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| Corresponding Cityscape (2024)Kentaro TAKI Photo by Yasyuki Kasagi |
Redevelopment Pool was with putting tracing paper on the inside of the east-facing window on the second floor of Hatsune Terrace, where the studio is located, and using a projector from inside the room, repeatedly projecting images of a woman swimming in the pool. The projection ran to pedestrians walking along the road under the elevated Keikyu Line from 4:30 pm to 9:30 pm. The footage used for this piece was filmed at the end of the summer of 2020, with contemporary dancer Sayuri Iimori swimming in an outdoor pool, however, it had been left unused as the exhibition was canceled due to the pandemic. The author remembered that footage, then he edited it for three minutes and projected it on the window, filling the room with water and making it appear like Iimori was swimming like a fish in an aquarium. I began projecting the video guerilla-style in mid-November, when the house was demolished, and the lot was cleared. It caught the eye of Sai Jun, a staff member of the Koganecho Area Management Center. It was included in the Koganecho special exhibition "Homo-Tentrium" in December, where it was screened until the end of January 2024.
In 2024, Koganecho Area Management Center called for proposals for the Koganecho Bazaar, which will be held in conjunction with the Yokohama Triennale 2024, and I submitted two proposals in response. One was version 2 of Drowning Skull, a video object as the screen made of recycled home appliances and IT equipment, which was held under the elevated Keikyu Line in 2023, and the other plan was Corresponding Cityscape, which can be viewed at night projection with windows in the area, and the latter was selected.
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| drawing for installation |
The plan was to use the windows of shops, private homes, and businesses between Hinodecho station and Koganecho station so that the work could be viewed from the elevated train tracks. Negotiations began in February, and we looked for landowners who would provide us with windows. I walked around the area, recorded the best locations, and recorded the scenery seen from inside the Keikyu Line train, and determined about 15 candidate locations. Of these, with the cooperation of Koganecho Area Management Center and Step 3, finally, 11 locations were selected for projection and installation. The selection criteria were locations that could be seen from the street and inside the building and rooms that were not in use at night. This was because, as in the previous work, if there was an obstruction in front of the window, the work could not be seen, and we wanted the work to be seen not by art visitors but by chance visitors who happened to pass by.
In fact, we ended up installing one location in the living room of a private home, but because the fluorescent lights in the room would drown out the light from the projector, we had them install curtains from the ceiling only in the area where the projection was not possible. This meant that the work and the private life could coexist in one room. The other 11 locations were windows on the 4th and 5th floor of an electronics company's warehouse, three windows on the 2nd floor of a kindergarten, the 5th floor of a corporate building that has been turned into the Area Management Center's artist goods shop, a window in a workshop managed by the same center, a 2nd-floor window of STEP 3, the glass surfaces of a gallery exhibition room, the 3rd-floor balcony area of an apartment building, a 5th-floor window of the corporate building, a 5th-floor classroom window of a nearby high school, and a private home window on the 8th floor of an apartment building.
Depending on the location, the image was projected or shown on a monitor, but in a location where it was difficult to project the image onto the windows (such as the Takahashi Building), a silhouette of a person's upper body was made out of wooden boards, with hands physically moved using a motor mechanism, and lighting from behind made the shadow continue to wave its hands. Life-size figures are projected onto each window, appearing one at a time, or in some cases multiple times, waving to the viewer outside, making gestures as if calling out, and in some cases dancing or throwing balls, before disappearing from the screen. Actors were recruited from the neighborhood to play these characters, and 16 people took part in the three-day shoot. Combined with footage of Iimori Sayuri that had already been shot, a total of 17 people performed in front of the camera: artists based in Koganecho, artists in residence (from Ukraine, Philippines, Taiwan, Turkey, and Korea), Koganecho Bazaar 2024 director Shingo Yamano, and residents. While filming these in late February, I negotiated with the landowner about installing the video work on the windows and then edited the work after returning home. Because the windows were all different in position and width, I had to edit the footage into 11 different types of footage, such as full-body shots, bust shots, and waist shots, all of which were directed and edited differently. The kindergarten had five windows that could be used for full-size projection, but since I couldn't pull the projector back far enough from the windows, I projected the image onto three windows of the center. Because it was a Christian kindergarten, the composition of the three images coincidentally turned out to resemble an altarpiece.
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| shooting set |
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| installation system |
This time, the projections were installed in private homes, educational institutions, and company spaces, rather than in galleries or exhibition spaces, so the staff could not turn the power on and off, and all the power was controlled by a timer.
Since the images would be difficult to see due to the sunlight if the sun did not go down, the time was set to 5:30pm when the exhibition started, but even an hour later, they were still faint and difficult to see just before the end. Even so, on cloudy days, they were visible from 5:30pm, which confirmed once again that outdoor exhibitions are dependent on the weather. When the sunset started, the city's buildings and structures were still visible, and the figures that appeared were combined with the projections on the windows, which I liked. When it was completely dark, it would look like just a screen or display, but as the sun went down, the city and the images merged and looked great. During the exhibition period of Corresponding Cityscape, people involved told me that during such twilight hours, the audience would wave back at the footage of the protagonists waving. So, I myself tried to watch the audience from behind several times and was surprised to see some people really waving back to the window projections.
This composition was referred to Jochen Goertz's To Call until Exhaustion (Rufen bis zur Erschöpfung 1972), a video piece from the early period. In this work, Goertz himself stands on a hill and calls out to the camera (the viewer) for 20 minutes, saying "Hello." In the end, he shouts out to us in such agony that he almost loses his voice, but unfortunately, 30 years have passed since I saw this work in the early 2000s, and I was no longer able to respond to Goertz on the monitor. It was not able anyone to respond to recorded footage even at the time of production.
In Corresponding Cityscape, I traced the part of the performance record of Goertz’s work that attempts one-way communication again by questioning it. Although they do not speak, the figures in the windows all call out and wave to the audience outside the windows. Unlike advertisements on displays or screens, because my piece was projected on the windows, the audience or passersby on the street reacted differently from when they watched signboards. However, in this piece, where it seemed that protagonists were actually “being there” inside the building, some of the viewers on the street reflexively waved back.
Even though the concept may be different, I think that the appeal from inside the screen that Goertz was unable to achieve has been overcome after about 50 years. The production of such pseudo-presence of figures, like telepresence, is also a common theme in my recent works. The matter of "inside/outside" of the screen, which early video artists such as Goertz questioned, has now developed into a problem of the gap between illusion and physical space, and the fake and the real.
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| The audience could get a map above to follow projections. |
During the three-month exhibition period of Corresponding Cityscape, I had a performance piece, Mobile Projection, twice as a response to the city. Combined with the window projections, I believe this was an opportunity to open up the issues mentioned above to the public and encourage them to think about them. Due to the long period of the exhibition, I had stopped paying attention to where he had installed projections at the end of the exhibition, and there were several times when I was walking down an alleyway on my way home after finishing work in the studio in the evening, and I happened to look up and unexpectedly faced the protagonists waving at me in the window of a building, which surprised me so much. (or maybe I'm just forgetful...) I think that this contrivance of accidentally encountering art in the city will continue to be effective for a while.
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