Art and Philosophy in the 22nd Century: After Arakawa and Madeline Gins

This book seeks to look back sincerely at Arakawa and Gins’s legacy as well as look ahead to see how we can continue what they have left in the context of the situations we are facing now, and beyond, toward the 22nd century.

“Who are we and where are we going?— ‘puzzle creatures to ourselves, we are visitations of inexplicability.’ Arakawa and [Madeline] Gins posed these questions via multiple modes in the most profound manner, proposing concrete (albeit tentative) visions for the coming century. Recall that Arakawa always urged us: ‘do it, now!’ Need we be reminded that the 22nd century is coming soon, now!

Embracing this spirit, AGxKANSAI 2022: Art and Philosophy in the 22nd Century After ARAKAWA+GINS […] will explore the shape of art and philosophy toward/in the 22nd century through lectures, dialogues, presentations, exhibitions, and performances. ‘After ARAKAWA+GINS’ at once signifies our desire to follow after their future-forward vision even after their untimely demise.”—from the Call for Papers for AGxKANSAI 2022

This book comes out of the international conference AGxKANSAI 2022 Art and Philosophy in the 22nd Century: After ARAKAWA+GINS (at Kyoto University of the Arts, March 11–15, 2022), jointly organized by the Studies of the Architectural Body Research Group (SABRG) at the Institute of Oriental and Occidental Studies, Kansai University and the Department of Environmental Design, Kyoto University of the Arts. Building upon select lectures and papers of AGxKANSAI 2022, supplemented by reports of exhibitions and workshops that took place during the conference, as well as the translation of select chapters of the previous book (in Japanese) by SABRG, Art and Philosophy in the 22nd Century: After Arakawa and Madeline Gins seeks to look back sincerely at Arakawa and Gins’s legacy as well as look ahead to see how we can continue what they have left in the context of the situations we are facing now, and beyond, toward the 22nd century.

目次 (Table of Contents)

Acknowledgements

FORGET ANY PINK: Talking to Arakawa, Once More
Yasuo Kobayashi

Introduction: Arakawa and Madeline Gins in the Post-COVID-19 Era and Beyond
Naohiko Mimura and Takeshi Kadobayashi

EXPERIMENTS

Another Kind of Knowing
Don Byrd, Alan Prohm and Jondi Keane

Biotopological Craftsmanship in the Here and Now
Renske Maria van Dam

Puzzle Features: The DAO of A+G
Russell Hughes

THEORIES

Flattening or Extending?: The Possibility of Reading Architectural Body
Naohiko Mimura

A Long Way to Reversible Destiny: Some Suggestions from the Ecological Perspective
Masayoshi Someya

Understanding “To Not To Die” in Reference to Three Narratives on Death: What Japanese Creation Myth, Kus ōzu, and Cell Biology Imply
Haruhiko Murakawa

Against the Fear of Death: Arakawa’s Quest for Immortality and Benatar’s Anti-Natalism
Satoshi Inagaki

EXPERIENCES

“New Sensory Gravity” in Arakawa’s Thought
Hiroki Komuro

Mitaka Residents visit Shidami: Roundtable Discussion on Reversible Destiny Residences

Blanky or Che Guevara: Days with Arakawa+Gins
Momoyo Homma

DOVER STREET MARKET NEW YORK, ARAKAWA+GINS and I
Yusuke Koishi

The Manuscript for Madeline Gins’s ALIVE FOREVER, NOT IF, BUT WHEN
Takeshi Kadobayashi

HISTORIES

“…Of No Use to Me”: On Desire and Negation in a Diagram
Ignacio Adriasola

Muddy Minds: On Arakawa and Smithson’s Probable Perceptions
Adi Louria Hayon

Unfinished Business of the Unfinished: Four Essays
Reversible Destiny Foundation

Reassembling Arakawa: Archival Researches at Arakawa+Gins Tokyo Office
Arakawa+Gins Tokyo Office

PRACTICES

The Body is Full of Holes: The Process in Question/Bridge of Reversible Destiny in VR
Takashi Ikegami

In Connection with the Reproduction of Bottomless I
Akihiko Ono

Reversible Destiny Opened in Zero Gravity
Yasuo Nomura

A Pool of Pulls: Landing Sites as Propositions for Digital Collective Spaces
Matisse A-M, Anouk Hoogendoorn and Ben Muñoz

Beings Do Not Preexist Their Relatings: Works of Neon Dance
Adrienne Hart

Workshops for Encountering Our Multiple Selves: A Review of Two Workshops Presented in AGxKANSAI 2022
Mariko Kida

著者紹介（List of Contributors）

(in order of appearance)

Naohiko Mimura is Professor of Philosophy and Ethics at Kansai University, Japan. His core focus is the mind-body duality problem outlined in Husserl’s Phenomenology, and he is particularly interested in the “Theory of Experiencing” and the “Process Model” proposed by Eugene Gendlin, founder of focusing-oriented psychotherapy. He currently leads the Studies of the Architectural Body Research Program, with a grant from the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science for archival research into Arakawa and Gins.

Takeshi Kadobayashi is Professor at the Department of Film and Media Studies, Faculty of Letters, Kansai University. Having graduated from the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, The University of Tokyo, he specializes in media theory, critical theory and cultural studies. His recent publications include “The Media Theory and Media Strategy of Azuma Hiroki, 1997–2003” (in Media Theory in Japan, Marc Steinberg and Alexander Zahlten, eds. Duke UP, 2017) and Critical Words for Media Studies (in Japanese; co-edited with Nobuhiro Masuda, Film Art, Inc., 2021).

Yasuo Kobayashi is Professor Emeritus of The University of Tokyo. His numerous works include Yūrei no shinri [The Truth of Ghost] (Suiseisha, 2015), the book of 7 dialogues with Arakawa, and “Opera sengo bunka-ron 2” [On Opera Post-War Culture 2] in Nichijō-hinichijō, meikyū no jidai 1970–1995 [Ordinary-Extraordinary, the Age of Labyrinth 1970–1995] (Miraisha, 2020), in which he mentions Arakawa.

Don Byrd is a poet and a nervous observer of an overcrowded Earth, where the evolution of complex intelligence has been displaced by generalizations for forty millennia or more. He is Professor Emeritus of the State University of New York in Albany where he taught literature for 42 years, publishing poetry, essays and books including a book-length poem, The Great Dimestore Centennial (1986), and The Poetics of the Common Knowledge (1994); https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don_Byrd.

Alan Prohm PhD is an artist, scholar and educator living in Berlin. Researches into the spatiality of knowing and meaning led him to the work of Arakawa and Gins, which he has taught to students in art and design contexts since 2004. With The BodyBuilding Project (2007/2014), the Reading Room exhibition (2008) and his ongoing built poem, The Tubular Loom (since 2011), he has explored procedurality in practice. A speaker at the previous A+G conferences (2005, 2008, 2010) and at the funeral for Madeline Gins in 2014, he organized the 4-Day event, The Proceeding Procedure, and published the two-issue journal, Procedures; http://www.alanprohm.com; https://proceduresjournal.com/2014event/; https://proceduresjournal.com/.

Jondi Keane PhD is an artist and independent scholar. Since 1981 he has exhibited, performed, published and taught in the USA, UK, Europe and Australia. His doctoral dissertation, Arakawa and Gins: The Practice of Embodied Cognition (2006), led to co-organising the Reading Room exhibition at AG2 (2008), the AG3 conference (2010), the Unruly Techniques symposium (2014) and the Second International Body of Knowledge: Art and Embodied Cognition Conference (2019). He is co-author of Creative Measures of the Anthropocene (2020) with Kaya Barry. http://jondikeane.com/; http://www.architectural-body.com/?page_id=4035.

Renske Maria van Dam, Dr. Ir., is a Dutch architect and researcher. In her atelier, creative practice research coincides with the careful construction of architectural life. Inspired by the cross-pollination between Asian and Western perspectives, she promotes a life-affirming and empathic-animistic approach to architectural practice, research and pedagogy. van Dam holds a PhD in Architecture (KU Leuven) for research into the correspondence between the Japanese spatiotemporal practice of ma and a call from the cognitive sciences emphasizing the centrality of organism-environment reciprocity and the moving body in the experience of architectural space. She graduated from the Faculty of Architecture at TU-Delft, with additional studies in Asian conceptions of space-time (TU Delft Honors Program), and in the philosophy, sociology and anthropology of cities (Leiden University). Her work draws on her amateur background as a theatrical performer, zookeeper and yogi as much as it does on her professional engagement in the field of architectural design, her experience in academic and artistic residencies across the globe, and on her pedagogical involvement in arts and design education. Her work is internationally supported, exhibited and published both in and outside of academia.

Russell Hughes applies elements of art, architecture, philosophy, and science and technology studies to the design and construction of DAOs. He has presented at all previous Arakawa and Gins conferences, and in 2018 was Visiting Scholar to the Studies of the Architectural Body Research Group.

Masayoshi Someya is Professor at the Faculty of Human Sciences, Takachiho University. He is also a member of the Studies of the Architectural Body Research Program led by Naohiko Mimura. His major research interests are philosophical implications of an ecological approach to perception and action, philosophical body theories, phenomenological study of the psychological, and philosophy of mind. He has published articles and books on philosophical inquiry into perceptual experience from an ecological point of view. His representative work is Steps to an Ecology of Perceptual Experience (in Japanese; Keiso shobo, 2017). His numerous papers include “How Arakawa’s Works Appear from Helen Keller’s Points of View: An Implication from William James,” in Mimura and Kadobayashi (eds.), Arakawa and Madeline Gins in the 22nd Century: The Body and the Experience in the Reversible Destiny Mode (in Japanese; Film Art Inc., 2019).

Haruhiko Murakawa, Ph.D, is Professor in the Faculty of Health and Well-being at Kansai University. His research interests are somatics, education on life and death, and transpersonal psychology. His papers include “Social and Cultural Aspects of the Japanese Attitudes towards Dying Process in the Late Modernity,” Bulletin of The Institute of Oriental and Occidental Studies Vol. 52 (2019), and “The Void of Experienced Meaning in Japanese Society: Ambivalent Attitudes toward Traditional Bodily Practices” in Don Hanlon Johnson (ed.), Diverse Bodies, Diverse Practices: Toward an inclusive Somatics (North Atlantic Books, 2018).

Satoshi Inagaki is Professor of Philosophy at Toyo University in Japan. His field of specialization is Husserl’s phenomenology. His work focuses currently on phenomenological development of body theory in relation to clinical rehabilitation or environmental design. He translated A/G’s work, Making Dying Illegal, into Japanese. His newest paper about the A/G project is “A Critical View of Society and Technology from / toward Arakawa/Gins” in Arakawa and Madeline Gins in the 22nd Century: The Body and the Experience in the Reversible Destiny Mode (in Japanese; Naohiko Mimura and Takeshi Kadobayashi, eds., Film Art Inc., 2019).

Hiroki Komuro is Associate Professor at the Faculty of Health and Well-being in Kansai University and a researcher at the Study Group of the Architectural Body in the Institute of Oriental and Occidental Studies of Kansai University. He is a researcher in Holistic education and Somatic education. In recent years, he has been studying meditation while doing practical activities such as teaching and facilitating workshops of yoga and mindfulness. He also approaches A+G from both practical and research perspectives.

Momoyo Homma is Director both of Coordinologist, Inc. (Arakawa+Gins Tokyo office) and of The Reversible Destiny Foundation. Having graduated from Musashino Art University, she worked for international institutions and NGOs, engaged in art education, research into Central America and Caribbean arts, and cultural exchange before meeting Shūsaku Arakawa in 1999. She founded the Arakawa+Gins Tokyo office in 2002, from where she principally supports their domestic activities in coordination with their foundation in New York.

Yusuke Koishi is creative director and a founding member of Kleinstein Co., Ltd. Having graduated from the Faculty of Engineering, The University of Tokyo, and worked for Comme des Gar¥c{c}ons, he currently works as a producer for international fashion brands, and also as an artist and critic. He plays a key role in the creative direction of the Slovenian sneaker brand, Novesta, and Japanese leather accessory brand, BIÉDE. Taking “fashion” as a device to hack social system, he promotes the idea of “yōsō” as a Japanese translation of “fashion.” His essays include “Designing Nearby, Designing In-distance” (Ékrits, 2019). kleinstein.com

Ignacio Adriasola is Associate Professor in the Department of Art History, Visual Art and Theory, at the University of British Columbia. His publications include Fragment, Image, and Absence in 1960s Japan (Penn State University Press, 2022).

Adi Louria Hayon is Associate Professor in the Art History Department at Tel Aviv University. Her research focuses on the connections of art, philosophy, sound and the political in the modern and contemporary eras. She has published in Leonardo Music Journal, Religion and the Arts, Afterimage, Zeitschrift für Ästhetik, and Maimonides Review. Her book, Bruce Nauman: Performative Skepticism and the Aporia of Sense, will soon see light with De Gruyter Publishers.

Reversible Destiny Foundation (RDF) was founded in 2010 by Arakawa and Madeline Gins to promote their work and philosophy in the areas of art, architecture and writing. The foundation is dedicated to supporting research and greater public interest in the ideas and artistic practice of Arakawa and Gins through a range of initiatives to further advance and preserve their legacy. The contributors in the order of appearance are as follows. Kathryn Dennett is RDF’s Project Archivist. She received a Master’s in Information Studies from the University of Texas at Austin School of Information in 2016. Recent work prior to RDF includes the creation of a comprehensive, publicly accessible digitized archive at the Isamu Noguchi Foundation and Garden Museum (https://archive.noguchi.org/). Amara Magloughlin is RDF’s Research and Collections Associate. As an art historian, her research and writing explore the themes of globalism and migration, space/time and memory, and institutional and political critique in the 20th and 21st centuries. ST Luk is the project manager at RDF. He was heavily involved in the multidisciplinary studio practice of Arakawa+Gins, and worked closely with Gins to realize the last built architectural project during their lifetime at Dover Street Market, New York in 2013. Among various projects, he is currently working on the reconstruction of Arakawa’s early installation artwork, Ubiquitous Site X (1987–91). Miwako Tezuka is Associate Director of RDF. As an art historian and curator specializing in contemporary Asian art, she has contributed to numerous exhibition catalogues and curated shows of major artists including Mariko Mori and Yoshitomo Nara, among many others. Tezuka is also Co-Director of PoNJA-GenKon.

Arakawa+Gins Tokyo office (AG Tokyo, officially Coordinologist, Inc. since 2002) is based in the Reversible Destiny Lofts—Mitaka (Tokyo, 2005), one of the important built works designed and produced by artists/architects/founders Arakawa and Madeline Gins. AG Tokyo has worked to pass the legacy of Arakawa+Gins on to future generations, while ensuring the transmission of their projects into such different fields as art, science, philosophy, and architecture, among others. The contributors to the conference panel and publication project are, in order of conference appearance: Takeyoshi Matsuda (General Manager, A+G Tokyo), Haruka Seno (Archive Researcher, A+G Tokyo), Haruka Kawaguchi (Archive Researcher, A+G Tokyo), and Momoyo Homma (Director, A+G Tokyo / President, RDF). Reiko Tomii, the project editor, is Archive and Academic Advisor of the Reversible Destiny Foundation and Co-Director of the scholarly listserv, PoNJA-GenKon.

Takashi Ikegami‘s research interests include complex systems and artificial life. He received his PhD in physics from The University of Tokyo. He is currently a professor at The University of Tokyo, Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. His research focuses on complex systems and artificial life. Some of his results have been published in Life in Motion (in Japanese: Seidosha, 2007) and Between Man and Machine (in Japanese: Kodansha, 2016). He has also been active in art since 2005, with works such as “Filmachine” (with Keiichiro Shibuya, YCAM, 2006), “Mind Time Machine” (YCAM, 2010), “Long Good bye” (with Kenshu Shintsubo, Japan Alps Festa, 2017), “Offloaded Agency” (Barbican, 2019).

Akihiko Ono is an architect and Professor at the Kyoto University of the Arts. Having graduated from Kyoto University, he worked for Kazuo Shinohara (1989–1991) and Arakawa+Gins in New York (1995–1999). He founded his own architectural firm in 2000 and teaches at the Department of Environmental Design, Kyoto University of the Arts since 2005.

Nomura Yasuo is a New York-based artist. Having studied oil painting at Musashino Art University in Japan, he received the study-abroad grant for an emerging artist from the Agency of Cultural Affairs in 2018 and a Vilcek Foundation grant in 2021. He works in a transdisciplinary manner and proposes “Dimensionism,” an art movement that explores higher dimensions and gravity, in order to revitalize our perception and cognition through art.

Matisse ApSimon-Megens, Anouk Hoogendoorn, and Benjamin Muñoz all met through collaborative work with the Three Ecologies Institute and fuit.es collective in Montréal, CA. While each member comes from diverse disciplines, the collaboration was born out of shared affinities in textures, concepts and colours. Slowly and with much experimentation, Arakawa and Gins’s concepts of landing-sites revealed themselves as crucial actors in their work, making a collective compositional process possible.

Adrienne Hart works internationally as a choreographer and as Artistic Director of Neon Dance. Adrienne has worked in Russia, Belgium, Norway, Germany, Kosovo, Japan, USA, and extensively in the UK. Her work has been commissioned and supported by Arts Council England, British Council, Creative England, Sadler’s Wells, The Place, Modern Art Oxford, Glastonbury Festival, Reversible Destiny Foundation, The Great Britain Sasakawa Foundation, South West Creative Technology Network, Pavilion Dance South West and Art Front Gallery amongst others. Commissions include working with Sadler’s Wells resident over 60’s performance group Company of Elders and her work invited to premiere as part of Echigo-Tsumari Art Triennial 2018 and Setouchi Art Triennale 2022 (Japan).

Mariko Kida is an internationally acclaimed dancer who has worked professionally with dance companies in Canada and Sweden, most notably with The Royal Swedish Ballet as a principal dancer. Mariko received the prestigious Prix Benois de la Danse and the 42th Premio Positano Danza Léonide Massine in 2014. She became a freelance artist in 2016 to dance for Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch as a guest dancer, and in 2018 featured in Neon Dance’s production, Puzzle Creature. Kida is currently associate professor at Professional College of Arts and Tourism in Hyogo prefecture, Japan.