– encounters 5b & 6a

The beginning of this post really belongs to encounters 5. The Verkehr Museum, near Shimizu Port, is currently holding an exhibition of Taku Tashiro’s work. He’s an illustrator and graphic designer. The exhibition is interesting enough. I wouldn’t make a special trip just to see it. However, if you were combining checking out the Shimizu Port area, it’s worth popping into. Admission is only 400 yen and it runs until the end of February. The Verkehr has some really interesting exhibitions detailing the port history of Shimizu, and there were also some very lovely impressionistic/abstract etchings from a local artist. I’ve misplaced her name(card).

Encounters 6 begins with setting out to walk inbetween Shimizu and Okitsu station. You always think, easy, right? I’ll just follow the railway lines. Except they go places you can’t go. The easiest way to follow them is to be on them, which, in Japan, would probably result in death, considering how well they are utilised. Not really an option. Google maps, or GPS and so on, direct you to the most boring, car-ridden path you could possibly take. So, if you know the general direction, then follow the tracks when you can, if you don’t have to double-back too much, and there are lots of hidden pathways and opportunities.

Along the main road, maybe the old Tokaido Road, is the Zagyoso Musuem/Villa. A reconstruction of one of those elegant older houses you often encounter only as reconstructions. It belonged to one of the wealthier members of Okitsu, and he was visited by many dignitaries, etc. Not really my cup of tea, but entrance was free, the grounds and house were lovely, and if you like matcha and ice-cream, it was available, though maybe not on a mid-weekday. I was out walking to see what I’d encounter, so there was one thing.

As I wandered along I came across the Seikenji temple. According to virtual tourists, train spotters like it because the Tokaido line runs right in front of it. Which it does. Apparently, according to the link just prior, a shot of a train passing under the bell tower is well sought after.

That brick wall was beautiful, mainly because the red brick is so rarely seen in Japan. The temple overlooks Suruga Bay, and the horizon would be the ocean if not for the elevated highway that divides the vision.

The photo below details some further information about the temple. The temple was also a crucial in terms of negotiation between the powers that be and foreign powers/ religious interests, particularly Korean, throughout its history. It must have boasted stunning views once upon a time.

I was the only one in the grounds, though some workers were labouring in the nearby haka (cemetery). A monk sang while I overlooked the grounds. Very peaceful.

I love the depictions of the 500 arhats / rakan/ boatsatsu / bodhisattva that you can see depicted within Japan. Enlightened folk, in other words, who have reached sainthood, nirvana, possibly, but who come back to earth to help out the mess and mass of we bumbling fools. Of course, they’re quite often bumbling too.

Recently I saw Takashi Murakami’s depiction of these 500 fellows at the Mori Art Museum. The information I gained there was useful to understand the different personalities, facial expressions, foibles and achievements of the arhats. I visited a number (500?) of these at Nihon-ji, just outside of Kurihama. That’s a trip well worth doing. It’s detailed in this very long post from a previous blog of mine (there are a lot of photos!).

Anyway, I didn’t expect to see them. It was a delight to come across them, and to wend my way up the mountainside where I was abruptly met with a locked gate. So, I didn’t wander too far. But that gave me more time to check out the arhat who seemed to be having a pretty lively conversation with one another. I liked them so much, I’ll post a number of pictures to give readers some idea of the variety.

My favourite. This one has the Buddha inside the Buddha. Or the pure heart is shining forth.

This guy is very mellow.

The temple from the back. That’s Suruga Bay in the distance.

And here’s Murakami being an arhat at the foyer of his Mori exhibition.

Stay tuned for encounter 6B.

– encounters 1, 2 & 3

Grow Stock Pub is worth visiting. That was Thursday’s unplanned adventure when I arrived too late to catch the flick I wanted to see. My Japanese has grown rusty, not usually extending too far beyond introductions, but the staff worked hard to maintain an いいふいんき (ii fuinki) – a good atmosphere – among the three patrons who were sitting at the bar, early evening. They would not let me bury myself in my book, which was both good and bad.

A Japanese hipster came in and started shuffling cards down one end of the bar. The staff and all other patrons were friends, though they knew the guy with cards as well. The guy on the door (the master?) had just came back from Taiwan, and I was the lucky recipient of a small gift of pineapple cake. I did nothing to attract this attention and service except to be a customer. Two great Japanese craft beers, too – though I can’t remember their names – one  an amber ale, the other an IPA, one salad and one delicious seafood garlic dish later, I was on my way. Yummy.

Friday was catching up with this lady

Finding Vivian Maier is playing at the arthouse cinemas in Japan, and fortunately there is one just around the corner from Shizuoka Station. For more information on Vivian Maier, visit this blog. It was the film I missed out on on Thursday. Friday was rain, rain and more rain. Though it eased up somewhat when I went for a blowy, windy walk along the beachfront leading to Miho no Matsubara (just behind work).

The view from Sarnath Hall

Today was also a film day. After a very long chat with a friend overseas this morning, I get myself out to the indie cinema again. It’s in Sarnath Hall and as I wandered through the foyer I encountered the art piece below.

The receptionist started up the fans for me, which were in the hull of the paper mâche canoe, and the green ping pong balls started flying about. I think I was probably meant to be interactive with the art. The particular point that papers had been used did have some particular point, but return to the section about the basic level of my Japanese. That is, I can’t tell you what that point is or was. The title is Until Death Do Us Part. That might give you a clue. It was again, a little reward for being out and about.

Sarnath Hall seems to be linked to the Buddhist temple just opposite, and as everybody mills politely about in the small upstairs foyer, just as they do at indie theatres in any city, the hall over looks both the

temple

and the haka, or cemetery

I love that the temple, and the memorial stones of the departed, so squarely own this block of the city. I was scribbling away. I’m trying to do things that are beneficial to me, rather than the opposite. That are more beneficial, rather than draining, and I ran into one of the terribly busy Japanese high school teachers who attended our Toyohashi writing group a few times, and who presented her wonderful poem at the Central Japan Literature Society once. She’s just been accepted into a PhD programme dealing with the study of creative writing. Therefore, I’m not sure if she’s writing, or studying about writing.

Again, someone I would not have met if I’d remained stuck at home. She’d just been to see a flick and mine was just called, so we only had a brief moment to catch up, but she’s lovely.

As were Juliette Binoche and Kristen Stewart in Clouds of Sils Maria. A patchy movie, but wonderfully shot and acted. It was written by a man. You could tell (I did double check though!). Not that you can always tell, and not that women don’t write plodding dialogue either, but I think the Binoche character (Maria) is right when she talks about dialogue in the play she was rehearsing as being phoney, and a stereotypical view of how women dysfunctionally interact.

I know that was one of the major points, but considering the actors played out the parts they were rehearsing in real life, there wasn’t a lot of subtlety or contrast there, though there was some. It wasn’t totally ham-fisted. It wasn’t too much All About Eve, or Sunset Boulevard. There was a lot of light as well, and Binoche and Stewart’s characters were also very empathetic to one another, and Maria (Binoche) was not pathetic (well, sometimes), and it would have been very easy to make it that kind of movie. It’s good that it wasn’t.

The play within a play, turning in on itself, is a trope that fascinates movie makers, naturally. I guess to have the internal meta-script  be as good as the actual script would maybe be going against the grain? I don’t know. Anyway, the film had plenty of glamour and beautiful scenery. It’s marketed as Actress in Japan, or アクトレス。

I’m sure this film of the Majola Snake (below), a cloud formation that snakes through the Swiss Alps, was featured, albeit, without the soundtrack, and not the whole ten minutes.

Oh, and my work came out in Otoliths.

You saw it here first.

– where one disappoints, the other pleases – day 2, where to have lunch?

Photo by Ichigo Sugawara

Where the spiritual shadow descends smoke also rises.

Photo by Ichigo Sugawara.

This installation was in the Minekata-Yamadaira area, which my guidebook tells me, “. . . are villages in the mountainous areas of northern parts of Matsudai . . . ” (2015, p.21). I took tours in that area in 2009, but I also walked it from Matsudai station. It’s quite a hike, and though the photographs aren’t featured, I detail a small part of the 5-6 kilometre journey here. And then it seems I got very lazy, and just started posting pictures with no explanation. Such as the installation that was in the then Ikebana House I think, called Invited by the Wind, which had been in this area. The two photographs directly below are from that 2009 exhibition.

Ikebana House

Invited by the Wind, 2009, by Rishi Otsuka

ikebana house

Invited by the Wind, 2009, by Rishi Otsuka

This blog picks up where I left off, and gives some good detail of the exhibition, and also of the silkworm one below, which was surreal and peaceful. Silk worms chewing mulberry leaves sound like the rain falling. This is a fact, and I have heard them creating downpours.

The House of Cocoons by Kazufusa Komaki and the Nocturnal Studio, 2009.

We didn’t drive past these tanada as I recall, but that’s not to say they weren’t there, and what actually was at fault were our attention spans. That photo is also from 2009 and taken in Autumn. OR – totally somewhere else in the Echigo area?? Sorry, I can’t recall. It’s pretty though.

Anyway, we were back in Minekata-Yamadaira area, or I was back in that area, and I had to agree with K’s incredulity that I had walked to the villages, but as we passed iconic and permanent art exhibitions that I know I had seen, as detailed in my flickr stream I know that I did. Pick a destination and “walk on”, like Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee! If you look at the collection, “Art” on that flickr link, you can find a few Echigo Tsumari albums from 2009.

So, once more tucked into a village of this area, or one nearby (I’m sure I walked to two in 2009, though it might have just been two old residencies) were ephemeral installations residing in traditional Japanese houses.

Now, I know I’ve left these boys standing out in the field

and these birds without a roost to return to,

and I haven’t even touched upon how psyched I was to be able to get a picture of the 2003 Step in Plan by John Körmeling (text design Katsumi Asaba):

Nor, despite my enticing blog title designed to assuage and subdue the appetites of the hangries, have I mentioned the lunch of

photo by spinachdip on Wikimedia Commons.

zaru soba that we finally tracked down, but patience. All good things come to those who wait. Though you’ve read of my propensity to not finish Echigo touring reports, and is it any wonder? So much seen, so many words, so many pictures, dimming memories, my mind like a cobwebbed installation in a winding rural town. I’ll keep my fingers crossed that I return to the neglected topics touched upon above. You too.

The idea behind Where the spiritual shadow descends (top two pictures) is that within a house set in a rural village in northern Honshu, Niigata Ken, Echigo area lies, “. . . something that is disappearing but can be felt.” Shinji Ohamaki did a good job.

This is a photo of mine from 2009 which details the view from the road twisting around the Minekata-Yamadaira Area. K and I came from a slightly different angle, but took this way back into Matsudai.

Before we got this far though, K and I saw some other installations that had threatened to be spooky, but weren’t particularly, had lunch and made a few wrong turns and got a little lost on our way to the spiritual shadows. Spiritual shadows had been recommended by the researcher from my night at the Yama no ie dormitory and, even prior to meeting her, my curiosity was piqued when I had read its description. It was good. All our spook needs were met. We’d been told to give it fifteen minutes. Give what?

Viewers and “experiencers” are first ushered into a dark room in an old wooden house (after having their passports stamped – yaay!). A light swings around on a long cord suspended from the ceiling. The only light. This waiting time is necessary, because space on the first/second floor (one flight up) is limited and very dark. Participants’ sight needs to adjust and there isn’t much space.

Can you see your shadow? the woman who gave the introduction to the house asked myself, K and the other couple waiting. I’m sure she explained and spooked a lot more, but my understanding is limited.

When another couple descended the stairs, we were told to go straight and go up. It was very dark. With adjustment to the lack of light, you got used to it.

On the second floor we looked over a landing to the depths of the house below. Or what we could see of it. The house had been hollowed out, it seemed, but exposed beams and supports remained apparent to the eye, and divided the space below into squares.

Some of the old houses have whole tree trunks as the main support of the roof, though I think the beams we saw had been hewn and smoothed.

Stock photo from the Net. Not one of mine.

But, who could really tell? Smoke was swirling all around. At first it seemed that only the smoke and fog below (illusions, as there was not the smell of smoke) were the substance and theme of the installation, but after a period of time, small balloons, as seen in the second photograph at the beginning of this entry, began to rise.

On the balloon was a reddish-orange circle, which was some kind of flame or heat which resulted in the balloon both rising and then dissipating in a cloud of smoke. It was ethereal and impressive. No doubt it was hot up there too, but considering everything was in the dark, a lot cooler than the humidity of the day.

K asked the woman on reception how they had achieved the effects, and she said the balloons were especially made for the installation.

We felt our way down the stairs after a short period, and walked down to Sericulture project. Whose kimono is it anyway? – The mothers of the country of silk installation. This might have been an extension from the 2009 silkworm project touched upon above.

by Kazufusa Komaki + Nocturnal Studio

This picture is not particularly good, but it was an interesting idea whereby kimono, combs and hand mirrors of local residents were donated to make the installation. The local community plays a large part in the triennale.

Anyhoo, the kimono display was NOT the disappointment. Nor was it not being able to have lunch at Nunagawa Campus, or being unable to find a way into the centre of The Tower / Google Earth – The Fields of Tokamachi.

by Vladimir Nasedkin

The disappointment lay in the menace and promise of the picture below

not translating to reality. Doctor’s House by Lee Bul and Studio Lee Bul seemed like a good idea, and it was interesting. An old doctor’s clinic is used as an installation featuring a lot of mirror, but the actuality looked a lot different from the proposal. True, the descriptions in the guidebooks are just a few lines long. Full intention cannot really be known. Some of the more interesting pieces one was not allowed to photograph, and it was set in another historically interesting building.

And there was a disco chair that would have done Steve Martin and Audrey proud!

Disco chair (my title) in Doctor’s House, by Lee Bul and Studio Lee Bul

Disco chair (my title) in Doctor’s House, by Lee Bul and Studio Lee Bul

That doctor was obviously a superstar, though it’s also a good commentary on the ascribed and achieved status of doctors. I think this was another case of me hitting the on/off button on my camera, and thinking I’d taken a picture instead of withdrawing the zoom and closing the shutter, because I know I stood in front of that glitter chair and took direct pictures! I thought I did. It was fabulous.

I like the idea of the patients in the waiting room looking in at this exalted figure who might cure all their woes, or who might be, instead, a pompous jackass given respect only due to his title. The gilt and glitter encompasses both readings.I’m assuming it was a he as the house was pretty old, but I could be very wrong there, of course.

Anyway, the clear winners for this part of the journey can be summed up in smoke and the mirrors. Figures.

– nothing is nothing unless it involves a lost passport. day 2, after breakfast

Yeah, not this kind of passport. And we switched to a silver logo. I didn’t notice.

This one. The Echigo Tsumari Art Triennale 2015 Passport gives you access to all the artworks, and it has plenty of spaces for stamps. Without the passport you end up paying quite a lot for individual exhibitions and entrance to art hubs, such as the Nohbutai centre.

On my solo journeys I have never been so careless, as in, I never have been, not that I have, but with K, both in 2009 and 2015, my passport was not in my possession for a period of time.

2009 was probably more problematic. We were on a tour with a set time. We’d had lunch at Cafe Reflet and I’d talked K into taking a few unauthorised minutes to see

Reverse City (my photo from 2009), and had set my passport down as I took photos.

Like your daggy aunt with her best spectacles on a chain around her neck,

I also make sure I pick up a little passport holder that I can hook over my neck in a similar way to prove both my dagginess, my train-spotterishness, and my practicality, it has to be said.

However, it gets annoying. I take it off. I set it down. Especially in summer where sweat is a constant creep on all parts of your skin.

Luckily K is a marathon runner. From where the bus left to where Reverse City sways in the wind is a moderately steep 4 or 5 minutes away, at a run. There it sat. It was returned. I thanked K profusely and berated myself.

This time we saw

Ryo Toyofuku’s Golden Playroom

Ryo Toyofuku’s Golden Playroom

Ryo Toyofuku’s Golden Playroom.

That image is the right side up. He covers everything in gold and makes amazing wall collages from it. Check out this post to see what he did with the Matsudai Castle in 2009.

and we saw Shinji Morino and Kiryubu’s Matsudai Satoyama Kiryu-bu!!

Matsudai Satoyama Kiryu-bu!!

and we spent time at Masahiro Hasunuma’s Dream of land – twelve short stories, twirling flipbooks.

flipbooks

Notice that bag on the table? That contained my camera and my train ticket! That one I did not forget, but you can see why I might.

This picture is taken from the art field site, and shows you the contents of one of the twelve flip books shown above. Each flipbook reflected a month and season in the Echigo area, and each flipbook told an animated story about it as you turned them around. Very cool.

Looking out from the building housing the flipbooks

Furthermore, we saw Passing through the umbilical cord, by Asayo Yamamoto,

through which we passed,

You could pick one piece of fruit/vegetable if it was ripe, leaving a 100 yen donation. You entered the installation from portable steel steps leading up the top underside roof of a kamaboko, and then you clambered down the other side. Okay, Google tells me that kamaboko is Japanese for surimi, or seafood extender, which is

a semi-cylindrical shape, such as the storage sheds. Therefore, I don’t know if the locals call them Kamaboko, or if, as the titles are “Kamaboko-type”, it’s just a useful metaphor. K was saying it was the word for some kind of fish dish, which surimi is. The above is not my photo.

We also viewed  Satoyama Field Museum Visitor Centre by Musashino University and Tsohihiro Mizutani Lab,

which had unfolded from when I’d witnessed it earlier in the day. A brief sojourn past the car ikebana written about in the last post, and at long last picking up the official English guidebook for the festival (a tenth the size of the Japanese one),  before I realised I did not have my passport with me.

It meant no stamps at Nobutai! Though I’d got some of them previously, and I probably had to get the majority of them in the Nobutai Center, which we didn’t have time to explore within (I much prefer the installations, though the hubs are fun).

I realised I’d left it at the flipbook house, or at least I thought I had. All of these installations were near my accommodation from the night before, Yama no ie. The flipbook house was less than five minutes away from my accommodation, but further from Nobutai.

The night before, K and I had asked a man, bent over and seemingly feeble, yet fixing up vines around the edges of his house, about the flipbook installation. It was after six. Most things were closed. The old man didn’t know, and we resolved to see it the next day. We didn’t know what it was either. We’d just seen a house with one of the art field signs in front of it.  But when we spoke to the researcher staying at Yama no ie later, she recommended it.

Okay, the above is not a picture of the old man at all, and it was taken from this article about the festival in 2012. However, it reflects some of the colour of the area, and considering I didn’t take the old man’s picture, this will need to suffice.

The photographs are posted in the order we viewed the installations, apart from the one below (and the scarecrows). When we walked into the area where the flipbooks were, the installation being in an old house surrounded by equally old houses, we saw marrow drying in the sun.

You need to take your shoes off at a lot of the installations, especially the ones housed in old schools and residences. Dream of Land – Twelve Short Stories was no different.

Because I had so much travel, tramping and time planned, I needed shoes with support. This also meant shoelaces, and some difficulty getting into and out of my footwear, despite my many years in Japan. Curse you Plantar fasciitis!

I had strewn my possessions in the top floor of the building housing the installation, as you saw in the photos above, but had asked K to remind me to pick them up, and thought I’d done a pretty good job of reminding myself too.

However, while pulling on our shoes, looking out at those drying marrow strips, a lady as old as the man yesterday had been – I’m guessing late eighties at the youngest – offered to give K and myself some tomatoes and cucumbers. I’d rested my possessions on a shelf while pulling on my shoes. They had made it to the ground/first floor at least!

I was interested in hearing exactly what was going on, so I joined K when I could, and left my passport behind. Not intentionally. The old woman was an unexpected element. The day was hot. Tomatoes and cucumbers were summer fruits, the lady explained (I’m sure she said kudamono, fruit). We should put them in water, when we could. We should eat them soon. We thanked her and placed them in the back of the car.

K rescued my art experience again, pulling into the residential area (a no-no. I would have been fine walking up) – and fortunately the festival was not in full swing. There it was – my way and means and entry into the visual, aural, tactile and other art delights that punctuated the Echigo landscape. Still resting on the shelf. We explained ourselves to the lady who was still pottering about. She shrugged her shoulders, it happens. Then we went on to visit the loin cloths and birds in a shrine. Tori near a Torii.

The entry to A story of birds and Korato, by Maki Kijima. You can see some birds by the top of the steps.

– I never was much good at ikebana, or baseball for that matter – day 2, before breakfast

I had a pretty good pitch in softball, though. Put me on first base or on the pitcher’s mound (did we even have one of those in softball? I don’t think so) and I could catch anything. Not outfield, though. And they’d often put me outfield, before they realised – when class sizes had shrunk to the size of the withered skin of a raisin – that they needed all members of our year seven class to have some useful role in the softball team.

How many of us were there? I think there were only seven girls. Girls played softball. We combined with the year sixes, of course. There were enough of them to make up two classes. One of those classes was a combined grade 6/7 to which I belonged.

(Not my image).

They discovered I was pretty good as a goalkeeper in netball too. Necessity is the mother of all invention. I don’t do well when I know there’s a way that I should be doing something. This of course, means that I don’t really learn much. Learning takes practice. I’m not good with scrutiny, having team members rely upon me and with not being able to adapt to something quickly. I can get there, though. With practice, you nearly always can, though a mere pass in maths with hours of sweat-inducing effort seems hardly worth it.

(Not my image).

It’s insecurity, mind you, not arrogance, but maybe the two rub off one another somehow. The skills that you can dabble in when you visit Japan or other places are many. Having begun my career as an assistant language teacher in the JET programme way back when, I had many chances to place a flower in a vase a certain way, to fold paper to create an origami homunculus (maybe I was being too ambitious), or to cast a horse-hair brush over washi paper with grace and ease.

It was beyond me. Beyond my confidence. I even had the aikido outfit, but only attended classes twice. It was a wonder I picked up any of the language at all. Wasted opportunities. Flower arrangement is the art of ikebana in Japan, and it can be elegant, amusing, uplifting and something beyond a bunch of blooms strewn into a jam jar, or conversely that could capture its very essence.

Yuji Ueno knows all about it.

This one is termed Ultimate flower arrangement/garage, and in Japanese, I’m sure the word ikebana is used instead. Ueno’s exhibition was part of the Selected 100 Marginal Artists of Today, as part of the 2015 Echigo Tsumari Art Triennial. They were exhibiting in and around Nohbutai (For pics of Nohbutai, see below). Here’s a 2013 article on Ueno and his attitude toward ikebana. I can’t get much information about this artwork online.

According to the linked article above, it’s an expansion of and play upon the tradition of hanagaruma. A picture of the same lifted from the article is below.

I can’t readily find out if the work is from 2012 or 2015 as Ueno has participated in events for a while. This was the first Nohbutai exhibit that K and I had seen when we’d pulled into town (Matsudai) the day previously and, from a distance, apparent meaning was puzzling.

We didn’t see it from this angle though. Nohbutai is the centre for the Matsudai area, and I’ve posted many pictures of it in the 2009 touring reports.

I slept like a log at the end of my first day touring. Well, not quite, but I was asleep before 12 and slept straight for 2 hours. I know, because I woke at midnight. Of course I went back to sleep, and I do sleep fitfully generally speaking, but the periods when I slept were restful.

You can just see the tip of Yayoi Kusama’s Echigo in Bloom at the very edge of that picture. The person on the bike was tending a small vegetable garden just near it.

My plan was to strike out at about 7am, as breakfast was served at 8:30am at Yama no ie. I knew there were many artworks in the hills around Nohbutai, and I wanted to see the ones that had popped up since the 2009 visit, and perhaps some 2015 ones. I still didn’t have a guide with English, and not much time, so I was relying on memory and trust.

I did know that Illya and Emilia Kabakov had a new artwork, but the researcher I’d been chatting to the night before said she’d been unable to find it. However, we did reminisce about others tucked into the folds of the mountains, such as the spirals and the little library in the forest. Referenced in 2009.

There are a number of practical and not so practical artworks around the Nohbutai center, too, and it was good to see them so early in the morning, packed away. Though also great to see kids and others clambering all over them later on.

Gyro for Playing with Earth by Takahito Kumura. They look like unicycles, but are not. When we returned later, there were only one or two on the racks.

The palm of the god (below) is by Nobuhiko Terasawa. It’s housed in a Kamaboko style structure. The Kamaboko are the rounded warehouses that people in the Echigo area use for storage. They have arched roofs so that snow slides off easily. The Kamaboko installation can be found elsewhere in this blog, and they do seem to go through a metamorphosis each festival. K and I explored later when the center was open.

Anyway, time was ticking. There are a few ways to climb the hills. Art work is peppered throughout them. If you start at the 2009 post touring and read through to touring 8 on this blog, you will see a good representation of most of the permanent, and some not so permanent, art works in this area. If you check out my art collection on flickr, there are 9 albums dedicated to the 2009 festival.This time I decided not to take any photos of art works I had already seen, except if they’d changed significantly.

Anyhoo – new stuff.
It was hot. The hills were steep. I decided to walk past the Ricefield, the very first installation of the festival back in 2000, thereby bypassing a great many other worthy installations. I gave a quick nod to Simon Beer’s snowman (Carpe Diem). I’ve seen this icy fella (not really. He’s made of foam) on-season and off. He must prefer festival years when he can peer out of his refrigerated door to the spectators gazing in. Unless he’s a misanthrope. Which he very well could be. He’s pretty isolated year in, year out.

At a meeting of three roads, one which led to the highly recommended WD Spiral Part III Magic Theatre, I chose the path which had jinsei written in Japanese. I’d found the tricky turn to the Kabakovs’ work, and it was fitting that I’d walked through their original installation just a short while prior.

The Arch of Life in English. It doesn’t seem that Ilya and Emilia Kabakov have too bright a view of our journey. Even so, they make sure it plays out in beautiful surroundings.

I knew that Arch of Life would be crowded later, as the art work would have symbolised a lot to those who are invested in the festival. Therefore, it was great to just have me and the screaming, screeching, tweeting, rustling birds and insects. The sun rises a little after five nowadays (the days are getting shorter), so everything was already well illuminated, and Japan doesn’t really lose its heat overnight. However, it was still cooler at that time than at nearly any other.

Click on this one and have a better look at the side face of the egg.

Stamp!

There are three or more paths you can take back down to Nohbutai. Two via road, and about three through the fields and hills. I chose the road, and revisited Tatsuo Kawaguchi’s, Relation-Earth/ the Big Dipper, which was a big square piece of rust in a rice-field when I saw it in Autumn 2009

(Is that my picture? I’m not sure).

Not so in 2015:

Relation-Earth/the Big Dipper, Tatsuo Kawaguchi.

Can you see the farmer tending his rice to the side? Click to make the picture bigger, and zoom in.

I walked past The○△□Tower and the Red Dragonfly, by Shintaro Tanaka (2000), and Reverse City, by Pascal Marthine Tayou (Cameroun, 2009), two of my favourite installations. A young girl from our hostel was checking them out. I only found this out later. I saw her, but didn’t realise she was staying at Yama no ie.

She was an exchange student from Taiwan, and was currently living in Akita, to the north of Niigata Ken. She was travelling around on the seishun juhachi kippu, but was struggling with a rather big yellow suitcase, as were many of the travellers (No. They didn’t all have yellow suitcases).

Stock picture, not mine.

Of course she didn’t have her luggage with her at this early hour. I saw it when she was checking out. Considering how scarce accommodation was due to the festival’s popularity (travellers had to go from one business to another), and how far out of the way a lot of installations were, with a public transport system that could not be termed as frequent, a suitcase was cumbersome. I tried to find lockers for my backpack as soon as I could when I was using public transport, and luckily for days one and two, K and I used his car.

A picture of mine from 2009. Tetsuo Sekine’s Boys in the Wonderful Red Loin Cloths

I had to make a decision. Whether to see the addition I heard of to the Boys in the Wonderful Red Loin Cloths, or to go back for breakfast. I knew it was about fifteen minutes to the artwork and also to the dormitory cafe, in opposite directions. I opted for breakfast and chatted with the Australian researcher about research in the Arts (including creative writing).

K was coming at 10am, and once breakfast was finished, and the woman from Sydney had gone to meet her interpreter, and the Taiwanese woman had combatted her suitcase, I had time to actually get my head straight, to find the location of art works I wanted to see on the map, and to plan a vague itinerary. Don’t get me wrong, I really enjoyed the distraction of talking to my fellow travellers, and I know that I took up their valuable preparation time as well. The hectic breakfast pace quickly subsided, and the ensuing serenity of Yama no ie was the perfect place to spread out my map and wait for K.

Luckily I also waited for the loin cloths. That’s not a sentence you write every day. The new installation was not just about the loin cloths (fundoshi). Its title is Native Vegetation – Standalone Soil, another Tetsuo Sekine creation. However, there were some of the new-look loin cloths, as seen in the picture below. There were masses of the standalone figures, and they were a fair way from Nohbutai and the dorm. Having a car afforded us more time to wander around and take in other artwork.

– the final third, forwards and backwards again – day 1

The take a picture button and the switch on switch off button are rather near one another on my camera. A little Canon IXY640 which I’d only had for a short while. On the first day of my trip in the 2015 Echigo Tsumari Art Field, I hadn’t got the swing of it. I’m a bit better now. I know how to switch off the automatic flash.

The last time I wrote, which was all of eight hours ago, I left you here, in the surrounds of Marina Abramovic’s Dream House.

K and I then went to the Kyororo, Matsunoyama Area. I didn’t take a photo of the Echigo-Matsunoyama Museum of Natural Science, because I thought I’d taken enough photos of rusty looking edifices surrounded by green, and I actually thought I had already seen it. I hadn’t, and also it looks great in pics, so I wish I hadn’t let the feeling of being burnt out at the time flumox me.

Here, follow the link. That picture is from the Echigo Tsumari pages. The museum was designed by Takahara Tezuka and Yui Tezuka.

I didn’t really understand the information I had on hand, either. It takes a while to figure out the guides. A lot of things that I wanted to see were part of the hubs, such as Kyororo (the museum) and I think we should have spent more time there. We had more time. But lots of the cool stuff was outside, it was hot, we’d been racing around like blue-arsed flies, and I’d had intermittent sleep since 02:45 earlier in the day. We got to see most of what I wanted to see (yes, there were two of us, but K lives in the area, so he has more of a chance to go back and visit other artworks for the duration of the festival than I do. Plus, I’m a bully, unfortunately).

These life size insect pictures were one of them, and they were outside, along a walk way, which was also an art piece. These inside pics are not mine. Sourced from here. Remember that confusion between buttons I mentioned on my camera? It seems that I probably opened and closed the lens of my camera a few times and thought I’d taken a picture. Stay lucid if you want to do what you want to do. And having written that, the actual art work might have even been all in the museum, and we just saw smaller replicas. We didn’t explore all of the area.

What I really wanted to see, and I would have needed to have had a much better camera to capture it, were these two 2003 co-mingled installations:

Ting-King_Ping in Kyoro, Sound source, by Taiko Shono. The photo is taken from the Echigo Tsumari site.

Ground Water Cosmos by Takuro Osaka. The image is also from the Echigo site.

And see them we did. Ting-King-Ping is visually great*, but also aurally intriguing and relaxing in a way. Water hits the devices in the installation, and apparently, due to the shape of the devices, no two sounds are alike. I didn’t judge the variation, but I did listen. It aurally reflected the role of water in the community’s day to day life, and visually, as we walked up the very many steps, it square-spiralled (?) into a pit of red lights, into which, I did not want to drop my camera.

Luckily K is game. It was hot, it was stifling, they stated how many stairs there were, but I can’t remember. Maybe 670? Anyway, that’s where Osaka’s Ground Water Cosmos came into it. It runs the height of the stairwell. Ha, interesting. *The red lights at the bottom of Ting-King-Ping actually belong to Osaka’s installation. From the Echigo page:

The themes of this work are the earth, veins of water, ecological systems, and the cosmos, a world with vertical expansion. Energies are emitted from the ground and the cosmos. When an earthquake occurs, radiation that emits light in the sky is produced underground; cosmic rays are produced by huge explosions (supernovas) when stars are born and die. The neutrino is an example. Since the birth of the universe, a vast quantity of cosmic rays has run beyond time and space. We do not know whether cosmic rays captured by light were recently emitted by the sun or generated eons ago. It is clear, however, that we are watching fragments of time. When the sensor inside of the Echigo-Matsunoyama Museum of Natural Science detects cosmic rays, of which more than 200 travel through our bodies pre second, blue light emitting diodes (LEDs) installed inside the tower light up the wall on the upper part of the tower, and the red LEDs in the water are simultaneously extinguished. That reminds us that the same cause can generate opposite phenomena in space. My aim was to create a space in which visitors can feel the oneness of Matsunoyama’s earth and water and the cosmos as a whole.

Leaning over the railings while catching our breath, and doing the whole Vertigo, funky spiral stairs thing (LED version), it seemed the red lights were still visible, but I guess while we were moving, and the sensors were detecting the cosmic rays in our body as we moved passed (or were they just detecting them in general?), and the stairs and walls were lighting up with degrees of blue light, maybe the red lights below were extinguished without our knowledge.

The shadows cast on the edges of each step was very effective. But it was a hike only for those able to hack heat and a climb. I’d still recommend it, but not if you don’t want to sacrifice your comfort.

It brought us to these views in a hot, stuffy, outlook. Worth it, in my book:

I promised you tanada (terraced rice fields). These aren’t particularly dramatic ones, being only two layers deep, but still pretty.

That large shadow is the main tower of the Natural Science Museum.

Me being me, I got my numbers all mixed up. And while asking to see what I thought was Ting-King-Ping, I was actually asking the location of T024, Matsunoyama Project. You know it. The link’s not working at the moment. It’s a 2003 construction.

We were told 3 minutes away by foot, and we thought that couldn’t be right, because we just couldn’t see it, so they adjusted the time to five minutes, but three minutes was about right. Up a steep hill singing and rocking with cicadas and other summer insect screes. We weren’t able to enter it. As you can see, it’s rotting.

This is the case with a lot of the wooden structures in the area. There’s rainy season of course, but more so, the severe, snowy winter. The researcher I met at Yama no ie was looking at the sustainability of the art works as a background to the interviews she was conducting. Not all of the installations are made to last, but what do they become once they rot and return to earth (if they’re made of biodegradable materials)? Often they’re created with impermanence in mind.

Another art work on that walk was a 2015 creation, Deep Water, Deep Water, Into the Woods, by Yuuri Takanashi. Forgive me for the Echigo links which lead to 503 pages. If you refresh, you can usually get some information.

Excuse the blurriness. It’s the only picture I have.

And so, what happened before all this? If you’ve stuck around, I know the important question is, What did you have for lunch!?!

Here’s the map to remind you of the back and forth. The first part of this entry deals with point 5 on the map, and I’m now returning to point 3. Remember to click on it to increase its size.

So, a few rice fields and curving roads before this, and an accidental stray into the next prefecture, crossing the longest river in Japan twice (once when getting lost, once when returning) – the Shinano – we made it to the Kamigo Clove Restaurant Theatre. Again, the link is dodgy at the moment, but here’s the logo, which was presented as one of the art works.

Designed by Kasami Asaba in 2012.

Within and outside of the Kamigo Clove Restaurant were works such as

Untitled Project for Echigo-Tsumari, by Paola Pivi and The Game of Mikado by Meshac Gaba. The link says it’s a popular game in the west, but I wonder if there would be some allusion to the emperor, considering the art installation is in Japan. That’s what K and I were thinking when we tried to figure it out. Of course there is also the Gilbert and Sullivan opera. That installation was just to the right of the ladder.

The theatre is in a school which closed in 2012, as so many of the schools in the area appear to have done over the last fifteen years. The installation I really wanted to see was Shell of Time by Tatsushi Takizawa, because the photo in the guide looked great.

This photo looks great too, but I somehow thought there’d be more pebbly looking cushions on the floor, and the roof would be more densely covered by branches, and seemingly a whole lot closer.

The artefacts of the school were interesting though, and particularly for Japanese, and even more so for locals. Looking at school year books, it seemed that many photos were still shot in black and white well into the eighties, and there were a few year books which were a year or two shy of my Showa year of birth. Knowing that it’s Showa should be enough for you!

While waiting for lunch (we had a 13:30 reservation) we looked outside as well. I think it was the Shinano that was flowing by (K can correct me), and the small little shrines that are/were part of the school and community add to the whole beauty of the area as well, and also to the sorrow as cornerstones of community lose their traditional functionality.

So, the premise of the lunch was that we ate locally grown and cooked produce, and we also watched a performance. You needed to book ahead. The kitchen staff were female and there was a producer, perhaps, male, who sat behind a piano in the corner.

A CD player was piping out Wes Montgomery style music, and for a second, K and I thought the director/producer was playing it live (you know, the electric piano bits!). His smile, and me sighting the CD player, soon dissuaded us. On second thoughts, the guy might have just been the sound effects and lighting guy, and not just “just” of course.

I think there were four courses, and vegetables featured strongly. The main dish was Tsunan pork. Now, I term myself “flexitarian”, flexible with food, but I don’t eat a lot of meat, and when I cook for myself I buy fish and seafood, but very rarely any other type of meat. However, I suggested this restaurant, because I was interested in the performance. The pork was very tender, too, though I wouldn’t have been able to eat much more.

They gave all the extras to K, actually. He was the only male at our table (in the room? apart from the sfx guy, and the younger boy at the other table. Though maybe there were a few more), and it was interesting to see gender roles played out. Of course, it might have been a matter of expediency. Who do we give the extras to when there’s not enough for everyone?

The desert was lovely, though I can’t actually remember what it was, but it looks pretty in the picture. *Edit, August 10 – I remember, it was a carrot praline type of dish. It tasted good. The other participants took more pictures of their food than of anything else going on. I’ve no problem with people taking pictures of their food. It’s a lot quicker than selfies and never-ending group photos.

The pork had been infused with cloves. It was interesting as they’re such a staple of certain western and Indian cooking, but were considered quite unique in this situation. A handful were placed on each table for all to smell. A succulent aroma has the clove, though perhaps heady is a better word.

As for the performances, it was really a monologue of what life was like in the Echigo area, and the hardships that people have to endure due to isolation and the weather (at least that’s what K told me). It seems that people are writing their own histories as they are living them. Despite the cold and the difficulty in eking a living, those who head to Tokyo and other places always return. A bit of myth making going on, I think, but the festival does also breathe a lot of new life into these country areas that lose generation after generation.

Or does it? The researcher I met at Yama no ie said that people had expressed their worries about taking care of the art works in the winter months once the young people stop returning. Houses that are not used in non-festival years, and in the colder season still need the snow taken from the roof, and some of the art works are even taken down and over-wintered, like hoping your geraniums might survive if you bring them inside. The hardiest of plants, but not in the coldest of climates, where all of a sudden they become annuals instead of perennials.

Next, an early morning amble and preamble. Gold! Flip books and smoke. What more could you ask for?

Golden Playroom, by Ryo Toyofuku.

– a coffin by any other name would still be as uncomfortable as f**k (day one, second half, jumping ahead)

The picture above is from Japan magazine and illustrates Marina Abramovic’s Dream House. Not to say I didn’t see it, but I hadn’t figured out how to turn off the automatic flash on my camera yet, so I didn’t get any images which captured the mood.

This photo from this page shows how you are meant to sleep in it, though the dream bed in the photo below is not in Abramovic’s Dream House.

These are the suits that you wear, and to your side, in the coffin/bed is a book, tucked into a recess on the floor of the bed. And in that book, you record your dreams. The pillow is square and hard and I think it was made either of wood or stone. Anyone is free to correct me. You can see a version of it in the picture of the bath below (scroll down).

This blog post (not mine), illustrates the process somewhat. I’ve lifted the photo below from the post as well.

Dream House is nestled in the curves and folds of the Matsunoyama part of the Echigo Tsumari art field. You can stay in the house and doing so is part of the art project. I have wanted to, but not in summer. That little red room was hot, and those pyjamas don’t look as if they’d bring your temperature down.

In 2011 I stayed at the House of Light, James Turrell’s design, which is in the Kawanishi area. My ex and I stayed off-season, in late October, and paid a very small price to have the whole house to ourselves. During peak time, such as throughout the Triennial, you share with other users.

Dream House wasn’t as great as I thought it would be, but I’m sure that sleeping over might change my opinion. K asked the attendant if most people slept in the coffin-beds. She said they did, but there are only three or four of them. Whole families sleep here. There are tatami rooms where you can lay out your futons,  but how comfortable would sleeping be with this as your wallpaper, even if you’d paid for the experience?

Being so overwhelmed by the March 11, 2011 earthquake and tsunami on the east coast of Japan, I hadn’t realised that the following day there had been a large earthquake in the northern part of Nagano, which caused damage to many of the Echigo art installations, including the Dream House, and the destruction of Australia House (I think it was that earthquake, and not another which affected Australia House). Dream House was reopened for the 2012 festival, and the words above and below were added at that time in response to the earthquake. The website is playing up again, so I cannot verify that 100%.

The usable tatami rooms might have been upstairs, at it doesn’t look as if that glass case is easily movable.

Anyway, along with restructure, this was on my must-absolutely-see-if-we-have-a-car list. And K had a car. Yaay, K-san!

On the way there, we viewed the wonderful tanada (terraced rice fields). If you search for Echigo, or go to the art category, on my blog you can see photos of these from my prior visits. The aforementioned earthquake affected a lot of these as well, due to mudslides and weakened structures. This isn’t the most defined of pictures, tanada-wise – there’s a better one in the next post (as yet, unwritten, August 10) – but it is pretty.

I’d be very nervous negotiating the curves of the road, so I’m glad that K was behind the wheel.

I think this building housed “Elixir”. I detail that a little further down.

Charming or spooky, depending upon your knowledge of what lies within.

A relaxing bath. You can see the pillow. That was the shape and size of the ones in the coffin-beds. I think Abramovic uses stones, and possibly herbal properties, to usher in good dreams. So maybe the selection of vegetation in the bath holds some meaning. There were two baths.

I’m not really sure what all the glasses of water symbolised. They weren’t for drinking (or so we thought).

You can see the tour bus waiting. This group had gone before us, but as it was a Tuesday, the place was not swarming with too many people.

The furin rings sharply on the breeze, and brings our thoughts to a possible respite from the heat, and to our own selves. It’s a beautiful sound, and reassuring, protective sight in a slightly sombre house.

Within the same area was a 2003 Australian exhibit, Elixir, by Janet Laurence. That is the artist page. The Tsumari page is still having trouble!

Just down the curve of the road were another two 2003 Australian installations in Harvest House and Rice Talk.The artists were Lauren Berkowitz, and Robyn Backen, respectively. There’s a lot more to Rice Talk according to that link than I got from the website or guidebooks (we were using the Romaji and titles in English to connect with dots on the maps, and what we wanted to see, due to my appalling Japanese. It was all part of the adventure. Gathering enough information to be able to understand something and proceed. Of course K could understand the Japanese, but we had to determine which exhibits we wanted to see). It seems I didn’t take any pictures of Rice Talk though.

The map below shows you the direction and areas we covered on day one. Those areas have sub-areas. Click on it to get a better view.

 

Points one and two (Jimmy Liao and Harumi Yukatake) were in the Museum of Picture Book Art, Tokamachi South Area. I’d seen that exhibition before, by the way. It’s definitely worth it.

Point 3 is in the Asia Art Village, Tsunan Area. That’s where we saw this big guy:

And also where we ate. I’ve skipped right ahead to point 4 in this post, which is Abramovic’s Dream House, and the nearby art works. Point 4 and 5 are in the Kyororo, Matsunoyama area.

Five is full of sounds and pictures I didn’t take (next post), and six ends us up here, at Yama no ie (as opposed to Yume no ie – mountain house as opposed to dream house). This is in the Central Matsudai area which counts Nohbutai Snow Land Agrarian Culture Center as its base. If you search through the blog, you’ll find some pictures (go back to 2009).

The dormitory and cafe are on the right and run by a vary harried, but capable woman. She usually has more staff, but they were all off volunteering or working for other events and installations for the festival. She managed to keep the place running for 40+ people, single-handedly.

Inside the cafe. A very calm space. We had a delicious dinner, that took some time to come, but was worth the wait. A vegetarian hiyashi soba, with trefoil for garnish and taste. Yum. I can’t remember what K had. We also wandered the streets a little, but really didn’t take in any more art works, though the building next to Yama no ie is an art work.

This sign gives you an indication of just how many art works are in that area, and that is just a fraction of them.

Then I bid K farewell, after we kind of organised ideas for the following day, and had a chat to an Australian researcher who was interviewing locals on their opinion of art as community.

I was so beat that my notes made hardly any sense, but they were a vague guideline I could use when I was more in the present the next morning.

Okay, the next post will be pre-coffin and post. Until then.

– the title is longer than the thought process taken to create it (first half day of Echigo Art Field, 2015)

All journeys start at 01:55 in the morning. All journeys start with the last train to the station where the Moonlight Nagara will come in at 01:55. The last train to the station where the train will come in at 01:55 departs at 23:52. There are fifteen minutes between the 23:52 station and the 01:55 station, that is, between Shimizu and Shizuoka stations. All journeys involve indeterminable waits, except the wait is clearly determined and defined. Okay then, abominable waits. All journeys get shunted to 02:45 because there’s something wrong with the signal somewhere on the tracks in between Nagoya and Shizuoka. Okay, not all journeys, but the one that you’re on.

The Moonlight Nagara is a local train, stopping at a few designated stations, between Tokyo and Okagi in Gifu Ken. You can cover some serious ground. You used to be able to catch a great many other overnight trains, such as the Moonlight Echigo, and the train that went all the way to Kyushu – but JR has been phasing them out. I’m not sure why. Now the Moonlight Nagara only runs during the holiday periods, and it’s very popular with seishun juhachi kippu holders. Of which I was one. It’s a great deal. Google it.

Shizuoka at that time of the morning sure ain’t Tokyo. And Tokyo, at that time of the morning, away from the hubs and bars, sure ain’t a 24 hour party town. Even so, I’d be sitting for some time, so I wandered and trudged around with my indomitably heavy backpack, wondering just what that car was doing under the train bridge, idling, car lights spilling. It seems that Bikuri Donkey is open until 2:30 am. I considered going in, but wandered back to the station, thinking the train was going at the scheduled time.

We were not allowed entry until 01:30. Everything was shut down and being spruced up by shift workers on mobile polishers. I wasn’t the only one hanging out the front of the station. Of course there was the homeless guy taking a puff on his cigarette, but also a couple, maybe retired, some teenaged boys, or maybe early twenties, a mother and teenaged son. Cicadas, though I didn’t see any flying cockroaches. Come to think of it, I haven’t seen them in Honshu really. Must be more of a Shikoku, further down south thing.

The train going to the Osaka area was only ten minutes late. Not so ours. So, I practiced with my new camera. Some funky things you can do like getting it to convex signs

and to make other signs all vibrant and shadowed

An upside, I thought, was that the Moonlight Nagara for Tokyo was due get in at 5:05, but my connecting train wasn’t leaving until 6:20. It seemed my wait would be drastically shortened. Not so. They opened the throttle full speed, and even though those of us bleak and wearied at lonely train stops had had to wait, the train pulled in at exactly 5:05.

I was on my way to the 2015 Echigo Tsumari Art Field. I haven’t linked to the official page. It keeps getting so many hits that it’s out of action half the time. But that Japan guide link has links to the official page. I’d enjoyed it so much in 2009 that I saw it maybe five or six times. I’m not sure. Maybe more. I saw it in the summer and the autumn, and in the autumn, I explored independently. I wrote eight posts on it. Don’t worry, it’s not all words. There are a lot of photos.

A friend who lives in the area and I had done one of the tours, and he wondered if I might be coming up again. I wasn’t going to, but what the hell, and I didn’t go in 2012, and I do love it so. Due to obon, his times were limited, and due to me possibly returning to Australia, my times were limited as well. Early August suited us both.

Of course, being last minute, accommodation was almost impossible, but I managed to stay one night at Yama no ie (mountain house) dormitory, and it was very classy for a dorm. 8 beds to a room (bunks). Quite new, so the scent of hinoki (pine) throughout. The place is run by an interior design firm which has an office in Tokyo and Niigata, as well as Matsudai in the Echigo area. One girl slept on the floor, but it wasn’t a youth hostel. There were four more rooms. Another room was the male dormitory, I think, and then maybe some private rooms? Anyway, everyone was from everywhere. Taiwan, Hong Kong, Japan, Australia (not me, another woman). Children, students, academics. And this very cool statue, not an official art work, was just around the corner.

But, I’m way ahead of myself. My friend, K, picked my up from the Muikamachi station at 10:49am. That sounds like good time, and is pretty good for local trains, but I had been travelling since 02:45, and had left my house at just before midnight. Anyway, I got a bit of a snooze from Tokyo to Muikamachi, but the scenery was just so gorgeous between Minakami to Muikamachi that closing my eyes seemed a crime. Here’s the train chilling at Minakami. I had just disembarked the blue train on the opposite platform,

and also train-related, here’s the first art work K and I saw at Doichi station:

As you can see, it was very sunny, and quite a dry heat for Japan, but hot at 37 degrees centigrade. I’d misplaced my hat (found it the next day), and K’s wife, M, had kindly lent me one of hers (I’d texted ahead my emergency situation). What would I have done without it? I was slathered with sunblock, but still got a little crisp around the edges.

Jimmy Liao is a a children’s book writer. The art works are based on his stories, and the premise of the art at the Doichi Station was that the dog and child had got on a train and while we were in the carriage, we were watching their journey (on the film at the end of the carriage) as they were also watching/experiencing it. Major events of their journey were signposted in drawings around the inside walls of the carriage.

I can’t believe I didn’t take a photo of their faces. I had the chance. Again, I’m blaming getting used to my camera. This was a popular installation, and you didn’t want to block anyone’s view too much.

These were called Kiss and Goodbye and were, as said above, by Jimmy Liao from Taiwan. Unfortunately, I know those links will eventually die, but for now, you can learn a little about the artist, and see the second of the railway carriages that he decked out. The first was the best, I think.

I saw the second on my third day from an actual train window, as I was heading from Tokamachi to Nagano, then to Matsumoto. It was a treat to see  the art works that I thought I wouldn’t get the chance to set eyes upon due to distance and time. But, by dint of being on the train, and the scarcity of local trains in that area, there was no chance to get off and explore. The art work (below) doesn’t look as if it had any further installations within the structure.

Blame the train pulling out for the angled picture! If I straighten it, we chop off half of the pup. This was at the Echigo Mizusawa station on the JR Iiyama line.

In 2009 I had been desperate to see Restructure by Harumi Yukutake, but the tours were either full, and by autumn, the art work was no longer open. It wasn’t easy to get to. That and Marina Abramovic’s Dream House were high on my list. Restructure looks great in pictures. It’s also something special to come across this edifice. It’s covered with hand cut mirrors and stands in the middle of Echigo grassland, but it might make a better photo than an art piece. Even so, I was pleased to see it with K and the other family who had just pulled up. I was getting used to my camera, so a lot of the pictures are so-so. I haven’t edited a lot of them either. Anyway, you’ll get the gist.

This woman is probably a volunteer. I don’t think the masses of people “manning” the art works were paid. They were either charging entry for those installations that attracted a fee, or stamping the “passports” of those who had bought them. The passports are well worth it at 3400 yen. Especially if you intend to return and see more. They’re valid until the September closing, and probably available for the Autumn round of the festival as well.The great art museums in the States charge that for a day. Plus, your passport gets stamped for each art work you see! I love that. I’m such a trainspotter.

Lunch was at 13:30 at the Kamigo Clove Theatre Restaurant. More about that in the next post.

.

And it wouldn’t be an Echigo Tsumari post without a taster of Marina Abramovic’s Dream House.

– hey there

Well, it’s been some time. Do I even remember how to html, how to post? Updates – In October last year, in beautiful Morioka (the turning leaves, almost worn thin with  hints of winter) I participated in this event for the Font: a Literary Journal for Language Teachers at the Japan Writers’ Conference, reading my creative work with the other great authors featured in that photo.

Then in December, I read at Authors Live! in Kobe. That event also featured writers who had their work published in The Font. It coincided with the Peace as a Global Language conference for 2014, and was a well-rounded weekend. It was great to meet Suzanne Kamata , Jessica Goodfellow, Jared Angel, Paul Rossiter and Kelly Quinn at either event.

This artwork is from the Harper Collins page

A small piece of mine that originally appeared in Reasons for Song, and which still remains in that body of work, is featured in Harper Collins/ABC Radio National’s new publication, In their branches. It’s a book, despite it being published by the revered Aunty, and can be purchased now. There is a CD tie-in. A great gift for anyone.

We’ve all got special connections to trees. As part of the release, the ABC repeated this documentary which ushered the whole thing in. The original radio drop of my piece can be accessed and downloaded here. The text is also available on that page. The documentary is part of the Earshot programme, and will be repeated on Saturday, March 7, AEST 5pm and 8pm, and Sunday the 8th, 1pm and 9pm (AEST).

My work doesn’t feature, but it is a very interesting reflection on our connection and relation to trees. Anyone feeling homesick for eucalyptus will relate.

The original photo (or links to it) can be found here.

Academically, my paper on art movements and their literature components as windows for philosophical, cultural, historical and creative exploration in the Japanese EFL field has been published and uploaded here.

If you’re checking that out, you might like to look at older publications on authentic materials here (that one’s popular for some reason – I’m sure I haven’t downloaded it 35 times!), and one from way back when on Acculturation.

I had a paper detailing some technical tips for creative writers published last year, dwelling on the perhaps unfashionable maxim of “show, don’t tell”, and one is due later in March (this month, this year) on the un-lived memory and the creative process. The first is in Civilization 21(32), which is yet to be uploaded to the Aichi University Repository, and Civilization 21(34) should appear soon. Anyone interested, leave me a comment, and I’ll get back to you.

Dada poet: Elsa von Freytag Loringhoven

Presentations last year were held at the NEAR conference, the Literature in Language Teaching conference (The Heart of the Matter), JALT Hamamatsu and the National JALT conference. My presentations mostly dealt with empowering our students through creativity and ownership of language, and through connection to history and culture. Enough for now?

Go buy the book and reflect quietly. I’d love to know what you think.

– colourful elephant

This was from a page on facebook. I can’t remember the link. If anyone knows it, feel free to leave the information in the comments. I love this picture. Not sure about the message – but taken in the realms of positive possibility, it is a nice one.

– today

the world is good and kind and infinite in its knowledge and wisdom.

– love, might be

pure and absolute faith in one form or another. These were from an art show in Toyohashi, highlighting contemporary works. The title is “Tempus fugit”. Junko Sugimori is the artist. Here is a link to a dance piece which accompanied it. I didn’t see the dance, but it gives you an idea of the exhibition more fully.

– feel good pictures

Just uploading a few kids’ illustrations, or rather pictures from illustrators who illustrate kids’ books. Can’t track down some images. I’ll add some more later.

Where the Wild Things Are

Sarah Davis, Fearless

Sarah Davis, Bike

Graeme Base, Animalia, Lazy Lions

Possum Magic, Julie Vivas

Lion and Blue

– a thousand

child amputees in Basra alone*.

Beautiful walk this afternoon. My walk usually takes about 40-50 minutes but I had a bit of extra time, so I pushed it to the 1.20 mark, maybe a little more, a little less. Six p.m. was the starting time. By 8 p.m. there isn’t much light in the sky, so the sunset was part of the journey. I walked a little past Glen Forrest.

There used to be a mill in that area, in fact, before it was named Glen Forest is was Smith’s Mill for some time. However, some of the land around there was developed as a vineyard by Richard Hardy (I think). It was called Glen Hardy Vineyard, and he also ran a nursery. Some picknicking Frenchmen murdered him after some kind of altercation over a bottle of wine. Hon-hon-hon. I might be making the last bit up, the wine bit I mean. Maybe Richard didn’t like them being on the land. But it is a late-1800s story lost, as the hills so often are, into the small suburb of a small town of a huge, empty, state story.

A movie could be made. Similar movies are made. But some places have magnetism that makes them exude and bristle their own kind of confidence and chutzpah (don’t forget to throw in a splash of class), to which the rest of the world gravitates like swooping magpies to glittery, slippery objects (Chicago), and the stories from these places are told, even if similar, obviously lesser-known, occurrences happen elsewhere at a hundred times the magnitude.

Other places are kind of quiet and hermitage-like and fringe-dwellerish, and they like it that way (Perth, Seattle, outer hills suburbs of Perth). There is always a bit of wildness in the eye of the fringe-dweller. Maybe it is his own form of twirling under the bright lights of a big city. Maybe it’s the difference between getting murdered by French picnickers or gangsters. What were French picknickers doing in a British colony in the late 1800s anyway? Adventurers and those seeking to better their lot have been around since salt has been a trading commodity. Do you think that Lot did trade in his wife once she turned into a saline pillar? Maybe there was just no time if he was fleeing.

***************************************

I am a girl from the hills, the foothills of Perth. The Eastern Hills. Tim Winton in Land’s Edge, and Robert Drewe in many of his comments and writing both state that Western Australians are defined by their relationship to the sea. I think both guys grew up near the sea, but the sea is about an hours drive away for me, and though it was always a heady, bubbly, wave-dumping treat when I was a kid, it only defined me by the fact that I didn’t often go there.

The pool, yes. Bilgoman pool which catches the easterlies swooping in from the eastern states, and was always freezing cold as a result (though it is a warm wind, but it has the night air to sluice through, sully and muss). It was surrounded by Marri trees. Not a Norfolk pine in sight. Even trips there could be sporadic, though, but a bus-trip, if you managed to get one, was only 15 minutes or so after the 15 minute walk up to the highway.

honky nuts

But the hills. The magpie who was having some kind of squeaking conversation with the branch and leaves and nuts and trees he was on and surrounded by. The honky nuts still hanging on the tree (unlike the ones in the photo above), the marri laden with them, waiting for the 28 parrots to empty them out, fly elsewhere, and reseed them once they’d defecated.

The grasses all caught in the light with silvers and purples and gold. The red dust of the track, the dust that swirled below the sun when I shielded my eyes. The hills are what I know.

The wetlands area which, due to these dry dry times, showed a stunning white floor with small quartz rocks, similar to the glare given off from salt lakes – that was new. I hadn’t walked that far before. I wasn’t aware it was there. And there were still reeds and rushes, and the mosquitoes would come out in those patches where some water from the underground still obviously flowed, even if at languid a beat.

It was a treat to find that – to find something new along a walk I have been doing for so many years, but along which I hadn’t extended myself for some time, and definitely not that far, which wasn’t all that far – I do go bush-whacking occasionally, but that is off-track, and this was on-track, but I just turned around at a later point.

That is travel. That is the joy of walking. That is the joy of finding out about places as you wander around. You deliberately look up a guide to find the huge Baha’i temple in Wilmette, Chicago, or the Picasso statue in the city, and they are wonderful – but the extra thrill is the huge park which overlooks the ocean-like Michigan lake; the extra thrill is just how close the Miro is to the Picasso, just how amazing the architecture of the Chicago Temple Building with the very tall spire – access to which was closed the day I visited unfortunately – is.

The Chicago Temple building photo from here

The extra walk along the steep roads of Matsudai following the path of all the art installations of the Echigo Tsumari Art Triennial in 2009** – and seeing the hills drop away: at one stage the beautiful terraced rice fields (tanada), later in the season, leaves sewing the colours of autumn. Yet, you wandered those streets, took that literal high road so you could see the house that had made an art installation out of silk worm casings; so that you could see the rose petal bowls of ikebana writ large. Random wanderings bring random joy. Lavender bulldozers in the midst of roadworks . . . why not?

ikebana house

Ikebana House

I thought the sunset wouldn’t be anything much, as there wasn’t any cloud. But as it set a little over and beyond the Darlington post office, it was a pink, red and orange, surely green, as that somehow makes up fire, ball of beauty. The pollution , not so much, but present, made sure that pretty streaks feathered the face of the sky.

Darlington Post Office

* According to an interview heard here
**If you are interested in the wonderful art from the triennial, you can search for tags “Echigo Tsumari Art Triennial”, or “art” or something similar in this blog. Also, at my photostream, if you go to the collection “art”, you will find sets which contain photos, and which have links to as much information as I could find at the time.

– very small

Looking at this picture

makes me feel like

this

rather than

this

Which is exactly what it’s meant to do.