Antony Gormley, "Sublimate IV" (2004)
Photo by Tsuyoshi Saito

Michael Light, view of the "100 Suns" exhibition at Art Tower Mito
Photo by Tsuyoshi Saito

Michale Light, "Stokes" (2003, from "100 Suns")
Courtesy of Frehrking + Wiesehofer Gallery, Cologne

Bill Viola, "Surrender" (2001)
Photo by Kira Perov

Suh Do-Ho: "Paratrooper-III" (2006)
Photo by Tsuyoshi Saito

Hashimoto Isao: "1945-1998" (2003)

Finally I found the time to go and see the To the Human Future / Flight from the Dark Side exhibition at Art Tower Mito (through 5/7). It’s a powerful show, and I wish I had gone and written about it much earlier. Alongside some big names from the realm of contemporary art, including Antony Gormley, Bill Viola and Ono Yoko, the exhibition introduces works by such prominent journalists as Eugene Smith, James Nachtwey, Hirokawa Ryuichi, and others. The majority of the displayed items deal with war, bloodshedding, and other forms of contemporary ill-being, while at once holding a serene kind of beauty. The exhibition has a strong notion of accusation to the "dark side" of contemporary society, whereas this doesn't hinder the displays from being artworks, but in my view even emphasize that quality.

While each of the exhibited works is strong enough to whip up the viewer, the overall composition of the exhibition brilliantly magnifies this effect. Gormley’s highly abstract sculptures are followed by photographs of nuclear tests selected from the "100 Suns" photo book that was edited by Michael Light. Placed opposite from Viola’s video piece showing a grieving man and woman on two screens separated by a water surface, is Magdalena Abakanowicz’s sculpture of a face- and handless human body. Right after looking up to Suh Do-Ho’s overwhelming work (see below), the visitor encounters a total of 2053 nuclear tests carried out in seven countries between 1945 and 1998, in the form of Hashimoto Isao’s media art work using flickering light and impressive digital sound. Covering the walls of the next room are Nachtwey’s and Hirokawa’s most ghastly, yet at once beautiful photographs taken in Africa, the Middle East and other places where the absurdities of modern history are being exposed. Placed between these pictures are reflective texts on war and peace by the likes of Lev Tolstoi and Tanikawa Shuntaro.

The central theme of the works of Light and Hashimoto is the phenomenon of megadeath, as they focus on superpowers' nuclear testings, while Viola and Abakanowicz, on the other hand, keep their works in a personal scale, and portray individual tragedies as signs of our time. The photographs of Nachtwey and Hirokawa are on an equally individual level, and include such works as Nachtwey’s "Mourning a brother killed by a Taliban rocket", which also graces the exhibition’s promotional flyer: Muslim females dressed from head to toe in traditional garments, with their hands stretched out to a bleak gravestone being the only visible parts of their bodies — a sight that involuntarily renders every viewer speechless. Cases of megadeath can only be dealt with en masse, just like fish for example, but the persons that die (are being killed) are in fact individual "bodies" that won't be salvaged by any organization, just like the bereaved who remain in solitude. In order to stress this obvious yet often ignored fact, visually and intellectually, the abstract (mass casualties) an the concrete (individual deaths) are being displayed in in alternate shifts.

The work that gave me the biggest jolt was Suh Do-Ho’s giant plastic work. Made of the artist’s trademark cloth, the "Paratrooper-III" was a soldier on a parachute, suspended from the ceiling of Art Tower Mito’s highest exhibition room. The parachute was made of numerous shirts, which, according to the artist’s explanation, "hint at multiple human existences which help a single individual descend to foreign place in order to survive." In my opinion, however, this work is extremely polysemic. It is unclear whether the trooper descends or ascends, whether his goal is peace or war, and whether his aim is to rescue himself or someone else. It’s not a work that was commissioned by Art Tower Mito, but the perfect way of exhibiting it almost makes one think it was made especially for this show.

The theme in the second half of the exhibition slightly diffuses. Apart from Ono Yoko’s "Endangered Species 2319-2322", the works chosen for this part not only present the sorrowful reality in a present progressive form, or make wake-up calls by referring to the present state, but generally include notions of "hope" as a message. From the perspective of an editor of a photo collection as pessimistic as One Hundred Years of Idiocy, personally I find this optimism, or escapologism, a little naive. Anyway, the exhibition title says everything, and since opinions naturally differ, I refrain from discussing this any further here. I just want to mention that Shirin Neshat’s video piece "Fervor" in in the last room, which shows on symmetrically arranged screens Muslims of both sexes catching each other’s eyes from afar while being separated during a religious service, is a masterful work that displays an intimate connection with the exhibition’s main theme. However, I think the piece’s links to other artists' works should have been made with a bit more sensitivity and subtlety.

I talked to Osaka Eriko, Chief curator of the ATM Contemporary Art Center, who is in charge of this exhibition. She is a veteran curator whose experience include among others the job of a commissioner of the Japan Pavilion at the Venice Biennale. "The first outline of the event I wrote down in 2002. 9.11 and the following invasion of Afghanistan by US forces were shocking events, after which I asked myself what could be achieved with art. I'm not an activist, so what came out is this exhibition."

According to Edward Said, "an intellectual is a refugee and outsider, and an amateur who makes verbal attempts to confront the authorities with the truth. 'Amateurism' literally means to act out of concernment or affection, without being limited by thoughts about profits and interests, or small-minded expert views." (from "Representations of the Intellectual")

I don't know what a correct definition of "activist" would be, but Said’s definition of an "intellectual" comes very close to my idea of "activists". According to Said’s definitions, the artists and journalists who participated in the "To the Human Future / Flight from the Dark Side" exhibition, as well as Osaka Eriko, are perfect "intellectuals" and "amateurs". In my view they are all venerable activists.

Ozaki Tetsuya / Editor in chief / REALTOKYO