Pockets on the Streets at Kyoto City University Of Arts Art Gallery

^{Pockets on the Streetsat Kyoto City University Of Arts Art Gallery}

^{Exhibition: Pockets on the Streets,
August 08 - August 30. 2020,
Kyoto City University of Arts Art Gallery @KCUA

Artists: Jed Gregorio, Miro Kasama, Yuri Kunimochi,
Miki Murakami, Ayumi Nagato, Gerome Soriano, Tanya Villanueva

Talk event by : Nuno Alfonso and Poklong Anading (Aug 16),
Mutsuiki Konishi (Aug 29 )

Organized by Kyoto City University of Arts (KCUA Open Call
Exhibition 2020–2021)

Initiated by Miro Kasama, almost Curated by Load na Dito
(Mayumi Hirano and Mark Salvatus) using Flex*

Thanks to : Moeko Awasaka, Marian Barro, Mizuho Fujita,
Toshikazu Furimoto, Momoko Hibino, Mayumi Hirano, Jiro,
Hirooki Kishimoto, Mutsuki Konishi, Ralph Lumbres,
Ness Roque-Lumbres, Neo Maestro, mizutama (FIGYA),
Takayuki Okazaki, Asako Otsuka, Kaede Sakai, Mark Salvatus,
Yuko Shirahata, Eri Sugimoto, Mimi Tecson, Yuta Terao,
Ayamo Togawaya, Nanako Une

There within Here

By Load na Dito (Mayumi Hirano and Mark Salvatus)

This text appeared in the catalog of Pockets on the Streets that you can access HERE

Flex* is a listening and talking game. Participants sit in a
circle around an empty bottle in the center. There is no moderator; the game
proceeds by spinning the bottle. The person pointed by the bottle picks out one
word from the deck of Flex* cards or the previous person's talk and freely
speaks about what comes to his/ her mind triggered by the word. Although the
content of the talk does not have to be related to what the previous person has
said, the participants need to always keep their ears open to what others say
because they never know when their turn would come. It is up to the bottle,
which facilitates horizontal relationships among the participants.

Hence in Flex*, the flow of the conversation is connected by
words instead of the content. We have collected the words discussed since the
first Flex* held in October 2019, which currently totals about 200 words. The
words are printed on cards to be incorporated in the game.

In response to the restrictions on physical gathering, we
decided to try Flex* by transferring to the online space, and to our surprise
it turned out to be an effective platform of sharing so much more than we had
expected. First of all, it became an opportunity for the participants, who had
been isolated in their homes, to reflect and voice out their daily
observations, feelings, and thoughts while unpacking the meanings of familiar
words. The participants were also able to exchange words with others without
the responsibility of making direct response, but still being able to stay
connected through the simple choice of words even when the conversation was
disrupted by an unstable Internet connection.

In the autumn of 2019, Miro Kasama invited us to
collaboratively create an exhibition. The initial plan was for us to develop an
exhibition with artists in Kyoto through a series of workshops, however with
the spread of COVID-19 restricting the mobility of people, we were faced with
the challenge of finding alternative ways to create an exhibition
collaboratively yet remotely. And we decided to try out Flex* as an approach to
do so. It was a choice we mutually made in response to the actual condition,
but more than anything, we felt the urge to critically reflect on the values
that had been prioritizing productivity and to change the social hierarchy that
had been formed along with it. We thought Flex* will create a mutual space for
us to individually yet collaboratively think about what it means to make an
exhibition in this uncertain time. We hoped that using Flex* would allow us to reconsider
an exhibition not as a final form, but instead as a process of thinking and
doing.

Typically, an exhibition would have a preset concept, but we
intentionally did not set any theme or guidepost. The participating artists,
while in dispersed places, continuously listened to each other's voices by
playing Flex* regularly, through which kindness and imagination for each other
in uncertainty were exchanged, naturally creating a shared sense of immaterial
space. Perhaps, this process is best captured in the word "dawn" that
came up at the very first online Flex* meeting, where all of us met for the
first time. It is neither night nor morning, while it could be simultaneously
night and morning. The exhibition was formed by the links of intentions to
receive such elusive presence. The "poetic language" as described by
Trinh T. Min-ha provides us to speculate the indefinability that the exhibition
sought for. "through the notion of "poetic language", I am
certainly not referring to the poetic as the site for the consolidation of a
subjectivity, or as an estheticized practice of language. Rather I am referring
to the fact that language is fundamentally reflexive, and only in poetic
language can one deal with meaning in a revolutionary way. For the nature of
poetry is to offer meaning in such a way that it can never end with what is
said or shown, destabilizing thereby the speaking subject and exposing the
fiction of all rationalization." 01 The exhibition “Pockets on the Streets”
emerged from the process of flexing and stretching words and nuances, weaving a
organic flow of association and disassociations. It's a multiplicity of lines
linked through reciprocity - receiving and offering. In hindsight, creating the
exhibition as a process shaped by connecting small, fragile, and unexpected
events, without a predetermined direction, may have been an expression of a
consciousness that refuses to be packaged and consumed. It was an attempt to
question the conventional value of clarity and accessibility, to liberate
language from its traditional power relations, and to open up a shared space to
rework the normalized meanings.

-- Chen, Nancy N., spring 1992. "Speaking Nearby:
Conversation with Trinh T. Minh-ha." in Visual Anthropology Review, 8:1,
82-91.}