Untact
Tsubasa KATO
1984 Japan
〈Superstring Secret〉, 2020.
Five-channel video installation, color, sound, photography, camera, computer, shredder
Dimension variable
Commissioned by Asia Culture Center
Courtesy of the artist
One common characteristic of Kato’s multimedia projects, involving performance, structures, and video, is communal practice: his representative Pull and Raise (moving a large structure with ropes in public space) relies on spontaneous participation. Since completing a project in Tohoku after the 2011 disaster, his work has become more satirical projects which play with social boundaries and challenge the viewer to reconceive their sense of distances between us. His works have been widely exhibited at Tai Kwun Contemporary, Hong Kong (2020); MAXXI, Rome (2020); MOCA Taipei (2019); Aichi Triennale 2019, Japan; MMCA, Gwacheon (2017); Jeu de Paume, Paris (2016); amongst others.
Superstring Secret
I asked people on the streets of Hong Kong and Tokyo to tell me their secrets, write them on a sheet of paper, and post them to a white box that I have set temporarily. I also placed all these countless secrets through a shredder, and then I wove all the shredded pieces into a rope.
We all have secrets—not only as individuals, but also at the level of families, companies, states, etc. On the other hand, we can declare our ideas and thoughts anonymously, whether on online discussion boards, in counseling, during religious confession, or when voting in an election as long as no one censors us. I think that secrets are both closely involved with and serve as a key to understanding our everyday lives, and the environments that surround us.
In this project, I attempted to make physical the secrets that we do not dare share in everyday life, while transcending the city and the national borders of South Korea, Hong Kong, and Japan. Through this, I want to create an exhibition space in which viewers can reflect on the relation between the public and private, and how we are connected to and separated from others.
Haru.K
〈Edited Scape (The Lunchbox of Mr. H) 1 and 2〉, 2020 .
YANG Xinguang
〈Wilderness〉, 2020.
b-cone
〈44x60x24cm〉, 2020.
MIAO Ying
〈Pilgrimage into Walden Twelve–The Honor of Shepherds〉, 2019-2020 .
ZHANG XU Zhan
〈Mirror Series–Gwangju Mouse: You Never Loved Me Even in The Absence of the Pandemic. Pigeon: Do You Miss the Air of Freedom as Much as I Do? Gecko: Can't You Just Take It Anymore?,〉, 2017-2020 .
〈Animal Story–AT5〉, 2020.
Tsubasa KATO
〈Superstring Secret〉, 2020.
LU Yang
〈The Great Adventure of Material World〉, 2019.
〈Cyber Altar〉, 2017.