While the price of a rice ball has risen from 100 to 125 yen at Seven Eleven and we are busy surviving our daily lives, wars have been going on somewhere in the world since the beginning of history. Are wars started to protect our loved ones?
Media wars that fuel insecurity. In the midst of the confusion between the real and the virtual, I had to do something to say I am against wars, even if it is a tiny action. So one day I have decided to go to Taiwan where there is a lot of concern about the Chinese unification of Taiwan.
To be able to wash the Japanese flag in a laundrette and talk about the past and future wars, which are difficult to talk about, even a little, with strangers passing by is “normal”, which may be a very peaceful state. I would like to cherish this moment.
The exhibition ‘Fireworks and Bombs’ will feature the new work ‘Washing the Hinomaru (Taiwan)’ and the street snapshots of ‘Lovers’, both of which explore the themes of love and violence. It will also feature the martial arts photographs taken by the young photographer group REKREATIF at the workshop Nu’udar Ema; How do you cope with being a human? held in East Timor in 2021. Martial arts in East Timor have become a social problem as they have become a gang culture. The workshop brought together two rival gangs for a match.
The Taiwanese performance is called ‘Washing Hinomaru’ and is a ritualistic performance in which multiple Japanese flags are washed in a washing machine, dried, ironed and folded, and the process is repeated. The Japanese flags are dried on a clothesline and also function as an exhibit. The flags and the act of washing them act as a mirror, and there are various interpretations of the work depending on the viewer. Ultimately, I wanted to visit all the countries that Japan had occupied, and while creating other works, I occasionally presented them.
In the midst of this, I was watching the news about the ongoing wars in Gaza and Ukraine, as well as the situation in Myanmar, and I felt that I needed to do something, but I didn’t know what to do, and I was at a loss. I had been to Israel, and I also spent time with people from Russia, Ukraine and Myanmar, and even though I had the opportunity to see the deep wounds they were carrying in their hearts as they looked ahead and moved forward, I felt terrified that the information that was piling up in my mind was just being overwritten.
One day, when I met a friend from Hong Kong who had come to Japan, what my friend said to me, ‘I’ve lost my country,’ really struck me. My friend was a university professor in Hong Kong, and he was a very gentle person who didn’t make political works. After participating in various residency programs for a while, he said that it was difficult to live in Hong Kong, and now he lives in the UK.
When he told me that Taiwan might end up like Hong Kong, it really got me fired up. I felt like I had to go there soon, or I might not be able to film there again. I presented ‘Hinomaru no Sentaku’ in Hong Kong a long time ago, but I don’t think I could do it now.
Also, I have a good friend who has been working in Shanghai for about 10 years, and I was thinking about going there one day, but then the coronavirus hit, and things are becoming more and more difficult politically, and I was starting to regret it. I felt a sense of crisis that the world was changing so quickly while I was leisurely applying for grants.
When I thought about it later, I realised that Hong Kong and Taiwan are in different positions, and there was no need to panic. The people of Taiwan are all very sensible, and they said, ‘The people in charge are to blame for what happened in the past. What’s important now is to do what you have to do and live your days in a calm and collected way. But you should definitely vote.’I was also able to speak to people from China. In the end I could indulge in a little narcissism, but then I would feel uneasy again when I watched the news.
And of course, most Japanese people have completely forgotten about World War II except the ones who has lost loved ones. And by doing so, we have gained various benefits. Especially since we lost the war, I can imagine it must be very painful to be the aggressor. There are various cases, but that may be what war is like. What is it that drives people to war? It is important to remember the past, but it may also be equally important to move forward and build and maintain peace.
Perhaps the so-called peaceful state of affairs is one in which the wars of the past are enshrined in war memorials, and we can look back on them in some form. And since humans have been waging war for a long time, if we don’t cherish the peace we have now, it could disappear in the blink of an eye.
Is there a way for the people of Israel and Palestine to talk about the past? Through my work, I wanted to encourage people to reconsider the wars of the past and turn them into museums, and to find a way for people with diverse opinions to communicate.
Washing the Japanese flag in a laundromat and being able to talk about the difficult topic of war with a complete stranger passing even only a little, is a very peaceful situation. I want to cherish this moment.
TEARS wanted! I am dead serious. Please give us help (and your bodily fluids)! For our project, <<Making plum pickles with tears (work in progress)>> we need to make salt out of tears, and make pickles from plums from our garden. Any suggestions for the methods will be great, so far, onion is not working so much, and I don’t want to punch anybody.
The refreshment made by Kana Kimura with half a century pickes of my grand mother. 木村さんが祖母の50年ものの梅干しで作ったウェルカムドリンク。ローズマリー、桜の花のフレーク、麹などが入っています。今まで体験したことのない繊細でフレッシュな味でした。
On the occasion of the screenings of “The Desert Moon”, a work about Ebata’s father’s end-of-life care at the House of Ebata, Ebata’s grandparents’ home, a talk by Viktor Belozerov and a participatory performance with Kana Kimura and Mako Fukuda were organised.
In “Making plum pickles with teas”, we wanted to practise remembering the power of life and humour in the midst of mourning through the ritual of ‘eating together, crying together, making salt from the collected tears, and using the salt to dip new plum trees in the garden’ with half-century-old dried plums found in the barn at the House of Evata. We harvested the plums from the garden in June and are currently looking for a way to collect as much of the tears as possible.
We also had a talk “Anti-war vacation: life and death in art and politics of Russia” by a Russian researcher, Berzoerov, on contemporary art in Russia. Since the Ukraine Invasion, the world has become increasingly divided. From the ongoing division to the division with the past, the desire to forget the past and many other complexities. We were told that currently, interaction between researchers is also hindered. I think it is important for others with different ways of thinking to get to know each other better in order to coexist.
I am against war, violence, everything, but even asking a sick father to live can be violence. Violence is lurking in all of us. I hope that when we realise, when we have the chance, we can have just a little bit of courage and make choices that will reduce the number of people who suffer, even if just a little bit.
The dialogue with Viktor began when Russia invaded Ukraineand Viktor invited Japanese artists to write anti-war statements for a letter campaign called “Letters for Peace”. Does loving someone also mean that you will lose that person eventually? Do we start a fight to prevent the loved one from getting hurt? We don’t really know what the future holds, but we believe that now we can love more people and understand each other more.
*ビクターさんは国外からオンラインで参加になり、トークは英語で行われますが、日本語でのサマリーや通訳のサポートを行います/ The talk will be held in English. Language support for Japanese will be provided on an as-needed basis.
House of Ebata was the home of Ebata’s grandparents. A few years ago, pickled plums that seemed to have been made by Ebata’s grandmother some half-century ago were found in the storage. Dried plums have long been a popular preserved food and food medicine. Preserved food is an ongoing living memory and a family history that is passed on. In screenings for the film “The Desert Moon”, which is about Ebata’s father’s death-watch, with Kana Kimura and Mako Fukuda’s participation, we used the pickled plums in the ritual of “eating them together, crying together, making salt with a large quantity of forcibly collected tears, and using the salt to dip the newly grown plums in the garden tree”, so that even in mourning, we can practise not forgetting to find strength in life and a sense of humour.
“The idea of preserving food without allowing it to spoil is itself an attempt to ‘resist death’. Waking up the dried plums in our bodies, which have been sleeping for a long time in a dream, defying death, is an act of synchronising the dried plums with our time axis and making life and death in continuity. The dream is then activated by our tears and crystallised into salt. Salt is indispensable for living beings, but at the same time it can kill all living things, if we use too much of it. By using the salt, our bodies meet the plum tree, which bears new fruit again this year, and together we pass it on to the next generation.(Kana Kimura)”
*The pickled plums were tested by Food Microbiology Centre Inc. and found to be safe for human consumption.
Chopped onions and had traditional funeral soup with chili pepper to cry and made curry in the end! 玉ねぎと三重県のお葬式に伝わるとんがらし汁(辛さで泣くのだそうです)で泣いた後、泣くのに使った素材を使ってカレーを作りました。やさしい味のカレーでした。 https://houseofebata.wixsite.com/inforeceipt: ume-boshi, malt, ginger, sakura flower flakes, rosemary and sparkling water take aways
Viktor Belozerov is an independent researcher. Graduated from the Art History Faculty of the Russian State University for the Humanities (Moscow). Created the educational project Gendai Eye, which aims to promote contemporary Japanese culture in Russia. Currently the lead researcher of the Japanese Laboratory J100R, which focuses on ideas about contemporary Japanese art in Russia from the 1920s to the present.
江幡京子｜Kyoko Ebata
アーティスト。ゴールドスミス卒。日常で目にする様々な事柄をテーマにそこで生活する者の目線から時代を表現する。現在はプロジェクトスペースHouse of Ebataを運営しつつ、国内外で発表している。
Kyoko Ebata is an artist, graduated from Goldsmiths’ College. She expresses the times from the perspective of a person living in everyday life. Currently runs the project space House of Ebata, while exhibiting widely.http://kyokoebata.com
Lives and works in Germany. Runs the webzine ‘vulnerable people‘ and the Zine event ‘ZINEFEST Leipzig’. She pursues her interest and activities in intermediary communities, including involvement in the community space ‘Das Japanische Haus e. V.” in Leipzig. https://vvulnerablepeoplee.wixsite.com/website
Kimura has graduated from Fine Art BA, Iceland University of the Arts. From a cultural anthropological perspective, the artist observes and produces the transition of internal and external relations. Focusing on transience and the dynamic movements that take place there, she attempts projects and workshops, which she calls ‘ritual production’. She run a web magazine “vulnerable people” https://kanakimura.wixsite.com/kanakimura
“The Desert Moon”, is a part of <The Case of T&S>, an ongoing series of works on the theme of Ebata’s family, which focuses on the end-of-life care of Ebata’s father and her guilt that she may have caused him more pain because of her love for him, accompanying by related works, workshops and talks.
With the shortage of hospital beds amidst the Corona disaster, the government recommended end-of-life care at home without guidelines in place, and with little information available, the end-of-life care of Ebata’s father by an elderly doctor with little experience may have been more painful than necessary for the patient himself. Death with dignity was also reported in various media reports as a real possibility. On top of these issues, the invasion of Ukraine in Europe, where many of her friends live, began. The video work was produced in a bewildering contradiction between the difficulties of living and dying in peace and the lightness of life in the midst of war.
The video footage for ” The Desert Moon” was filmed at Ebata’s own parents’ house, as well as at an old well in his father’s family home, where Ebata now lives, referencing a folk legend about talking to the dead through the well. The Ebata’s house is used as a project space, House of Ebata. The work was presented at Monad Contemporary in Kyoto and at the House of Ebata, with new works created for each venue.
The workshops consisted of ‘Salt’, which collected tears from participants, and ‘Flowers’, in which participants were asked to cut an old book from the 1960s about nuclear power plants that belonged to their father into the shape of a flower. In ‘First Love’, a work based on my father’s junior high school diary and photographs, the purchaser of the work is given a tarot card by a fortune teller attending the exhibition venue to purchase the work.
In ‘Salt’, the process of mourning is transformed into humour, bearing in mind the weakness of the artist, who still cannot stop crying even though it has been some time since his father’s death, and the various social problems caused by the lack of discussion that arises from the over-taboo treatment of ‘death’ in society. I set myself the goal of collecting as many tears as efficiently as possible, turning them into salt and making pickled plums from the fruit of the plum tree in my garden. Together with Kana Kimura and Mako Fukuda, we organised a food event: as of June 2023, we have harvested the plums and are currently in the process of collecting more tears.
To accompany the exhibition, we also invited Russian researcher Viktor Berzoerov to give a talk on current Russian art. As the world becomes increasingly divided, we are often reminded that peace is still a new existence for human beings and we are still learning how to live in peace, but it is hard to imagine returning to a state where we will no longer have freedom and where we will live by killing people in war. I feel it is very important to listen to people who are in a different position to us, even if only a little.
“While watching, I had a kind of mixed feelings. I saw a woman who was suffered and lost by her father’s death. She tried to cope with the suffer by going down into a deep dark well to realise her recent past.
The footages of her parents show many emotions: dramatic pain of her ill father, love between wife and husband, love between father and daughter, and the feeling of letting someone go.
You ended the work in a nice way: telling your deceased father (including your audiences) about current relationship between you and your mother. Finally, you ended your performance by saying “See you” to your dad, which made me think that this is an on-going process of the artist who is still coping with the death of her father.”
One day, I received an email from my mother. She told me that cancer had been found in my father’s lower jaw and they had decided not to operate. I didn’t object, as my father had been suffering from the aftereffects of a brain haemorrhage for 22 years and had been battling with the disease. Before I knew it, they decided to take care of my father at home. His cancer was progressing rapidly and the doctors said he only had two weeks to live, and that he might choke to death before dying of cancer from phlegm in his throat. So I decided to stay at my parents’ flat for a while.
The suctioning of phlegm, which involves inserting a tube deep into the lungs, continued twice daily for nearly two months, and my father lived in hell. My mother and I could not do anything but watch him. We didn’t know anything about end-of-life care, so we said goodbye to him twice. A few weeks later, he had a black stool. Apparently, before dying, the human body has to expel all the filth out of it. It was black liquid. On the third time, my father really passed away.
Looking back, I feel that by being there for my father, I prolonged the time he spent suffering without realising it. I felt I had to watch him die, and my judgement became more and more impaired as I nursed him without beaks. Just a hundred years ago, it would have made sense to show him mercy. And perhaps it was I, the eldest daughter, who had to do it. Love is also violence. We really loved our father.
Kyoko Ebata
〈展覧会情報〉
monade contemporary | 単子現代では、アーティスト江幡京子による「月の沙漠 | The Desert Moon」を開催します。
monade contemporary | 単子現代 is honoured to present The Desert Moon by artist Kyoko Ebata.
Kyoko Ebata has explored the loneliness and violence surrounding people’s lives and deaths through exhibitions of her photographs taken inside the homes of elderly people in various countries around the world, as well as photography workshops for young people in East Timor. More recently, she has been engaged in the process of opening her home to the public as a space for living with others and collaborating in the production of artworks, while searching for a new mode of life and death or community for survival and living in relation to the nation, region, individual, and nature.
In recent years, while reflecting on the video recordings of her father’s end-of-life care, Ebata has been creating short films that tell stories focusing on her father, experiences with family, and the nature of human life and death. The exhibition will be an opportunity for Ebata to share with the audience the process of overcoming the grief of losing her father and time of mourning to reexamine her lost father and family, life and death, then the world that comes in the future. How does love turn into violence as it meets death, and how does love keep memory alive along with death? Please join us for lyrical poetry in the moment of loss that wavers between love and violence.
Participatory installation. My father’s old books on nuclear power plants came out of the storage barn. It is shocking that after all the information we had, we managed Fukushima nuclear accident to happen. When will we learn? Visitors to the gallery are invited to cut out their favourite page from the book in the shape of a flower to create a floral ornament that looks like a condolence offering.
* To purchase a work on display about my father’s first love, you will be asked to draw a tarot card from a pack of major arcana and the card is corresponding to a work. Then Mizumi-san, the cafe owner of the gallery/a professional tarot-reader will give you a reading alongside minor arcana cards.
The gallery is situated in the middle of Gion, the most exclusive geisha district in Japan. A cathouse is the neighbour of the gallery. The 1000 years of history of men and women astonished me. I couldn’t dare add any more words to the space.
So I decided to change the plan of installation and chose the texts from my father’s diary (Sorry, Dad. You were too cute!) about his affection towards a young girl when he was 15 years old. He only spoke to her 3 times in the year.
I know it is impossible but even in the hardest time of our life, trying to keep love in your heart is important. And simple words like these are very important in a place like this.
Subtitles Kieko Ikehata/ Elea Himmelsbach/ Kana Kimura/ Ai Suzuki
With F. Atsumi Abi Tomoaki Asano Tim Byrnes Tatsuro Ide Shintaro Nishimura Katsushi Goto Taiga Okamoto Hideyo Ohtsuki Ari Okubo Hana Sakuma Ai Suzuki John L Tran Hanae Utamura Meiken Inc.
I would like to express my sincere gratitude to all the people for being by our side all through these challenging days and ensuring that we could say our goodbyes. Thank you so much.
The artist, Ebata’s father, died of advanced cancer at the age of 77, after a 22-year battle with the aftereffects of a cerebral haemorrhage. When the cancer was discovered, Ebata’s parents refused to have the operation because it would have been too harsh to remove the entire lower jaw, in addition to the fact that he was already living with a paralysed left side of his body. Because they made the decision not to operate at a time when there were not enough hospital beds amidst the coronary disaster, he could not be hospitalised and had to be cared for at home. As he had cancer of the mandible, his trachea became narrower and narrower, and to prevent him from suffocating to death from the phlegm that clogged it, a tube had to be inserted into his lungs every day to suck out the phlegm, which caused him great pain and he suffered for two months. The paucity of information on end-of-life care led the nursing artist herself to believe that she had to say goodbye to her father at the moment of his death, and she lost the ability to make the proper decisions as she stayed next to him day and night. His family experienced the pain of not being able to help someone who was suffering, and the terror of a person’s life or death being placed in their own hands. Then they watched him die and said goodbye to him twice. And the third time he really died. The family’s love for him, wanting him to live, was in a way violent. He would have wanted to die immediately, but he endured the suffering for the love of his family. We felt the regret that anyone would have felt, that there were other ways to make him feel better. At that time, the Corona disaster was becoming more serious and the government was beginning to recommend ‘end-of-life care’. However, in today’s society of nuclear families, it was completely different from the great deaths on tatami mats that were celebrated in large pre-modern families. Ebata felt that more knowledge and an auditing system were needed and decided to show the work to as many people as possible as soon as possible. In the meantime, The invasion of Ukraine broke out. In peace a person who wants to die does not have the right to die, while in war there are real people who see it as unavoidable to kill those who do not want to die. How can we face this contradiction? Is a death with dignity the answer? Have we become happier through modernity? Can we as individuals accept the territory that religion has long become? Stories about death and the relationships that surround it are difficult to tell, and sometimes we get so caught up in them that we lose the ability to live our lives. But the longer we keep a lid on these issues, the more alone we will become. The end-of-life care of her father is also an opportunity for Ebata to confront her mother, with whom she has hardly interacted for a long time. She discovers her mother’s complex and deep love for her father, and is perplexed by the reality that her mother, who has lost her protector father, gradually accepts that her daughter is becoming her protector as she grows older. At the same time, she reflects and reinterprets her daily life, feeling that old age is slowly creeping up on her as well. This family story, “The Desert Moon”, is part of a series that Ebata has been working on for many years, facing her family through her camera, and the work continues today. What was initially expressed indirectly as part of “The Game Keeper’s Jam Cellar”, series of elderly people’s rooms, gradually began to be presented directly as the story of her own family, giving it further new narratives, and developing into a more universal story through related works and projects. This is the story of Ebata’s family as well as Ebata’s own story.
Burmese women artists are staying with us.ミャンマー人の作家さん達が泊まって下さってます。勇敢でエネルギーに満ち、光り輝くような美しさを持った方々で、毎日沢山の力をいただいてます。オンゴーイングでの展示は26日(日)までだそうです！The show at Ongoing is until Sunday. They are so brave, beautiful and full of energy! I am totally in love with them. We talked so much about the strange world we live in. Incredible experience. Thank you so much for staying with us😍
„alter|n|ative“ at IG Bildende Kunst (https://igbildendekunst.at/),
Crisfor (AT), Barbara Eichhorn (AT), Kyoko Ebata (JP), Mario Höber (AT), Urban Nomad Mixes (AT), Angelika Kaufmann (AT), Hanna Schimek/Ula Schneider/Andrea van der Straeten (AT)
The opening will be 9th of June, the show runs until 29th of September.
