《ウツ世ノ門》をくぐった先に

「生きる選択肢が商品に繋がっていく現代は、人生そのものがテーマパークのようなものかもしれない」とアンテナのメンバー田中英行は言う。人間の原初的な欲望が商品化、パッケージ化され、それらが日々の消費行動から人生の価値までを決定づけるとしたら、そんな現実をテーマパーク的な仮想空間、虚構、暫定的な時間に置き換えてしまうことで、どこか救われた気にもなる。アンテナが構想した架空のテーマパーク「ヤマトピア」は、「自国の文化財保護と世界からの観光誘致」を目的にした日本の歴史テーマパークという設定だ。それは経営難に陥り、忘れ去られ、地震によって陸の孤島と化して 200 年を経過、ユートピアの廃墟となる。「ヤマトピア」を描いた製作中の映画《囿圜》(2004 年~)のシーンや《ジャッピー之塔ドローイング》(2006 年)には、仏教の宇宙の中心にそびえる須弥山を彷彿させる塔が描かれ、垂直方向に広がる世界観、さらには世界を構成する壮大な仏教宇宙の秩序を投影した曼荼羅も連想させる。この宇宙観は、われわれの意識の空間的な広がりを理想郷、桃源郷としての架空の世界へ拡大させる一方、げんせ/うつしよ現世に対する不老不死の世界としての常世の国や黄泉の国といった「あの世」観、前世と来世といった時間軸も意識させるものだ。そこから 1990 年代に現実の日本で見られたテーマパークの勃興とその後の衰退を振り返ってみれば、人々に一瞬の夢を提供したその概念自体がはかない世界としての「浮き世」そのものであったというアイロニーが見えてくる。「ヤマトピア」はそれが架空のテーマパークであることによって、現実の時空間を日本古来の宇宙観に繋ぐ異界のような存在ともいえる。「ヤマトピア」のマスコット・キャラクター「ジャッピー」は、黄色い皮膚、頭に日の丸、鼻に梅干し、お腹に富士山といった日本的記号をまとっている。
着ぐるみとしての存在は人間が入る内側の空間が交換可能な「空」を象徴し、本質の非物質性を示唆するが、田中はそれを神社の構造にも喩えている。

このことは自然崇拝、精霊崇拝、アニミズムなどに起源をもつ日本の古神道、仏教伝来以前の古代人の世界観にも通じるものだろう。生きるための恵みの雨や太陽の光をもたらす一方で洪水や台風、日照りによる害を及ぼす自然現象は、不可視の空間に何らかの超自然的なエネルギーや人為を超越したカミの存在を古代の人々に感じさせた。意志も人格もない自然神は、風、大地、太陽など宇宙を構成する森羅万象に宿るカミとして、その後の神道や「草木国土悉皆成仏」という日本の仏教思想とも繋がっていく。

この不可視の「何か」の存在を感じる感覚は、明治維新から合理性、効率性、利潤を追求してきた戦後の高度経済成長期を経た日本で、居場所を失ってきたことも事実だろう。各地域の祭りや祭祀、伝統行事は今も数多く継承されているが、そこではともすれば忘れられがちな文化の型や形式の周辺に漂う無形の精神や超自然的なエネルギーの気配としての「空(ヴォイド)」を、ジャッピーの空っぽのお腹は見事に表現しているのだ。

今回のプラザノースでの「Antenna 展 ウツ世の祝宴」は、これまでのアンテナの活動を網羅的かつ多角的に見る好機であった。「ハレ」と「ケ」、つまり祭りや年中行事のような非日常的な「ハレ」と、日常的な時間としての「ケ」の対比を投影した展示には、《ウツ世ノ門》をくぐった先に「ハレ」の世界観、祝宴の世界が繰り広げられていた。神輿や祭りの屋台などには、アンテナのメンバー市村恵介による伝統的な木工の手技が光り、テーマパークでの採算性を優先した仮設的な装置と伝統の職人芸を対比させていた。また、どこか整然と配置されているインスタレーション全体は、曼荼羅的な宇宙の秩序を感じさせ、現世の「ハレ」という非日常的な次元を須弥山的宇宙空間へと昇華させていた。

30 歳前後の若い世代で構成されるアンテナがこのような日本の伝統的な世界観や宇宙観を共有していることはとりわけ興味深い。インターネット上の仮想空間という新たな次元が「ケ」に加わった時代と何らかの関係があるのだろうか。「ハレ」と「ケ」、現実と仮想空間の不均衡に対し、人間は無意識にもその均衡を回復させようとするのだろうか。ソーシャル・ネットワークなど非物質的な空間を経由して新しく他人と繋がる世代にとって、粘土、木、石膏、絵の具、膠などの物質性は、自らの手で触覚的に捉えられる確実性や生きている実感に繋がるのかもしれない。

実際、この世代のアーティストの仕事には、丹念な手作業や職人技的な技術を伴うものも少なくない。ただ、ここで見てきた古来の宇宙観、日本の職人的、工芸的伝統、さまざまな「道」の世界の本質は、ネット時代の仮想空間でいう非物質性とは異なる、不可視の精神世界へと人々を至らせてきたものだ。彼ら新しい世代がこのような精神世界を希求しているかどうかここでは断言できないが、寺社仏閣やパワースポット巡りへの注目は何らかの予兆かもしれない。

アンテナは、効率性や生産性を求めて短期的に循環する社会ではなく、それと並行して流れるより長期的な時間のサイクルを考えたいと言う。そして、その中に日本の伝統の本質や精神といった不可視の「何か」を導き出したい、と。大量生産品、商品としての物質的価値を追い求めて来た時代が終焉を迎えようとしている今日、物質的な満足感を超えた何かを人々が改めて求めているようにも思う。アンテナの《ウツ世ノ門》は、われわれに未来を考えさせるための門であるのかもしれない。

片岡真実(かたおか・まみ/森美術館チーフ・キュレーター)

 

Beyond the gates of this mortal world

“Contemporary life is like a theme park. The choices we make regarding the kind of life we want to lead are all associated with particular products,” Hideyuki Tanaka, one of the members of the art collective Antenna, tells me. If our primordial human desires have been commodified and packaged, determining all of our daily consumption patterns and even the value of our lives, we seem nonetheless to have found some sense of salvation by replacing reality with imaginary spaces and fictions, and the sensation of momentary time offered to us by this theme park environment.

Yamatopia is an imaginary historical Japanese theme park dreamt up by Antenna that seeks to “protect our own cultural heritage and attract sightseeing tourists from all over the world.” After running into financial difficulties, Yamatopia is gradually forgotten about until an earthquake comes along and cuts it off from the world, transforming it into a solitary island. 200 years later, this theme park becomes a ruined utopia. In Yu-en (2004–), an ongoing film-in-progress about Yamatopia, and “Drawing of the Jappy Tower” (2006), we see a tower that resembles Mount Sumeru, the towering peak that stands at the center of the Buddhist universe. Both the film and the drawing evoke a view of the world that keeps extending in a vertical direction, as well as the mandala, on which the ordered system of the vast and magnificent Buddhist cosmos that comprises this world is projected. This cosmology expands the spatial reach of our consciousness and pushes it towards the Arcadian paradises of other imaginary worlds. At the same time, however, it also prompts in us an awareness of the world that lies beyond this mortal coil – Hades, the realm of the dead, or tokoyo no kuni in Japanese: a world of eternal youth and longevity as opposed to the transience of this earthly realm – as well as the time axis that divides us from both our past and future lives.

Looking back at the sudden boom in theme parks during the real Japan of the 1990s and their subsequent decline, a certain irony becomes painfully apparent. The idea of building these parks, which provided people with a momentary glimpse of a dream, was itself nothing more than a fleeting, empty illusion. By embodying a fictional theme park version of this notion, Yamatopia became the site of an underworld that linked the space and time of reality with the realm of ancient Japanese cosmology.

Jappy, Yamatopia’s official mascot, is clad in an assortment of symbols of Japan: yellow skin, a red emblem of the rising sun on his head, a pickled umeboshi plum for a nose, and a Mount Fuji-shaped pattern on his belly. As a character costume, Jappy symbolizes the interchangeable voids that occupy the inner worlds that we enter, alluding to the immateriality of our true nature. Tanaka has also likened this to the structure of a Shinto shrine.

This idea also resonates with the worship of nature, the spirits of the deceased, and animist concepts that constitute the origins of ancient Shinto, as well as the vernacular Japanese worldviews of antiquity that existed before Buddhism was introduced into Japan. Although natural phenomena were blessings that brought life-giving rain and sunlight, they were also a malevolent force that wrought harm through floods, typhoons and drought. For the ancients, these occurrences hinted at supernatural energies and the presence of a divine force that transcends human agency, existing in some invisible realm. As deities lacking both intention and personality that dwell within all the things that make up our universe, including the wind, earth, and sun, these nature gods are also linked to the subsequent development of Shinto precepts, as well as the Japanese Buddhist belief that “Buddhahood is present in all things on this earth, even the grass, trees and earth around us.”

The sensibility that is attuned to these invisible presences has clearly lost its place in modern Japan, after having been through the rapid postwar economic growth that pursued profit, efficiency, and the rational modes of thinking that go back to the time of the Meiji Restoration. Many of the festivals, rituals, and traditional ceremonies associated with each region are still being handed down from one generation to the next. Jappy’s hollow stomach is a compelling metaphor for the empty void that hints at the presence of all the formless spirits and supernatural energies surrounding these endangered cultural formats, each one liable to being forgotten and neglected.

Antenna’s recent “Feast for this Mortal World” exhibition at Plaza North gave visitors a good opportunity to get a diverse and exhaustive perspective on their previous work. On display were videos that depicted the contrast between the extraordinarily ceremonial atmosphere of festivals and other annual events, and the mundane time of everyday life. Beyond the gates of this mortal world lay a festive world of mirth and celebration. The wooden festival stands and portable shrines borne aloft on the shoulders of the revelers were deftly crafted by Antenna member Keisuke Ichimura using traditional carpentry methods, creating an effective contrast between age-old artisanal skills and the temporary installations found in theme parks that typically prioritize profitability over all else. As a whole, the neatly arranged installation also evokes the cosmological order typically found in the mandala, transforming the extraordinary festival-like dimension of this mortal world into a sublime, cosmic space, a latter-day Mount Sumeru.

What is most interesting is the fact that Antenna, a group of young artists in their late 20s and early 30s, share something of this traditional Japanese worldview and its cosmological beliefs. Perhaps there is some connection between the new dimensions offered to us by the virtual spaces of the Internet, and the contemporary, mundane experiences of our everyday world. Faced with the disparity that divides these virtual worlds from reality, perhaps we are subconsciously trying to recover a sense of balance between them. For a generation that connects to others through social networks and other immaterial Internet spaces, the materiality of clay, wood, plaster, paint and glue is associated with a sense of real, lived experience, and a tactile or haptic certainty that can be grasped with their own hands.

In fact, there are a significant number of artists from this generation whose work is accompanied by a sense of diligent manual labor and artisanal technique. The ancient cosmology I have described above, as well as the essence of a Japanese world made up of various vocational “callings” and craft traditions, helped people to gain access to an invisible, spiritual world that is different from the so-called immateriality of virtual spaces on the Internet. It is perhaps not for me to assert whether the younger Japanese generation in general seeks to reach this sort of spiritual state, but their interest in making pilgrimages to Buddhist temples, Shinto shrines and other sites thought to be filled with mystical energy is perhaps an indication of their aspirations.

“Rather than a society of short-term circulation in pursuit of efficiency and productivity,” Antenna tell me, “we want to think about temporal cycles over a longer span of time that proceed in parallel with that society. In our work, we try to draw out the invisible essence or spirit of traditional Japanese beliefs and practices that exist within those cycles.” At a time when the demise of an era in pursuit of commodified forms of material value seems near, people are searching once again for something in their lives that goes beyond material satisfaction. Antenna’s gates of this mortal world are, in a sense, also portals that invite us to think about the future.

Mami Kataoka (chief curator, Mori Art Museum)

<Translated by Darryl Jingwen Wee>