Ryuta Ushiro (Chim↑Pom): Pt II

II.


Making the Sky of Hiroshima “PIKA!” (2009) Photo Cactus Nakao. All images: Unless otherwise noted © Chim↑Pom, courtesy the artist and Mujin-to Production.

ART iT: In projects including Thank You Celeb Project I’m Bokan (2007-08) and Making the Sky of Hiroshima “PIKA!” (2009), you often build relationships with local people and share experiences with them over the course of the production process. How do you understand these relationships – both on the level of personal responsibility and in relation to the finished work?

RU: The unique realities of the local people exponentially amplify the strength of the work. An artwork that can be understood entirely according to preexisting notions of reality and common sense is ultimately weak. If you look at history, you see that reality and common sense inevitably change. The political and economic systems and the cultural frameworks all change – the purpose of life itself changes. No matter how they change, the work won’t be able to stand on its own if it doesn’t attain a reality that goes one step further. When you make art with that in mind, you realize that the people you meet in these places have a reality that goes beyond all formulas of common sense.
For example, we went to Mexico to produce the works presented in “The other side” (2016-17). There are essentially two borders between Mexico and the US, one marked by an older fence and the other by a newer fence, while the area in between is a Homeland Security no-man’s land with nothing but watchtowers and patrol vehicles. Mexico is on one side of the old fence, and the US is on the other side of the new fence, so the reality of the people living next to the fence is really unique. Even most people living in central Tijuana assume that you’ll get in trouble if you climb the fence – get arrested or maybe shot, and end up in the news – but for the people living next to the fence, the border is simply part of their everyday environment. They throw their garbage over the fence, and then someone else climbs over to look for something they can use, which is understandable, but then other people just seem to be walking around, strolling or something. If people are playing soccer and the ball gets kicked over the fence, they just go and get it. So the lives of these people already go way beyond the conventional image. These kinds of extreme realities have a strong affinity with art, so we take them seriously in our practice.
When we went to Cambodia to blow up the plaster cast of Ellie’s body, there were of course people in Japan who had qualms about using a landmine to blow up a human figure – because there are people who have actually lost their limbs in explosions in Cambodia. But then this “local reality effect” happens, so the mine clearance specialist we met took the plaster figure to the army camp where he was an instructor and blew it up with all the landmines the soldiers had collected. Of course it was our first encounter with the soldiers, and we had no permit or anything, but all of a sudden we were getting total support from the Cambodian army, and since it was an unusual event they were happy to perform their duties for us. The thing that actually made us question our morals was the impression we got that they were excited by the perversity of blowing up a human figure. I remember it gave me this complex feeling, but also a sense of immediacy – like I had touched a wound of humanity or glimpsed into Pandora’s box. And that of course influenced the production and conceptualization of the work.

ART iT: But in Hiroshima the issue of agency became a big problem for you. It may have been mostly reactionary, but you were harshly criticized for the way you handled local sensitivities concerning the atomic bombing.

RU: The issue of agency was the most fundamental part of that work. People said that we had nothing to do with Hiroshima, but in the first place the definition of who has a stake in it or not is ambiguous. From a foreigner’s perspective, it’s perfectly normal for a Japanese artist to make a work about Hiroshima, even though there’s a complete difference between being from Hiroshima and being from the outside. And even in Hiroshima itself there are different mentalities across different generations of survivors. For instance, a lot of the survivors’ organizations are now run by second-generation survivors. In those cases, since the people speaking for the survivors have no direct experience of the bombing themselves, they might also have doubts about continuing to talk about the bombing as if they were there. And of course we are entirely clear that we are not in the position of the survivors. But at a certain level our lives are also deeply affected by this issue, or at least not unrelated. Ultimately, we are implicated in the “postwar peace” that resulted as the flipside of the atomic bombing, and the necessity of the nuclear accident that followed from it.
A lot of theories of agency have developed out of this, including questions about “the right to make works about Hiroshima,” and, if such a thing exists, exactly who controls that right. For instance, there’s the exercise of “trying to understand the experience of the survivors by imagining it as your own,” which I think is actually one of the objectives of “peace education.” I think it’s an important educational approach for obtaining essential historical knowledge and learning to believe in the power of human imagination, but the harder you try, it only reinforces the sense that you’ll never know what it was actually like. There are a lot of people who start to tune out the moment it becomes education.
And even among the survivors there are huge differences between people who prefer to stay silent and others who choose to speak out about it. The bombing was the kind of freak incident where you might live while the person next to you was killed, so there are huge disparities in the experiences of the survivors. With all these different experiences, there are people who want to show “consideration” for those who wish to keep silent. That may be well-intentioned, but if it goes too far then it reinforces the presumption that the only people who can speak are those who experienced the bombing, and it sends the message that anything else is taboo.
We could keep going on about this, but in terms of what we were just talking about with regard to Mexico and Cambodia, even in the case of Hiroshima only a few people actually have that kind of unique reality – like Sunao Tsuboi, the chief representative of the survivors’ organizations. He has a powerful or I would even say monstrous charisma. We were floored when he told us, “I’m the world’s first A-bomb survivor,” as if he had just climbed Everest! It was like watching someone score an incredible long-range goal. The same thing happened when we were making Ki-Ai 100 (2011) in Fukushima and the kids from the disaster zone were shouting “Radiation’s awesome!” or when we were in Cambodia filming Ellie giving her speech and one of the landmine victims held up the stump of his right arm as a “microphone.” Those are unforgettable moments.
In any case, there are a multitude of differences in Hiroshima, but now we have lots of friends there, and one of our members lives there, and the city officials are supportive of our projects. In the end everybody is kind and understanding. So instead of staying in the safety zone of saying “It’s not my place to speak,” it’s far better to get closer together.


Bakuhatsu (2007), from “Thank You Celeb Project I’m Bokan.

ART iT: On the other hand, in “Don’t Follow the Wind” (DFW), the people whose lives were affected by the disaster are no longer physically there in the exclusion zone. From a certain view, it could be said that in organizing the exhibition you have attempted to insert yourselves into their places.

RU: The question of the agency or positioning of the locals is far stronger in DFW than with the “PIKA!” project in Hiroshima. It may be hard to visualize because the exclusion or difficult-to-return zone is still not open, but the sites we used are the properties of the local people. The traces of their lives are still there, only the people are absent. The people are not there, but the works will always exist in relation to those absences.
Once the entry restriction is lifted and people can go see it, I think visitors will have the sense they are entering someone else’s private space. And then they will encounter a tremendous agency – one that goes beyond words – in the local people’s personalities and lives and the time that has accumulated there. I’d like to know what they think when they realize that. Maybe they will be able to confront the forgotten identifications they have within themselves.

ART iT: In the case of “Real Times” you entered the exclusion zone to produce works on your own initiative, whereas with DFW you organized a group exhibition, inviting artists from overseas and involving a team of curators, which means that the sense of responsibility goes beyond individual decisions. Does this change the dynamic of agency?

RU: That was something that concerned us from the start. Knowing we would have to make multiple trips to the site, we had some hesitancy about involving other people when that kind of risk was entailed. But what resolved this apprehension for me were the unexpectedly varied stances of the participating artists and organizers regarding issues like “nuclear energy,” “Fukushima” and the “exclusion zone.” Some people made multiple trips to the site, while others never went at all. I now think that this variegated distance is really important for thinking about the place. I mean, it would be weird if everyone made multiple visits without any problems and ended up arriving at the same conclusion, right? It would be like showing a single, biased opinion on “Fukushima” and “radiation” at the exclusion of all other viewpoints. The project could more comprehensively consider the disaster, accident and environmental situation because there were people who said they would not go or who wanted scientific verification of the safety of the zone.

ART iT: Viewing the exhibition that was held in Tokyo at Watarium in 2015, “Don’t Follow the Wind: Non-Visitor Center,” I got the sense that the process of organizing the project had some elements of dark tourism: you bring artists and curators to the exclusion zone, they briefly experience this other reality and then they go home to their normal lives.

RU: First of all, from the organizers to the artists, the curators and the critics – which is to say, anyone who went with the assumption that they would find something to express there – there was not one person who entered the exclusion zone for the project with any such intent. Of course it was necessary for them to “see the site,” but if you put it in negative terms like “dark tourism” then it would mean that no art project rooted in some different locality could function. In contrast to tourists, they went there with the understanding that they had the responsibility to place something on the site or to write about the site; they went there with a sense of engagement. That said, once the restriction is lifted and the exhibition is opened to the public, I’m sure there will be many people who go just to see it. But I think for the local supporters of the project that would actually be a good thing.
Ultimately art and tourism cannot be so romantically separated. Places like Tate Modern and MoMA are major tourist attractions, and regional art festivals are predicated on the interconnection of art and the tourist industry. It’s just that there is a totally different significance to having an exhibition in the exclusion zone compared to MoMA. I don’t think it can just be summed up as tourism. As I said, you are entering someone else’s space – a space that belongs to someone who went through an extreme experience. That is an act that throws all your assumptions into question. Entering into the memories of a place that has been closed off due to high radiation levels is going to be a unique experience. For instance, there are places that have been robbed by thieves or are going to ruin, and there are people who just casually intrude into other properties – because they feel they are ruins. But what if they understood that these were other people’s homes?
I think that’s the part where your humanity comes into question. So even once the restriction is lifted and visitors can enter, I think it will be a completely different experience from going to a public facility like an art museum. If all someone can think after confronting the reality of the victims and environment and works spanning all that time is that it’s just tourism, then I think it’s their problem.


Both: Don’t Follow the Wind – A Walk in Fukushima (2016), 360-degree video, headsets, café furniture from Fukushima, Australian uranium, maps, installation view at Carriageworks, Sydney, commissioned by the 20th Biennale of Sydney. Photo Leïla Joy, courtesy Don’t Follow the Wind.

ART iT: Not only Chim↑Pom, but many other artists and filmmakers have also gone to Fukushima to make works, and certain images have already become clichés. For example, scenes of Geiger counter readouts or people riding in cars in anti-radiation suits are used to establish the fact of being in Fukushima. But as more and more works about Fukushima draw on these visual conventions, it could have the reverse effect of obscuring the reality of Fukushima.

RU: We in the DFW organizing committee were conscious of that from the start, and the first thing we decided was that we would not refer to the exclusion zone by the shorthand of Fukushima but rather insist on calling it “the difficult-to-return zone implemented after the nuclear accident at TEPCO Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant.” And we were also conscious of the risk that we could disparage Fukushima by doing the exhibition. The participating artist Kota Takeuchi lives in Iwaki Yumoto in Fukushima Prefecture, and the organizing committee member Yutaro Midorikawa also comes from there, while Grand Guignol Mirai’s Shuji Akagi lives in the city of Fukushima. As residents of Fukushima Prefecture, they wanted to avoid over-generalizing about Fukushima or creating the image that the entirety of Fukushima is closed off. In fact, Takeuchi turned the cliché of using protective gear and masks as symbols of the exclusion zone into an element of his work.
This comes back to the point about different realities, but many of the locals who have made multiple visits to their homes no longer even bother wearing protective gear or carrying Geiger counters. With all these layers of normalization, of assessing personal risk and of gaining knowledge, there is no single look or behavior defining the people you see in the exclusion zone. It’s just that I’m not in a position to say whether that’s good or not. If you want to know how safe it is, that’s not the job of the organizing committee.
So the thing we were most concerned about in organizing DFW was just to make and maintain the exhibition in the midst of all these gradations in different realities, values and opinions. Regardless of how each individual artist thinks, as the organizing committee we weren’t doing it because the exclusion zone is dangerous or safe or whatever. We were doing it because the exclusion zone exists. The existence of the exclusion zone is a fact that nobody can deny, from Shinzo Abe to the most hardcore activist. This is an exhibition that lives with that fact.

ART iT: The critic Midori Matsui has written about Chim↑Pom in relation to the Situationist International. What are your thoughts about the current media environment and your relation to the mass media? With so many different activities and phenomena being contingent in some way upon corporations these days, it seems difficult for any alternative to exist. For example, the Arab Spring could be considered the ultimate advertisement for social media like Twitter and Facebook. In the case of Chim↑Pom, Thank You Celeb Project I’m Bokan (2007) seems to be intended as a satire of celebrity culture, but now Ellie has become something like an actual celebrity, appearing in fashion magazines and videos.

RU: Actually, I’m Bokan was not really conceived in opposition to celebrity culture. If anything, Ellie at the time was like any young woman who followed celebrity culture. That reality itself was the premise of the work – although taking it all the way to Princess Diana and landmine clearance was pure Ellie.
The issue of corporations is certainly one of our motifs, but we’re not so concerned with simply rehashing facts everyone knows already. For us, it’s far more enticing to see how history fucks with us and depict that experience than to say we resisted the times. We have no desire to become political leaders or commentators or opinion leaders or whatever. If we ever lose the sense that we’re nothing but shit, all the humor and excitement would drop out of our work. We don’t see any appeal in the chain reaction of responding seriously to being taken seriously. If you forget about the richness of humor and vitality and playfulness, then no matter how smartly the work may confront society, art will lose to reality.
About our relationship to the media, I feel it’s no longer possible to draw a clear line between art and the mass media or social media and the Internet. They completely influence, rely upon and use each other. ISIS is the lovechild of this interlocking situation. Bloggers and people posting to sites like YouTube follow the trends in the mass media, while the mass media picks up topics trending on SNS to turn into TV shows. And it’s impossible to sweep the mass media and corporations out of the operations of art museums and festivals. Although obviously one side effect is that this is where restrictions on expression enter into the picture – which is why I think it’s really dangerous for artists to rely on those structures in their practices. We are committed to the independent production and exhibition of our works, and that is what gives us our voice.
When Ellie decided to go into the media, she called it “a kind of experiment” – like using herself to make a collage of art and general society. I think Chim↑Pom’s voice also stems from that. We do what we want and present it as we like, but if it has no influence on the current society or the next generation then it’s like abstruse masturbation. If it’s really exceptional masturbation that’s ok, but as for small concerns like “corporations” or “being appropriated by celebrity culture,” we feel that our current approach is more than capable of striking back and reversing the dynamic. Given how few artists in Japan make works about control and censorship, how do you explain the fact that it is we who engage with the mass media and entertainment, fashion and music scenes who are the best able to say what we want to say?


Don’t Follow the Wind Flag (2015), designed by Naohiro Ukawa, courtesy Don’t Follow the Wind Committee.

ART iT: But people admire and follow Chim↑Pom’s work because of its attitude of opposition or resistance. Is that just a matter of projection?

RU: If we appear to be “resistant,” it’s really more because the other artists and curators in Japan are too submissive. There has been almost no response from critics and especially curators regarding issues of control and censorship. There are so many great curators in Japan, but almost all of them are “organization men” who belong to museums and institutions, and while it’s rare for a country to have so few independent curators, neither are there so many countries with as many museums and art festivals as Japan. There are opportunities for artists to exhibit all across the country, and the cultural budget is only increasing in advance of the Tokyo Olympics. That’s great, but when it comes to control and censorship, the flipside of all this municipal and financial support is that there’s a risk of betraying the hardcore spirit of “art.” That’s why we don’t depend on it – not that anyone’s asking us in the first place. But since Japanese are more geared toward group rather than individual initiative, maybe that’s just a reflection of our national character.
In fact, this kind of organizational or social or systemic logic might actually be a necessary condition for art’s uniqueness. Uniqueness is not necessarily about “resistance” to the system but more like something “free.” That’s why we personally admire artists like the “guerilla” activists Voina, or Van Gogh and Modigliani, or the people who are characterized as outsider artists. We can sense in their works the social violence and human irredeemability that drove them to become “free,” and in the long run they communicate a “resistance” that is more urgent than that of any activist. I was saying that society always changes, but maybe this property of being “free” could also be described as the spontaneous mutation that necessarily occurs whenever things change. All evolution starts with spontaneous mutations, right? Through mutation, things that look like trash or vermin now can become the keys for a new society. That’s where the legacy of art becomes valuable. It’s different from the temporary objective of “resistance,” but it’s super heavy.

I | II | III (coming soon)

Ryuta Ushiro (Chim↑Pom): Art from the Other Side

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