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A X-spat boX in a "No Man's Land"
Tokyo, 1-31 of January 2010. After the French Embassy relocation, the former buildings are holding a huge art event called "No Man's Land" (the place doesn't belong to France any longer but doesn't belong to Japan again yet either !). The event is bringing together 70 artists from Japan and France and will last until january 31st, the buildings will be destroyed in february ! The works, most of which were created on the premises invade all the spaces both inside and outside of the remaining buildings : offices, corridors, library, staircases, basement, gardens, etc. The visitors can see all the fields of creation such as visual arts, design, sculpture, architecture, photography, graffiti, stencil art, live performances, conceptual installations, video, land art, music, etc. The opening evening was a huge success with more than 2000 people between 6 and 10 pm. "Kare-San-Sui Surrounding" is creating three sound installation space in there, and they are using X-spat boX with 8 speakers is for a installation at the central garden.
They comment: "We, Kare-San-Sui Surrounding, exhibited our works at No Man’s Land in the French Embassy in Japan. No Man’s Land is a special exhibition organized by the French Embassy on the occasion of the renovation of the main buildings. The concept is “Destruction and Creation”. More than 70 artists from Japan and France have been invited to this unique exhibition. Kare-San-Sui Surrounding put sound installations into three areas in the main building. They are pieces of a suite named "La Divina Commedia Suite" which is inspired by Dante Alighieri’s great epic of the Middle Ages. While related, each has its own concept. To create these works received enormous cooperation from many people and companies such as KENZO. We thank them and hope many people see the result of this collaboration. Anyway, it is a very rare chance to stroll in the embassy, maybe a once in lifetime chance. And we are also preparing art tours and live performances at the venue by Kare-San-Sui Surrounding on January, 23 and 24. “Paradiso”. We at Kare-San-Sui Surrounding installed our master piece Kare-San-Sui garden with sound in the classical Japanese-styled court of the ex-French Embassy. For example, the Stone Garden of Ryoanji is famous as the way of zen gardening. “Kare-San-Sui” expresses nature, like mountains or oceans, with only stone and rock. We express the cosmic image just with sound. As Dante portrayed stars in the epic, we tried to create a mixed image of the Ptolemaic system and contemporary cosmology. You may listen to the sound in the past or in the future since this microcosm can not be measured by absolute time. The acoustics of the space are produced with special sound acoustics and hardware. Please stroll inside the garden. You will hear the sounds from speakers on the virtual circumference as if the sound objects really exist here and there. But is the object there? Or is it not there? Look with your inner eyes as Zen tells us to.
Text and images courtesy by Kare-San-Sui Surrounding and Acoustic Field Tokyo.
Text and images courtesy by Kare-San-Sui Surrounding and Acoustic Field Tokyo.
