Route D'argent Art Festival in IKUNO
The Time Alive (2020)
I feel the exposure of various times in this land called Ikuno. It is a generational span of human beings, a historical span, a span of the earth, a span of the universe. Every time is concentrated in this valley. Ichikawa, which runs beside the purchasing community, is still full of water. Since human beings created the concept of time, I wanted to hear the polyphonic performance of the "clock", which is a human-made tool that shows time, and the "river flow" that humans use as a metaphor for time.
The art festival is held in Ikuno Town, where the Ikuno Mine was once located. For 1200 years, people continued to mine silver and copper and tin here. In particular, the Edo period under the shogunate of management, mining of silver in supporting the economy reaches its peak. It was mined for 77 years after it was paid off to the Mitsubishi joint-stock company in 1897, but it closed in 1973 due to resource decline. The so-called supermarket, which has supplied all kinds of daily necessities to the mining workers until the closing of the mountain, is a purchasing event.
The former tunnel is now open to the public as a museum, and the state of mineral mining is explained by placing dolls. The bare surface of the dark tunnel, which was also carved with fleas carved by fleas, was the exposure of the earth, and the minerals that formed the earth were once floating in space.
A Hole of Space（2016）
Karami-stone is garbage after silver extraction. The room walls made of Karami-stone-bricks. There is no light except from the hole in the ceiling and the entrance. To collect the subtle light, Namekawa used mirrors which are made of glass and coating silver on the back. Silver and Karami-stone which were separated by human being before, reunited in this space.
