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Time and space emerge when the position of an object is connected to the position of another. What words can we use to describe the time-space that arises as if its parts were linked, even though no such result were obvious? Perhaps an apt comparison would be constellations, which are recognized as linkages of stars when observed from a certain point\u2014Earth\u2014despite occupying different locations in time and space in the vastness of the universe. This follows Walter Benjamin, who employed the concept of \u201cconstellation\u201d in the sense of arrangements or situations (referring to certain positional relationships in time and space) to describe the relationship between ideas and objects. Ideas enable us to perceive relations between objects, just like constellations allow for positive connecting of clusters of stars shining against the negative backdrop of the night sky.<\/p>\n
\u201cEverywhere Gather Yourself Stand,\u201d the sharply worded title of this exhibition, comes from the poem Eye-glances<\/em> by the German-Jewish poet Paul Celan, included at the beginning of Threadsuns<\/em> (1968), the last of Celan\u2019s poetry collections published before his death. Celan owned a copy of the first volume of Benjamin\u2019s collected works, edited by Theodor Adorno and others and published in 1955, and it is interesting that he had come into contact with Benjamin\u2019s ideas at an early stage. The poet had underlined the following passage, from the \u201cEpistemo-Critical Prologue\u201d in The Origin of German Tragic Drama<\/em>, in his copy of Benjamin\u2019s collected works:<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cJust as the harmony of the spheres depends on the orbits of stars which do not come into contact with each other, so the existence of the mundus<\/em> intelligibilis<\/em> depends on the unbridgeable distance between pure essences.<\/u> Every idea is a sun and is related to other ideas just as suns are related to each other. The harmonious relationship between such essences is what constitutes truth.<\/u>\u201d<\/a>[1]<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Celan scholar Hiroaki Sekiguchi argues that Benjamin\u2019s key concept of \u201cconstellation\u201d (arrangement) can be read as pointing to the essence of Celan\u2019s poetics. In Sekiguchi\u2019s view, \u201cEach word in a (Celan) poem, and each poem in his collections, exists at a certain \u2018distance\u2019 from the other, but is positioned to \u2018ring with truth\u2019 like the relationship between suns.\u201d<\/a>[2] In the same sense, the words \u201cEverywhere Gather Yourself Stand\u201d that come from one of Celan\u2019s poems appear to exhibit an interrelationship between their subject and that which connects them across a \u201cdistance.\u201d Consequently, the exhibition focuses on the invisible lines or threads that are drawn to bind the stars shining in the night sky together into constellations.<\/a><\/p>\n It seems worth mentioning that this exhibition was held at two venues, SCAI PIRAMIDE (SCAI) (July 21\u2013September 17) and Yutaka Kikutake Gallery (YKG)\u00a0(July 7\u2013August 6). Although the two venues are located in the same building, they are on different floors and on opposite sides, rather than on top of each other. Looking up from YKG, you can see SCAI, and if you look down from SCAI, you can catch a glimpse of YKG. Since the exhibition periods were not identical, one had to visit during the time they overlapped in order to appreciate the connection between the two locations. There were also times when only either YKG or SCAI was open, meaning that the exhibition could only be viewed at one of the venues. Was this a limitation, a condition, or what?<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Installation view of \u201cEverywhere Gather Yourself Stand\u201d (2022) at SCAI PIRAMIDE, Tokyo. Photo by Nobutada Omote. Courtesy the artist and SCAI THE BATHHOUSE<\/p>\n Ishu Han “My Star” 2005, Single channel video, sound, 5’33” \u00a0\u00a9Ishu Han\u3000Installation view of \u201cEverywhere Gather Yourself Stand\u201d (2022) at SCAI PIRAMIDE, Tokyo. Photo by Nobutada Omote. Courtesy the artist and SCAI THE BATHHOUSE<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Let\u2019s take a look at the continuity in the exhibition. One clue is contained in the connection between the star shapes in James Lee Byars\u2019 The Figure of Question: The Star Book<\/em> (1990) and Ishu Han\u2019s My Star<\/em> (2005), as described in the exhibition statement. The former is represented as a symbol of the human form by Byars, who derived formalistic beauty from mystical thoughts and meditative experiences, while the latter is represented as lines (reminiscent of the five-pointed stars on the Chinese flag) created by Han after moving from Shanghai to Aomori, by taking his possessions out of a bag and laying them out while removing his own clothes.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Installation view of \u201cEverywhere Gather Yourself Stand\u201d (2022) at SCAI PIRAMIDE, Tokyo. Photo by Nobutada Omote. Courtesy the artist and SCAI THE BATHHOUSE<\/p>\n Yui Usui “empty name” 2013, mixed media\u3000Installation view of \u201cEverywhere Gather Yourself Stand\u201d (2022) at SCAI PIRAMIDE, Tokyo. Photo by Nobutaka \u00a0Omote.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>Courtesy the artist and SCAI THE BATHHOUSE<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Such ties extend to other works as well. The oil painting Tablecloth That My Grandmother, My Mother, and Her Two Other Sisters Made Together<\/em> (2013) by Ken Sasaki depicts a work of embroidery done together by the women in the title, while in Apichatpong Weerasethakul\u2019s film Cactus River<\/em> (2012), a woman who has been given the name \u201cWater\u201d (Nach<\/em>) following the Thai folk belief that changing one\u2019s name can make one happy, is shown knitting a garment in a fast-forward scene. There\u2019s also a connection between this woman and the countless used glass bottles in Yui Usui\u2019s Empty Names<\/em> (2013), which bear labels inscribed with the \u201cprofessional names\u201d given to \u201ccomfort women\u201d who worked in the so-called comfort stations used by the Japanese military during the Pacific War (and, in my memory, the linkage extends to the cloth artwork Demands and Resistance<\/em>\u00a0[2019], another piece by Usui I recall having seen in a different place). The circle is completed by Sewing the words<\/i> (2022), a bundle of dictionaries used by Han (with audio of Han\u2019s grandmother working in her kitchen in Shanghai and Han\u2019s son studying Chinese to be able to speak with his grandmother). The aforementioned linkages also seem to form a large star-shaped figure through the way they\u2019re laid out in the exhibition space.<\/p>\n These artworks all occupy different points in time and space and are born from differing problematics. However, the five-pointed star in Han\u2019s work, which was created to raise questions about his own identity following his move from Shanghai to Aomori, and the star shape in Byars\u2019 work, which permeates the form of a human being standing or lying down with arms and legs open, overlap in terms of dealing with the human body and at a deeper level of expression. Similarly, the acts of actual knitting and the weaving together of events in daily life are elements of the same phase\u2014of connecting the invisible threads of historical and social problematics that each piece of art here contains.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Installation view of \u201cEverywhere Gather Yourself Stand\u201d (2022) at Yutaka Kikutake Gallery. Photo by Osamu Sakamoto.\u00a0 <\/span>Courtesy of Yutaka Kikutake Gallery<\/p>\n Madoka Furuhashi\u00a0<\/span> \u201cTo undebecome\u201d 2022, white clay\u3000Installation view of \u201cEverywhere Gather Yourself Stand\u201d (2022) at Yutaka Kikutake Gallery. Photo by Osamu Sakamoto. Courtesy of Yutaka Kikutake Gallery<\/p>\n Kohei Sekigawa “I Don’t Care a Fig for\u2026” (detail) 2022, potted fig tree, stainless steel, graphite, performance\u3000Installation view of \u201cEverywhere Gather Yourself Stand\u201d (2022) at Yutaka Kikutake Gallery. Photo by Osamu Sakamoto. Courtesy of Yutaka Kikutake Gallery<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Such \u201cconstellation = arrangement\u201d also came into play in relation to the works of Kohei Sekigawa, Rie Nakajima, and Madoka Furuhashi, which were exhibited at YKG. Peeking down through the glass at YKG from SCAI, visitors could see a potted fig tree that Sekigawa had been watering, sound objects that Nakajima had fashioned out of items such as scrubbing brushes and sponges, and objects that Furuhashi had created to deal with her mother\u2019s death by digging up soil equal to her own body weight from her garden and firing the material in the shape of handfuls. At a certain point in time and space, the soil that Furuhashi had grabbed and the photographs of the plants in her garden, and the moving daily necessities that Nakajima added to her work day by day, were connected to the vertical, fence-esque sentence that Sekigawa, who visited the exhibition space every day to water his plants, wrote on the wall of the gallery: \u201cThe leaves that received light released the water they had absorbed, the soil in the pot dried, I watered it, and today will be a fence\u201d\u2014and linked to the verticality of the case that contained Byars\u2019 star.<\/p>\n Perhaps there\u2019s a tendency these days to avoid analyzing exhibitions in terms of such forms and actions. However, in this case, rather than being a mere series of informational links, these large interlocking rings\u2014which can be dismantled into forms and daily activities, but also enable the emergence of common forms from different levels of information across different points in time and space\u2014functioned as constellations, revealing both individual problematics and some of the ancient layers that humanity continues to gaze upon.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Apichatpong Weerasethakul “Cactus River” 2012, 10’9″\u3000Installation view of \u201cEverywhere Gather Yourself Stand\u201d (2022) at SCAI PIRAMIDE, Tokyo. Photo by Nobutada Omote. Courtesy the artist and SCAI THE BATHHOUSE<\/p>\n <\/p>\n In the \u201cEverywhere Gather Yourself Stand\u201d verse of Eye-glances<\/em>, the poem by Paul Celan\u2014who ended his life by throwing himself not into the riverside, the stretch of land along the river, but into the line of the Seine\u2014there\u2019s a clause that calls on the reader to \u201cincreate<\/a>[3].\u201d In Cactus River<\/em>, the woman is shown walking (in slow motion) along the banks of the Mekong River, one decelerated frame at a time. A man skateboarding by the riverside fails a backside 180 down a two-step staircase. To be precise, he fails to land, but regains his position with perfect balance and does not fall. The woman is staring at him. Or, rather, a frame that makes it look like she\u2019s watching is shown in slow motion, but whether she was actually paying attention isn\u2019t clear.<\/p>\n Seemingly, the most striking thing about this exhibition is not the stars floating in the darkness\u2014i.e. the actual works, which are simply there and can be looked at\u2014but the image of humans it evokes; wobbling and wavering on the invisible lines that connect them. The stars, shining as the bodies of information representing various problematics, are connected in \u201ceye-glances\u201d and \u201ceverywhere\u201d across many different times and spaces, unraveling and being spun together as a network laid out to maintain one\u2019s sanity or remain steady in an uncertain world, their lines echoing to form a harmonious relationship with calls to \u201cgather yourself, stand.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n <\/a>[1] Hiroaki Sekiguchi: Paul Celan und das Judentum<\/em>, Keio University Press, 2011. Page 128. Quoted from Walter Benjamin, The Origin of German Tragic Drama<\/em>, translated by John Osborne, Verso, 1998. Page\u00a037.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/realtokyo.co.jp\/_sys2024\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/12\/220725_PIRAMIDE_011_DSC6579_small-683x1024.jpg\")
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