Reports from Echigo Tsumari

Rising to a morning of blazing cicada calls, brisk winds, and terraced rice fields bursting in abundance. Recalling Hong Kong Farmers’ round veggie fields in Maitsuda that demand different kinds of attention. On the same note of ‘attention’, previewing #HongKongHouse, #LeungChiWo & #SaraWongChihang’s Tsunan Museum of the Lost: The artists pay tribute to persons unintentionally captured in old photographs of residents in the region. Utilizing multiple local archives, with meticulous studies into each person’s attire, adornment, and the circumstances they are in (eg. a gust lifts the tail of a man’s suit, a badminton player ready to hit the shuttlecock…), the artists become their semblance, which is then presented as full-sized portraits. I find this gesture of embodiment the most moving: in each semblance is not only a person but an encounter, without dismissing the incommensurable distance in-between. The work involves the leashing and unleashing of this distance; perhaps also a whisper: “How ready are we to let others into our regard?” I do wonder if the standardized format of the photographic works offer the best access to the subtlety of the artists’ experience.

Yang Yeung

Full moon tonight; first rim, second rim, third rim, infinitely pushing out its own coordinates until they are invisible to the human eye. Thinking of another way to regard the so-called ‘white cube’ gallery: the ‘white’ is a blandness and blankness that some art needs, to seek infinite expanse…

Yang Yeung

Volunteered for artist #Shimabuku to plant flowers in the fields around Ketto village in #Akiyamago. He has other works there, including one that gets cucumbers to ‘fly’ (being transported) above rice fields using a pulley system mounted on old wooden towers on both sides. ‘It used to be rice flying; now it’s cucumber or tomato,’ he said. ‘Why here?’ I asked. ‘Here, no one has time to get fat. They are always working the fields. I’m curious why people chose to live here. They are different from city people.’ ‘Perhaps spiritual, perhaps to be close to nature,’ I said. ‘Yes, but nature is also very harsh. Maybe, to hide…’ I think of how everyone needs to hide sometimes – artists, farmers, hunters the like; then, all of a sudden, nature wakes us all up from it, neither for good nor bad; just to be. Next to the artist’s work is a tree trunk with claw marks of a bear. The artist said the bear is nicknamed #crescent_bear’ because of the patch of white fur on its chest. Nearby, #JunHonma’s #MeltingWall outside a school-turned-onsen. From a turquoise blue, the ‘wall’ returned water to the summer sky.

Yang Yeung

No picture for any of this except the circumstances (what’s around) – to You who gave the warmest smiles, to You who speak no Cantonese the way I speak no Japanese, to You who brings the touch of sun on skin to the gazbacho Herman and Pak made, to You who say ‘I’m happy’ the way I too say ‘I’m happy’, to You who is so needy of sleep but still stand….Resentment or gratitude? It’s a choice not entirely up to us, but also up to us. What makes a day long? Is ‘long’ too much? Is ‘long’ a measure? Is ‘long’ bountiful? Is ‘long’ a stretch of time? Is ‘long’ all of the above, or everything beyond the above? Inspired by books in the open shelves of #Kinare_Tokamachi…

Yang Yeung

Special immersion on #KingsleyNg_StephanieCheung‘s ‘Twenty-Five Minutes Older‘ accompanied by a booklet cuddled by light and shadows…grew 5 minutes younger.

Yang Yeung

End of my morning hike blessed by ‘gifts from land’: tomatoes from grandma at 魚兼本店居酒屋, as if a prelude to #Gift_from_Land by Sense Art Studio + HK Farmers + St James Creation today at #EchigoTsumari_Auditorium. It was an occasion that corrects the way Echigo Tsumari Art Field is imagined (from some in Hong Kong, including artists and visitors) as related only to ‘villages’ as an idea of the ‘rural’ that is frozen in time. Instead, agriculture and commerce are involved with each other; farming communities are supported by urbanization; art emerges out of overlapping systems including processes of negotiation that recognize citizens as masters who govern what the common good is. In this case, well-being of the land gives rise to well-being of human and other beings with art being a medium that transmits – a symbiosis central to the triennale. Does the equality of freedom not have to be instituted and the care for each other be nurtured first for anything like this to happen? Not sure if it was Mars or Jupiter I was gazing at just now…but the wonder remains.

Yang Yeung

#StJamesCreation #Snow_of_Spring by #José_de_Guimarães #Mars_and_Jupiter_in_July_sky

The artist makes the house breathe. Of the many conditions of life the artist gives expression, I am impressed the most by the way air is simultaneously a bagful (at rest), drawn through bellows (as music), conveyed and connected by open windows (as wind), trailed from wall to wall (as imaginary & broken music), sculpted into a single long chime (as instrument)….all of which coming into awaking a dwelling. One sees here and hears there; one is here and is there. Modes of embodiment keep gently shifting. In the middle of the house, one pulls a string hanging from the ceiling to make a bellow swell; at the gesture of release, the bellow seems to let out an elongated sigh. I imagine how this might come close to being inside the belly of an ancient tree: whereas from the outside, it inspires awe, from the inside, it imparts safety, warmth, and an understated marvel.

Yang Yeung