Created in the Yamaguchi area of southern Japan at the Akiyoshidai International Art Village, and following the given theme “Features of this Land”, the work is constructed as variations for looking and listening to weight, accumulation, and trace. As a site-specific interdisciplinary project, a central inquiry is the literal physical weight of labor, the weight of memories, and the possibilities of lightness.
Thematic touchstones span a painting and series of sketches entitled 'Carrier' (1960), from the 'Siberia Series' by the late Yamaguchi artist Kazuki Yasuo, to a film essay by Chris Marker titled 'Letter from Siberia' (1957), to movement explorations with a multi-generational ensemble in the Yamaguchi area. Here, the work contrasts daily, foreign, and remembered environments as a question of stability and change.
For the performance, installation, and process, 40-50 nondescript storage bags (for uses of construction or agriculture) are filled with materials of similar mass but different weights. For example: cement, dirt, limestone, buckwheat lulls, styrofoam, balloons, shredded office paper, and also, human bodies.
Overall, a key focus is the interactions, uncertainties, and negotiations of people to place. Here, the human role and its contextual scale, weight, disappearance, imagination, and impact, is a special key to discerning a constructed environment, an artistic work, and a fertile landscape.
