"beginning of the landscapes"

A world-changing event occurred.
The earthquake created a breach in time, space and history.
The invisible radioactive pollution is spreading imperceptibly over large distances, becoming a global issue. What is Japan's fate? Fear of the waterfront invites anxiety. Yet our world moves tirelessly forward.
We walk by intersections of the ordinary and the extraordinary in the unstoppable flow of time.

I first heard of the earthquake from an production assistant who received a phone call.
The information I got from him turned into the huge disaster the next day, the world was undergoing complete change.
A radio became indispensable to follow the course of events. Pain, sorrow, sadness, anger, fear…
I go on confronting my work with emotions hard to digest amidst the stream of information.
The long hours spent calmly concentrating on my work happen to be neither an escape nor a prayer for salvation from this apprehension.
While I slowly realize that there are no other options but direct confrontation, information about the well being of the victims and aftershocks keep flowing out of the radio.

Then songs started being played between calls for missing persons.
Listeners are sending music requests and messages of hope to the devastated areas.
After all this time, I eventually became able to think of the process leading to the completion of the artwork as a precious mundanity that links today to tomorrow.
I feel this is when I first came up with the title "beginning of the landscapes".

The landscapes we took from granted in our world of affluence suddenly disappeared.
Each and everyone one of us must now face the landscapes starting from here.
Many are probably yet unable to choose a direction, stuck in pain and fear.
What I want to create with my work is a landscape that is a nostalgic one, like seen from afar, one they can meet when they will make their first step forward.

I am now putting garden tree leaves taken from several places together.
I believe each leave is like a map of the time they were coloring someone's garden, breathing. Putting those leaves together is the process of connecting those landscapes. It is also a way to connect people together. This small landscape growing little by little as days pass by is incorporated in the fabric of the world, expanding superimposition.

The landscape that starts below your feet continues endlessly
− to remote landscapes, to landscapes to be, to the familiar landscapes next to you.

2011. 3. 28 MIYANAGA Aiko

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