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\u201cThat night, technology was under the illusion it was human.<\/p>\n
The human was under the illusion it was technology.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Shota Yamauchi “The Dancing Princess” (detail, 2021)\u3000photo: Koichi Nishiyama<\/p>\n
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\u201cMedium and Dimension: Apparition\u201d consists of Shota Yamauchi\u2019s artworks \u201cThe Dancing Princess\u201d and \u201cApparition.\u201d The above cites the two opening lines of the poem in \u201cThe Dancing Princess,\u201d a piece combining video and poetry.<\/p>\n
This exhibition was curated by Takuya Nakano in 2023, 100 years after Marcel Duchamp abandoned the production of \u201cThe Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even\u201d (a.k.a. \u201cThe Large Glass\u201d; 1915\u20131923). The view of the exhibition from outside the large glass window of Aoyama Meguro brimmed with a charm that was difficult to resist even for myself, someone who has deliberately avoided engaging with Duchamp.<\/p>\n
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Shota Yamauchi “The Dancing Princess,” 2021\u3000photo: Koichi Nishiyama<\/p>\n
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That charm is rooted in \u201capparition,\u201d a concept that appears both in the exhibition title and in the name of one of the artworks. Nakao holds that this word, which captures the essence of Duchamp\u2019s work, also makes for an important perspective in the act of creation in contemporary art. Nakao\u2019s \u201cApparition\u201d takes over from the point where Duchamp left his piece, illuminating the curatorial aspect latent in \u201cThe Large Glass\u201d\u2014a work that can be seen as a collection of Duchamp\u2019s art in exhibition form. Meanwhile, Yamauchi\u2019s \u201cApparition\u201d draws out aspects of Nakao\u2019s curation that are latent in the work, returning \u201cThe Large Glass\u201d into the form of an artwork. The view of the \u201cApparition\u201d exhibition from outside the glass window resembles \u201cThe Large Glass.\u201d<\/p>\n
Nakao and Yamauchi work together as unwitting accomplices to reveal the multilayered structure of artwork and curation that underpins \u201cThe Large Glass,\u201d uncovering the conflict between the work\u2019s two \u201cdesires\u201d\u2014the desire for completion as a piece of art and the desire for transformation into an exhibition\u2014matured over a period of 100 years. This clash of desires drives the reception of Yamauchi\u2019s work.<\/p>\n
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Installation view “Medium and Dimension: Apparition” AOYAMA\uff5cMEGURO, 2023\u3000photo : Koichi Nishiyama<\/p>\n
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Installation view “Medium and Dimension: Apparition” AOYAMA\uff5cMEGURO, 2023\u3000photo : Koichi Nishiyama<\/p>\n
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My idea of \u201cun-medium\u201d (see \u201cSound of the Real 3\u201d in the catalog for \u201cRailroad Siding 2015\u201d) was developed in reference to \u201cimmedium,\u201d a concept expounded by Akira Mizuta Lippit in an article written for the exhibition catalog of \u201cReading Cinema, Finding Words: Art after Marcel Broodthaers\u201d (The National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto, 2013). In plain terms, \u201cun-medium\u201d indicates the \u201cbudding state\u201d of a medium that precedes its development into a specific one. The cyclical and composite structures in Yamauchi\u2019s work, including a water tank, distillation, humidification, footage of smoke, repeated images of the shedding of skin, and performance, are suffused with a non-substantial state of \u201cun-medium.\u201d<\/p>\n
This pervasive \u201cun-medium\u201d casts the audience into the work. Particles of \u201csmelly\u201d water released by distillation and humidification are absorbed into spectators\u2019 bodies, and \u201csmell\u201d is sprayed on them during the performance. Unable to be grasped by sight alone, the piece defies objective viewing, sweeping the onlooker inside its cyclical structure. Yamauchi\u2019s way of merging technology (a machine\/system) and the body (love\/eroticism) appeals to an uncontrollable part of our senses and encourages the inter-permeation of technology-symbolizing imagery (as signals and resolution) and water (as circulation and a molecular structure), which is symbolic of life.<\/p>\n
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Shota Yamauchi “Apparition”\uff08detail), \u00a02023\u3000photo: Koichi Nishiyama<\/p>\n
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Shota Yamauchi “Apparition”\uff08detail), \u00a02023\u3000photo: Koichi Nishiyama<\/p>\n
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The film in \u201cThe Dancing Princess\u201d depicts a gorilla-like creature shedding its skin over and over. Tubes threaded through holes in the wall onto which this footage is projected connect the water tank and distillation device of \u201cApparition\u201d to each other, allowing water to circulate. Does this make the gorilla a metaphor for ice, with the shed skin representing meltwater from its surface? The ice-gorilla never melts down completely because the tube keeps feeding new water into the footage, generating new ice. The computer-generated smoke in \u201cApparition\u201d evokes vaporized water particles, demonstrating the close relationship between distillation and humidification.<\/p>\n
\u201cOver-dimension\u201d is a concept I propose here for the first time. According to Nakao, in Duchamp\u2019s \u201cThe Large Glass,\u201d \u201cexistence in a higher dimensional world, beyond the three dimensions of reality, \u2018appears\u2019 on the precipice of the three-dimensional world.\u201d \u201cOver-dimension\u201d is derived from this reference to a \u201chigher dimensional world.\u201d Recognizing the existence of Duchamp\u2019s super-four-dimensional space in our three dimensions takes time, and Yamauchi\u2019s work accomplishes this with time-sensitive elements such as distillation, humidification, video, and performance, through which transitory time transforms materials and bodies into phenomena.<\/p>\n
Works that involve time do not allow themselves to be grasped in a static manner, instead forcing the viewer to perceive them dynamically. However, viewing the gallery space from the outside, through the large glass window that is the hallmark of Aoyama Meguro, provides a singular visual experience in which \u201cun-medium\u201d and \u201cover-dimension\u201d are compressed into a single image. When looking into the gallery from the outside, no sounds can be heard or smells perceived. The space behind the glass is compressed, and like in \u201cThe Large Glass,\u201d artwork and viewer become one; a visual integration is achieved.<\/p>\n
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Shota Yamauchi “Apparition”\uff082023\uff09Performance\u3000performer: Karu Miyoshi\u3000photo\uff1aKoichi Nishiyama<\/p>\n
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In theology, \u201ctransubstantiation\u201d is the word used to describe the conversion of bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ. Duchamp employs this word in a 1957 lecture entitled \u201cCreative Act.\u201d The concept of transubstantiation is the key to understanding Nakao\u2019s curation and Yamauchi\u2019s works. Below, after quoting Duchamp, I will attempt to describe my experience of a virtual transubstantiation.<\/p>\n
\u201cThrough the change from inert matter into a work of art, an actual transubstantiation has taken place, and the role of the spectator is to determine the weight of the work on the esthetic scale.\u201d<\/p>\n
Particles of water released by the humidifier are absorbed by my body, and my body becomes one with these particles. Transformed into water particles, I am eventually absorbed into the liquid that fills the large water tank and circulates through the gallery by means of a tube. Occasionally, behind the wall onto which the footage of \u201cThe Dancing Princess\u201d is projected, I am supplied to the ice (= gorilla). Therefore, I am also the gorilla. The skin it has shed is the water that has melted from the surface of the ice, which flows out of the image onto the gallery floor.<\/p>\n
This sensation is provided by Eva Hesse\u2019s \u201cHang Up\u201d (1966), evoked by the tubes that enter and exit the wall of imagery, connecting the world of the artwork with the real world. When the shedding of skin reminds us of snakes, the tubes slithering on the floor begin to look like serpents (whose head and tail are behind the wall of the footage). This sensation resonates with the drawings in \u201cApparition,\u201d in which a fetus and an adult are transposed, as well as with the rubber suit into which the body in the \u201cThe Dancing Princess\u201d poem is twisted.<\/p>\n
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Shota Yamauchi “Apparition”\uff08detail) \u00a02023\u3000photo: Koichi Nishiyama<\/p>\n
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The view from the outside, through the big glass, leads me to the virtual transubstantiation: my body becomes skin = footage, and my blood turns into water. The shed skin in the \u201cThe Dancing Princess\u201d footage turns into water and flows out into the real world. That water, myself, eventually evaporates and drifts throughout the gallery. I, in the form of water particles that are distilled and humidified, and by way of the \u201cApparition\u201d footage\u2019s resolution and the molecular structure of water, permeate the footage through the monitor\u2019s pixels, becoming involved with the generation of CGI smoke. In video footage, just like in water and air, particle coarseness and density are what make an \u201cimage\u201d appear.<\/p>\n
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Shota Yamauchi “Apparition”\uff082023\uff09Performance\u3000performer: Karu Miyoshi\u3000photo\uff1aKoichi Nishiyama<\/p>\n
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The large glass compresses not only the material and the audience, but even the air inside the gallery, in which smells are dispersed through distillation and humidification. This air is something invisible but perceptible, and an important element in Yamauchi\u2019s work. The compression caused by the glass makes visible even the invisible air and the smells in it; a perverse state, brought about by Nakao\u2019s curation and Yamauchi\u2019s work, and guided by the twin perverse desires of \u201cThe Large Glass.\u201d It\u2019s in this perverse state that Nakao and Yamauchi\u2019s efforts to bring about the \u201capparition\u201d of invisible art come to fruition.<\/p>\n
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The apparition of invisible art alters the two opening lines of the poem in \u201cThe Dancing Princess.\u201d This, the moment when the \u201cillusion\u201d in Yamauchi\u2019s poetry becomes reality, is when transubstantiation occurs, bringing me to my conclusion.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat night, footage was under the illusion it was water.<\/p>\n
Water was under the illusion it was footage.\u201d<\/p>\n
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\u00a0Note:<\/small><\/p>\n