current / upcoming / past > back to list
Kota Takeuchi "Body is not Antibody"
Kota Takeuchi "Body is not Antibody"
From "Body is not Antibody"《Evidens》(2020, 写真) / part of "Aa" and 《Evidens.otf》(2020, OpenType font)
Kota Takeuchi "Body is not Antibody"
session：2020.7.18 Sat. - 8.15 Sat. 13:00 - 19:00 *extension of session
＊closed on Sun, Mon, Tue and public holidays.
venue：SNOW Contemporary
SNOW Contemporary is pleased to present Kota Takeuchi’s solo exhibition “Body is not Antibody” from Saturday, July 18th through Saturday, August 15th, 2020.
Takeuchi was born in 1982, and received B.F.A. at Tokyo University of the Arts, Department of Fine Arts, Intermedia Art in 2008. He currently resides in Fukushima Prefecture, Japan.
In his previous activities, Takeuchi highlighted consciousness of viewers of the disaster as well as self-consciousness of anonymous performers by suddenly appearing in front of the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant live monitoring camera as an agent of a Finger Pointing Worker in his solo exhibition "Open Secret" (2012), and captured our landscapes in which we acquire information from our hand (=mobile phone) in "Eyes on Hand" (2014). Furthermore, he disclosed the nature of media and the state of human memory through tracing the path of the stone monument tour in Iwaki, Fukushima, in his solo exhibition “Photographs turn stone monuments into mere stone, but even so people take them” (2017), and featured the history of balloon bombs dropped by the Japanese army during 1944-1945 during World War II in his video work Blind Bombing, Filmed by Bat (2019). Throughout his practice, Takeuchi has traced objects and events utilizing motions of his own body, and presented them as installations using various media including paintings, video, photography, and sculptures. He has transformed his concepts into artworks through detailed research and fieldwork to critically discuss the diverse issues such as the ways of information and our consciousness in contemporary society.
This exhibition “Body is not Antibody” will showcase Takeuchi’s original font and associated works created through photographs of light trails taken by the artist while he worked as a security guard in the exclusion zone in Fukushima during 2019-2020.
Takeuchi captured the light trails created by the motions of imitating the workers swaying the guidance light into a photograph and attempted to convert them into an original font. The title of this exhibition “Body is not Antibody” was inspired by the artist’s experience of devoting his own body to the nation’s reconstruction project, and questions the meaning of a body and where the body belongs on a personal level.
We cordially welcome viewers to this occasion to reconsider the relationship of individuals’ bodies with nations and society, at a time when mutual surveillance in society and governments interfere with the lifestyles of individuals under the global outbreak of COVID-19 today.
■From the artist
From the summer of 2019 to the spring of 2020, I worked as a security guard in the difficult-to-return zone in Fukushima prefecture. In the summer I heard the voices of the cicada, and in the winter I gazed up at the stars. Every day, from dawn till midnight, I waved the traffic baton on the street in the town where no one lived. It was that red glowing LED baton that a security guard has in a hand to control traffic.
The photographic work “Evidens” was taken by using this traffic baton. In light-trail photography, traces of light are captured by moving a light at a slow shutter speed. I drew letters in the air with the baton and took light-trail photographs, then edited the photographic letters into a font (data of typefaces that can be selected when writing text on a computer).
I believe wisdom, which illuminates the darkness, is brought by the hands of people who crawl on the ground, and not by a divine revelation. In this work, I worked with my hands a lot myself.
The word “evidence” is now often used to mean a “proof,” but it originally came from the Latin word “evidens” which means “perceptible” and “obvious.” While thinking of the 2011 nuclear power plant accident and the echoing words of those who desired for “evidens” in the darkness of through varied incidents and discussions, and also thinking about the origin of the word “photograph (light-picture),” I made the word “evidens” the name of this font.
“Document 1: Corona and Body” was a document, an image that used this font. It extracted the crown and body from the famous frontispiece drawn by Abraham Bosse (1651) for the book “Leviathan” by Thomas Hobbes. The original artwork was a king taller than a mountain coming out of the sea, whose body was shaped by the bodies of the people. In the city in the foreground of the picture, there was no one except a few military trainers and two people, who seemed to be plague doctors.
People willingly become “antibodies” for the body named a nation at the times of fear and crisis. “Antibodies” are substances that respond to foreign substances in the body, which attack and eliminate foreign substances in the immune system. This picture often came to my mind when I would hear stories of people taking antibody-reactions against other people during long-term disasters, such as wartime, earthquakes, and this corona-related chaos. I also realized the king's headpiece was the same as the origin of the name of the virus, which motivated me to make this artwork. (The coronavirus seen under an electron microscope has distinctive protuberances of about 20 nm on the surface, which appearance resembles that of a crown, in Greek, a “corona.”)
To protect the health and livelihood of vulnerable people ? bodies belong to individuals and countries ought to be a system to protect the individuals, but at times before we notice, this relationship could be reversed. The theme of this exhibition is to portray the attribution of the image of the body. As the exhibition title “Body is not Antibody” exemplifies, bodies are not antibodies. My body is not the antibody of the monster named the nation. Then, in that case, what kind of attributed image can be said that it is my own body?
It might sound extreme, but what about aliens? Due to the influence of science fiction movies, people tend to associate “aliens” as “beings from outer space,” but the word originally means “outsiders” and “foreigners.” But when we think of the difficulties foreign residents are currently facing, or the distracting gaze thrown towards the Fukushima migrant workers, the bodies of “aliens” seem not to have an easy path either, even at a personal level. We must also keep in mind these “aliens” are the ones who often become identified as “antibodies” too.
Or, in the field of economics and philosophy, the loss of the essence of a human being caused by transferring one’s own property and rights is called “alienation.” This is another form of domination by the system. If I would forcibly find an “alienated self” in a human body, it would probably be a mitochondria ? originally a foreign substance, but by transferring the energy it produced, they coexist with the cells of the host and become a part of a body before one knows.
It seems to be quite a difficult position after all, but if I were forced to choose between becoming an “antibody” or a “mitochondrion,” I’d probably prefer to be... a mitochondrion-like alien. That way I can at least maintain my own dignity as an individual. Well, how can I say such a thing while I had been working as a security guard, who kept an eye out at the very end of the national project named a reconstruction, which is probably one of the most “antibody-ish” professions?
Excuse me that I have deviated off the track. Anyway, everyone who cordially visited this exhibition is highly welcomed to sit on the alien seat, or return back to the city of Tokyo by going through the body of the “Corona Leviathan,” or simultaneously look at both of them in front of the photographs taken in the town that has forced to be in quarantine for a decade. It would be my great pleasure if you could find your most comfortable place while walking around in the gallery.
18th, July, 2020 Kota Takeuchi
translation: Kana Kawanishi
session：2020.7.18 Sat. - 8.15 Sat. 13:00 - 19:00 *extension of session
＊closed on Sun, Mon, Tue and public holidays.
venue：SNOW Contemporary
SNOW Contemporary is pleased to present Kota Takeuchi’s solo exhibition “Body is not Antibody” from Saturday, July 18th through Saturday, August 15th, 2020.
Takeuchi was born in 1982, and received B.F.A. at Tokyo University of the Arts, Department of Fine Arts, Intermedia Art in 2008. He currently resides in Fukushima Prefecture, Japan.
In his previous activities, Takeuchi highlighted consciousness of viewers of the disaster as well as self-consciousness of anonymous performers by suddenly appearing in front of the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant live monitoring camera as an agent of a Finger Pointing Worker in his solo exhibition "Open Secret" (2012), and captured our landscapes in which we acquire information from our hand (=mobile phone) in "Eyes on Hand" (2014). Furthermore, he disclosed the nature of media and the state of human memory through tracing the path of the stone monument tour in Iwaki, Fukushima, in his solo exhibition “Photographs turn stone monuments into mere stone, but even so people take them” (2017), and featured the history of balloon bombs dropped by the Japanese army during 1944-1945 during World War II in his video work Blind Bombing, Filmed by Bat (2019). Throughout his practice, Takeuchi has traced objects and events utilizing motions of his own body, and presented them as installations using various media including paintings, video, photography, and sculptures. He has transformed his concepts into artworks through detailed research and fieldwork to critically discuss the diverse issues such as the ways of information and our consciousness in contemporary society.
This exhibition “Body is not Antibody” will showcase Takeuchi’s original font and associated works created through photographs of light trails taken by the artist while he worked as a security guard in the exclusion zone in Fukushima during 2019-2020.
Takeuchi captured the light trails created by the motions of imitating the workers swaying the guidance light into a photograph and attempted to convert them into an original font. The title of this exhibition “Body is not Antibody” was inspired by the artist’s experience of devoting his own body to the nation’s reconstruction project, and questions the meaning of a body and where the body belongs on a personal level.
We cordially welcome viewers to this occasion to reconsider the relationship of individuals’ bodies with nations and society, at a time when mutual surveillance in society and governments interfere with the lifestyles of individuals under the global outbreak of COVID-19 today.
■From the artist
From the summer of 2019 to the spring of 2020, I worked as a security guard in the difficult-to-return zone in Fukushima prefecture. In the summer I heard the voices of the cicada, and in the winter I gazed up at the stars. Every day, from dawn till midnight, I waved the traffic baton on the street in the town where no one lived. It was that red glowing LED baton that a security guard has in a hand to control traffic.
The photographic work “Evidens” was taken by using this traffic baton. In light-trail photography, traces of light are captured by moving a light at a slow shutter speed. I drew letters in the air with the baton and took light-trail photographs, then edited the photographic letters into a font (data of typefaces that can be selected when writing text on a computer).
I believe wisdom, which illuminates the darkness, is brought by the hands of people who crawl on the ground, and not by a divine revelation. In this work, I worked with my hands a lot myself.
The word “evidence” is now often used to mean a “proof,” but it originally came from the Latin word “evidens” which means “perceptible” and “obvious.” While thinking of the 2011 nuclear power plant accident and the echoing words of those who desired for “evidens” in the darkness of through varied incidents and discussions, and also thinking about the origin of the word “photograph (light-picture),” I made the word “evidens” the name of this font.
“Document 1: Corona and Body” was a document, an image that used this font. It extracted the crown and body from the famous frontispiece drawn by Abraham Bosse (1651) for the book “Leviathan” by Thomas Hobbes. The original artwork was a king taller than a mountain coming out of the sea, whose body was shaped by the bodies of the people. In the city in the foreground of the picture, there was no one except a few military trainers and two people, who seemed to be plague doctors.
People willingly become “antibodies” for the body named a nation at the times of fear and crisis. “Antibodies” are substances that respond to foreign substances in the body, which attack and eliminate foreign substances in the immune system. This picture often came to my mind when I would hear stories of people taking antibody-reactions against other people during long-term disasters, such as wartime, earthquakes, and this corona-related chaos. I also realized the king's headpiece was the same as the origin of the name of the virus, which motivated me to make this artwork. (The coronavirus seen under an electron microscope has distinctive protuberances of about 20 nm on the surface, which appearance resembles that of a crown, in Greek, a “corona.”)
To protect the health and livelihood of vulnerable people ? bodies belong to individuals and countries ought to be a system to protect the individuals, but at times before we notice, this relationship could be reversed. The theme of this exhibition is to portray the attribution of the image of the body. As the exhibition title “Body is not Antibody” exemplifies, bodies are not antibodies. My body is not the antibody of the monster named the nation. Then, in that case, what kind of attributed image can be said that it is my own body?
It might sound extreme, but what about aliens? Due to the influence of science fiction movies, people tend to associate “aliens” as “beings from outer space,” but the word originally means “outsiders” and “foreigners.” But when we think of the difficulties foreign residents are currently facing, or the distracting gaze thrown towards the Fukushima migrant workers, the bodies of “aliens” seem not to have an easy path either, even at a personal level. We must also keep in mind these “aliens” are the ones who often become identified as “antibodies” too.
Or, in the field of economics and philosophy, the loss of the essence of a human being caused by transferring one’s own property and rights is called “alienation.” This is another form of domination by the system. If I would forcibly find an “alienated self” in a human body, it would probably be a mitochondria ? originally a foreign substance, but by transferring the energy it produced, they coexist with the cells of the host and become a part of a body before one knows.
It seems to be quite a difficult position after all, but if I were forced to choose between becoming an “antibody” or a “mitochondrion,” I’d probably prefer to be... a mitochondrion-like alien. That way I can at least maintain my own dignity as an individual. Well, how can I say such a thing while I had been working as a security guard, who kept an eye out at the very end of the national project named a reconstruction, which is probably one of the most “antibody-ish” professions?
Excuse me that I have deviated off the track. Anyway, everyone who cordially visited this exhibition is highly welcomed to sit on the alien seat, or return back to the city of Tokyo by going through the body of the “Corona Leviathan,” or simultaneously look at both of them in front of the photographs taken in the town that has forced to be in quarantine for a decade. It would be my great pleasure if you could find your most comfortable place while walking around in the gallery.
18th, July, 2020 Kota Takeuchi
translation: Kana Kawanishi
2020cSNOW Contemporary, All Right Reserved.