Desiring Unspeakable Entropy

2019

Two-channel video installation 

14 mins 59 secs

Videography and editing: Koichi Sato 

Sound Design: Hideki Umezawa 

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Desiring Unspeakable Entropy captures the process by which the landscape of the Chichibu region of Japan becomes aestheticized like a piece of Land Art. The region is well known for its unique geological condition and a symbolical limestone mining site of Mt. Bukoh. The aestheticization happens through the spectacle of it created by drones and satellite imagery. The traces left behind on the scale of the millions of years of the Earth’s geological history and the deformations wrought by modern industry, as well as its irreversible entropy, are discussed in terms of a single ecology from different perspectives. The elaborate operations of the drone that project overland images as seen from the sky, allowing us to manipulate our impressions of the comprehensive ecological landscape of the site in an almost playful fashion. This playfulness of the multiple perspectives triggers our contemporary desire to (visually) “see” the spectacle of environmental crisis. At the same time, our bodies somehow suffer from vertigo and a sense of displacement.

本作は、ユニークな地質や日本国内有数の石灰岩採掘地である武甲山で有名な秩父地域のランドスケープの形成のプロセスをとらえています。国内でも有数の石灰岩採掘現場である埼玉県秩父地方の「武甲山」を代表とした岩石をめぐる産業活動と環境変化、およびその展示表象をめぐるポリティクス、地域特有の地層と現地の信仰といった諸要素の関係を、映像とフィールドレコーディングを軸とした音を介して提示しています。また、地球環境に対する人工的な介入が、ドローンや衛星的視点による視線を通して、ランドアートのように美化されてしまう作用を、ランド・アートのパイオニアであるロバート・スミッソンの先見的なテクストの引用とともに映し出します。こうした美化作用は、現代に起こる環境危機の光景を「（視覚的に）見たい」という欲望の感覚を私たちに引き起こしつつ、同時にそうした現実のサイト（場）とイメージの「ずれ」によって、わたしたちの身体は眩暈のような不快感と美的体験のあいだに宙吊りになります。

IMMA Editions (Artist Limited Editions) of  "Desiring Unspeakable Entropy" is available on The IMMA Shop.

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The work is commissioned by Irish Museum of Modern Art for the exhibition "Desire: A Revision from the 20th Century to the Digital Age" from 21 Sep 2019 to 22 Mar 2020.

Special thanks:
Shin Sasakubo
Takeshi Shimizu 
Hannyasan Hoshoji Temple
Mt. Bukoh Museum
Saitama Museum of Natural History