If you visited REALTOKYO recently you'll have seen the "19 x 10 Highlights of the Year" special gathering 19 RT editors' and contributors' top ten events of 2007. Selecting the best ten out of hundreds necessarily means dropping some (dozen) good ones, and in my case it was one particular event that I initially added to my top ten list as a "bonus", but then deleted because the venue was not on RT territory. That one event was in fact my personal number one in the year 2007. It was Naito Rei’s "Matrix" exhibition (10.6-12.16).
Put simply, it was a show of site-specific art, whereas the "site-specificity" was quite out of the ordinary. The event took place at the "Art Power Station, Nizayama Forest Art Museum" in Nyuzen-machi, Toyama Prefecture. From Tokyo, that’s a trip of three to four hours in total on the Joetsu Shinkansen, and then the Hokuetsu Express "Hokuhoku Line" or the JR Hokuriku Line, plus an additional 15 minutes by taxi. The venue, a former hydraulic plant built in 1926, escaped demolition when the power company gave it to the city (Nyuzen-machi), who refurbished it and reopened it as a museum in 1995. The impressive brick construction was built on an area of 558 square meters, and has a gross floor area of 678 square meters and a total height of 14.4 meters.
Visitors have to take off their shoes at the door, and upon entering I was greeted at once by a stone-cold floor and a small bluish painting (or is it a photograph?) on the wall. After letting my eyes wander across the high, cavernous interior for a while, I entered the loft kind of room on mezzanine floor to my left, where the framed artworks were on display. There were eight photographs that seemed to be showing some kind of white liquid poured into water, something as amorphous as smoke or champagne bubbles. And that was already the entire exhibition.
Thinking that there has to be more, I looked around. Nope, nothing else to see here. Probably due to the distance from the nearest railway station, I was the only visitor even though it was a holiday, so there wasn't anybody I could at least ask what else the neighborhood has to offer. Disarmed by the idea that I traveled hundreds of miles for this, for an instant I felt rather cheated. But then I thought again and came to the conclusion that relaxing in an old (calling it "historical" would be a little exaggerated I guess) facility erected more than 80 years ago wasn't too bad either. When my mood had perfectly cleared up, I noticed the sound of a river that was faintly audible through a slightly open window. The spacious interior was filled with soft light and a dense, delicately humid kind of air.
I decide to let the "mezzanine floor" be the mezzanine floor, and explore the rest of the building that I came all the way from Tokyo to see a little closer. Climbing down the stairs I felt how my steps unintentionally got slower, and with the curiosity of a junior high school boy I inspected the turbines and other machinery that’s still in its place. Then, this time adventurous as a primary school kid, I walked into the tunnel-like aqueduct that has a diameter of about three meters. When leaving the tube I felt that my socks got wet, and just when I was about to express my displeasure at my increasingly cold feet, a drop of water hit my neck.
I found out that water was dripping in intervals of ten, twenty seconds from quite far above my head, which is what caused the wet floor where I was standing. Upon further inspection, I detected a total of eight leaks. Then I found a number of white threads put up in the air, so fine that I had to look really hard to see them, and imagine what they could possibly be connecting…
Later I learned that there was also some drawing on the floor, but that I didn't notice. I'm sure (and I don't say this as pretence) it wasn't something too important. Wrapped in a mixture of light and air, I relaxed body and mind, enjoyed the smell and the sound of water, sensed the peculiar time and space of the former power plant, and finally was awarded with a little surprise. My cold feet in wet socks, and the joy of discovering those threads are sensations that are firmly engraved in my body. If you allow me to overstate a little, I'd say it was a hint at some kind of connection between myself and something else. It was Naito Rei who gave me the precious experience of a moment as scarce as this.
Venues with a unique character are double-edged blades for site-specific art. As I wrote before (in "Out of Tokyo 150") about the "China Power Station" exhibition at London’s Battersea Power Station, especially in the case of such massive buildings as power plants, the respective space’s impressiveness is likely to outshine the power of what is being displayed in it. Browsing through the "Art Power Station Records 1995-2004", which I purchased at Nizayama Forest Art Museum, it appeared to me that almost all artists who realized solo exhibitions at this venue channeled into their works all their strength to combat the place’s intensity. Only Naito Rei seemed to snuggle rather than fight against the venue, to the magnificent and optimal effect that her work amalgamated exquisitely with the space it was exhibited in. She works with sunlight rather than north wind. Optimal here refers of course to the trick of achieving maximum results with a minimum of expenses.
Leaving Tokyo requires both time and money, but as long as it involves experiences as precious as this, I surely won't stop traveling. In 2008, I'll be on the road again so far as my schedule and budget permit. I wish you all a Happy New Year, and Bon Voyage!
Ozaki Tetsuya / Editor in chief / REALTOKYO