BOOK_2023

Diffusion of Nature -Soil and Dreams-

We are pleased to present "Diffusion of Nature 2023: Soil and Dreams," an exhibition of the results of last year's Kumonodaira Mountain Lodge Artist-in-Residence Program (AIR), as we did last year. In 2022, we held a similar exhibition in Tokyo featuring the 13 artists who participated in the AIR program in 2020 and 2021. Thankfully, many people visited the exhibition. This year, we will hold a traveling exhibition of the results of the 2022 AIR participating artists and a group exhibition of the past participating artists.

With the cooperation of WATOWA GALLERY (Asakusa and Shibuya, Tokyo) and GASBON METABOLISM (Hokuto City, Yamanashi Prefecture), the exhibition has been expanded to three venues in Tokyo and Yamanashi Prefecture.
Through the diverse perspectives of artists traveling to Kumonodaira, the remotest region of the Northern Alps, this project explores the question, "What does nature mean to us?".
The meaning of all "nature" is latent in human history. From the time ancient hunter gatherer societies began to "overcome their environment," to the period after the Industrial Revolution when people began to recognize the destructive potential of technology and began to advocate the protection of nature, up until the present day when the human body itself has been diluted as a medium (subject) for recognizing the environment (spatial and local) by reliance on digital systems.
The environment is a foe to be feared, a resource, something that surrounds our lives, beauty to be protected, a chaotic phenomenon itself, a collection of mechanisms that promote generation and decomposition, an ego to be regained, and a destructive self. In this age of environmental crisis and resource shortage, we are confronted with the complex contradictions of a civilized world in which life cannot be sustained without destroying the living environment around us, even after going through all the meanings of nature.
For us, the view of nature that is unique to Japanese society is also an important theme.
Since prehistoric times, Japan, as an island nation rich in nature, has developed its own culture and spiritual world with animistic sensibilities. Today, however, we have passed through a period in which nature was both a resource and a constraint on daily life, and since the modern era, which has seen an external dependence on resources and an inclination toward industrial development and a free economy, what should we see as the actual shape of a society that has rapidly lost its sense of ethics toward the environment?

In the area surrounding the mountain lodge, despite the outdoor boom, the reality is far removed from creative engagement with the value of "nature," including the (neglected) critical conservation system of Japan's national parks, destructive renewable energy policies within the nationwide, and the Fundamental Plan for National Resilience. In the background, there is a dominant mindset of "taking it for granted" due to the abundance of the natural environment in Japan. This has prevented the stimulation and awareness of artistic, scientific, ideological, and economic values surrounding nature that could withstand the weight of modernity. It has had long-lasting effects. The dependency on natural resources at the subsistence level was dissolved, and at the same time, the ancient sense of beauty, faith, quickly receded. The historical mental structure that pursued a sociality that could be described as a short-term over-adaptation to free economy and industrialization without the process of autonomous value judgment also shows the limits of animistic beautification.

What will we find in nature?
The theme of "nature" lies in front of us like a crossroads of all values, lands, and times.
This exhibition is oriented toward encouraging a small stirring in our perspective on nature through confronting the works of the participating artists, which are clothed in a realistic sense of the landscape and ecosystem of Kumonodaira, located in the deepest part of the northern Japanese Alps. What will our senses perceive by looking closely at the harmony, circulation, and chaos there? What kind of dynamism will the mountains, the stage of AIR, portray?　What kind of dynamism will the city, the exhibition space, portray? And what about the city, the exhibition space?　What will the distance and commonality of nature in the countryside depict?

The subtitle of this project is "Soil and Dreams" as an echo that embraces "nature" as an existence between life and inorganic substances, body and environment, city and mountain, concept and reality, phenomenon and material, and as an existence that seems to have clear boundaries but has none.
We hope that this project will help you discover a new view of nature that will bring harmony and creativity to the world in the future.

About this Project

Kumonodaira Mountain Lodge launched its artist in residence program in 2020 with the intent of using our isolated setting to help bridge the gap between nature and society.
Our program gives artists the space and time to ask the perennial question "what is nature?" Artists arrive at Kumonodaira's pristine alpine setting as travelers, bringing their vision from the valley below. During their two weeks stay the isolated wilderness seeps into their vision, a filter for new, creative work. Kumonodaira's raw setting comes out, filtered through each artist's unique sensibilities, bringing forth a stunning diversity of colors, shapes, sounds, observations, and images - both concrete and abstract. Over the years, we've come to see in our artists' work not merely the imitation of raw nature, but a subtle interaction of Kumonodaira's natural setting on the societal vision that each artist brings along with them.
Through the artists' exploration of the question "what is nature," we end up asking "what is a human being?" At Kumonodaira, human beings and the natural world flow, intermingle with each other. Nature reflects human-nature. By portraying nature, the artist lays bare human nature.

From its foundation, Kumonodaira has been dedicated to conserving its unique, pristine alpine environment, at the heart of Japan's Northern Alps National Park.
National Parks were first established in Europe and America to preserve unique natural spaces from destructive developments of the industrial revolution. From the romantic, transcendentalist, and progressive movements, artists, philosophers and politicians united to conserve our natural patrimony, source of inspiration and symbol of bounty.
Japan's government copied this model at the same time the Japanese economy was industrializing quickly. Traditional notions of nature's spiritual significance were abandoned just as quickly. There was no time to reevaluate the place of nature in this rapid modernization.
Rather than refuges against modernity's onslaught, symbols of learning from and coexisting with nature, Japan's national parks became tourist destinations. Their original conception and current financing have struggled to reconcile incommensurate demands.

Kumondaira's artist in residence program aims to inspire new horizons and possibilities for the neglected resource of Japan's national parks. We hope our artists and their art can bring the beauty and inspiration of Japan's natural world back into daily life.
To convey nature's universal significance to an indifferent public, powerful art is needed. We begin to ask: "What do we need nature? For beauty? For science? For a sense of place in the world?"
Humans today are overrun by information, overwhelmed by the threat of an environmental crisis. Kumonodaira's unique setting can help us to recover nature's subjectivity, demonstrate nature's value, and to clearly express nature through art.

Indeed, what is "nature"?
Humanity, is a form of "nature." Having prospered for thousands of years on nature's bounty, now it finds itself faced with nature's limits. What was formerly nature's sustenance, is now its menace.
Since the industrial revolution, global population has grown from one to nearly eight billion. Energy consumption has gone up one-hundred-fold, along with our consumption of natural resources.
Human activity has left an indelible mark upon the earth's climate. Even geologists are naming our epoch the "anthropocene" after human signs in the rocks themselves.
As human control of and impact upon the natural world has increased, our connection to nature has become abstracted. From our food to our glowing devices, modern humans are ever more separated from our own bodily "nature."
As life itself is dismantled into its discrete parts, today's society stamps out clones while manufacturing disparity. Diminished humans struggle to make a refuge of their own life. Prosperity and isolation, the fertility of life, destruction and metaverse are the diffuse reflections of the world, which is our "nature".

The only way to live a more fulfilling life is to re-discover a world where we are felt with our bodies. Sustainability is a state where people would like to "stay this way." This is not possible without the concept of beauty and physical completeness. It is through our very physicality that we can even imagine the planet and the other people seen on the screen. Only by sharing the places and encountering "nature" will we be able to find the clues to true "sustainability."

Overview of Kumonodaira

Kumonodaira is a lava plateau spreading out abruptly at an altitude of around 2,600 meters in the innermost part of the Northern Alps, located in the central part of Honshu. It was once called "the last hidden gem" because of the remoteness of approach: it can take more than two days to walk in from any trailhead. The scenery of Kumonodaira is described as that of a natural garden. Meadow ponds, volcanic rocks, and dwarf pine trees weave a calm and balanced landscape. Steep mountains Suisho and Yakushi provide a dynamic contrast to the surrounding scenery. The lights of the city are out of sight. Under the endless open sky the sound of the Kurobe headwaters can be heard faintly from the valley. The seasonal changes are overwhelmingly varied: a blanket of snow in winter, flowers in spring, green grasses in summer, and windswept golden meadows in autumn. At the center of it all lies Kumonodaira Mountain lodge.

Anais-karenin and Tatsuro Murakami

Anais-Karenin and Tatsuro Murakami are a unit that develops expressive activities based on the themes of music and nature. Anais is from São Paulo, Brazil, and works as an installation artist with a background in cultural anthropology and herbal research. Tatsuro Murakami has studied traditional music (choro) as a guitarist in Brazil since his teens, and performs and works as an experimental music and ambient artist.
At Kumonodaira, they began field recording various natural sounds with a recorder and using these samples to musically reconstruct the ecosystem of Kumonodaira.
Their works are closely related to the field of ambient music. It is not easy to use the "environment" to evoke emotional expression. It is an approach to spatial expression through the use of sounds that softly embraces and harmonizes the boundaries between mind and body, place and space, objects and phenomena, life and inorganic matter, and so on, by reconstructing the environment itself with sounds through an exploration of sound textures wrapped with some sort of raw sign of nature (or life).
When the two artists concentrate their minds on field recording, you get the feeling of a kind of meditation. When they feel nature by sharpening their senses, they feel their own body and mind becoming one with the existence of nature. This sensation is also reflected in the texture of the sounds they produce.
When the memories of Kumonodaira that linger in the sounds are collected as digital signals and reproduced as a musical ecosystem through speakers in an urban environment, what kind of scenery will we see out there?

Profile: Anais-karenin

Born in 1993 in Brazil. MFA in Art and Contemporary Culture, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (2018). Doctoral student at the Department of Visual Poetics, University of São Paulo, and concurrently a Research Fellow at the Graduate School of International Culture and Communication Studies, Waseda University. She is also the director of the at "Biolilolab – Bioart in the tropics," an institute of biomaterials, and a member of metaPhorest. As an artist, she creates works that integrate installation, sound art, video art and performance. Using traditional techniques for about a decade, her themes cover medicinal herbs and herbs, ecology, interspecies relations, science, indigenous cultural studies, and mythology along with the interrelationships they bring.

Profile: Tatsuro Murakami

Tatsuro Murakami is a guitarist, composer, and sound artist. After graduating from high school, he moved to Brazil by himself in 2014 and spent about 7 years there. In 2020, he became the first Japanese to graduate from the department of Choro of the Conservatório Dramático e Musical de Tatuío with a degree in 7-string classical guitar. During his stay in Brazil, he started his career as an experimental musician and ambient artist, and has released albums on Rohs! Records/Lontano Series (Italy), La Petite Chambre Records (Brazil/France), and other labels. As a composer, he mainly produces music for short films and documentaries, and in recent years has also been active as a sound artist. With a sensibility that mixes Brazilian and Japanese cultures, he creates sounds from words, memories of the past, natural objects, and their landscapes.

Hiromasa Iwasaki

I visited Iwasaki's atelier in Tokyo. His workspace is located in the corner of a spacious wooden building that was once used as a public bath, which he shares with fellow artists. Around his desk, photographic equipment and boxes of insect specimens were piled up high. The way he was working buried among them was impressive, giving him the appearance of an up-and-coming scientist in a novel.
The specimen boxes are old specimens from an insect museum, which gave them to Iwasaki rather than throw them away. In the fall of 2022, he published a beautiful book of art, with photographs that lovingly depict these lost specimens. Hiromasa Iwasaki is an artist who has developed a variety of artistic activities based on the concept of visualizing the hidden images of insects.
In one work, he has printed on the wings of a specimen a photograph of a landscape where the specimen butterflies and beetles are thought to have once flown around. He has also taken a series of photographs of small holes made by larvae on the surface of trees, using them as pinhole lenses. His expressive activities are truly a glimpse into the world from an insect's point of view.
And it is precisely because we are confronting the destructiveness of civilization in the form of an environmental crisis that his work has begun to take on a multilayered meaning. In the midst of such an historical context, he assigns to insects the question, "What would we see if we were to look at the world from a non-human point of view?"
The activities of underground minerals, microorganisms, mycelium, plants, and insects generate soil, nurture forests, and circulate the atmosphere. What does human society share with these mindless activities, and what can human society produce? In his work at Kumonodaira, Iwasaki both internalized the gaze of the insects and observed people.

Profile: Hiromasa Iwasaki

Born in Tokyo, Japan in 1994, graduated from Tokyo University of the Arts in 2021 with a Master's degree in Oil Painting. One of his main series is "Printing a landscape on what was once part of the landscape." He photographs the scenery of the place where an insect was collected and prints the image on the insect's body. Recent exhibitions include "Shoten-tai" (Focus Zone, GalleryBlue3143, 2022), "Monono-nokoshikata" (How to Leave Things Behind) (Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum, 2022), "Gifukei" (Pseudo-landscape exhibition, The University Art Museum, Tokyo University of the Arts, Chinretsukan, 2022), "Over the fence" (Courtyard HIROO, 2021).

Shigeta Kobayashi

Kobayashi published "cairn" at his own expense in 2020, a collection of photographs of landscapes from his travels in Iceland. A series of gentle undulations in the desolate land, bright moss growing in a stream, light shining through the streets of a country town, a chair placed in the courtyard of a house, pebbles underfoot and mottled patterns of alpine plants, a side angle of a man standing in a diner...these are just a few of the moments that Shigeta captured. As we unfold the moments he captures one by one, we get the sense that we are mysteriously descending into the depths of the memories that make up this world.
In Kobayashi's works, we feel the gaze of "time" that deciphers the story of existence. Behind the existence of all things, whether living or inorganic, human or earth, on all scales, in their present forms, there are a wide variety of phenomena, relationships, and mechanisms, and the shapes and landscapes of the present exist as traces and signs of these enormous events. His photographs speak to us of the layers of memories hidden in such "existence" with a clarity that surpasses that of verbal expression.
The subject of his work at Kumonodaira was the small ponds scattered in the meadows. Here, I would like to cite a sentence from his own reminiscence:
"In the ponds, there was animal waste, and insects were swimming on the surface of the water. For large animals, it may be a place of elimination, but for small insects, it may be a waterside for nourishment. I could catch a glimpse of the scenery where various organisms coexist in this pond. At the same time, there were unique times for various organisms, and the pond-bank-time seemed to be wrapped around them."
The landscape of ponds itself is a whole life, a storage of memories, an environment that flows in through our eye, a spark at the moment when the different streams of time of all beings meet.
Through his photographs, we touch the dream of this planet that slumbers behind the surface of a small pond.

Profile: Shigeta Kobayashi

Born in Niigata Prefecture in 1985, Shigeta graduated from the Department of Civil Engineering, Faculty of Science and Engineering, Chuo University. After working at a photography studio in Tokyo, he began his career as a photographer. As the axis of his photography, he focuses on human physical actions and all the layers in nature. His photographic works are created by capturing them as fragments of those layers. His major works include "AURORA" (2019) and "cairn" (2020), which were taken during his visits to Iceland two years in a row. "stratum" (2022), based on the experience of his second visit to Iceland and using photographs that remain vivid as a record of these events, fixes the fluctuation of memories that fade with time. Another work, "yoha" (2020), is based on photographs taken in Tokushima of the indigo-dyeing process and expresses the act of "dyeing" as a print.

Osamu Shikichi

A seed flies in from anywhere, landing on a huge lava rock, absorbs water and minerals from the tiny dimples there, and then flowers. They extend their roots into the minute cracks, seize the nutrients of that rock, grow, die, and repeat the process, until the rock melts and the soil is formed. Someday, the flower, the soil, and the rock will have no boundaries. When he inverts onto the rock in an oddly shaped flower-like pose, his body soaks into the rock like water, connecting himself to the world.
Osamu Shikchi is a dancer who captures space.
Today, with the expansion of digital systems, the environment itself that defines the self is in flux, identities are becoming anonymous, and the self-evident sense of place, physicality, and distance from others is becoming increasingly rare. In this time, Osamu reconstructs a new way of perceiving physicality, that is, the universal connection between the body, place, mind, environment, self, and others, through his physical expression.
When he synchronizes the movements of his own hands with those of others through the monitor as two anonymous bodies, a mutual memory that the media of the body contains subconsciously rises to the surface. The recurring motif of the other's body through the monitor brings his intentions into clear relief.
By synchronizing his own body with the wavelengths of the environment and others, Osamu calls it hacking or recycling, a gesture that eliminates the boundaries of consciousness and accesses a more universal synaesthesia.
Osamu's performance in Kumonohira was a mutual hacking of the environment and the body.
When his swinging arm catches the wind, it melts into the wind, leaving the heat of the body in the wind.
When he immerses himself in the rustle of the dwarf pine branches, the dwarf pine shapes the human being.
The next moment he surrenders himself to the rocks, to the water, to the sound, and he blurs into space, tinged with his environment.
The audience watching this chain of "hacking" will soon hear the pulse of a vast body, in which every layer of vision is integrated.

Profile: Osamu Shikichi

Born in 1994. Choreographer/dancer. Osamu received his M.F.A. from Tokyo University of the Arts. As it is impossible to look at oneself objectively, he creates works on the theme of capturing our strong sense of existence through others who are physically closest to him. Major presentations include "happy ice-cream" (Yokohama Dance Collection, 2020), "blooming dots" (Toyooka Theater Festival 2020 Fringe, CAF Award 2020, TPAM2021 Fringe), "dragging" (Tokyo Arts and Space), "Hyper Ambient Club" (Rohm Theater Kyoto). Major awards include the French Embassy Prize for Young Choreographers at Yokohama Dance Collection 2020.

Keiko Hata

Merry characters from every fairy tale in the world suddenly descend from the sky and travel in a never-ending carnival parade. All of these colorful characters, large and small, are her incarnations. Keiko Hato's expressive activities, from creating paintings, illustrations, stuffed animals, and animations to stage art, as well as appearances by costumed girl unit members, theater, dance, and Chindon-ya (street advertising band), are just like a magician's magic hat.
The worldview she depicts, with its funny and strange aspects that deviate from the everyday viewpoints of the human world, is warm, as if it were a soft light in a dark world, cuddling up to the weak and the small. For a short time, it releases us from the weight of the real world.
The work produced at AIR this time is a lively depiction of the adventures of Mr. Mrak, a small botanist who likes to climb mountains after escaping from the parade of the "Keiko Hato Carnival," while conducting vegetation research in Kumonodaira. But, of course, this is not really a film about a small botanist. The story is spun out using the time-lapse animation technique known from Russian films such as Cheburashka, in which a hand-made dwarf Mrak is filmed frame by frame diligently with a smartphone at various locations in Kumonodaira.
Although we know it is a work of fiction, the background is the actual landscape of Kumonodaira. As we witness Mrak's face changing expressions, eating, and taking notes in his journal as if he had been given life, we are somehow caught up with the feeling that a world of dwarves, different from the human world, actually exists.
The universe that spreads out in the grassy vegetation at our feet, the world that insects might be seeing, and if we look into the darkness, we will find a dazzling dream world.

Profile: Keiko Hata

Born in Hiroshima in 1981. After graduating from high school, Keiko worked for the Hiroshima City Network for People and Town (now the Hiroshima City Cultural Foundation). Since 2000, she has been creating paintings, illustrations, stuffed toys, and other works under the name "Hato," and has held exhibitions in various locations. In 2005, she became independent as an artist. In 2007, launched the Kigurumi (costume) girl group "Shidekasu Otomodachi" (goofy friends) and participated in its activities as a founding member. In 2017, she began creating stop-motion animation using 2D objects and dolls. Keiko studied abroad in the Czech Republic in 2018, and participated in the Prague Cadre Triennial in 2019 as a Kigurumi (costume) performer. In 2022, she created a work using Ohtake Japanese paper, a local product. Her hobbies include collecting local toys and studying Czech. All Japan Daruma Research Association member.
→ "Dopey robot"The Little School of Art and Animation: A Production for the Year 2020 (YOUTUBE)
→ "Himitsu no jyumin（Secret resident)" (The Little School of Art and Animation) 2018 Production (YOUTUBE)

Minami Haraguchi

When I saw her painting of lilies, I was powerfully attracted by the bright vibrancy that filled the picture. It is not only beautiful as a painting. I felt a strange reality, as if I was facing a large white flower that really exists (and even though it is not supposed to exist) right in front of my eyes. Minami Haraguchi paints flowers as universalized representations of life.
She herself calls them "weak symbols." She says, "I walk away from something like a personal feeling or a fleshing out, and decompose it one more time. It's not like stepping into a mere symbol (of a flower), but something like a "weak symbol" that also includes some kind of cluttered feeling. I want to paint a picture with a 'pause' that evokes a distant memory for the viewer when gazing at it."
Perhaps the shortest way to understand the artist's intention is to examine her unique production process. She begins with careful observation and drawing, then copies the same composition on paper cutouts or resin clay, and again replaces the cutouts or reliefs with oil paintings. The process is fascinating, as if the symbolic meaning of a myth is strengthened as it is handed down across various languages and cultural boundaries.
The realistic details are lost in the process of making cutouts from drawings, and the outlines are further blurred in the process of transferring them to clay, and as the uniqueness of each material and the flowers in the memory are repeatedly integrated and decomposed, the image of the flower gradually takes on universality as a "weak symbol." Then, the feeling of the artist's interaction with the life of the flower itself emerges.

Profile: Minami Haraguchi

Born in 1990 in Osaka, Japan, Minami completed her master's course at Kyoto City University of Arts in 2016. She creates works that symbolize the trivial things found in daily life. Her methods of expression range from 2D paintings to installations. In recent years, she has been using a technique of digital drawing with her motifs, collaging them with paper cut-outs and clay, and then oil painting them, shifting the artistic format several times. Major solo exhibitions include "Symbols and Junk" (Fukuzumi Gallery / Osaka, 2021), "High Noon Counter" (Gallery Fukuzumi, Osaka, 2018), "PLAY" (Yoshiaki Inoue Gallery / Osaka, 2022), "About Each One" (TOWED, Tokyo 2021), and "Taiwan Contemporary One Year Exhibition" (Zhengyan Pavilion, Taipei Flower Expo Park, Taiwan, 2019).

Tomoki Watanabe

Like a fairy tale writer depicted in a fairy tale, or perhaps a rebellious poet living in a comic book, Tomoki Watanabe is an artist who is memorable precisely because we are unable to grasp his reality in a certain way. The profile text I once saw said that he was a "picture book author," and the first sentence continues, "No major works."
He is a very curious person. He seems friendly, but he refuses to be exposed to the world, and continues to create works at the grassroots level, secretly attracting many fans.
His activities are diverse. He paints, draws pottery, embroidery works with his wife, writes poetry, conducts portrait workshops, makes daily calendars, and so on. Among them, his daily calendar is the best-selling daily calendar in Japan, which makes its niche sound even more mysterious.
His activities at Kumonodaira mountain lodge were also very unique. He was dressed in his usual pink and red outfit. He woke up in the morning, chats with the people who gather at the lodge, sometimes opened his sketchbook by the window and did a bit of writing, then went back to the lobby to draw portraits of climbers. When he was done, he chatted with the staff again, or went for a leisurely stroll to take in the scenery, and soon after, he returned. Before you knew it, you found yourself with a unique picture book.
His presence naturally creates a circle of people, and the place is enveloped in a soft atmosphere.
The works created during these days are the very aspects of the world he has encountered.
In his paintings, chunky flowers in pinks and blues bloom in the plains, mysterious beasts like Mayan characters walk around on the canvas, and seven-colored sailboats race across the sky of Kumonodaira.
The creatures depicted in the painting are so fresh and full of life that they seem to be escaping from the paper at any moment. In the simplicity of the lines and the sense of volume, we suddenly feel the touch of his mythical everyday world.

Profile: Tomoki Watanabe

Born in 1980. Picture book author. No published works. At age 23, Tomoki has been exhibiting his paintings (mainly abstract watercolors), and began holding solo exhibitions not merely in Japan, but also abroad. Besides painting, he has been presenting his works in various media such as live piano performances, poetry writing, and making bird objects. "Pepepe daily calendar," now in its ninth year, is one of his best-known works, and was once the top-selling calendars in the daily calendar category at the Daikanyama Tsutaya bookstore. When he was in his 20s, he hitchhiked around Japan for a month or two in the summer, and has so far ridden in more than 200 cars. During his travels, he earned cash by drawing portraits wherever he went, and slept in a sleeping bag under a bridge, which is quite adventure. *Participation in 2021 has been postponed due to circumstances, however it has been scheduled anew for 2022.

Contribution: Minami Haraguchi

Movement：Spring

Exhausted, as I approached the mountain lodge, I looked down at the rocks I had just grabbed and saw a flower almost melting in the rain. I later learned that it was a rhododendron. For some reason, I strongly associated that image with my memories of my days in Kumonodaira.
"Spring" in Kumonodaira—as I stayed at the end of July—was the very season of flowers. Bright, low greenery covered the area (pinus densiflora), small white Chinguruma (Geum pentapetalum) lined the rocky crevices, and Hakusan Ichige (narcissus anemone, Anemone narcissiflora) and Chocolate lilies (Fritillaria camschatcensis) and bright violet Yotsuba Shiogama (pedicularis japonica) added color to the flower fields. There were clusters of large, horsetail-like Kobaikeisou (Veratrum stamineum), small, orange kuruma yuri (Lilium medeoloides) with curled petals in the mountain valleys, and a short walk into the meadow revealed a carpet of deep yellow, trumpet-like nikko kisuge (dwarf day lilies, emerocallis dumortieri). It was truly beautiful, and the various rhythms of the flowers were like a paradise that made my knees weak. It is madness to see life sprouting all at once like this in the spring.

Seven years ago, I wrote in my statement, "When we think of flowers as beautiful, we may have memories of when we were insects." We feel blue as a distant color because our ancestors saw the sky and the sea from afar. My body has a much longer history than I can imagine.
In my work, I use the same motifs repeatedly in various mediums. I sketch digitally or with colored pencils or watercolors, then replace the sketches with cut paper or clay, and finally paint on canvas with oil paints. This process is akin to ruminating on a memory, or a translation. With each medium, details are lost or emphasized, and the original motif is abstracted.
I hope that what remains at the end, the "picture," will connect with another memory or evoke some primal emotion in the viewer.
During the week of my stay there were many foggy and rainy days as well as paradise-like sunny days. The day after a heavy rain, the path around the lodge was completely turned into a river, and plants sank to the bottom of the water, their petals transparent, and I found myself standing still in the fog, unable to see the way ahead, surrounded by the scent of flowers.
Standing still, surrounded by the scent of flowers, I wondered where I was.

There is a German poem by Karl Busse titled "Over the Mountains."

Over the mountains

Carl Busse

Over the mountains, far to wander,
People say, happiness dwells.
Alas, and I went in the crowd of the others,
And return back with teary eyes.
Over the mountains, far, far over there,
People say that happiness lives…

I often think of "Over the mountains" when I am creating. I feel that I am creating my work in order to meet or present it to "Someone over the mountains" outside of this world, who is probably somewhere out there. To the others who are infinitely like me, to the you beyond, who can be said to be my own self, whom I have not yet seen.
The closer you get to a mountain, the less you can see of its entirety. You start ascending a mountain because you feel it is beautiful, but when you reach the end of your climb, you can't see it. It is a little ironic and funny. At the same time, it is interesting that once inside the mountain, there are so many different disconnected beings, but from a distance, they seem to be just one mountain.

As I repeatedly traced and sketched the melting contours of the rhododendrons, I imagined that I too was now melting into one of the colors of the mountain. I go to my canvas, ruminating over and over again the memories and scenery of this place, Kumonodaira. Just as a leaf on a plant is gnawed off by an insect, and the leaf is then rounded off and modified, so the contours of my memory, and the contours of myself, seem to be determined by the antagonism between the forces inside and outside. I hope my work will tickle something in you, the viewer, and that you will actually visit Kumonodaira someday to feel the murmurs of the small, clamorous life here.

Contribution: Osamu Shikichi

An image carried from 2600 meters high

Plants reflect the environment in which they grow. Looking at a plant grown in a cold and harsh environment, we find a dignified appearance, casting a shadow of having survived the harsh environment, unlike a plant grown in a warm climate. Their trunks and branches, as well as the small plants that bloom in summer, remind us of the time before and after their existence, as if the wrinkles on the cheeks of Fukai, the Noh mask of a middle-aged woman, were a metaphor for the flow of time in her life and the many joys and pains she has gone through. As I balance on a rock and dive and dance in the bushes, what does my body reflect?
As I was ascending to Kumonodaira, known as the last hidden gem of the area, the plants were changing their appearance with the increasing altitude. I started ascending the mountain in the early morning while it was still dark, and suddenly found myself walking by myself in the deep mountains, with no sign of others. As I continued to follow what I thought was the path, I wandered off the regular trail and wandered into the forest. I realized that it had been a long time since I had seen the path. At the same time, I felt my animal senses, dulled by the modern world, returning to my body. I realized there is only one solid thing when I lose my sense of direction and time in a place where no cell-phone signal is available, - my own body. As I climbed the mountain for the first time alone, with no one to talk to and no words to rely on, my whole body naturally began to listen to things that were beyond words.
When I arrived safely at the lodge and was looking for a place to take pictures on the 2600-meter-high lava plateau, the highest lava plateau in Japan, I remember seeing a single plant growing high on a rock that jutted out of the ground. I photographed it then with my iPhone, printed the image on a bank card of Brussels, and carried it with me. When I took it out while walking through the city in winter, I imagined what the landscape would be like in Kumonodaira and how the plant would be doing now in winter when humans have been ousted by the seasons, like a flock of monarch butterflies moving with the seasons after the summer is over.
I have been on several residencies in my life. Among them, it is extremely rare in the world to have the experience of creating a work of art on mountain terrains in such a wilderness. I honestly do not know yet how this tremendous experience will be digested. However, I am quite sure that my body remembers it well and my memory has imprinted on it. The unique space created by the inhospitable and harsh environment, distant from today's convenience-seeking society, has given me a number of questions that demand a rethinking of dance itself in relation to my past production activities and artworks.
I was trying to keep a link between the world in which I lived and the world on the mountain, helping to carry food and other supplies to the mountain lodge while almost being blown away by the helicopter winds, and gluing my Gore-Tex wear with big holes in both legs after a full day of hiking.
I believe that one of the significant things about going far away, of leaving one's intimate living space and going all the way into a different culture, is to evaluate what one believes to be interesting. If I can still find it interesting in a place where the flow of time and the way of life are different, or if I can somehow make it into something that I can still find interesting there, it is because I am touching something universal, something that is important to human beings. I was able to confirm this, up in that high place in the Japanese Alps.

Contribution: Hiromasa Iwasaki

Kumonodaira AIR, The Birth of the Portrait Series, or The Secrets of the World

At AIR, Jiro guided me from place to place. The destination was always somewhat fixed, but for me, it was not so important to get there. What is important is what Jiro said to me along the way. His words are as if he were handing me pieces of the puzzle one by one. It's like the academy in the days before "academia" was born.
The current theme is about the work of mountain lodges. It is a broad responsibility, including the maintenance of trails. "The trail is maintained with minimal signage so as not to spoil the scenery," he said. "Stones are piled in such a way that when you find a good spot to walk, the trail will naturally appear." or "The wooden boardwalk is rotting away, exposing the metal stakes and making it dangerous. Let's move the wooden path a little so that it is not so dangerous. Metal is certainly strong, but it is not as strong as wood." And so on.

The LANDSCAPER is a series of landscapes photographed through holes made by insects in trees. I walked along the path Jiro showed me, this time taking my camera with me, looking for landscapes, and the thought of holes that struck me. As we headed home without much success, Takao, who was accompanying me, asked me something outlandish: "What happens when you take pictures of people with that lens?" I had been thinking about the concept first and had never thought of taking pictures of anything other than landscapes.
I was about to say, "Maybe I can take an out-of-focus portrait," and since all I had to do was press the shutter, I took the shot for the time being. Then a strange human figure with a long neck like a gray alien emerged, and both of us were so impressed that we could not move for a while. When I showed it to Jiro, he smiled. This is the story of the birth of the portrait series that should be handed down to our descendents. It was like turning a Rubik's cube around and seeing a completely different composition of colored surfaces.
According to Jiro, the area in front of the lodge is like a shallow underground water vein. Rocks are on the impermeable layer of soil, and water usually flows through the gaps between the rocks. Therefore, the footing of the path is riddled with stones and rocks, or sometimes clay soil appears, making it difficult to walk on. A wooden boardwalk bridges the rocks.
During my stay, the weather was quite changeable, even as much as the saying, "A women's mind and winter wind will change often." However, on the day I was about to descend, it rained all day as if it had made up its mind, and I postponed my descent. The lodge looked busy with people.
I turned my head to glance out the window and saw that the place where the wooden boardwalk used to be was now a river. The next morning, the rain had stopped, and the wooden boardwalk had reappeared. I stood in front of the mountain lodge with the backpack on my back, just as I had when I arrived here. The difference is that this scenery looks adorable. As I walk backwards, the wooden boardwalk is gradually getting out of alignment and eventually turned upside down. I am walking on the same footpath, but on the return trip, the path is inverted or turned 90 degrees.

I am sure Jiro and his crew will fix this wooden boardwalk soon. It must be heavy. Even if they were to fix it, it would not be exactly the same, as the position and alignment of the rocks would have changed slightly due to the flow of water. Not everything is all solid with asphalt.
What I felt while I was here was that various things happened to be combined in a well-balanced manner; they form an overall image that exists for a certain period of time. I feel that I can see the world as it is. On this planet, there is no such thing as an unchanging form. Various things are always moving, appearing before us in a way that is both accidental and inevitable, as if they have always been this way, or as if they have only recently become this way.

Contribution: Anais-karenin

Sound / Atmosphere: Kumonodaira's language

When the topic "nature" is incited, my first impulse is to critically analyze the relationship of modern societies to the environment. Conceptions such as "nature" were founded by modernity through a language system that, by trying to contain "nature" in one concept, induces dualistic actions and thoughts.
To access an expanded perception of what is meant by "nature," I suggest rethinking one of the main apparatuses that mediates the interaction between worlds: language. If, on one hand, the communication among all things and the distinct types of language that arise from it, enable the emergence of specific and uncapturable cosmogonies. On the other hand, modern societies have produced hierarchies that was structured by the logic of language-nation, differentiating human languages and the languages of "more-than-human" entities.
Categories are created through language, and these shape our perception of the world.
By creating sensitive and specific means of communication that can be shared among diverse entities, it is possible to blur the conception of "nature". What then would be the forms of expression and communication that do not categorize, but make possible the connection between the diverse forms of existence?
In my artistic practice, I work with sound as a means to create sensitive languages, understanding that through sound it is possible to generate open, translucent and vibrational forms of expression. My interest for the sound field originated from inquiries regarding the communication and connection, in search of going beyond the powers and limitations of discourse.
Through sound it is possible to translate invisible and uncontrollable aspects of communication that cannot be apprehended by formatted words, generating the passage from one language to another. Through the relationship with sound, I propose the recovery and creation of new ways of fabulating the world, inspiring the ideas of coexistence, animisms and symbiosis, building a metaphorical thought through artistic practice and ecological reflection.
Sound sensitivity makes it possible to connect with the invisible aspects and atmospheric force of Kumonodaira. The silent feeling of the mountaintops reveals a systemic and constant communication that takes place between countless beings that belong to that place.
The translucent noise is like the endless echoing of water under rocks, of clouds moving fast in the sky, of insects and plant scents wafting through the air. It seems to me that everything contained in Kumonodaira inhabits the water droplets of the atmosphere, and moves to distant places, becomes a river, becomes the sea.
It means that the invisible force that inhabits there propagatesin expansion like the sound force, rebounds matter, and connects with a larger ecosystem. Perhaps Kumonodaira is beyond what we name as Kumonodaira. Perhaps it is an uncapturable force and the impossibility of containing its existence, is its potency.
Places like this reveal themselves to modern societies as an enigma. The reason why it is impossible to transmit Kumonodaira completely is that one cannot contain the multiple existences of this place in a single form. For this very reason, Kumonodaira does not fit within the word "nature". Like sound, its forces are vibrational, and the relationships between things constantly echo.
Through sound, through Kumonodaira, and through the sound of Kumonodaira, it is possible to extend the language and create different ways of narrating "nature". Other ways to describe the existing entities, and communication with them. Here, sound emerges as an ally of linguistic distension, making possible intersections, coexistences, deviations, and ruptures.

寄稿文 Anais-karenin

音・大気： 雲ノ平のランゲージ

「自然」をテーマにしたとき、まず現代社会と環境との関係を批判的視点で分析しようと思う。「自然」という概念は近代が築き上げたものであり、二元的な行動や思考を誘発する言語システムによって、その「自然」を一つの概念の中に収めようとしている。

「自然」が意味するものをより広く認識するために、世界の相互作用を媒介するもっとも重要なツールであるランゲージ について再考することを提案したい。万物間のコミュニケーションと、そこから生まれる異なるタイプのランゲージが、具体的だが捕らえがたい宇宙進化論の出現を可能にしている。一方で近代社会は、言語国家の論理によって構成された階級を生み出し、人間のランゲージと「人間以上（モア・ザン・ヒューマン）」の存在のランゲージを区別してきた。

そして、そのランゲージによってカテゴリーが作られ、それが私たちの世界認識を形成している。

多様な存在が共有できるような繊細で具体的なコミュニケーション手段を生み出すことで、「自然」という概念を曖昧にすることができる。では、多様な存在をカテゴリー化することなく、繋ぐことができる表現・コミュニケーションとは何だろうか。

自分の作品の中で、音というものが、開放的で半透明、かつ振動的に訴えかけてくるような表現形式を生み出すことが可能で、更に繊細な言語を生み出す手段であると信じている。音の分野への興味は、コミュニケーションとコネクションに関する探究から生まれ、言説の力と制限を超えることを目標としている。

音を使うことで、形式化された方法では理解できないコミュニケーションの、不可視で制御不能な側面を翻訳することが可能であり、ある手段から別の手段への通路を生み出すことができる。音との関係だけでなく、共存、アニミズム、共生などのアイデアから受けたインスピレーションも加え、自分のアート作品を通じ学んだこと、エコロジーへの考察も併せた、世界を空想する新しい方法の回復と創造を提案したい。

雲ノ平で、音が目に見えないものや大気の力とつながることを可能にすると学んだ。山頂の静寂な感覚は、その場所に属する無数の存在間で行われるシステム的で絶え間ないコミュニケーションを見せつけられたかのようだった。

その半透明のノイズは、岩の下の水の響き、空を高速で移動する雲の響き、空気中を漂う昆虫や植物の香りのように果てしなく続く。雲ノ平に含まれるすべてのものが、大気の水滴に宿り、遠方へ移動し、川となり、やがて海となる。

そこに宿る見えない力が、音の力のように膨張しながら伝播し、物質をはね返し、より大きな生態系とつながっている。もしかしたら雲ノ平の持つ力は、私たち人間が名付けた山という存在を超越しているのかもしれない。それは捕らえがたい力であり、その存在を封じ込めることができない様子そのものが、大きな力なのかもしれない。

このような場所は、現代社会では謎の存在として姿を現す。雲ノ平とは何なのか、それを完全に伝えることができないのは、この場所が持つ複数の存在を一つの枠に収めることができないからだ。つまり、雲ノ平は「自然」という言葉で表現することはできない。音と同じように、雲ノ平の力は振動的であり、その場所の全ての関係性は常に共鳴している。

音を通して、雲ノ平を通して、雲ノ平の音を通じてなど、その「自然」を説明しようとする方法はいくらでもある。現存する実体を描写し、それらとのコミュニケーションする方法。ここでは、音は伝達手段な拡張の味方として登場し、交差、共存、逸脱、断絶を可能にするのである。1 言語や言語そのものという意味ではなく、伝達手段の一つとする広い意味。

Soil and Dreams -An Epic of Relationships
Jiro Ito

Does soil dream?
You may wonder what I'm saying in my sleep. I feel as if the soil dreams. The spring scenery of Kumonodaira spread out before my eyes is also a dream. The sky, the clouds, and the brightness of the new greenery that has begun to sprout on top of the dead grass from last year. The pale pink petals of the first flowers of the Japanese hyacinth.
Black lava rocks peeking out from the meadow, and a lark chirping above. The sound of melting snow dripping from the lingering snow and soaking into the ground. The softness of the ground, where sleepy-eyed black bears saunter about.
In the soil, fungi and microorganisms are awakening to the springtime. They are attached to the carcasses of dead ants and crickets scattered around the area, the withered grass stalks, and the feathers of grouse, eating them and decomposing them to produce soil humus. The humus is mixed with coarse-grained inorganic materials from weathered lava. The melt water that flows into the area passes into the humus. Organic matter is dissolved from the humus and nitrogen and calcium from the inorganic matter. The water is sucked up by the shoots of the Indian poke and Nephrophyllidium, and seeps through the tubules into the cells to promote the growth of the branches and leaves. In the leaves, chloroplasts react with water, carbon dioxide, and sunlight to produce starch. Eventually, oxygen and excess water are released into the air through the pores with a faint sweet fragrance of grass that fills the empty space. The scent directly stimulates the hippocampus, the memory center of our brain, and memories of the endless repetition of the seasons on this planet begin to well up from the depths of our cells. At that moment, we intuit spring. The landscape becomes a wave of various shades of green and rises into the sky.
A world exists in the soil where life and inorganic matter, place and space, life and death, matter and memory, and all these things are dismantled and integrated. What would we call this without calling it a dream?
The boundary between the flow with form and the flow without form is always ambiguous.
As soil, water, and light nurture life, in our minds, memories and sensations of sound, light, temperature, fragrance, and encounters with others accumulate in the unconscious, intermingle, and are integrated to form the image of the ego. As Freud and Jung showed with their psychoanalytic methods at the beginning of the 20th century, dreams during sleep reveal a part of the vast amount of memories repressed in the unconscious. By correcting and organizing the gap between the conscious and unconscious mind, humans work to maintain equilibrium in the mind (ego). The mind, which has no form, supports the body. The body acts as a medium to absorb memories from the world. If too much distortion (a negative memory that cannot be processed) is accumulated in the unconscious, the ego cannot be integrated, and one's life becomes unstable. This is somewhat similar to the loss of water and light from the soil, and the loss of the ability to nurture life when there is an excess of toxins and nutrients. These are just a few trivial thoughts that come to mind.
In any case: Spring has come. Inside and outside, things and phenomena, life and inorganic matter, humans and the environment. The visible and the invisible. We are standing between them.


***

We are in an era of environmental crisis.
When we look at two different faces of social sustainability, we are reminded once again of the difficulties of the current situation. One is "conserve the environment for our existence" and the other is "remain competitive in the race for survival." There is a saying that "you can't make an omelet without breaking eggs." Humankind has, for a long time now, rather reflexively chosen to survive in the short-term struggle for survival. Since the war in Ukraine, European countries have put aside their environmental concerns and are now expanding their armaments, a symbolic example of this. It has implicitly shown that only the leisure time of the rich can be used to worry about the "earth." In addition to violence, it is also unique to human beings to use technology to respond to the earnest sympathy of, for example, "saving the life of a friend who is ill," and such humanitarianism also increases productivity, which in turn leads to population growth and competition. What I am trying to say is that environmental crises are not brought about only by malicious intent or failure, but also by a kind of naivete and "good will."

We modern humans are the fruit of this contradictory structure.
An environmental ethic that ignores this reality seems to be an optimistic logic. Surplus resources are concentrated in cities, which are at the center of a predatory structure. Hence, much intellectual labor is established. And, contradictorily, the cities advocate an environmental ethic. Although it is a matter of degree, in most cases, people enjoy a comfortable and stable living environment in their real lives, which allows them to turn on their PCs and worry about the earth. For the poor, without the time to contemplate, the environment is simply the view before their eyes.

In any case, the reason why 8 billion people can survive, compared to less than 1 billion people 200 years ago, is that humans have been able to allocate more energy to their society than the productivity of the natural ecosystem through incremental production of calories from thermal energy resources and food resources. This is also evident that in while only 30 million people lived in the Japanese archipelago during the Edo period, now it is 120 million. Our bodies are sustained by the system's production (or exploitation, or stealing from the future) of energy. In this sense, the ecosystem on which we depend is a world of dreams and phenomena of capitalism and heavy chemical industry that is alien to the soil. The mechanism is an atypical "nature" that has been repeatedly converted by technology. We can only think about the environment and good will by keeping this reality in mind.
Thus, memories of our relationship with the world, starting from the overcoming of the environment to the present day, when we crave "nature," intersect in our bodies. Now that we are facing a situation in which humans are powerless before AI, it is also reminiscent of a strange return to the origin, somewhat like a digitalized shamanism. Humans are not the subjects who select the environment, but rather a kind of microorganism in the digitized soil, an unconscious action that repeatedly produces and destroys without an object, and the distortion (repressed unconsciousness) that occurs in this process appears in our individual consciousness. The cognitive function of thinking that nature is beautiful and enjoyable itself is fostered as a kind of modern dream.

The distortion of the black box society of today (unconscious soil), which is no longer feasible as a nurturing environment for living creatures, may be acting to produce a way of cognition that would let us see nature as beautiful and enjoyable, and to correct the gap with the circular activities of the natural ecosystem as an ego that can maintain a state of equilibrium. It is interesting to think that this may be a function of our consciousness. What if our consciousness itself were, in the first place, like a hologram, or dream, in which the environment is unconsciously projected onto us?
And through the mediation of the unexplainable dream of "enjoying nature," we regain our autonomy. When we recover, we stop dreaming. We walk like dreamless sleep... And we begin to see the world with a slightly more long-term perspective of sustainability. This is what the benefits of experiencing nature are all about.
As I have stated before, environmental conservation is hardly a general concept. Unless the people around us autonomously and actively share the concrete reality of the landscape, cultural style, etc. that "we want it to remain as it is." It will be but a pictorial reality. Environmentalism spelled out in rationality, technology, and information literacy will spin with endless "innovation. The more it rotates, the more fluid and arbitrary it becomes, and the less it can be shared. What cannot be shared is easily discarded.
When I think of the difficulties of sharing the actual landscape, the symbolism of maintaining real, experienced natural ecosystems such as mountains, forests, rivers, and oceans as a "modern dream" might be strengthened at last. There is really nothing wrong with the invitation of that dream to go out to the mountains and witness the circular world of unrestrained struggle and coexistence by non-human creatures. What can we grasp from that world? Something that is not "the answer." To engage with the feelings, memories, desperation, and fear that once filled "life." It's a narrative of long lives that partial optimization and short-term competitive principles can't capture.

The dream invites us to a place where our own memories lie asleep beneath our feet in the soil, and where the wind sweeps over us, as if we are suddenly reunited with an old neighbor in an instant.
It becomes a twilight-time reminder. In this wilderness, let us maintain our journey with high spirits.