Georgian Letter
"Georgian Letter" is a communication tool between two artists who have never met, one in Japan and one in Taiwan. It is the voice of these two writers, and a declaration on the issue of sexuality and the relationship between Taiwan and China. One artist receives a letter (a piece of textile) that describes the textile artist's private life, and the other artist replies to it by cutting into the textile. The cloth becomes a garment, dancing freely in the blazing midsummer sun and the blowing wind. The image is unmistakably free, a record of the determination to walk strongly into an as-yet-unseen future, unbound by anyone.
Victoria＆Albert Museum curator Anna Jackson’s comment
This fascinating project, so very clever in its apparent simplicity. It does resonate with kimono in terms of structure and the idea of a single bolt of cloth, cut and reassembled; and also in the way in which the kimono has been deconstructed and reconstructed in the hands of fashion designers across the world. It could also be an important way of recycling textiles. In this case, the use of the Yuji Mizuta work is interesting. I am always intrigued by the use of words on the body and again it echoes the different patterning on the kimono surface and the use of text as a way of literally reading something of the wearer's personality.
This work is a collaboration between two artists from Japan and Taiwan who have never met in person. This work inevitably makes us think about what the definition of “encounter” is. This work poses the question of what kind of history is spun out when different people and things meet, and whether the form and format of such encounters are already predetermined.
This work should be valued more for the episodes depicted in it, or the premise of it, than as a video work. For example, the movement known as “mail art” dates back to Duchamp, Neo-Dada, and Fluxus, and it was the creation of “encounters” using mail and the subsequent influence on each other (including the surrounding areas) that was ignited by these encounters. I felt that this work may have unconsciously followed the very conceptual and important aspects of mail art. I also felt that the one-on-one activities of the two artists through the so-called “letters back and forth” reiterated the importance of a certain “sense of touch” that tends to be automatically and forcibly discarded in the one-to-many and many-to-many communications in contemporary media.
This work is the work of two very distant and yet very close people. Perhaps what this fact brings to light is the essence of technological art.
Toshiya Kuroiwa / Media artist Dean, Faculty of Arts, KYUSHU SANGYO UNIVERSITY
この作品は、日本と台湾の、直に会ったことのない二人のアーティストが共同で制作した作品である。ここでは必然的に「出会い」の定義がなんたるかを考えさせられる。そもそも違った人やモノが出会うことがどのような歴史を紡ぎ出すのか、その形態や形式はすでに決められたものなのか、という問いを本作は突きつけるのである。
この作品は、映像作品としての評価よりも、そこに描かれた、あるいは前提にあるエピソードの方に価値を見出すべきであろう。たとえば「メール･アート」と呼ばれるムーブメントは、デュシャンやネオ･ダダ、フルクサスに遡るが、これらは郵便物をつかった「出会い」の創出と、それを着火点とする以後の互いへの(周辺を含めた)影響を創造するものであった。本作は、メール･アートのきわめてコンセプチュアルな、そして重要な部分を、もしかすると無意識に踏襲しているのではないかと感じた。またいわゆる「往復書簡」による二人のアーティストの、1対1のアクティビティは、現代メディアにおける、1対多数や、多数対多数のコミュニケーションにおいて自動的強制的にそぎ落とされてしまいがちな、ある種の「触覚」の重要性を、あらためて提示しているような気がした。
本作は、きわめて遠く、そして近い二人の作品である。もしかすると、この事実がもたらすものこそが、テクノロジーアートの本質を言い当てているとはいえないだろうか。
黒岩 俊哉