ants
アリ
This digital print was made as part of my Phd research.
This print was produced as a response to a metaphor of Japan-ness which was claimed by one of my participants in my research, a practicing Tokyo architect. He stated that for him, Japan-ness manifests as an ‘ambivalent mind’, an image which embodies the complexities around identity stereotyping, the marketisation of nationhood and the relationship between conscious and unconsciousness participation.
When making this work, I began by using the image of the Japanese flag as a starting point - not only because it is a visual global symbol of natonalism but also because, with its red singular circle, it denotes an image of homogenous unity. It is this false claim of uniformity that has helped produce pervasive stereotypes which have influenced how Japanese architectures are understood and represented with anglophone discourse. Subsequently, I wanted to produce a representation which challenges this ideology and which makes clear that a singular understanding of Japan and Japan-ness is non existent
. Employing the words ‘ambivalent mind’ to the flag was a structural framework was a way of deconstructing its previous form in order to rebuild it; to start from a place of ambivalence is not to place limit on thought. It is a place of openness, a willingness to acknowledge a multiplicity of perspectives - a neccessary position when reimagining Japan-ness as comprised of collective and diverse practices. ‘Ambivalent mind’ was
written in English because
my participant said these words in
English, despite the interview
being conducted in Japanese. He
stated that in Japanese, the word ambivalent has a variety of
different meanings and contextual
uses so he believes the English
word to be more clear in its
intension.
Once the textual form was solidified, I
began considering the flag’s central red
circle. To deconstruct the notion that
there is a singular Japan, and thus a
single
Japan-ness, I chose to include 14 other red circles in the work ‒ all of which disperse out from the central circle. The number (14) and the position is not random, rather each of the small circles represents one of the architectures visited for my phd research and each map their rescaled position in Tōkyō onto the flag. This is a way of not only indicating that each architecture represents its own manifestation of
Japan-ness, as all the stakeholders in its production (the architect/s, the clients) will have different
interpretations of the term, but also a way of visualising the role of the individual cells (architectures) in the wider foam network theory which the research relies on. In order to recode Japan-ness, spatiality must be present in equal measure to aesthetics.
Japan-ness, I chose to include 14 other red circles in the work ‒ all of which disperse out from the central circle. The number (14) and the position is not random, rather each of the small circles represents one of the architectures visited for my phd research and each map their rescaled position in Tōkyō onto the flag. This is a way of not only indicating that each architecture represents its own manifestation of
Japan-ness, as all the stakeholders in its production (the architect/s, the clients) will have different
interpretations of the term, but also a way of visualising the role of the individual cells (architectures) in the wider foam network theory which the research relies on. In order to recode Japan-ness, spatiality must be present in equal measure to aesthetics.
When it came to revisualising the central circle, I chose to combine the methodologicalact of zooming (see Kuroda, Kaijima and Tsukamoto’s Made in Tokyo) with a participant’s drawing of ants moving through the window frame of their project ‘A House in Tsukishima’. If one zooms in on the large circle, it is clear that it is made up of hundreds of red ants. Ants, as micro-organisms, move and operate as a networked entity - they do invisible work connecting with larger life forms. To tie to the role of the sensory in the research, ants are also acute sensory beings, communicating through sounds, touch and pheromones. I wanted to emphasise in this work that micro components, such as individual architectures (cells), play a valuable role in the macro urban ecology. In a similar way, the individual spatial practices of the fourth generation of Japanese architects is contributing to our global collective knowledge of Japan-ness. If one zooms further into the work, black ants crawl among the textual structure; one could view them as disrupters of the work, yet they are also potentially repairers and communicators, securing the flag’s structure and carrying information to and from the circles.