Artist Statement

I have long pursued desolate, primordial landscapes. With a fascination reminiscent of science fiction films, I believed that viewing the world through landscapes devoid of human presence—grasping it as a configuration of time and space beyond human scale—might offer us some kind of insight today. Claude Lévi-Strauss once said, “The world began without man and will end without him,” and the so-called “landscapes of lost civilization”—as if captured by artificial satellites left behind after humanity’s extinction, or scenes from after humanity or before its emergence—seem to acquire a trans-temporal perspective that spans both past and future. At the same time, however, I felt there was a risk that such views could slide into a kind of misanthropy or distrust of humanity.

In Snow Falls on a Southern Island (1961) by Daisuke Katō, the author—also an actor—recounts his wartime experiences in which, amid hellish conditions of starvation and hopelessness, he sought to give soldiers a reason to live and encouragement by organizing a theatrical unit deep in the harsh jungles of Papua New Guinea and staging performances for them. As disease and hunger claimed lives one after another, it was customary to ask dying soldiers, “Is there anything you want?” One severely malnourished soldier reportedly answered, before his death, “I want to see snow.” Determined to make snow fall in a theatrical performance, the author spread the remaining white parachutes on the ground and shredded paper to let it fall like grains of sand, creating a snow scene. At the sight of it, three hundred soldiers fell silent for a moment, then without exception began to tremble and quietly sob. I was deeply shaken by the fact that, under such extreme conditions, people on the brink of death found hope and profound emotion simply by looking at a landscape.

In Wind, Sand and Stars (Terre des hommes) by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, the author—himself a pilot pioneering early air routes in the twentieth century—depicts the astonishing nobility of spirit with which he survived a forced landing due to an accident, wandering the desert for three days at the edge of death before returning alive. This true story, set in circumstances of near starvation, describes how he is suddenly overwhelmed with emotion upon gazing at the star-filled sky above him, losing himself in awe. Through a dialogue with the landscape, he reflects upon and honors others beyond himself, pressing forward to his limits—an unreserved celebration of humanity. It is only by thinking of others, he suggests, that people can become strong.

In our contemporary era, often called the Anthropocene, we live immersed in cloud-like systems where uncertain information constantly drifts, while being tormented by a double anxiety: environmental destruction and global structures of division and conflict. The environment surrounding us has become unstable to the point that we can physically feel it. If we view human life—so confident that it understands the world—and the history of the Earth along a single timeline, and imagine the time since Earth’s formation as twelve hours, then the span from when humans first began using fire to the present amounts to only two seconds. Within those two seconds, how long have we truly lived without conflict and in peace? Perhaps no longer than the blink of an eye.

As newcomers to this planet, perhaps all that remains for us is to entrust ourselves once more to the landscape, to sense vast stretches of time, and to reclaim the simple position of merely gazing at it. And yet, if it is true that “only when the wind of the human spirit blows across the clay is the human being formed,” then there are moments when I feel that by looking at landscapes—and by walking within them—we may again be able to find a single ray of light within our own spirit.

Notes

1. Claude Lévi-Strauss, Tristes Tropiques

2. Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Terre des hommes

Akira Kugimachi