OTHER “Someone's public and private / Something's public and private”

Shuta Hasunuma

OTHER “Someone's public and private / Something's public and private”

2020.2.1 (Sat) - 2.29 (Sat)

"OTHER: Someone's public and private / Something's public and private" is an exhibition that compiles archives from the one-day exhibition "Someone's public and private / Something's public and private," which was held at Tompkins Square Park in New York's East Village, and reconstructs it in Tokyo.

Through recent exhibitions such as "Compositions" (Pioneer Works/2018) and "~ing" (Shiseido Gallery/2018), Hasunuma has been particularly focused on the relationships between people, and between people and non-humans. He developed "Someone's public and private / Something's public and private" as a project to freely and actively experience the nature of these diverse relationships through artworks in a park in New York, which could be described as a conglomerate of diverse relationships. The reason he called it a one-day exhibition, a space for putting into practice his recent thinking on the various relationships involved, is that it echoes the context he has approached in his previous exhibitions.

In the park there will be a bottle filled with water equal to Hasunuma's weight, as well as instructions created by Hasunuma, who will allow participants to move the bottle freely based on these instructions and, at the end, be able to take the bottle home with them, with everyone who participates becoming part of the work. Hasunuma has previously said that "music is born in daily life, starts from the individual and returns to the individual," and the bottles moved by the participants will spread out into the public space before finally being moved by individuals into private spaces. The "public" and "private" will truly intersect and gently connect, and the various elements that make up the work will become one.

Hasunuma also sees the invisible and direct contact between people and objects as a relationship, stating, "In today's world, we need to reexamine this directly, and I want to reexamine concrete and abstract relationships through touch." "Walking Score," one of Hasunuma's lifework pieces, truly embodies this philosophy. It is a fieldwork piece in which Hasunuma walks the streets dragging a microphone, and has been performed in Aoyama, Beijing, New York, Ginza, Hashima, and other locations. This piece captures the sounds of the city, the breath and noise lurking within it. The sounds present in each city are truly diverse, allowing one to sense the various relationships and diversity that exist within cities. The underlying concept of this work is contact = relationship, and it also contains elements common to "Someone's public and private / Something's public and private." While the completed forms are different, both are characteristic of Hasunuma's considerations of the city.

The exhibition at void+ this time will reconstruct the project's archived footage, photographs, audio recordings, score-like notes made from fixed-point observations of the bottles' positions, project documents, etc., as if the space were a single canvas. Rather than just looking back on the records, the work will also create a new dialogue between the viewer and the work, making it a new form of communication that is truly typical of Hasunuma.
During the event, we will also be holding a leading event for the first time in Tokyo. We hope to share with you Hasunuma's new endeavors, which continue to sublimate his unique and diverse expressions while always maintaining a tireless spirit of inquiry into sound, society, and humanity.

-Artist Statement-

This project, set in a park, explores the "private" and "public" aspects of the city, using the element of "water." Water moves and circulates in the same way that sound spreads throughout the city. Water, a fundamental substance, is an element that exists on Earth in various forms in nature, but in human-centered urban environments, it is a mysterious material that moves globally, riding the logistics of capitalist society. Set in a New York park where diverse races, animals, and plants gather, residents who happen to pass by the park, following instructions, move wine bottles filled with water, transforming the park's scenery. The wine bottles filled with water are then transported to residents' personal spaces. This project, which explores the public, the individual, capitalism, and sound through water, is exhibited again this time.

Shuta Hasunuma

------------------------------------------------------------------

[Exhibition Overview]

Shuta Hasunuma
OTHER “Someone's public and private / Something's public and private”

Date: February 1, 2020 (Sat) - February 29, 2020 (Sat) 14:00 – 19:00
Closed: Sundays, Mondays, and public holidays
Venue: void+ 1F, 16-14 Minami-Aoyama, Minato-ku, Tokyo
TEL: 03-5411-0080
Organizer: void+ https://www.voidplus.jp
Project management: Toshi Shibata Public relations cooperation: YN Associates