PUBLIC MARKS with tag japon

Motoi Yamamoto is a Japanese artist who does installations made of salt. These huge, and incredibly meticulous labrynths are site specific, and the end result is nothing short of amazing.

As Haruki Murakami, Japan’s best-known living novelist, wrote via e-mail, “My personal view on the Japanese language (or any language) is, If it wants to change, let it change. Any language is alive just like a human being, just like you or me. And if it’s alive, it will change. Nobody can stop it.” There is no such thing as simplification of language, he added. “It just changes for better or worse (and nobody can tell if it is better or worse).”

The woodblock illustrations below were cherry-picked from a Wisconsin University collection of about forty books presenting the earliest depictions - from the 18th and 19th centuries - of the Ainu people by the Japanese. The images are in haphazard order and are primarily of the Sakhalin Ainu (pronounced eye-noo)

The first word that occurs to me is "motherlove". But perhaps a better term would be "ambient impersonal tenderness". Japan is a society shockingly full of ambient impersonal tenderness, overlapping with tender-mindedness, shading into tweeness.

A-SMALL-LAB

focusing on research and practice in creativity

based in Tokyo

contact: chris@a-small-lab.com

(Chris Berthelsen)

"The existing floor was uneven from inaccurate construction," writes Schemata architect Jo Nagasaka, "so we poured epoxy mixed with pine ash on the floor to create a flat surface. The transparent black liquid made different shades of black, following the uneven surface on the floor. It looked like gradation of color on a gradually shoaling beach."

Today the forced relocation of 120,000 innocent U.S. citizens to camps in seven states of the American West has been condemned as immoral and unconstitutional. In 1988 the federal government paid restitution to survivors and issued an apology, while official reports acknowledged that the policy arose from racism and irrational fear.

請求記号：ル04_06316

Une estampe est une impression, la reproduction d’un dessin par l’intermédiaire d’un support gravé (métal ou bois, principalement). L’intérêt de ce support, c’est qu’il permet de reproduire l’image à de multiples exemplaires. Pas toujours exactement identiques, en plus !

i am a big fan of Ozu. link.

we can learn a lot from his films. a quick list:

1. life and people are impermanent.

2. slow down.

3. look people in the eye.

4. drink tea.

5. be kind.

6. simple things hold the secret.

Multiple trips to Japan and constant frustration at being unable to read the language has sparked off an unusual typographic project at johnson banks. Earlier in the year we started seeing if we could combine the English language and Japanese script in some way.