approximately one hour
commissioned by the International Research Center for the Arts
Galerie Aube; Kyoto, 2006
Getting to know Kyoto.
This project began as a question of 'passing', of trying to insert oneself into the situation invisibly, of slipping into the daily life of Kyoto in a premeditated failure of assimilation. But very quickly, language and the question of nativity led to a much more relational sense of identification, and 'passing' became much more interesting in the sense of 'passing back and forth'. Language and the exchange of meaning became the tools with which to trace the distances between person, object and place. Wherever we go, whether as urban planner, tourist or native resident, there is an inherent and instinctive mapping process with which we engage our surroundings. But the greatest illusion of the map, however, is its misleading sense of authority, of concrete objectivity in the face of a neatly laid out plan, a grid or a logically designed river. In fact, the map, as an image of the city, is a multiplicity of narratives inasmuch as it is a trajectory of points fixed in space. To learn about Kyoto becomes less about a real mapped variable than a simultaneous 'result of activities'. In the same sense, identity becomes based upon production. De Certeau measures being by un vouloir-faire, or "will to do", and it is within these gaps between reality/aspiration, natural/fabricated or transmitted/received that we find the rhythms of a delicate meta-communication. The former rooted-ness of time and place are no longer valid. We walk in circles everyday.
This project began as a question of 'passing', of trying to insert oneself into the situation invisibly, of slipping into the daily life of Kyoto in a premeditated failure of assimilation. But very quickly, language and the question of nativity led to a much more relational sense of identification, and 'passing' became much more interesting in the sense of 'passing back and forth'. Language and the exchange of meaning became the tools with which to trace the distances between person, object and place. Wherever we go, whether as urban planner, tourist or native resident, there is an inherent and instinctive mapping process with which we engage our surroundings. But the greatest illusion of the map, however, is its misleading sense of authority, of concrete objectivity in the face of a neatly laid out plan, a grid or a logically designed river. In fact, the map, as an image of the city, is a multiplicity of narratives inasmuch as it is a trajectory of points fixed in space. To learn about Kyoto becomes less about a real mapped variable than a simultaneous 'result of activities'. In the same sense, identity becomes based upon production. De Certeau measures being by un vouloir-faire, or "will to do", and it is within these gaps between reality/aspiration, natural/fabricated or transmitted/received that we find the rhythms of a delicate meta-communication. The former rooted-ness of time and place are no longer valid. We walk in circles everyday.
