JOURNALS

Tokyo, With Eva

After my trip to Norway, my project with Eva remained without anything tangible from the end of the summer of 2008 and through the autumn, however I believe that some invisible seed was stirring quietly.  We continued to exchange emails; rather than being detailed discussion of the work, the topics of our emails were almost always exchanging information about what we were getting up to.  Eva was occupied with another project, and I was engaged with my own studio work as well as my job at the university in Tokyo. Once again, we had gone back to our busy lives.

Just before winter arrived, I was given a fantastic opportunity to visit the continent of Africa, somewhere I had never been, as part of my university work.  I visited Rwanda and Uganda giving seminars and workshops. Although this seemed to be a world away from the Cultex project with Eva, I felt that within myself there was some overlap or resonance in the sense that I accepted the request and was taken far away to another culture, to carry out a mission to meet and interact with new people. It is hard to explain in words, but I felt that the broadening of my experience in Africa gave me a boost to push on with the project; at the very least it gave me something valuable psychologically.

Winter came and the year came to a close, in some ways my work with Eva was still up in the air; I had made time for my own work although that wasn't to say that I had done nothing at all towards my work with Eva. This became evident in the 10 days that I spent with Eva in Tokyo.

It was decided that Eva would come to visit Tokyo after the New Year in January 2009.  It can be much more difficult getting ready to accept a sudden guest into the minutiae of your daily routine than go away yourself.  January is always a very busy time for me but I was very happy to make some unexpected free time to fit in with her itinerary.  As Eva had already lived in Tokyo before I knew that it was not necessary to introduce sightseeing places to her.  Also, we were both aware that at this meeting nothing was more important than getting to grips with the details. We would bring fragments of ideas, inspiration, images together as a concept, to begin to form the embodiment of a piece we could feel satisfied with; we would consider and decide upon matters that could not be discussed easily by email such as materials, colour, texture, methods, size and so on.  Although, to be honest I was slightly confused as to what I ought to be preparing.  In the meantime, I tidied my studio a little, and cleaned up the house a bit more than usual, and bought in her favourite rice crackers and green tea.

But my worries were soon put aside and Eva’s energy brought me into the middle of the project, just as it had done in Norway last summer.  On the day that Eva arrived, I had to work during the daytime, so I was not able to meet Eva until the evening, but Eva had already explored the area of Shibuya, which she hadn't visited for a long time, she really liked the accommodation that I had booked for her and was quite settled in and ready to get going.  Although the location was different being Shibuya in Tokyo, just as we had sorted out our schedule every evening at Eva's house, we immediately discussed the coming schedule.  Eva had brought a black trunk with her.  She called the trunk “my atelier”, and inside she had packed all manner of samples or materials for reference.  Making a promise to have a meeting next day at my workplace we bade each other goodnight.  As I walked home through Shibuya, I recalled going up or down to our respective rooms to sleep at night in Eva’s home.  As I walked along the familiar evening streets, I felt as if I was walking along an unknown road and returned home with a feeling of excitement. 

From the following day, as we went from place to place - to my studio, my university office, Eva’s accommodation - we were totally focused on our discussions as we went.  We had decided that we would create one installation between the two of us, but we hadn’t decided on any actual details.  When the piece created between us is installed in March, it will be finished with the addition of some improvisational elements as well.  However, we determined most of the details for the construction of the whole thing and decided how to divide up the work.  We carried out a simulation of the actual installation in the size of the space, we considered the choice of material and visited suppliers, then we discussed the finer details of the colour scheme of the material for the piece and using the samples; one by one we carefully decided each of the details.  By the very nature of the task, deciding on minute details in a limited space of time for the final stage of the piece, it would not be unusual for there to be a clash of opinions. Above all Eva’s mind works quickly, and she thinks and acts speedily, in contrast, if anything I could be described as taking things slowly. Rather than catching on to ideas quickly, I like to think carefully and mull them over. However, in a peculiar way, it was almost as if things had already been determined and we found we were able to make decisions easily. This was thanks to the two weeks we had spent together in the summer, and the result of being able to slowly nurture the project after that as we carried on our normal lives.

Also, I believe our circumstances on this occasion helped us to work more effectively than you might expect: living within walking distance but not spending the time in one house; the energy and intensity of the bustling town of Shibuya; the expanse and quietness of the university campus like an oasis. Tokyo is a city which offers a multitude of sensations, visual and textural; this energized us for our work, whilst at the same time the sense of distance we maintained in our free time helped bond us for this project. Rather than cooking, we deliberately took the chance to go out to eat sushi or tempura during the breaks in our work. Of course, not the dishes offered to foreign tourists, but I wanted to introduce to her the genuine Edomae (Tokyo-style) flavours around Shibuya and Meguro; modest yet providing a cultural experience. Chatting in this way over meals, I discovered a number of clues towards the work which were very interesting for me.

We thought we would like to express something essential about human life through our piece.  We had kept a note of certain words and phrases that we both used as we talked since the summer to winter.
Gravity. Earth. Water and air, breathing. Encounter. Preciousness, nurturing, gathering, preserving, protecting, and destroying. Old things and new things. Hands and textiles.

I do not think it would be possible put these together and explain them to other people. We could not fully describe what we felt in our hearts but we felt them deeply.  We both believe in the tacit knowledge of our hands, that the thoughts are built up and merge together into the piece itself. Through these discussions and experiments, we confirmed that we would endeavour to create a piece which reflected all our work.  Eva’s works are installed outdoors and express an awareness of the sky and the earth. I will create a space which has an awareness of gravity hanging a piece from the ceiling of the 1st floor room. The two will come together on the ground floor below my space. The piece which spreads across the entire floor forming one space comes out of our encounter and the contact between our minds.  Our intention is that the vertical lines of the inside of the room and the horizontal lines outside will meet in the ground floor. Although the amount of time was very short, just 2 weeks in the summer of 2008 and 10 days in 2009, you could say that the way that we have collaborated, the single installation resulting from that, and construction of three spaces are the results of a fruitful time together.