, I managed to create a very satisfying work. The time I spent in Cologne is my treasure.

There is an ephemeral nature to both your completed artworks and the medium you use to create them. Do you think that nature is something that originally drew you to creating art in this way?

Since my sister and wife passed away at a young age, I always spend a finite time, permanently conscious of death. Even while I’m answering your question I am using my limited lifetime. There is no doubt that it is a very precious and limited time. Our lives, that we live here now, it is always wrapped up in ephemerality.

What advice would you give young creatives who want to create installations but perhaps don’t have the space or the resources to do so? 

After my wife died, I cancelled all my work to rebuild my life with my daughter. And I printed out hundreds of photos of my memories with my wife and put them on the wall of my room. That’s when I became suddenly aware that creating an installation and putting photos on the wall are equivalent to me.

My aim is to remember people who are precious to me, and I want to make sure that I never lose sight of the fact that creating installations with salt is just a means to get closer to that aim.

What projects are you working on at the moment and what plans do you have for the future? 

This year I am working on a new project. The Oku-Noto International Art Festival is a big challenge. Create huge installations in what was once a nursery. It is a plan to combine an area that uses a large amount of salt with an area drawn with paint. I’ll paint the walls, ceilings and floors of the nursery with the light blue colour that my daughter chose.

From next year onwards, I would like to realise exhibitions overseas again, for example in Germany, France and other countries.

Ishiuchi Miyako

Posted on by nr

NR Vol. 13 Growth · Spring Summer 2021
Published · Print Page Unnumbered

Feature · Ishiuchi Miyako
Words · Ellie Brown

“Photography is the work of evoking time using light”

The photographer, Ishiuchi Miyako, grew up in the Japanese port city of Yokosuka in the aftermath of the World War II. Yokosuka is one of the largest overseas US Naval base, and it was against this backdrop that Ishiuchi Miyako grew up. She went on to study textiles and weaving in Tokyo in the late 1960s, and whilst there, discover a passion for photography. Ishiuchi Miyako returned to Yokosuka in the 1970s to confront the place that brought joy (in the form of American exports like jeans and pop music), fear and anger, as a city overrun by the – sometimes sinister –  pleasures of the military occupation. Once there, Ishiuchi Miyako began documenting the city in grainy black and white images that capture a place shrouded in confusion surrounding its identity. Her images are scenes of a Japanese urbanscape, that much is clear, but the lingering presence of Americanisms here and there in oftentimes deserted scenes feels alienating and menacing. Ishiuchi Miyako titled this body of work Yokosuka Story after a hit Japanese pop song, and its release as a book in 1979 launched her career in a male-dominated field. 

Ishiuchi Miyako would later create a series of work around the time of her 40th birthday, in which she contacted women of the same age to photograph their hands, feet and bodies up close. The work, 1∙9∙4∙7, captures imperfections, wrinkles, and scars as evidence of the life’s impression on the human form, not quite young but not old either. What is striking about Ishiuchi Miyako’s photography is that many of her projects seem to inform the next body of work. After the book publication of 1∙9∙4∙7 in 1990, Ishiuchi Miyako turned her attention to another series, Scars – a tender exploration of scarred bodies. One particularly striking image, Scars #13 (Accident 1976), shows a woman’s torso in soft focus; a lengthy scar etched into the natural dip of her stomach. ‘While a person hopes to remain unblemished through life, we must all sustain and live with wounds, visible and invisible,’ the photographer explains in the afterword of the 2005 book, Scars; ‘It is an imprint of the past, welded onto a part of the body.’ 

In 2000, when Ishiuchi Miyako had been working on the Scars series for almost a decade, she persuaded her mother to take part – hoping to document scars from a cooking accident that left their mark on a large part of her body. Unbeknownst to both Ishiuchi Miyako and her mother however, the latter would be diagnosed with liver cancer not long after the photographs were taken and died within a short space of time. Left with her deceased mother’s belongings, Ishiuchi Miyako began working on her next series, Mother’s. In attempting to grapple with the grief she was experiencing, coupled with a complicated relationship with her parent, Ishiuchi Miyako turned to photographing the shoes, underwear, dentures and make up left behind. A hairbrush is captured with strands of her mother’s hair still entangled in its spokes. In one image, Ishiuchi Miyako photographs a snapshot of her mother from the 1940s stood in front of a vehicle. Her mother drove an ammunition truck during the war; another reminder of Japan’s fraught history.

Mother’s was shown in the Japanese pavilion at the 2005 Venice Biennale; it was after that that the photographer was approached by the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum to photograph clothing and accessories belonging to the victims of the atomic bomb. Without the familial connection to the belongings of a parent, in hiroshima, Ishiuchi Miyako forges a relationship with the objects themselves. For the series, the photographer carefully positioned each item of clothing – sometimes talking to them, the curator of the museum told Getty in 2015. The images are beautiful, affording an almost anthropomorphic feeling to a dress or a blouse. But these images are hard to look at too; after noticing the detail of a collar, intricate needlework or the vividness of a print, the eye turns to the tears and charring in the fabric. As Makeda Best, Curator of Photography at Harvard Art Museums, wrote in 2015, ‘These “scars” on the fabric serve as metaphors for the bodies of bomb victims and of a nation.’

Following hiroshima, Ishiuchi was commissioned by the Museo Frida Kahlo in 2013 to photograph 300 of the artist’s belongings, sealed in the bathroom of her home in Mexico until 2004. The result is a body of work that both forms a bond with the clothing of someone the photographer never knew, and begins to build an impression of a woman’s life. Over the course of her career, Ishiuchi Miyako’s photography has worked to leverage an intimate portrayal of women and womanhood, of time, suffering, loss and memory, into a world of brutality and hardship. 

Has your outlook as a photographer changed over time? 

Photography has always been a product of its time, and has always changed with the times. My photographs may change in superficial terms, but what I am basically expressing and my mentality remain unchanged.

You mention that it was photographing your mother’s lipstick that led you to take colour photography. What difference is there between shooting in B&W and colour, and what impact does this have on the final image? 

I can do every step by myself when I’m working in black and white. My ideal here has been to take full responsibility for every stage: shooting, developing, printing. When I’m working in colour, I just take the photographs and have the rest of the work done at a lab. When I started doing this, it was very refreshing to have the works be out of my hands and be able to look at them more objectively.

With black and white, I felt like I was clinging to the photographs throughout the entire process. When I started working in colour, I felt in a way as if I had been liberated from photography. Black and white is a world of artistic creation, while colour is the world of everyday life. At the same time, both black and white and colour are just approaches, and it doesn’t matter which you use.

The photographs of Yokosuka are commended for their grainy texture. What are the attributes that make a powerful image? 

The Yokosuka photographs are not intended to have a powerful impact. When I printed my first photograph, I realized that a photograph is a collection of ink grains on paper. I wanted to print those particles properly, so I developed the film at a high temperature. Grains are like units of time, and I tried to make prints as if I were counting them one by one.

I like the analogy between your background in weaving and the process of photographic development.

Do you think there’s something similar with the photographs themselves; weaving moments of time into history? 

Photography and textiles are very similar – they are both water works. It was a revelation to me that the colour-fixing liquid used for dyeing yarn and the stopping liquid used for photography are the same thing. Making textiles is very labour-intensive work. Photography is the work of evoking time using light. Both of them are jobs done by hand.

A lot of your work involves photographs of objects and possessions. Do you see photographs as being objects and possessions too? 

“A photograph is a narrative that documents and renders memory visible in two dimensions, transcending objects and possessions.”

Photographed subjects are given new value and meaning, and by becoming part of a photograph they become almost eternal.

Did you take a different approach photographing the possessions of your mother and Frida Kahlo, compared with the clothing of Hiroshima victims (whose identity we might not know)? 

/hiroshima, Mother’s, and Frida all share the same intent in that they focus on what has been left behind. I took the same approach to photographing these three subjects, but Mother’s began as my own personal project, then after being shown at the Venice Biennale it became a photographic work that transcends my own personal concerns, expanding from the private to the public. This later shaped the specific development of /hiroshima and Frida.

I find it interesting that you don’t attach messages or captions to your photographs. How does that relate to the objects (clothing/possessions) that you photograph? Do you try to interpret the meaning that their original owner gave them? 

I consider my photographs to be creative rather than documentary, and I take them from my own point of view and with my own values. I believe that adding a message or caption to my photos would take away the viewer’s freedom of thought. I want people to be free to see my photos from their own perspectives, and to attach their own words to them. 

I cannot photograph the past. My work is based on encounters with things left over from the past, but which are in front of me, in the same space and time, in the reality through which I am living in now. In particular, the bombed artefacts of Hiroshima cannot become part of the past.

/hiroshima is very different to Yokosuka Story – how do they capture the aftermath of the war in Japan and the country’s relationship with America? 

I made my debut with Yokosuka Story, a series that is kind of a personal sentimental journey.

“I was born in the post-war era and spent my adolescence in a community with an American military base, and I enlarged these prints to exorcise emotions like scars I felt I had received from the Occupied Japan city of Yokosuka.”

There is a connection between Yokosuka and the history of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima, which played a huge role in ending the war, and which I documented about 30 years later. Yokosuka still serves as the home port for Asia’s largest nuclear-powered aircraft carrier. The post-war period is not yet over, and the reality is that Japan is still under US control. My photographic work, which started in Yokosuka, inevitably turned toward Hiroshima, and /hiroshima is still an ongoing project.

Credits

Images · ISHIUCHI MIYAKO
Special Thanks · THE THIRD GALLERY AYA

Anne Holtrop

Posted on by nr

NR Vol. 13 Growth · Spring Summer 2021
Published · Print unnumbered

Feature · Studio Anne Holtrop
Words · Ellie Brown

“The driving force behind both temporary and permanent work is similar; it’s about the performance.”

Dutch architect Anne Holtrop started his eponymous studio in 2009. Anne designed the Bahrain pavilion for the World Expo in 2015, without having visited the country beforehand. Now, the architect divides his time between his hometown, Amsterdam, the Kingdom of Bahrain, where he is working to refurbish heritage sites, and as a Professor of Architecture at the ETH in Zürich, Switzerland. Anne’s work spans temporary installation to permanent structures, but it is his use of tactile and organic materials for which the studio is both recognised, and recognisable. Having started out as an assistant to Krijn de Koning, the Dutch artist known for his site specific installations, Anne’s first project was the Trail House in Almere. As part of an exhibition by the Museum De Paviljoens in 2010, the installation consists of a series of paths that make up the house’s structure – described as ‘A house that curls, bends and splits through the [vegetal] landscape’ surrounding it.

Alongside his work in Bahrain, Anne has worked with John Galliano since 2018 to redefine the brand identity of the Parisian fashion house, Maison Margiela – culminating with the remodelling of the label’s London store earlier this year. The curved gypsum walls and fabric-cast surfaces are evocative of both the studio’s signature feel, and of Margiela’s recent in-store presence. But, as Anne explained over Skype back in February, his work process is limited to neither the studio, nor Galliano’s vision for Margiela. Rather, he heralds the disappearing craftsmanship of specialists and family-led artisans. ‘For Margiela,’ he explains, ‘almost everything is produced in Italy. Around the time I started working in Bahrain, I started working a lot in Italy with small workshops that were specialists in the different materials I’m interested in.’

The gypsum casting that embodies Anne’s work with Margiela? It comes from a small company in Veneto; the profession almost died out, I’m told, because house molding is no longer en vogue. When Anne started working with the company, they had only two employees; they’ve since re-hired former collaborators. That’s not to say that irreparable damage hasn’t been done to artisanal craftsmanship though; despite enjoying something of a renaissance in recent years, Anne is quick to point out that ‘because of our lack of interest for a long time, these industries, which are often small family-based companies, have died out.’ The aluminium that features in the Green Corner building in Bahrain (2020), was cast at a foundry in the Netherlands, where their specialism allows for the experimental techniques that Studio Anne Holtrop employs.

Central to Anne’s design approach is an innate belief in the ‘gestures’ that define materials; the source of those very materials, and the ways in which they’re used to construct spaces and the architectural environment. And as our conversation below demonstrates, these are themes that inform Anne’s vision for the temporary, the interior and the exterior.

Does your practice take on different approaches depending on whether you’re creating something temporary versus a permanent?

With [Maison] Margiela, we did a catwalk show in 2018, shop windows in Osaka and a pop-up store in Tokyo. So these exist for one week, one day, a month – and in architecture, that’s a very short time. What I like about temporary work is it can be more radical in a way, because we have less to fulfil for a permanent use. So for instance, with Margiela, the [display] in the shop windows in Osaka, we made them out of very thick felt that we let hang. So it was a kind of architecture that’s literally soft; that has no rigidity. To make architecture that is literally soft is very difficult to maintain or to use. Although Margiela would love that idea, the practicality of it is just more difficult to manage. The driving force behind both temporary and permanent work is similar; it’s about the performance. You know, how can we form space and how can we also discover space?

The Margiela store in Paris has crooked columns (textile-cast gypsum), which was a process of making, where we deliberately searched for an undefined outcome. It redefined the process of making, and the outcome is different every time you produce it. In that sense, we can discover and invent spatial conditions. John Galliano describes this kind of pyramid where everything starts with the artisanal collection, and then it trickles down. With architecture, we build maquettes of projects with the materials that we want to construct with. So that’s also a kind of temporary building – to scale, but it exists. It has a reality. Even if a project is permanent, that’s its temporary state.

I was looking at images from your work with the Charlotte Chesnais jewellery store in Paris from late last year; the acrylic sheets you use have these really organic shapes. I’d love to know a bit more about the kinds of materials you work with, and how you translate these into organic forms?

I have a liking for irregular forms like the Rorschach inkblots, the butterfly inkblot tests that are basically just ink on paper. But because of its form, you imagine things in it and for me, the irregular or organic forms of things have more possibility than a purely rectangular form. You can project more into it. That’s the way that we work because we have form that is not necessarily architectural. So, we can start to imagine how we’ll use something; how can we read the architecture? And for visitors, that happens [all over] again.

With the Charlotte Chesnais store, [the approach] came from a project before that, where we started casting materials directly in sand, using sand as a natural relief. So we cast another material in it and it takes the imprint of it in the material. We started doing that with gypsum, concrete and aluminium. For the store, we used acrylic but we didn’t cast it; we scanned a 3D relief of the sand. The irregular relief diffuses the light a lot more than it would a flat surface, which works more as a mirror.

[But] the irregular relief starts to diffuse the light so you cannot see through it anymore; the ceiling has this irregular form, and that diffuses light into the space and onto the display. Then we repeated the exact same thing with the display table, which works as a backdrop for the jewellery. So with the specific treatment of a material, we benefit from certain characteristics of it. By changing the relief, we have different characteristics that we can work with. So the material is the same, but the way it is formed and treated enhances, or brings forward, other properties. That is something I call material gesture; to work with the gestures that are intrinsically bound to a material, but also the gestures that, in the process of making things, are formed with the material.

And this is the same process you used for the Green Corner building in Bahrain?

Yes – in the Green Corner building, all the concrete (so, the façades, the walls, the floors) are cast on land next to the building. So we cast it directly in the sand; every time the sand has been worked on by the workmen on the site, and so every time we had different reliefs in the concrete. It was also very efficient, so in that sense it contributes to an idea of sustainability because most of the form work is just in the sand, in the ground that is already there. We didn’t have to transport building materials, just the concrete. I think up to 50% of the energy [to build] is used in making form work, and the other 50% to cast it. So, by shortcutting that first 50% of formwork, we reduced the energy consumption used to make a building. But that’s not the only driving force.

The driving force is that we can building something that feels very local, and very [site specific]. The site itself produces the building, and leaves its mark on the building. With the façade, each one is a fragment of the landscape, but also a moment in time. One was done in March 2019, another in April. So you have this time recording in it as well. The building isn’t static; it becomes a time document and a process. With the Green Corner building, we also have aluminium doors and windows that are also sand casted, but we did that in a foundry. But with aluminium you can’t cast solids so, with the doors, the front side is an imprint of the sand and the back side is hollow.

By changing the material, you get something else. Suddenly you have the negative of the sand that you could never see in concrete. For that reason, we placed the doors and window shutters facing the other way. So when you see the sand cast concrete, you see the aluminium as a hollow version, so they are in a kind of juxtaposition with each other.

You’ve been living and working in Bahrain for seven years now – how has this time allowed you to use different techniques like, for example, the sand casting?

I mean, I was already doing that when I was [still] in Amsterdam. I was visiting Jordan, and going to Petra, a few years before I moved to Bahrain. So, for me there was definitely an interest in the type of landscape and conditions there. It’s very minimal – it’s rock and sand, and that it’s base. And I like that base because that’s also the base of building material; when I see a building standing in that landscape, I just see two versions of the same thing. And I was very excited to work in a place where I can research that kind of relationship.

So the Green Corner building is a very clear building for me in that way because it builds hat relationship between the soil in which it is built, the material, and the matter of it – the building itself and its construction.

The aluminium was also chosen because Bahrain has one of the largest aluminium smelters in the world. I saw it as being a local material, a vernacular material. When we look back in history, we say, you know, we built with clay, stones and things like that. But over the past 50 years, aluminium [has become] one of these materials. It’s a process [rather than a material], but nevertheless still part of it. And I like to build up that relationship. It’s all part of that investigation of material gesture; from the sourcing of material, the process, the craftsmanship of working with the material.

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