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Solo Exhibition “1/2 Century later.” in Shiseido Gallery

Agricultural Revolution 3.0
(Research project)

Outline

[:en]Small circulation/ecosystem, a small revolution
Space changing organically

A research project on agriculture, biotechnology and a new garden city.
This was held in multiple forms; research, installation and conversation.
Columbia University and University of Cambridge cooperated in the research and farmers, Wired, OMA NY, and more intellectual participated in the conference.
In the center of Shonai, Yamagata prefecture, with a long history of agriculture and a landscape of satoyama, we established a place growing organically.

[:ja]Small circulation/ecosystem, a small revolution
Space changing organically

A research project on agriculture, biotechnology and a new garden city.
This was held in multiple forms; research, installation and conversation.
Columbia University and University of Cambridge cooperated in the research and farmers, Wired, OMA NY, and more intellectual participated in the conference.
In the center of Shonai, Yamagata prefecture, with a long history of agriculture and a landscape of satoyama, we established a place growing organically.

小さな循環/生態、小さな革命 | 有機的に変化する(場所ならぬ)場

農業とバイオテクノロジー、そして新しい田園都市に関する、リサーチ・プロジェクト。
リサーチ、インスタレーション、カンバセーションと、複数の形態に渡って行われました。
リサーチではケンブリッジ大学やコロンビア大学、カンファレンスでは専業農家やWired、OMA NYなどが参加。
農耕の歴史が深く、里山的風景が広がる山形県庄内の中心地で、有機的な場を展開しました。

 

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Research
and
Drawing

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Through interview to domestic and overseas laboratories and researchers and companies developing new materials, we designed the definition. Based on thorough research and collected actual materials, we drew a design.
Not in the macroscopic/comprehensive/destructive city model but in a sequence of small cycles at a low perspective, we try a new model of revolution.

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Through interview to domestic and overseas laboratories and researchers and companies developing new materials, we designed the definition. Based on thorough research and collected actual materials, we drew a design.
Not in the macroscopic/comprehensive/destructive city model but in a sequence of small cycles at a low perspective, we try a new model of revolution.

国内外の研究機関や研究者、実際に新素材を開発する企業へのインタビューなどを通して、定義の設計を行います。
徹底したリサーチ、集めた実素材をもとに、設計図※を描いていきます。
巨視的/俯瞰的/破壊的な都市像からではなく、低い視点にある、小さな循環の連続の中に、新しい革命のモデルを試行します。

 

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Living
Research

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Space changing organically

The transforming space
We established a space organically changing correspondingly to research.
In this installation, furniture, clothe, lamp, food, materials which grow during session, and open sourced small agricultural machine were showcased as if it is from theatre or cinema. This work gave the visitors physical experience to travel around the thoughts.

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Space changing organically

The transforming space
We established a space organically changing correspondingly to research.
In this installation, furniture, clothe, lamp, food, materials which grow during session, and open sourced small agricultural machine were showcased as if it is from theatre or cinema. This work gave the visitors physical experience to travel around the thoughts.

変容する場

リサーチと連動し変化する、有機的な空間を設置。
農業廃棄物や構造タンパク質をもとにした、新しい素材の家具や衣服、照明、食べ物、期間中に生成される新素材、オープンソースの農業用マシンと小型農場を、セットのように配置。思考と身体を伴った体感ができる場を作ります。

 

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Living
Research
Conversation

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We held conference at the transformed installation space. Local farmers and various guests from Spiber Inc. which locates in Tsuruoka City and develops recombinant protein materials, OMA NY, Wired, 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa, and more discussed the possibilities of agricultural cities and the future direction in front of the local people.

 

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We held conference at the transformed installation space. Local farmers and various guests from Spiber Inc. which locates in Tsuruoka City and develops recombinant protein materials, OMA NY, Wired, 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa, and more discussed the possibilities of agricultural cities and the future direction in front of the local people.

会場一部を変形し、カンファレンスを実施。 地元を拠点とする専業農家や、新素材を開発するSpiber、食と都市を研究するOMA NY、Wired、21世紀美術館などのゲストが、農業都市の可能性や、その未来の是非を、住む人々の前で議論しました。

 

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Selected Q&A

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Q. Where was it held?

A. It was held in Tsuruoka city, Yamagata prefecture in Tohoku (northeast) area in Japan. Tsuruoka art forum that was used as a venue is Kunst Halle used mainly to live in.

Q. Why is it “3.0”? / Can I see the research and interview?
A. You can see the details of the concept and text from here, and a part of the interview here.

Q. To what extent are you involved?
A. We conducted research, defined the conference, constructed the project (what to do in the conference) and decided details.

Q. What is described in the design drawings in the picture?
A. In this exhibition, the blueprint of the practices in the project was shown. In these drawings, the sceneries which are not quite different from now. In “Model Room”, a set of four drawings, a calm lifestyle and a room surrounded by clothes and furniture made from new materials were drawn with delicate lines. Most of the furniture and clothes drawn here are made from the new materials we actually found through our research. In the drawings, we can also see olives which were important as an oil crop from ancient times, rubber trees regarded as a new material for Europeans after processing, as well as motifs on agricultural myths.
These show a peaceful future different from technology dystopia. The “model” minutely carved on a copper plate rises faintly behind the reflection of copper.

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Q. どこで行われたのでしょうか?
A. 日本の東北地方にある、山形県鶴岡市で行われました。会場となった鶴岡アートフォーラムは、主に住む方々が使用するクンスト・ハレでした。

Q. なぜ3.0なのでしょうか? / リサーチ、インタビューを見ることは可能ですか?
A. コンセプトの詳細や、テキストはこちらから、インタビューなどは、一部こちらから見ることができます。

Q. どこまで関わっているのでしょうか。
A. リサーチ、定義付け、プロジェクトの組み立て(どういったことを行うか)、ディテールまでを決めます。

Q. 画像の設計図には何が描かれていますか?
A. “ー本展で展示されているのは、それらの試みの設計図となったドローイングです。このドローイングには、大きくはいまと変化がない風景が描かれています。4枚組の“Model Room”には、新素材でできた衣類や家具に囲まれた、快適で穏やかな生活・部屋が、繊細な線で描かれています。ここで描かれた家具や衣服などの多くは、リサーチを経て実際に集められた新素材のものであり、また古代から油糧作物として重要であったオリーブや、後世ヨーロッパにとっては加工によって新素材として捉えられたゴムの木の他、農耕神話に関するモチーフが見られます。
これらはテクノロジー・デストピアとは異なった、穏やかな未来ともいえるでしょう。銅板に細密に彫られた「モデル」は、銅の反射の向こう側に、うっすらと立ち上がるのです。”
(※1/2 Centuly later 展示資料より引用)

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Installation

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From a re-excavation place to a constructive space

In our exhibition “1/2 Century later”, we mainly placed two works; “Beyond good and evil, make way toward the wasteland.”, a sculpture work which expresses a destructed/weathered room in the last scene of the movie “2001: A Space Odyssey” (Stanley Kubrick, 1968), and “White Painting”, a pure white two-dimensional work, or a minimum architecture, which was impressed with the kisses of 100 people.
The space for the exhibition was like a cube and the longest distance was on the diagonal. Thus we placed these two pieces of work on this vector relatively and made a classical arrangement that centering the destructed sculpture and putting the painting in the back/surrounding. Since the objects in the center themselves are scattering, they cause parallax against the painting in the back.
Audiences first go through the ruined room and then they encounter White Painting in the space behind. The movie “2001: A Space Odyssey” was released in 1968 and this exhibition was held in the end of 2017. The exhibition title “1/2 Century later” means both “half a century from then” and “half a century from now on”.

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From a re-excavation place to a constructive space

In our exhibition “1/2 Century later”, we mainly placed two works; “Beyond good and evil, make way toward the wasteland.”, a sculpture work which expresses a destructed/weathered room in the last scene of the movie “2001: A Space Odyssey” (Stanley Kubrick, 1968), and “White Painting”, a pure white two-dimensional work, or a minimum architecture, which was impressed with the kisses of 100 people.
The space for the exhibition was like a cube and the longest distance was on the diagonal. Thus we placed these two pieces of work on this vector relatively and made a classical arrangement that centering the destructed sculpture and putting the painting in the back/surrounding. Since the objects in the center themselves are scattering, they cause parallax against the painting in the back.
Audiences first go through the ruined room and then they encounter White Painting in the space behind. The movie “2001: A Space Odyssey” was released in 1968 and this exhibition was held in the end of 2017. The exhibition title “1/2 Century later” means both “half a century from then” and “half a century from now on”.

再発掘現場 → 建設的空間へ

“1/2 Century later”では、 映画『2001年宇宙の旅』(スタンリー・キューブリック、1968年)のラストシーンの部屋を破壊/風化した彫刻作品 Beyond good and evil,make way toward the wast land.と、100名の接吻がなされた、真っ白な平面作品/極小のアーキテクチャー White Paintingを中心に配置。
展示空間は立方体に近く、最長の距離は対角であったため、このベクトル上に2つの作品を相対し、バラバラの彫刻作品を中央に、背面/周囲にペインティングという古典的な配置を行いました。中央のオブジェクト郡自体はばらつきがあるため、背面のペインティングに対して、パララクスを引き起こします。
鑑賞者は、まずはじめに廃墟の部屋を通って、その後ろの空間にWhite Paintingを捉えます。
『2001年宇宙の旅』の公開は1968年であり、この展示は2017年の末でした。タイトル”1/2 Centuly later”は、「あれから半世紀」と「これから半世紀」の2つを意味します。

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Exhibition

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Outline (Excerpted from exhibition information)
THE EUGENE Studio 1/2 Century later.

Duration: November 21 (Tue) to December 24 (Sun), 2016

The Shiseido Gallery is pleased to announce the exhibition “THE EUGENE Studio — 1/2 Century Later,” which will run from November 21 (Tue) through December 24 (Sun). THE EUGENE Studio is a completely new artist team focusing on contemporary art that pushes the conventional boundaries outward toward the creation of the next society. Along with design groups like teamLab and others, THE EUGENE Studio’s Japanese artist team has been garnering worldwide attention, its activities arguably establishing a new 21st-century image of what it is to be an artist.*1

For this exhibition, THE EUGENE Studio presents an installation of previously unseen works based around the motif of “1968,”*2 and the exhibition title “1/2 Century Later” refers to “the half century since then” (as well as “the half century from now”). THE EUGENE Studio has been exploring fresh new images of the future that “we of today” can create by connecting with today’s reality and contrasting such images with our previous images of the future. This exhibition space features a large glass-sheet installation piece on the motif “the legacy of ‘future images’ drawn by the stories of the past,” and around this are arranged works that reflect the next future.

The futures these artists have contributed include: the 2D work “Agricultural Revolution 3.0,” which depicts a tranquil life in which biotechnology and agriculture have merged; portions of a script and sketch board for a story about an artificial intelligence agency; and “White Painting,” a work central to this exhibition and created through a collective method that adopts the structures characteristic of the social media era to convey small hopes for the new globalization. The legacy of “future images” from the past half-century come face-to-face in the gallery with the start of the new yet contiguous future in which we are living now. Visitors may get to experience the feeling of a new society as this refined worldview resonates the spectacle of the exhibition space. This is to perceive the values of the new future as illuminated by art along with the progress of 21st-century science and technology, and it is also the experience of expressing this in words.

In recent years, THE EUGENE Studio has drawn on research and conferences featuring participants from Cambridge University, the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa, OMA NY, and others, and these feature in the biotechnology and agricultural themes in “Agricultural Revolution 3.0.” It has also collaborated with science fiction writer Ken Liu (winner of three of the most prestigious American science fiction awards), and it has been expanding its international presence to include full involvement in film production.

Even as it takes an active look back on the history of art itself, art history and the circumstances of the past, THE EUGENE Studio also continues to renew the map of that “contiguous future,” in which the past and the present alike find connection, by purposefully involving itself in today’s real society through a multifaceted sphere of activity, including participation in cutting-edge R&D in fields like artificial intelligence, urbanization, and biotechnology. It can be said that these are the kinds of activities which, even while embracing the conceptual creativity, contextuality and forms of pure contemporary art, will be truly instrumental in creating the next actualities in society.

Shiseido takes as its mission to inspire a life of beauty and culture, and through the activities of the Shiseido Gallery we connect the new values of society to inspire our lifestyle and culture by sharing images of the future as reflected in the new art of each era. We hope this exhibition will stimulate as many people as possible to begin updating their own maps of the future.

*1 Daisuke Miyatsu’s The Age of Art x Technology, published this year by Kobunsha Shinsho, introduces THE EUGENE Studio along with teamLab, Takram, and Rhizomatiks as four Japanese artists currently garnering international acclaim.

*2 1968, the year of Stanley Kubrick’s film 2001: A Space Odyssey, and Philip K. Dick’s science fiction novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (the basis for the movie Blade Runner), was the year which saw the definition of many of the emblematic future images that remain with us today, extrapolated from developments in science and technology at the time.

 

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概要 (本文抜粋)

THE EUGENE Studio 1/2 Century later.

会期:2017年11月21日(火)~12月24日(日)

資生堂ギャラリーでは、2017年11月21日(火)から12月24日(日)まで、THE EUGENE Studioの個展『1/2 Century later.』を開催します。THE EUGENE Studio(ザ・ユージーン・スタジオ)は、現代美術を中心に、従来の境界線を押し広げて次の社会を創造していく全く新しいアーティストです。現在、チームラボなどとともに世界が注目する日本のアーティストチームとして脚光を浴びており※1、その活動は、21世紀のアーティスト像を確立するものといって良いでしょう。

本展でTHE EUGENE Studioは、展覧会を終えるとともにちょうど「半世紀」が経過することになる『1968年』※2をひとつのモチーフに、『1/2 Century later.』―つまり、「あれから半世紀(あるいはこれから半世紀)」を主題とした未発表のインスタレーションを展示します。THE EUGENE Studioはいままで、過去の未来像に対比させ、現在の「私(たち)」が現実とのつながりの中で作り出すことのできる新しい鮮やかな未来像を思索してきました。展示会場では、「過去の物語で描かれた未来像の遺産」をモチーフとしたガラス張りの大型インスタレーションと、それを取り囲むように、次の未来を反映する作品群が立ち現れます。

彼らが描く未来は、バイオテクノロジーと農業が融合した穏やかな生活を描いた平面作品(Agricultural Revolution 3.0)、人工知能エージェンシーに纏わる物語の脚本とスケッチボードの一部、そして本展の中心ともいえるソーシャル時代の構造を採り入れた集合的な手法で、新たなグローバリゼーションへのささやかな期待を告げる作品(White Painting)。半世紀前の未来像のレガシーと、私たちの生きる、新しい、しかし地続きの未来の始まりが会場内で対峙し合います。来場者は、洗練された世界観とスペクタクルな展示空間の中で新しい社会と響き合う感情を体感することでしょう。それは、21世紀の科学とテクノロジーの進展とともにアートによって照らし出された新たな未来の価値を知覚することであり、言葉にしていく体験でもあります。

近年THE EUGENE Studioは、本展でそのドローイングが展示されるバイオテクノロジーと農業を扱った作品「Agricultural Revolution 3.0」において、リサーチやカンファレンスにケンブリッジ大学や金沢21 世紀美術館、OMA NY などからゲストが参加し話題を呼び、またアメリカ三大SF賞を受賞したSF作家ケン・リュウとの共同制作のほか、映画制作に本格的に着手するなど活躍の場を国際的に広げています。

アートそれ自体の歴史、美術史や過去の世界の事象と積極的に向き合うと同時に、人工知能や都市、バイオテクノロジー領域といった先端分野の研究開発に招聘されるなど多角的な活動を通じて今日の現実社会と積極的に関わり合うことで、過去とも現在ともつながりのある「地続きの未来」の地図を更新し続けています。こうした活動は、純粋な現代アートのコンセプチュアルな創造性と文脈性、フォームを包含しつつ、アクチュアルに次の社会を創造していくものといえます。

資生堂は美しい生活文化の創造を使命とし、資生堂ギャラリーの活動を通じて時代の新しいアートが反映する未来像を世の中と共有することで社会の新しい価値観を私たちの生活文化の創造へと結びつけてきました。本展が多くの人々にとっての未来地図を更新する端緒となることができれば幸いです。

※1 今年出版された『アート×テクノロジーの時代』(宮津大輔、光文社新書) ではチームラボやタクラム、ライゾマティクスとともに世界が注目する日本の4つのアーティストチームとして紹介されています。

※2 1968年は、スタンリー・キューブリックの映画『2001年 宇宙の旅』や、映画『ブレードランナー』の原作となったSF小説『アンドロイドは電気羊の夢を見るか?』(フィリップ・K・ディック)が発表された年であり、今日にも残る科学とテクノロジーの発展によって描かれた象徴的な未来像が決定づけられた年ともいえます。

 

[ Exhibition ]
1/2 Century later.
November 21 – December 24, 2017 Shiseido Gallery

Organized by SHISEIDO Co.,Ltd.
Planned by Shiseido Corporate Culture Department
Exhibition Cooperation: THE EUGENE Studio Co., Ltd.

Sponsored by GOLDWIN INC., NEUTRALWORKS.
Cooperation: Object of Null, Inc.,Scovil Galen Ghosh Literary Agency., Ryosuke Uehara (Graphic design)

Curated by Kenichiro Ito

[ Related Event ]
Artist Talk
Kei Wakabayashi (Editor-in-Chief, WIRED Japanese edition)
Teiya Iwabuchi (Bijutsu Techo Editor-in-Chief)
Eugene Kangawa (THE EUGENE Studio)

Date: November 9, 2017 14:00-16:00
Venue: Hanatsubaki Hall

 

 

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