Sankakudo

mori - 鳥がいない
The Forest - No birds.

materials : leaves, woods, dead body.
period : 26/01/2012 - 06/02/2012
place : Komyoji-kaikan (AIR cafe 2nd floor) Onomichi-city, Hiroshima.

English is below.

この作品は大学二年の終わりに初めて開いた私の個展に展示されたインスタレーション作品です。テーマは人間にとって心地の良い、生き物のいない森です。
　
以前より自然が好きだという人々の話しを聞く度、彼らのほとんどが人間にとって都合のいい人工林を自然林だと思い込んで、そのことに気づかずに自然を語っていることに欺瞞を感じていました。本当の自然環境は虫や野生生物などの外敵も多く、人間にとって都合の良いように整備もされていないため、居心地がいいところなどではないのです。そこで私はその欺瞞を更に押し進めてみようと考えました。
地面が剥き出しのコンクリートの場所に自然を感じる人は少ないでしょう。ですがそこが枯れ葉で覆われてしまったらどうでしょうか。そこでまずは約6000リッターぶんの落ち葉を山から集めて来て床に敷き詰めました。等間隔に整然と並ぶ杉林を見て何の疑問も持たずに「自然が豊か」と言ってしまう現代人なら、角材を逆さまに吊るして木に見立てて並べてもそれを森のようだと感じてくれるのではないかと考え、次に角材を配置しました。それだけではちょっと味気ないなら、いただいてきた立派な木の切り株を置いて神々しさも演出してみましょう。仕上げに殺虫剤を焚いて虫を殺し、人間以外の外敵や生き物のいない空間にしてしまえば、人間にとって心地の良い森になったのではないでしょうか。そうして木や葉っぱといった人間が空間を認識するのに必要な記号的要素だけで作られた生物の一切いない森がこのインスタレーション作品です。
展覧会には多くの方が来て下さり、「素敵な空間」だとの言葉も沢山頂けました。何時間もじっと佇む人、枯葉を踏みしめる音に耳を傾ける人、木や枯葉から立ち上る自然的な匂いを楽しむ人、何度も遊びに来てくれる子供達。私は展覧会の間ずっと会場に居て人々の反応をつぶさに見ていました。どうやら人間にとって心地の良い生き物のいない森を作ることには一応成功したようでした。外敵や不快な他の生き物がいなくて、安全で快適で、適度に自然を感じられるような記号が散りばめられた空間、それこそが人間にとって理想的で心地の良い空間であり、それは人工の空間以外には存在しえないものです。私達は純粋な自然空間では快適に生きられない生き物です。そんな人間が自然を求めたり守ったりしようとすることは本来強い葛藤やストレスを伴う行為でもあるはずです。もしそこに葛藤やストレスがなく、逆に居心地の良さや快適ささえあるのならば、それは欺瞞なのではないでしょうか。

This is an installation work that was shown in my first solo exhibition at the end of my second year of college. The theme is a forest without living things, which is comfortable for humans.
　
I have always felt deceived whenever I hear Japanese people who say they love nature because most of them think that man-made forests are natural forests, and talk about nature without realizing it. The real natural environment is not a comfortable place to live, as it is full of insects, wildlife, and other foreign enemies, and has not been maintained in a way that is convenient for humans. So I decided to push the deception even further.
Few people would feel natural in a place where the ground is bare concrete. But what if it were covered with dead leaves? The first thing I did was to collect about 6,000 liters of fallen leaves from the mountains and spread them on the floor. I thought that modern people, who look at an orderly cedar forest and call it "beautiful nature" without question, would feel that it was like a forest if I hung square lumber upside down and arranged it to look like a tree. If that's not enough to make it look like a forest, you can also place some fine tree stumps that I got from a tree to make it look more divine. To finish off the forest, insecticides were burned to kill insects, and the forest became a comfortable place for humans to live if it was free of foreign enemies and creatures other than humans. In this way, this installation work is a forest without any living things, created only with symbolic elements such as trees and leaves, which are necessary for humans to recognize space.
Many people came to the exhibition and said that it was a wonderful space. There were people who stood still for hours, people who listened to the sound of the dead leaves being stepped on, people who enjoyed the natural smell of the trees and dead leaves, and children who kept coming back to visit. I stayed in the exhibition hall for the entire duration of the exhibition and watched people's reactions closely. It seemed that I had succeeded in creating a forest free of creatures that would be comfortable for humans. A space that is free of foreign enemies and other unpleasant creatures, safe and comfortable, and interspersed with symbols that give a moderate sense of nature, is the ideal and comfortable space for humans, and it cannot exist outside of artificial space. We cannot live comfortably in a purely natural space, and for us to seek and protect nature must be an act of strong conflict and stress. If there is no conflict or stress, but on the contrary, a sense of comfort and ease, then it is a deception.

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