SHADOWS NORTHERN PILGRIMAGE
INTRODUCTION TO THE PROJECT
 When Duchin displayed a toilet stool under the title of "Spring", powerful individuality expressed by so called "objet" (visual object) became the mainstream of the values of fine art in the 20th century. But now this "objet" has lost its individuality as an art work toward the end of the 20th century.Art which serves urban culture Our reality space is getting more and more artifical as the urbanization, commercialism, prosperity of tourism into nature and develoment of the electronic media progress. Art itself is under the control of urban networks, and built in the art industry such as art galleries or art museums. Inside the houses sculptures are belittled surrounded by the industrial designs, while in the air, they are just enlarged, enshrined on the pedestals as accessories to modern architecture. Though those so-called public art pieces may giverise to familiarity or sense of play in the inorganic urban space and peoplemight, if they are sensitive enough, feel some difference from the everyday space, those objets are merely set into part of the controlled function of cities, contributing to the uban culture as part of it. There seems to be no strong urge to place the objets at the spot, reflecting the creator's particular life style.Landscape of the inconceivability created by urge I don't mean to restore the title of artists or return the individuality to theold position as the almighty. Nor do I suggest that we return to Nature. For instance in the electronic media, which enables us to develop collective networks, experiments are being carried out in which any reader can participate in the development of the story. There is no boundary between writers and readers. This is true of the images on the electronic media, in which virtual images turn real as virtual reality, creating"another landscape" which presupposes thevirtual images. On the other hand, the"adventurers"in the Earth Art including Christo are notclaiming environmental preservation. De Maria invited lightning by installing 400 hundred steal poles in the vast plain difficult to approachin the state of New Mexico, just because he wanted to let the symphomy of thethunder sound all over the world of darkness and feel the mysterious spiritsof the universe. He wished to join the nature and be immersed in the supernautra l "aura". The magnificence of the lightning he called up was the directindication of his irresistable urge. Christo, who put such huge red cloth as adam in Rifle Canyon wanted to wrestle with the wild natural creation by magnifying his imagination all the more because human beings are so insignificant. In their activities there are no titles which expose their adherence to their individuality. In other words their activities exist as anonymous in the realworld. They are real while creating another unrealistic landscape. Desire to commune with the universe and nature, the inspiration they lived and their impulse produced their enormous energy, enabling them to realize the formationof the unrealistic landscape.Sacrifice to the universe My universe is the azure sky and the desert of Algeria as well as the coldair and the Sea of Ohotsuku contained by the floating ice. The landscape is the silence, the nil and the infinity. Standing there to face the universe, I am filled with the bottomless solitude and fear, struck with awe. I am gradually reduced to nothing and turn into a stone, ending up as a flake of ice. "Let everything go now". That 's what my heart tells me. And still repeatedly metamorphosed, I return to the earth. How could I reconcile the silence of nature and the unstable my-own-self. My existence is split and made void. In seeking the succor of this contained split, I conceived the image oflandscape as a field for mutual response between the universe and the solitaryhuman existence. The "Figures in Ohotsuku" I "brought up" are the bridge to uniteour existence and the other side of the world. The creation of the landscape was the act of sacrifice, offering the group of pilgrims in prayer as you do in some religion. They are not objectives to express the individuality but a field for the responses between human existence and the universe as well as the symbol of the invisible boundary between our daily life and the twilight zone. Those who see the landscape with the strangers standing by placing themselves in the fieldwill see their own "shadows", in other words,"another landscape". |
