Noi Sawaragi: Notes on Art and Current Events 42

A Restatement: The Art of ‘Ground Zero’ (Part 18)
“Yasashii Bijutsu” and Takashi Tosu I


Yasashii Bijutsu Project – Café Shiyoru. Photo Kimito Takahashi. All photos courtesy Art Setouchi Executive Committee.

“I want to be critiqued and questioned exhaustively.” This was Fram Kitagawa’s strong desire leading up to our recent dialogue at Club Hillside in Daikanyama. (1) Given that Kitagawa himself had made such a request, of course it would have been impossible to raise such commonplace critiques as “the general-contractor approach to art,” “the spider/mold incident” or “cozy relations with administrations.” It goes without saying that this was an expression of his previously stated desire to “have my own work critiqued at a more fundamental level.”

Fundamentally, I rate highly the art model Kitagawa has recently brought to fruition through the likes of the Echigo-Tsumari Art Triennale and the Setouchi Triennale, a model that is cross-jurisdictional, not bound by administrative divisions, and places off-site activities at its core. This is because Kitagawa is someone who sees in the geographical conditions of Japan – a country made up of numerous mountain ranges and peninsulas, labyrinthine coastlines and inlets, and lengthy archipelagos born out of movements of the earth’s crust – possibilities different from art born out of continents such as Europe and North America. In response to the criticism that for international art festivals Echigo-Tsumari and Setouchi are perhaps too close to community renewal projects or tourism, one could counter that traditional, state-initiated art was perhaps too inclined towards desktop education policy. Certainly, not everything at these festivals can be viewed uncritically, but in order to reform the existing art model, a change of view of this magnitude is necessary, and even looking on from the sideline it is easy to imagine what a feat of strength is required to achieve this.

Kitagawa’s wish was to be subjected to even more criticism. He also confronted me with his own rather difficult problems. Perhaps one could also say that this is precisely why Fram Kitagawa is such an interesting person.

After thinking about it for a while, I came up with the following point of discussion. The new art model presented by Kitagawa certainly breaks down the existing framework and opens up new possibilities. However, if the kind of art he is thinking of is that expressed in the statement, “showing documents relating to a small number or a small group of contemporaneous people, revealing people’s pent-up resentment buried in layers of history; this is what is expressed with people’s hands and bodies, and the results are manifestations of the physiology of naturally connected human bodies” (Kitagawa), then the only occasions when this has been realized would be limited to extremely rare cases such as – to use the Setouchi Triennale as an example – the project at the former leprosy sanatorium on the island of Oshima, and it would be fair to say that such an approach has not permeated throughout these festivals.


Yasashii Bijutsu Project – {Tsunagari no ie} Sea Echo. Photo Kimito Takahashi.

In response, while partly acknowledging this, Kitagawa stressed repeatedly that “Oshima was one of the projects I put the most effort into,” “so much so that in taking on the Setouchi Triennale I included among the conditions that Oshima be included.” To put it another way, one cannot talk about the Setouchi Triennale unless one has seen Oshima. In this respect, there is a considerable gap between this view and the views of the public and the art world who praise and criticize Kitagawa (the two being nothing but antagonistic responses of the same kind by people who have seen exactly the same thing).

So, what exactly is taking place on Oshima? I have touched on this, albeit briefly, in a previous column. (2) Here, I would like to comment in more detail in light of the problem alluded to above.

The activities taking place on Oshima are part of the Yasashii Bijutsu Project, a collaborative art project being conducted by students and graduates of Nagoya Zokei University of Art & Design and Koebitai art festival volunteers under the direction of Nagoya-based artist Nobuyuki Takahashi. With the heartfelt wishes and strong support of Fram Kitagawa, for several years Takahashi has been either living in or commuting to the former leprosy sanatorium on Oshima where leprosy sufferers were once incarcerated, and simultaneously running multiple programs in cooperation with local residents. At the center of this project is the running of a café (Café Shiyoru) and a gallery (Gallery 15), collectively known as Tsunagari no ie.


Both: Yasashii Bijutsu Project – {Tsunagari no ie} Library. Photos Kimito Takahashi.

What’s remarkable about this project is not only how this depopulated patch of land floating on the Seto Inland Sea, which is quite different from the other islands, can even be a venue, but also the questioning of whether it is “permissible or not” to turn it into a venue in the first place.

That the policy of the enforced isolation and “sterilization” of leprosy sufferers in this country was a fundamental error was recognized as a result of the self-criticism of the Japanese Leprosy Association in the wake of the repeal of the Leprosy Prevention Law in 1996. Nevertheless, specific medicines existed and a complete cure was possible from as early as the 1940s, yet despite this and the fact that it was known that leprosy was only slightly infectious, sufferers and ex-sufferers were in fact robbed of their rights and dignity as human beings over a period of 50 years. People who contracted leprosy were forcibly removed from their homes and confined to remote detention facilities – they were not permitted to go into the outside world for the rest of their lives. But that wasn’t all. In order to “eradicate” the disease, the state went as far as strictly forbidding leprosy sufferers to have children. Oshima’s Seishoen was unique among the various leprosy sanatoriums scattered around the country in that it was located on a tiny, isolated island. It is difficult to imagine the feelings of the people left behind there, feelings too heavy to make the subject of “art” or an “art festival.”

Accordingly, Takahashi’s project cannot take the simple form of an artist finding a location in accordance with their own wishes and creating an “artwork” there together with collaborators, as would normally be the case. When it comes down to it, the starting point is none other than “the feelings of the residents, their universal cries as human beings” (Takahashi), which are things that have no form whatsoever. In essence, what is critical is the question of how to create effective opportunities from these formless things and how to give form to encounters with the “outside.” Which is precisely why there is a café and a gallery, and not a “facility” already in place for bringing together artworks and detaining people. This in itself is yasashii bijutsu, or “gentle art” (a term that sounds somehow cruel when used by Takahashi).

But before reaching this point there were undoubtedly many twists and turns, too many to give a full account of, in fact. At the same time, however, as a result of this process Takahashi is again and again unearthing the lost history of Oshima as he encounters the island’s residents and gains their confidence.


Yasashii Bijutsu Project – Café Shiyoru. Photo Kimito Takahashi.

Speaking of “history,” the difficulty of this task is perhaps best summed up by the fact that Oshima was an island on which people were not permitted to have a history. The sterilization policy was implemented with the goal of erasing the very fact that certain people existed on this earth, and when sufferers died on this island, even their ashes were not returned to their loved ones. All their possessions were disposed of, as if the people had never existed at all.

In other words, the circumstances here are quite different from those in other cases often dealt with in art where forgotten history is unearthed. Even if the will to recover it exists, the history itself has been erased. In a sense, what Takahashi is attempting to recover from the “feelings” of which nothing was even permitted to remain is not history but “memory.” And with this in mind, he has set out to gather (although I don’t even know if this is the right way to put it) the “things,” “voices” and “sounds” predating hard material that were left behind as fragments on the island. It is at this point that he encounters a certain photographer (perhaps?). He goes by the name Takashi Tosu (now deceased). Furthermore, Takahashi eventually assumes the name of this complete stranger whose real name is unknown.

I see here an ideal way for art that is unlike anything we have witnessed before. And I also think that we can see in this more than in anything else the most concrete expression of the kind of art Fram Kitagawa dreams of. (To be continued)

 

 

    1. Session 1 “Criticizing/Critiquing Fram Kitagawa” of the seminar series “Fram Kitagawa and ‘Art’ – Considered from the Worn Line in the Road of Civilization” held on May 30, 2014 at Club Hillside Salon (Daikanyama Hillside Terrace)

  1. Notes on Art and Current Events 12: Viewing the Setouchi International Art Festival (Part II)

Noi Sawaragi: Notes on Art and Current Events 1-6

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