不時着アブダクション | Distorted Abduction
17th Jul. - 28th Aug. 2021
KODAMA GALLERY TENNOZ
17th Jul. - 28th Aug. 2021
KODAMA GALLERY TENNOZ
Courtesy of the artist and Kodama Gallery
In this exhibition, titled "Distorted Abduction", exhibiting artists Gaetan Kubo and Shu Isaka focused on the so-called "Haneda new flight routes", which passes over Tennoz, the venue for the Kodama Gallery. This has been in operation since 29 March 2020, with the aim of expanding the airport's throughput capacity in anticipation of an increase in the number of foreign visitors to Japan. Approximately 30 flights per hour will pass over Tennoz Isle every hour for a three-hour operation between 15:00 and 19:00 when the southerly winds blow. As of the time of the 2019 announcement by the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism, the angle of descent on the aircraft's arrival path will be 3.45 degrees for noise control, and it has been said that the airport will be the most difficult airport in the world for pilots to land. Flying directly over the heart of Tokyo means flying over the heads of the people who live there, and from the time the plan was announced until now, more than a year after it has been in operation, complaints of noise and falling debris have continued. The plane is now snatching up the Kodama Gallery, where this exhibition is being held, at an altitude of approximately 1,500 ft, or 450 m above the ground.
Shu Isaka has previously featured this new Haneda new flight route in The Sprite (Thunder/Flower Bud) (2021). On this occasion, Isaka did not show the flight route as usually indicated by a 'line', but cut out the space around the route as if it were an architectural structure. The ironically deconstructivist stadium-like structure is simulated using a video game application, and various hypotheses are portrayed in a science fiction film-like narrative, involving the High Frequency Active Auroral Research Programme (commonly known as HAARP) set up in Alaska. The film seems to be haunted by a sense of disquiet and 'unknowability', so much so that some conspiracy theorists believe that HAARP, which appears in the film, caused the massive earthquake, and want to link it to something else.
On the other hand, Kubo Gaetan's works have so far focused on the modern and contemporary history of sound and vibration in works such as 《The world is full of sound》(2020), and have touched on human activities that have tried to capture earthquakes scientifically, such as the 'a catfish-style seismograph / power generator' named 《I cannot hear you but I can listen to you》 (2020) The catfish is linked to earthquakes. While the 'belief' that catfishes are linked to earthquakes is, in the light of today's advanced scientific analysis, somewhat unscientific, we can find something in common in that we want to somehow understand earthquakes. Kubo also looks at the origin of the name Tennoz. In 1751, before it was called Tennoz, a mask of Gozu-Tenno 'washed ashore' on the pre-Edo sea. This mask became a deity when it was pulled up by fishermen's nets. The objects in the exhibition room may be considered to have a significance from this history.
However, the essential part of this two-person exhibition, which is not a presentation of research or the like, is not devoted to such foregrounds and present-day Tennoz. Why does the Haneda new flight routes, the most dangerous in the world, make us 'uneasy' in this way? And why is the disquiet created by the unobtainability of things like HAARP so favoured by conspiracy theorists? Why were catfish believed to be linked to earthquakes? Why did the Gozu-Tenno masks arrive? If we face these as questions, there will be many arguments, but no correct answers. If the production of a work of art is the transfer of the artist's idea onto a medium, then the aspect of the work does not lie in the above-mentioned questions. The very thought of watching a plane fly over the Haneda new flight routes and thinking 'what if this plane crash-lands here...' may only be an imagination stirred up by our fears, but the imagination is with each one of us as a disgustingly concrete and therefore terrifying thing. It is also, of course, what makes real the inferences of 'what might happen' that we experience directly or that we capture in images, photographs or through people. When we fear such possibilities, we know that we do not fear them because we are aware of them, but because we are frightened of their very existence in the first place. The aim of scientific analysis is to unravel and understand the phenomena that occur. But this fear makes us think of nothingness, and therefore makes us uneasy, no matter how unclear it may be.
That plane might not crash-land. Or rather, the probability is that it almost never will. The probability of dying in a plane crash is said to be 0.0009%. But a plane flying there can come here now. What is important is that there is another form of work than to say "but it is not zero per cent" about this. It doesn't have to be an aeroplane. We probably know how the imagination of being able to think like that is different from what conspiracy theorists love. Kubo Gaetan and Isaka Shu find pareidolia in the fourth dimension in their own ways.
That plane might not crash-land. Or rather, the probability is that it almost never will. The probability of dying in a plane crash is said to be 0.0009%. But a plane flying there can come here now. What is important is that there is another form of work than to say "but it is not zero per cent" about this. It doesn't have to be an aeroplane. We probably know how the imagination of being able to think like that is different from what conspiracy theorists love. Kubo Gaetan and Isaka Shu find pareidolia in the fourth dimension in their own ways.
Yuji Oshita (Nakanoshima Museum of Art, Osaka)
Left: 世界は音で満たされている 天王洲篇 | The world is full of sounds TENNOZ ver.
Right: 聞こえないけど聴こえてる | I cannot hear you but I can listen to you
2021
Right: 聞こえないけど聴こえてる | I cannot hear you but I can listen to you
2021
耳回路 | Ear circuit
2021
2021
銅板にインク
Ink on copper plate
Ink on copper plate
ミス,ア・シング (Myth, A Thing) | Myth, A Thing
2021
2021
月刊ムー 1998年8月号(8月1日発行), ブルキナ・ファソのビランガ村に落下した隕石と思われる石(1999年10月27日落下)
Japanese super mystery magazine "Mu"(issued 1st August 1998), meteorite which has allegedly fell into the village of Bilanga.
Japanese super mystery magazine "Mu"(issued 1st August 1998), meteorite which has allegedly fell into the village of Bilanga.
Everyone at one time or another has probably thought about the "Great Prophecy of Nostradamus", which is probably the most famous of all the "doomsday prophecies". Tatsuhiko Shibusawa, in his book "Yōjin kijinkan (1971)", refers to the "Great King of Fear, Angolmore" in the prophecy as "the Great King of Angoulême", perhaps from the bilingual translation of Galancière's book. Angoulême is where my grandfather's high school was located and was a town I passed through every summer when I was a child.
I don't know if it has anything to do with such a prophecy or not, but the fact that Armageddon was the number one film of all time at the box office at a time when everyone was worried that a meteorite was going to hit the city, somehow the theme song 'I Don't Want to Miss a Thing' has been given in Japan the "Miss a Thing" in Japan. I think the title was originally intended to mean "I don't want to miss even the smallest thing", but I wonder if it is my imagination that the Japanese title seems to contain a nuance of "missing something". This film changes the spelling of that Japanese title to 'Myth a Thing', meaning 'a myth (made-up story)'.
Seven meteorite falls were confirmed (and authorised) in 1999, and a fragment of one of them, from Burkina Faso, pierced the notice for the next issue of a super-mystery magazine published just before the Great Prophecy.
I don't know if it has anything to do with such a prophecy or not, but the fact that Armageddon was the number one film of all time at the box office at a time when everyone was worried that a meteorite was going to hit the city, somehow the theme song 'I Don't Want to Miss a Thing' has been given in Japan the "Miss a Thing" in Japan. I think the title was originally intended to mean "I don't want to miss even the smallest thing", but I wonder if it is my imagination that the Japanese title seems to contain a nuance of "missing something". This film changes the spelling of that Japanese title to 'Myth a Thing', meaning 'a myth (made-up story)'.
Seven meteorite falls were confirmed (and authorised) in 1999, and a fragment of one of them, from Burkina Faso, pierced the notice for the next issue of a super-mystery magazine published just before the Great Prophecy.
一件落着（つち） | Settle down (Dirt)
2021
2021
1999年3月27日に墜落したステルス戦闘機F-117の破片,ベニヤ,コラージュにアクリル
scrap of the crashed stealth fighter "F-117A" on 27th March 1999, plywood, acrylic on collage,
scrap of the crashed stealth fighter "F-117A" on 27th March 1999, plywood, acrylic on collage,
On 27 March 1999, a US fighter jet crashed north-west of Belgrade, Serbia. The aircraft was a stealth fighter, which until then had been considered top-secret technology, and its existence became known to the public for the first time as a result of this crash. The stealth fighter, which had been whispered to military enthusiasts as an "invisible fighter", was stealthy against GHz radar, but the low-frequency radar used by the Serbian side at the time was an old-fashioned search system no longer used by developed countries, so it had no stealth effect, Ironically, it was shot down because it was in full view. The recovered aircraft was used for stealth research in Russia and China, and is now on display at the Aeronautical Museum in Belgrade as a trophy. Some of the dismantled fragments are also sold as 'souvenirs' to the museum shop, while the aircraft, which was considered top secret, is being passed around the streets by military enthusiasts.
After the war, the US pilot who survived the emergency evacuation searched for the Serbian soldier who shot him down, and after several years of correspondence, they met in person to talk about their lives and now have a family connection.
After the war, the US pilot who survived the emergency evacuation searched for the Serbian soldier who shot him down, and after several years of correspondence, they met in person to talk about their lives and now have a family connection.
直りかけのレディオ | Flyingsaucer
2021
2021
撃墜された米軍戦闘機を北ベトナムが溶かし日用品として鋳造した皿、音（北朝鮮などの短波放送を東京で受信し録音したもの）、MP3プレーヤー付短波ラジオ
Plate which has allegedly made by melting a U.S. military figther, a shortwave radio
Plate which has allegedly made by melting a U.S. military figther, a shortwave radio
I Often go too far during disassembly and end up breaking it.
The reason for disassembly may be for repairs, or to jack up parts for materials, or simply out of curiosity to find out how it works, but as I disassemble it, thinking it will be OK up to this point, I lose the road map and realise that I can no longer put it back together. It is a common occurrence in this world that there are sacrifices to be made in order to know something.
The shortwave radio in this work was also empty, the antenna having gone somewhere during the production process and left to die. Near the end of the exhibition, a round plate sent by a Vietnamese man called Thai arrives. The dish, which was based on a US fighter plane that was intercepted and crashed in North Vietnam during the Vietnam War, was made of duralumin (aluminium and copper), which might be an exaggeration to call it a parabola, but it was a good material for catching radio waves. The 'it' that once flew as an aeroplane was connected to a radio and held up to the sky. From across the sea, you can hear the sounds of a country you can't go to.
Good Morning, Vietnam.
The reason for disassembly may be for repairs, or to jack up parts for materials, or simply out of curiosity to find out how it works, but as I disassemble it, thinking it will be OK up to this point, I lose the road map and realise that I can no longer put it back together. It is a common occurrence in this world that there are sacrifices to be made in order to know something.
The shortwave radio in this work was also empty, the antenna having gone somewhere during the production process and left to die. Near the end of the exhibition, a round plate sent by a Vietnamese man called Thai arrives. The dish, which was based on a US fighter plane that was intercepted and crashed in North Vietnam during the Vietnam War, was made of duralumin (aluminium and copper), which might be an exaggeration to call it a parabola, but it was a good material for catching radio waves. The 'it' that once flew as an aeroplane was connected to a radio and held up to the sky. From across the sea, you can hear the sounds of a country you can't go to.
Good Morning, Vietnam.