DATE: October 10, 2018, 16:00-20:00
VENUE: Zou-no-hana Terrace

GUEST ARTISTS: Yasuhiro Suzuki, Noboru Tsubaki

Zou-no-hana Park and Zou-no-hana Terrace were established as sites for cultural tourism in conjunction with the 150th anniversary of the opening of Yokohama Port. This event, held on October 10, 2018, was intended to provide information on the application guidelines for the Futurescape Project, which is set for June 2019 and timed to mark the facility’s tenth anniversary.

In addition to a general explanation of the project, designed to collect ideas not only from artists but also a wide range of local residents, the event featured talks by two artists with close links to Zou-no-hana Terrace, and case studies for submitting work to an open-call project. In this report, I would like to focus primarily on the artist talks.

Changing the Town with Artists’ Ideas

The theme of the talks was how to change the town with artists’ ideas. In the past, both of the guest artists created defining works for Zou-no-hana Terrace.

The first artist, Noboru Tsubaki, created The “Perry” Symbol, an elephant-shaped sculpture that was permanently installed on the site in 2009. The large work also watched over this talk event from the back of the building. Some small elephants (Perry’s offspring) are also positioned at the entrance to Zou-no-hana Park, functioning as car stops and indicating that the area is only accessible to pedestrians.

The second artist, Yasuhiro Suzuki, created a landmark-like work titled Trunk of Curiosities in 2012. It was based on the idea that a huge elephant trunk would stretch high in the air from the roof of the building for a limited time only.

The Issue of Public Space in Japan

Tsubaki began by discussing the notion of “public spaces” by referring to his own works and activities. These included Insect World – Grasshopper, a giant grasshopper-shaped inflatable installed on the exterior wall of the Intercontinental Hotel for Yokohama Triennale 2001; aTTA, a work commissioned for the Towada Art Center; a work made for the 2010 edition of Roppongi Art Night that dealt with the problem of global warming and the related push for nuclear power; and Tsubaki’s 2012 solo exhibition at Kirishima Open-air Museum. Tsubaki spoke about the fact that there are taboo subjects in every country, but that since the Fukushima nuclear power accident that occurred in 2011, it has become increasingly difficult to show political works at Japanese museums and other venues.

With this in mind, Tsubaki talked about a project he did for Space Art Tanegashima, held on Tanegashima in 2017, in which he carried an inflatable work called mammalian to various places on the island. Tsubaki said that he thought about how people could take pictures of the anonymous beauty that they encountered in the island’s unique environment. And he also thought about what kind of experience they would have by accidentally interacting with other people they met in each place instead of going to look at the art.

Tsubaki also talked about how people in Japan have no compunction about destroying cultural heritage, which from a slightly different viewpoint might be seen as tourist attractions – as exemplified by the recent removal of student-made signs at Kyoto University. He also spoke about how this gradually leads a town to become overly tidy and lacking in personality. On the other hand, Tsubaki said that in Guangzhou, China, where he had gone to conduct a workshop, there were numerous fabric wholesalers and factories in the vicinity of the fashion school he visited, and tasty and cheap restaurants. The town was quite chaotic, but it was filled with a dynamism that allowed you to immerse yourself in making things for a short period. Moreover, the students Tsubaki met there were directly linked to a variety of interesting, local things all over the world via social networking and other online systems. He said he sensed that people there had assimilated themselves into the environment in no time at all, and concluded his presentation with the following thoughts:

“In terms of the power of public spaces and towns, I think it’s safe to say that Japan has lost this sort of dynamism and fundamental energy. In about 15 years when people like myself and those older than me are starting to die out, the industrial structure will be completely different. But society as a whole isn’t prepared for that kind of change. It seems to me that we’re always accruing more debt and putting off all of our problems, which makes me want to ask if the public sphere is really okay?”

Reconsidering the Measurement of Time

This was followed by Yasuhiro Suzuki’s presentation. Suzuki began by discussing his 2012 work Trunk of Curiosities. The piece was based on the image of an elephant buried in the ground with only its trunk jutting up from the surface, extending upward toward an apple floating in midair. The project called for something functional that would also serve as a landmark for Zou-no-Hana Terrace. The work, visible from many different places, proved to be much more popular than Suzuki had expected, attracting attention through social networks and other means. He also said it was interesting to see how people approached the work without any regard for the artist’s original intentions.

Next, Suzuki discussed some of his most notable works including Perspective of the Globe World (2001), which was projected on some playground equipment in a park and introduced on the NHK TV program Digital Stadium; Blinking Leaves (2003), made up of leaf-shaped pieces of paper that rotated and fluttered in the air, making it seem as if you were blinking. He also talked about works such as The Origin of the Word Jaguchi (2006), a video of a faucet with water gushing out of it in a park, which might provide helpful hints for someone interested in taking part in the Futurescape Project. These works contained aspects such as reconsidering the measurement of time, adding a playful element to a familiar scene, and prompting a new discovery through viewer participation.

Suzuki also spoke about his activities in the public sphere, including serving as an assistant to the Tokyo University professor and artist Toshio Iwai, and working on projects that fused media technology with public art. He also talked about Digital Public Art in Haneda Airport (2009), an exhibition held at an airport terminal that Suzuki served as art director for, and Aerial Being, a work he showed in the event that subsequently received worldwide attention. Viewers reacted to the work in unforeseen ways, leading to things that the artist had never anticipated such as people taking a nap with the piece. He said that experiencing things that exceeded his expectations was the true pleasure of these projects.

Suzuki’s Ship of the Zipper, a work which Suzuki showed in the Setouchi Triennale in 2010 and Rediscovering the Sumida River: A Boat and Waterfront Art Project in December 2018, was apparently inspired by a boat crossing the sea that the artist saw from an airplane. For a moment, it seemed as if the boat was opening a zipper in the water.

Suzuki explained why he was drawn to the upcoming project: “I was intrigued by the idea that submissions could be as short as ten seconds. I have a metronome work in which the time it takes the rod to move back and forth can be changed anywhere from one second to 10,000 years. Simply being aware of time makes the things we see look completely different.”

The two artists’ presentations were followed by comments from Zou-no-Hana Terrace director Tsutomu Okada and Koizumi Atelier director Masao Koizumi, who designed Zou-no-Hana Terrace, and Tsubaki and Suzuki were also asked about how to prepare yourself mentally for a project in a public space.