Saturday, August 20, 2016

Fukushima, Iwaki, Tabito / Art Meeting

I keep thinking of the term "reverse gentrification" - not really sure why or what it means, but somehow what Art Meeting is doing seems like reverse gentrification. Artists are not here to increase the value of the land or real estate prices; we are not displacing anyone; no one is profiting. Everyone is here because they want to do something, make something in defiance of the state-corporate structure that is responsible for so many half-truths, distortions, misinformation, lies, bad policy, redistribution of contamination......Many efforts feel futile, like scraps of poetry....

or subtle, almost invisible, as if forgotten there


peeking into abandoned schools feels wrong and sends chills up and down my spine, makes me ache for all the students long gone, split apart from their circles of friends and family, their communities and gardens, their fields and crops, traditions



Radiation monitors stand at attention and an artist balances a string with rock
across the entrance steps





I am stunned by this entranceway at one of the abandoned schools:

and when I come back through an artist has placed a ladder there:







invisible radiation


an artist, a man whose son once attended this school, sculpts a figure out of dirt and chalk....




Like Chernobyl, things are left untouched

Mayumi Matsuo, the amazing woman artist with whom I will be showing at Gallery G in Hiroshima immediately after Fukushima, installs her photographs of fluids/liquids from Hiroshima and Fukushima with a textile piece for her friend who died of AIDS.....



A leftover sculpture from a previous Art Meeting exhibition



seaweed and plastic on abandoned playground equipment










gestures 

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