 My name is Irene Sunwoo, I'm the GSAP Director of Exhibitions, and I'm pleased to welcome you to this event, Encounters with Arakala and Madeleine Ginz, a half day conference organized on the occasion of the exhibition, Arakala and Madeleine Ginz Eternal Gradient, which is currently on view in the Arthur Ross Architecture Gallery, just two doors down. And we'll have a short coffee break after the second panel, so you'll have an opportunity to hop over there if you haven't seen the show yet. I wanted to thank, first of all, Dina Malandros, who couldn't be with us this afternoon, but she was incredibly supportive of this project from the very beginning. And I also especially wanted to thank her for being very game in terms of trying new things in Ross. So it's been a real pleasure to develop this project in conversation with her. I also wanted to express huge thanks to the estate of Madeleine Ginz and the Reversible Destiny Foundation, especially Peter Katz and Stephen Hepworth, who have been incredibly generous with their time and resources and have been really integral to the curatorial advancement of this project. I would also like to acknowledge Tiffany Lambert, the Assistant Director of Exhibitions, who is my co-curator on the project, and helped see it through all the way to the end. And we were really fortunate to be able to work with Norman Kelly, Carrie Norman, and Thomas Kelly, who's unable to join us today. But they produced an incredibly intelligent and stunning exhibition design, which is really going to knock your socks off if you haven't seen it yet. Aline Mule was our graphic designer and produced a really beautiful and thoughtful approach to quite challenging and complex content. So I'd like to thank her for all of her hard work and, of course, to the events and communications team, Lila, Stefan, Paul, and Shannon. And also, of course, very big thanks to all of our presenters, some of whom have flown in from Hong Kong just for a day, from Tokyo, from London, and from Berlin. So it's really wonderful to have this group of people able to join us today to speak about Arakawa and Madeleine in quite different ways. If I could have the next slide, Rosanna, and even further up than that, one more. Oh, sorry, I can do this. Never mind. Right, so in fact, I was not familiar with the work of Arakawa and Madeleine until I happened to go to a documentary on their work called The Children Who Won't Die. This was screened at Triple Canopy in November 2016. I had to go back through some of my emails to figure out when this actually happened. And this documentary was made in 2010 and is an exploration of Arakawa and Madeleine's architectural work. And I was really blown away by all of this incredibly imaginative and creative and daring architectural material and theory, which I had never encountered in my architectural history, education, or even having been through multiple architecture schools in North America and in Europe. So I was really drawn, you know, I'm a historian, first and foremost. So I was very curious about finding more about their history, their backgrounds, et cetera. And this movie also brought to light this very provocative philosophy that they were putting forward, which they termed reversible destiny. So a quite complex concept that will unpack throughout the day from different perspectives. But in broad strokes, this is a claim that through a more rigorous and integrated and dynamic relationship between the body and our architectural surroundings, human perception and consciousness could be fully stimulated and activated and in turn leading to a more active, rather than passive experience within the world. So rather than a notion of achieving eternal life, we might be able to approach this concept of reversible destiny more as a reclamation of one's own life. So having full control of one's being and this understanding one's place within the world and implicitly with other people. Now, in starting the research, the most accessible projects to consider were a group of built works. There's about four or five total. And the movie, Children Who Won't Die, focused especially on the Mitaka Lofts in Tokyo from 2005. And we're really fortunate to have Momoyo Hama, who was involved in the project, to speak about this project as well as others that were realized in Japan, including Yoro Park in Gifu, Japan from 1995, and also Ubiquitous Site, an installation at a really quite exquisite Isosaki Museum in Nagi. And I'm just cycling through these quickly because I know that Momoyo will speak about them in more detail. More local is the Bioscleve House in East Hampton, Long Island from 2008. And perhaps some of you have even visited the house. And I know that a few of our presenters will be able to speak about it from firsthand experience. Now, to start the research on the project, I reached out to the estate of Madeline Ginz, which is the keeper of the archive for the artists. And it was quite challenging and interesting to go through this material, which was in a kind of nascent state in terms of its archival organization. It's been kind of freshly plucked from their home and studio at 124 West Houston Street and was really or is really jam packed with an overwhelming amount of material. So this was an incredibly rich, but challenging research project. So considering their architectural context, another important point of entry was a 1997 exhibition at the Guggenheim Soho, which they co-organized with the curator Michael Govan. And here you see some install shots. So it's quite rich with models. You can see that they've expanded some of their designs, you know, from an individual home now to an urban scale, which you see in the slide on the right. And also an incredible amount of models were on display as well. But this is also kind of a typical architectural exhibition with panels and models displayed in the gallery. And here are just some renderings to point out that at this time, they were really embracing digital technology, which was allowing them to envision some of their proposals at a much, much larger scale. So at the urban, and also in terms of looking at individual architectural units, working out more complex details that might otherwise not have been possible on the page. But in doing the research at the archive, one was also confronted with the fact that Arakawa and Madeline also had their their own careers before they jumped directly into architecture. So during the 60s and 70s and 80s, Arakawa had a quite successful and prolific career as a painter. And so this was a whole other realm of research that was there to be considered in terms of archival material that was surfacing in boxes and folders, but also Madeline's own career as a poet, writer and philosopher. So on the right, you see one of her poems that was taken out of a box. So in some we have a painter, a poet, architects, writers, I mean, there's an overwhelming amount of work to deal with. And for this reason, I'm really pleased that we have such a range of speakers today who will be able to provide different perspectives and lend their own expertise, because I really do think it takes a team of people to really work through a lot of this material. This is an image of WoWo's art storage, which Stephen Hepworth, our champion at the Foundation, was able to coordinate for our viewing. He was also really important in pointing out that there was this trove of architectural drawings, hand drawings that hadn't been looked at, hadn't been exhibited, and hadn't been written about at all. So at a certain point in the curatorial research, it was decided, you know, this could be the way to focus this show, which otherwise would have to draw upon all of these different disciplines and types of materials. So this was the day at the candy shop, as Stephen put it, when we went to sift through all of these gorgeous materials, many of them really, really huge. It's kind of hard to tell from this photo, but some of the drawings are, you know, about eight feet long. And so drawings became the framework for the exhibition. So I'm just going to walk you quickly through the organizational structure for the show before I turn it over to some of our presenters, but we'll also be able to kind of dive back into some of this material, these architectural drawings in a panel with the curators and the exhibition designer. So one important project that's featured in the show was called the Container for Mind Blank Body. This we discovered was Arakawa and Madeleine's first architectural project dating from about 1983 to 84. It's a bit of a mystery in terms of its history, but from what I can tell, based on archival materials, they were invited to develop a proposal for an island in the Venetian Lagoon. Interestingly, the invitation came from Paolo Cacciari, who was then the deputy mayor of Venice and also brother of architectural theorist Massimo Cacciari. And we know that Arakawa and Madeleine went to Venice. We have some photos of their visit in the exhibition, very charming romantic photos of them in the hazy mist of Venice. And this, as you can tell from this drawing, is an incredibly monumental proposal. There is one little body sneaking in here. And they've laid this project out as a series of gigantic units within which the users would encounter different obstacles and materials, lighting, projections, et cetera, that were intended to kind of overstimulate the bodily perception and experience walking through the space. We also found some really beautiful little drawings to explain what's happening here. There's a kind of labyrinth that goes around the entire structure. And they've described these as trench drawings, so these kind of tunnels around the perimeter. And this element is something that actually reappears in Yoro Park in 95. So a lot of the elements from this project are the beginnings of their thinking about different architectural fragments and strategies that are going to really inform a lot of their work in the following decade. And I should say, in terms of chronology, the show was really focusing on this period of the 80s, so from about roughly 83 until 91. Another real find, thanks to Stephen, was this group of 24 drawings called Screen Valves, also quite a mystery. Nothing written about them as far as we can tell. Haven't been exhibited. A little sticker on a photo that we found gave us a clue to the date and the title of these objects. But seen as a whole, they really read as a kind of spatial experiment that is being performed over and over again in this repeated module that's being jammed with different objects. The spaces are being divided up. And sometimes quite explicitly we see these architectural interiors emerging. And this also became a clue in terms of other drawings that we found where I began to understand that this was actually a module that was being repeated elsewhere. So they're really thinking about expanding individual elements that are being fine-tuned and poured over in the studio. So these drawings that I'm showing you also lead up to one of their major projects called The Bridge of Reversible Destiny, dating from about 87 to 1990. And this was really a continuation of the Venice project container for Mind Blank Body that I just showed you. Expanding on this idea of individual containers lined up in a sequence and becoming much more complex in this design. And this project as well as the Venice project have really beautiful texts that have been written, I would say, by Madeleine, which give quite evocative descriptions of what the mind and body is experiencing as it progresses through this space. And from this we know that they envisioned bodies actually walking through walls and the walls reassembling behind them. So a real literal relationship between the body and architecture. This was a very important project that was actually realized at the scale of a model, even though it was not realized on its intended site in France in a city called Epinol. It was meant to extend over a river. But they did produce a 42 foot model that was exhibited at Ronald Feldman's gallery in 1990. So it was quite important for them to actually put this out in the public and make sure that it was disseminated. And also interesting here and looking at this project was a kind of discovery of the really intense model-making culture that was at the heart of the studio. So in the exhibition we have quite a number of model photographs. These are quite candid ones, but there's also very staged photographs. So they were very intense on capturing the model-making aspect of the project. And this was an important way of putting it forward. And models would be overflowing in the studios by the 1990s, as some of our presenters can attest to since they were part of that studio culture. So in the final two sections, the first one is looking at the body. They were doing some interesting image research in terms of how to articulate the body's tactile functions, how to map out perception and the relationship between the interior and exterior of the body to the interiors of architectural spaces. So based on some archival findings, we have some displays of some of these research materials. So on the left, a selection of images borrowed and never returned from the New York Public Library under the category blind. So how do you visually articulate blindness and that experience? And then on the right, these really psychedelic illustrations from a book called Man in Structure by the medical philosopher Fritz Kahn from the 1940s. So quite surreal. And these we can see real correlations between these visual strategies and some of the more diagrammatic drawings that they're producing by the late eighties and early 1990s. So in the gallery, we have this large scale drawing. It's a sketch, interestingly, for a computer drawing that they would produce immediately after. And you'll see when you go in the gallery, this is quite large in scale. So again, it's kind of integrating Arakawa's painting practice in terms of working with a large canvas, even though this is an architectural drawing. But then we also have the introduction of text at the bottom, which I think we can safely attribute to Madeleine, at least her literary contribution is really apparent there. And then lastly, we wanted to kind of recognize each of their own independent creative practices. So there's a selection of items that, you know, obviously we can't given a comprehensive overview of Arakawa's painting, nor of all of the writing that Madeleine did, but we made a selection of items that would tease out some resonances and shared intellectual interests between them. And we have a panel at the beginning of the conference to focus on Arakawa's work and its reception in Japan, well, Madeleine and Arakawa's reception in Japan through built work. But we're also giving a panel dedicated to Madeleine's own writing, so giving some room to breathe and really unpack both of their practices and consider how these work together. All right, so with that, I'd like to just start by introducing our first panel. As I just mentioned, we'll be looking at Arakawa's work, particularly his early work from the 60s and 70s, I believe. And our presenter is Moaka Tatsuka, who is a consulting curator at the Reversible Destiny Foundation and has courageously flown in from Hong Kong for the day, just to participate, so we're incredibly pleased to have her here. And she'll be followed by Mamoyo Hama, who's director of Coordinologist Inc., but also director of Arakawa and Gin's Tokyo office, and was very integral in the realization of their Mitaka Lofts project. And afterwards we'll have a response by Julian Rose to wrap it up. So, Moaka. Thank you very much. Thank you very much for inviting me to speak at this conference. This is such a great opportunity not only to introduce Arakawa and Madeline, but also for me personally to learn about their works from different perspectives. As Irene kindly introduced me, I am trained as an art historian. So I come from that perspective into, first of all, Arakawa's works from the context of post-war Japanese art and how it relates to the broader international art movement of the sixties and onwards. So just to start my involvement with Arakawa and Gin's, I, when I first met Arakawa and Madeline, I was still a graduate student, right here at Columbia University, spending far too much hours at every library. And at that time, I was contemplating on writing my dissertation focusing on the topic of Dushan's influence on Japanese artists of post-war period. So I had three artists in mind. One was Ayo, who was in New York during 60s, 70s. And then Shigeko Kubota, who is another Japanese artist, woman artist who was, it was the widow of Namjoon Pike. And the last, but not least, important artist was Arakawa. So I was looking into the general information about this artist and Arakawa was, you know, in the background of my mind. I didn't end up doing my dissertation, but as the fate brought me to him and Madeline, I was just wandering around in Soho one day. This was back in like 2002 or three. And I just run into them in front of now closed Homura Soba Nuro Shop. And I was with a professor from Tama Art University then. And we started to chat on the street and five minutes turned into ten minutes and ten minutes turned into 30 minutes. And because we were already in Soho, they invited us to their studio then on West Houston Street. So I had this amazing memory of speaking with them together on that happen chance occasion. And we ended up that day spending like 10 hours together. So that was how I came into kind of glimpse. I had the glimpse into their world. And the thing I remember most from that encounter was that, like Irene described the archival materials, they were just two container full of jam-packed information. And the conversation went from everything from art to philosophy to medicine to what not, like things that I didn't even comprehend. So it was like a dreamlike experience. And I think when I think about Arakawa Madeleine, particularly Arakawa, a lot of people have this kind of image of mysterious person. And I wanted to start my slide with this page of a poem by Madeleine Gaines and titled For Someone Who Called Himself Arakawa. So there's always this kind of mystique surrounding Arakawa. And if you just kind of skim through this text, it's just a beautiful poem trying to sort of locate this person who calls himself Arakawa in somewhere in the spectrum of the world. And essentially when I look at their works in Arakawa's paintings as well, that's what they had been doing. They're trying to decipher the location of human existence and try to examine what is true and not true about various aspects of human conditions, one of which is this, in their opinion, mistaken concept of the unavoidable death. So before I go into Arakawa's biographical information, I just wanted to kind of bring out the voice of not only Arakawa, but also Madeleine, because my presentation was mostly focused on Arakawa's work. So I mentioned there is always this kind of surrounding mystique around Arakawa. And this is a front cover of magazine art news from May 1980 issue. And perhaps he could be one of the first Japanese contemporary artists to glaze the front cover of this major art magazine. I think the second one is like Mariko Mori, but we had to wait until 1990s. So he was a very successful artist at the time. And he had this feature article in this magazine by Paul Gartner. And the way he Arakawa is described in this profile is that the writer recalls this moment in gathering, like a salon style gathering that Arakawa and Madeleine often hosted at their place for various creative people from different fields. And the writer recalls Arakawa saying that, quote, a cockroach knows how to use a house better than we do. And that one sentence when Arakawa pronounced shut everybody else and the room was quiet, and then on they would have some interesting discussions. So that kind of meeting of artistic minds were happening in Soho in 1980s. And he was really right in the middle of that creative energy of the city at that moment. But he was already quite a controversial artist when I was in Japan. So before he moved to New York in 1961, he was a part of a group of neodada artists of post-war Japanese art world. He was born in 1936 in Nagoya, which is hundreds of miles west of Tokyo, but he moved to Tokyo in 50s to become part of that sort of post-war avant-garde movement and psychedelic culture of Japan. I have two images here on the screen. The larger one on top is a group of artists from neodadaism organizers, which was a short-lived avant-garde artist group based in Tokyo, active just within a year of 1960. And Arakawa was one of a key founding artists of this group, along with other artists such as Shinohara Ushio, who is also in New York now, Yoshimura Masunobu, Toyoshima Souroku, Kazakura Sho, Ueno Norizo. And they were, some of them were trained as painters, but some others were much more engaged in kind of happening events and kind of street performance type of artistic expression at the time. And in this picture, they were strolling along the street of Ginza in 1960s, really becoming kind of, you know, attention of a lot of passers-by of this central part of Tokyo City. So they were kind of young artists who were gathering quite often in one of the artist's studio located right in the center of Shinjuku. And you can see at the bottom here, group photo again, they would do periodical gathering. Oftentimes it would start with serious artistic discussions, but then moves into this late night drink and performance kind of gathering in the end. So Arakawa was part of that energetic group. And the type of works that he was creating at the time was really kind of in line with many other artists who were utilizing many unconventional materials to create paintings, relief sculptures, and in essence, like a lot of assemblages were created during this time, partly because not all of these artists were able to afford purchasing conventional canvases and oil paints. So they were trying to kind of scavenge hunt in the city to obtain any kind of materials that would suit their desire to express something. So here is one example of Arakawa's sculptural work called Part One from 1960. It's kind of sliding towards me. Is that better? No? Is that better? OK, good. I'll try to keep this distance. So this is a sculptural work called Part One 1960. And it was exhibited at the 1960 Yomiyuki Undependent Exhibition in Tokyo. And Undependent Exhibition was a non-juried annual exhibition for anybody who wanted to submit works. And it was really serious exhibition or serious, like very experimental open exhibition that took place at Tokyo Metropolitan Museum. And it was the platform for emerging artists of the 50s and 60s Japan to try out their expressions. So Arakawa was showing at this annual exhibition at least three times. And some of the works were recorded. This is one image that I could find. And you can see how he's using what seems to be a kind of concrete, like a massive concrete in the middle with attached like a gauge, like fabric on the background. And this is the kind of experimental objects he was creating within the kind of atmosphere of usage or the method of using junk materials. But it was a big jump for him to get there. When he was still in high school back in his hometown in Nagoya, this is the type of work he was practicing. He wasn't yet an artist per se. He was still a high school student. But he did paint in this kind of traditional figurative style painting. When he was growing up, he had a neighbor who was a doctor. And had a clinic operating from home. And because the doctor lived very close by, Arakawa became quite close to him. And it so happens that the doctor's wife who was a painter who encouraged Arakawa at the time about 8 to 10 years old to try out on painting. Apparently at that time, Arakawa was interested in becoming a doctor. And the doctor along with his wife told him that if you want to be a serious doctor, you have to be able to do anatomical drawing. So that was the kind of motivation Arakawa acquired while he was growing up. And he showed such a talent to the wife of the doctor that she convinced him to go to an art school. So that's, you know, according to Arakawa's own narrative, that's how he entered Musashino Art University in Tokyo later on. But it so turns out once he entered this academic institution and started to take some courses, it was really too conventional, too traditional, to confine into the traditional mode of expression. So he says that he dropped out within a few weeks of beginning of the school education. And he went out to do his own things. And one of the key series that he started on his own, you know, inspiration was this series now called a coffin series. So as you can see one example here, it was this kind of object, you know, undescribable mass of things encased within a wooden box aligned with a field, which is in the scale of like a human body. So it has this kind of eerie very like a human scale presence when it is exhibited. And apparently this, when this was exhibited in a gallery in early 1961, they were all closed with lids. So as visitors go to the gallery, they would have to open the lids and then encounter this undescribable mass inside. So Anakawa was creating the object as artwork, but he was also creating this occasion for people to interact with the objects. So it wasn't just the presentation of still image or thing. It was engaging people to interact with his work. So that interaction, the part of the interaction I believe is a very important part in Anakawa's work and it connects to his later works. And as I mentioned already, he moved to New York in 1961 and narrative goes that he was part of this group, Neo-Dadaism organizers in 1960, but because his solo exhibition in 1961 was so successful that his success really disturbed the group mentality of the Dada group, which is kind of working against this like experimental avant-garde spirit of the time, but that was Japanese society. So Anakawa decided to really just get out of Japan, do something completely outside the box and he decided to move to New York. And part of the reason why he chose New York was because he was also fascinated about Marcell Duchamp's work. And with the introduction by Japanese art critic and poet Shuzo Takiguchi, Anakawa got in touch with Marcell Duchamp. So even before he physically moved to New York, he was starting communication with Duchamp. And once he got to New York, really as he landed, he called Marcell Duchamp, and apparently Duchamp agreed to meet him in Washington Square Park. So there comes this like historical meeting of avant-garde from Japan and grand-daddy of Dadaism and Neo-Dada in New York of Marcell Duchamp. So in his early works, particularly works from 1960s, you can kind of trace Anakawa's interest in particularly in surrealism and Dadaism, where he continues his method of assemblage, creating encounter of unexpected objects such as an umbrella and a funnel and juxtapose with serial images taken from Moe Bridge experiment photography, capturing movement. So this kind of imagery appeared oftentimes in his early 60s works. But something started to happen even further, transformation of Anakawa as he become more integral to the New York avant-garde scene now. In mid to late 1960s, he started to incorporate language into his paintings. And he was using stencils like this one. These are some stencils that were kept by one of his studio assistants. And works such as this, the diagrammatic painting starts in mid to late 60s. So here you still see a little bit of trace, residue of surrealistic kind of sensual aspect of composition. But at the same time, you start to see the space, in this case, interior space of apartment room, starts to become a combination of different signs. So rather than keeping the illusionistic depiction and representation of painting, he is starting to avoid all that, get rid of all that conventional method of representation and move into these diagrammatic composition in his late 60s work. And that continues onward on 1970s. And I'm just showing you some one or two examples. And I wanted to show you these works because as Steven and I went through many canvas left from 60s and 70s in the estate, we realized how even though on the first glance, Raka was painting so very minimalistic and monotonous sometimes, and then very like kind of difficult to grasp in terms of visual presentation, when you see the texture of canvases, see them as material objects, they have such a beautiful presence. The beautiful handling of color, these drips of colors are really intentionally placed there. So as paintings, they are quite an amazingly impressive works. And he continues into 80s keeping his interest in usage of diagrammatic signs such as arrows and also alphabets in this case arranged in the eye chart format. And his paintings also started to become larger and larger in a sense starting to become, starting to kind of embrace these, I got the, yeah. It's time. So his work started to embrace the architectural space. So he was already thinking about how to engage viewers, not only through their visual perception of the works, but the physical reaction to the images that he create on canvas. So particularly in this canvas, I think it shows you that from the left side panel where you see grids of different colors, these grids are essentially dissected light. It's a different segments of light spectrum. And this is how I see the world. And you realize that on the next panel because it is really like measuring how your eyes look the world. And then move on further towards the right-hand side and you start to see less and less. And on the third from the left panel, you face the blank and the concept of blank as I'm sure we will talk about this more in the rest of the day to day is a very important concept that comes back into the architectural projects. And from that blank, what interests me most is this importance of physical movement. The movement itself is how we perceive or we start to perceive the world. It's not just the vision. I think what essentially particularly this composition tells us is that eyes can encounter the world through color, but bodies do not see color. So that's actually Leotard saying, but I think Arakawa is trying to, in this case, in painting, painterly composition, say that physical movement is the way we conceive and perceive the world. So that kind of importance placed on the physical existence, I'm just going to skip through to the last image I'm going to show you, goes into the essential basis for Arakawa and Gin's architectural projects where physical interaction to their design of space becomes primary importance. And this park, Yoro Park in Gifu is something truly amazing when you actually enter there. And within the matter of spending 10, 15 minutes in this park, it really starts to change how your body engages with the space and also time. So once you step outside from this park, you almost feel it's kind of strange to be standing on the flat ground. So within the matter of one hour, that's how their design of Yoro Park changes your physical interaction with the world. So with that, I know this was really kind of superficial, general, quick run through of progression of Arakawa and Madeleine's work in my presentation, but I hope these images kind of linger on in the rest of the presentation we can bring some of the issues that come up into our discussion. Thank you very much. Good afternoon, everybody. I'm Momoyo Honma, the head of Arakawa and Gin's Tokyo office. This is where my office locates in. It's a reversible Disney love to Mitaka in memory of Helen Keller. Obviously designed by Arakawa and Gin's. I started working with Arakawa and Madeleine since around 2000. And although I'm not an architect, I worked with them together in various projects and accompanied them in their later years. So I would like to introduce the built works of Arakawa and Gin's today in historical order. But first of all, I have to say that it is almost impossible to explain their works in words. So I know this attempt is quite paradoxical, but I will try my best anyway. Hi, Arakawa and Madeleine. Arakawa and Gin started focusing on architecture in the 1980s. In the exhibition opens today, we can see their beautiful drawings and architecture model and some other related archival materials from the 80s and early 90s, early 90s. But when Arakawa announced that he would quit painting and started working in architecture, many people, especially museum curators, art critics and gallerists were so confused because at that time he was already an internationally acclaimed artist. But I believe that for Arakawa and Madeleine's creative trajectory, the job title didn't mean so much. They just found that there were so many frames and limits if they continued working as artists. For example, even if they would appeal, if they would like to appeal something through their artworks, it would only reach people who could come and see them at museums or galleries. In contrast, they found a huge possibility in architecture because the architecture always associates directly with the social world. So they saw a huge possibility in architecture, perhaps even more so than practicing architects. That is when they started calling themselves as architects. They also referred to themselves as coordinologists. Coordinologists means the expert in coordinating art, philosophy and science, a word created by Arakawa and Madeleine. Well, I will now show you a couple of works by Arakawa and Ginz. Let's start with Nagi. This is the first architectural project they realized in 1994. It is one of the three permanent installations works at Nagi Museum of Contemporary Art in Okayama Prefecture. Okayama Prefecture is that red point. Maybe you can imagine the location. Well, the building design is by the architect Arata Isazaki and we are told that Isazaki invited Arakawa and Madeleine for this project. As you can see, Arakawa and Ginz space is a huge slanted tube, which you can enter to experience it. You'll see green ceiling and red floor, complementary colors with two seesaws and iron buds, one in a life scale, the other in 1.3 times bigger than that. Then you'll notice that there is replica of the famous Ryoanji Temple's rock garden. This is Ryoanji Temple's rock garden. I don't know. Maybe some of you have been there. And it's the... Let's go back to Nagi. You see a replica of the rock garden placed bilaterally. And the title of this work is very long. Yubikita site, Nagi's Ryoanji architecture body. The message, question from Arakawa and Ginz is, when you are in a space with objects, elements that make you feel uneasy or unsecure, together with the other elements that make you feel peaceful and secure, what would you feel first? If you get lost, just ask your body. In 1995, the following year of Nagi's Ryoanji, Arakawa and Ginz next architecture project came out. That is site of reversible destiny, Yoro Park in Gifu Prefecture. The park is like a huge ball. And as you can see in this panoramic view, there are no flat, horizontal and vertical spaces. Everything is slanting and you can easily lose your balance there. There are 10 architectural pavilions, they call pavilions, and nine of them are based on the main building called Critical Resemblance House. After the site was opened, it became very famous because unfortunately, many people got injured there. Some people broke their legs and arms and sometimes the ambulance were cold, so Arakawa and Ginz became famous as dangerous artists in a short time. I have been there so many times and actually I got injured twice or three times. For the first time I fell down and then I cut my lips bleeding and for the second time I cut my forehead bleeding again. So it is a dangerous park for some people. But when media interviewed Arakawa at that time, he said in a calm way, I don't know why people always try to walk on tulips. Look at children. They naturally start walking on all fours using their hands when they find unstable areas. The space encourages their body to do so. It is our common sense that gets in a way of listening to the inner voice that comes from your body. Again, here's the message by Arakawa and Madeleine. Try to believe in this wonderful thing that you have, your body, and use it as a scale, measuring rod. Again, Madeleine Arakawa here. Today, the site is regarded as one of the must-go places in Japan and last year, Yoro Park had 130,000 visitors, which is amazing because of the location, remote from any city which has good access to transportation. And we also see so many Instagrammers getting there. Look at these images posted by them on SNS, Twitter, or Facebook. I just love these images. After the Yoro Park, Arakawa and Gens became more and more enthusiastic about working with architecture. In 1997, there was exhibition. We have decided not to die at Guggenheim Soho, exhibiting many architectural models. And in 1998, the following year, their proposal entitled as Sensorium City. This is the image of Sensorium City. Sensorium City was awarded by the Tokyo Metropolitan Government for the city planning competition for future development of the Tokyo Bay Area. But after all, it took 10 years to see a third-built project, which is external gene house, Shidami, in Nagoya City in 2005. Nagoya is Arakawa's hometown. Shidami Housing Complex was a commissioned project by Nagoya City. As Arakawa and Madeline knew that they might have to compromise on many aspects during the process because it was a public project, they decided to start a completely private project at the same time that they were working on Shidami. That was the reversible Disney lofts, Mitaka, in memory of Helen Keller in Tokyo. The Mitaka lofts consists of nine apartments, and five of them are for long-term lease, and two of them are for multi-purpose spaces, including short-term stay. And we, Arakawa and Gin's Tokyo office, are using two for our office and library. Since it was built, we have been using the lofts for various purposes, such as architecture tours, a venue for events, events, researches, photo film shootings, and so on. Let me show you some images. These are obviously from the photos taken at architecture tours. I think one of them is of the Columbia G-sub tour. These are some images of our short-stay program. You can check our availability either on our website or Airbnb. And these are photos from our cultural events, which we organized. You can see Arakawa giving a lecture at the loft. And these are images captured from the famous HBO drama Girls. Since it was aired, we started receiving more visitors from the States, thanks to girls. And these are some photos taken at the lofts for a fashion magazine. This is the brand Mew Mew Prada. As for the tours, we receive students constantly from all over the world. And among all, there is a high school in Taiwan who sends us a group of students every year. We are told that their study trip in Tokyo is Tokyo Disneyland, and Ghibli Museum, you know, Ghibli Studio, Ghibli Spirit Dataway, and the reversible Disneyland of Sumitaka. How do you like that? And Columbia University G-sub is also visiting us over the years. That is the latest tour for G-sub study trip. It's just two weeks ago or so. Maybe you see some familiar faces. And as the lofts dedicated to Helen Keller, among our visitors, we have hosted many people living with physical and mental disabilities. And professionals in rehabilitation such as physiotherapists, therapists, care workers, and so on. Although the lofts have bumpy, undulating, slanting floor and sphere shaped or cylindrical rooms, those people just can find their way of using the lofts, fitting their bodies easily. But why Helen Keller? Helen Keller was a perfect model for Arakawa and Mandolin whenever they studied on architectural projects. As you know, Helen Keller lost her eyesight and hearing before she became two years old, but with great continuous support of her family and friends and famous Miss Sullivan, Helen Keller succeed in seeing things, listening sounds, and even reading and speaking, using a number of senses that we still don't know their names. So Arakawa Ginz thought that everybody should be Helen Keller and everybody can be Helen Keller if we study carefully about our bodies. And for children, it goes without saying that they just love the space. They become crazy, enjoying the lofts at the maximum. We sometimes feel sorry for them because parents always say it's time to go home and they always say, no, I don't want to go home. I want to stay longer. Well, I can spend hours and hours talking about what an amazing space the lofts are, so maybe I should stop here to go for it. And for your reference, I wrote a copy of an article as your handout today. And this is an article written by Mr. Yoshihiko Sano, the president of Yasui Architects and Engineers, an honorary member of the American Institute of Architects, and a joint creator in Shidami and Amitaka Project on Design, Architecture, and Engineering. The article was originally issued in Kenchiku Journal last December. Kenchiku Journal is one of the important architectural magazines in Japan. So I hope it helps you in understanding the history of the project better. Well, after the Amitaka Lofts long-awaited project, the Bioscleve House was completed in 2008 in East Hampton. This is Bioscleve House. It was also a private project and started almost at the same time with Shidami and Amitaka. Let me show you one more slide of Bioscleve House. It's from a study tour with some Japanese scholars, university professors, visiting the Bioscleve House for further study on Arakawa Gin's body theory. Currently, the house is under the management of the professor's group, LLC, right? I always confuse with other LLC, sorry. I would like to mention one more build work, which is Biotopological Scale Juggling Escalator, that you can visit and see at Dover Street Market, New York. This work was commissioned by Comde Garçon and was completed in 2013, just two weeks before Madeline's passing. Madeline worked so hard on this project without Arakawa, but trying to listen to Arakawa all the time according to her. I think this was a wonderful step that gives us ideas on how to continue working on reversible Disney projects. Arakawa in 2010 as well as Madeline in 2014 met their biological deaths. Although we cannot work with Arakawa and Gin's physically together anymore, we can achieve in listening to their voices using our great abilities of our bodies. We can yet again collaborate together in creating more architectural projects, more architecture against death. I think I have a couple of minutes, okay? One minute, okay. Let's go quickly with some unbuilt works, unbuilt projects. This is Museum of Living Bodies. I simply love this concept. The concept is, you know, the village or town or community which you belong to should be regarded as museums in near future. And where are the artworks? Artworks are our bodies, our lives. This is in detail. I love this one too. Reversible Disney Hotel. It has spiral DNA and I would love to for this project anywhere in the world. I imagine you would like to stay at the reversible Disney Hotel, right? This is Twin Tower of reversible Disney Hotel. And it's more radical because on the ground level you see two sides of reversible Disney. So it's a challenging thing to get to the reception. You have to walk all the way to the site. This is an amazing project, but I will skip it. This is Kachidoki Project. Well, lastly, I would like to mention that every Arakavan Gin's works has its directions for use. For example, the first thing that the residents in Mitaka Lofts have to do is to read the directions. It is very witty list by Arakavan Madeline and the most important message comes at the end of the directions which always says to be continued. As you can imagine, Arakavan Gin's architecture never can be completed without its users and their bodies. So let me close my presentation saying reversible Disney projects are to be continued. Thank you. Thank you so much, Milwaukee and Mamoyo. I couldn't think of a better way to start the day than those two presentations. So I'd like to invite you both to join Julian Rose at the table for a short discussion. Thank you, Irene, for organizing and thanks to both of you for your excellent presentations. That was kind of a perfect, I think, bracketing of the work that's in the gallery. So I wanted to ask you a question for both of you to begin about how you understand the work in this exhibition and two different perspectives. For you, Milwaukee, kind of how you see it as continuing themes that maybe are brought up in our work and for you, Mamoyo, how you see maybe the seeds of the later architectural practice even though the work is quite speculative. And just to make it a bit more specific, I'm also curious to hear what both of you feel space meant to them. I think what's interesting to me, Irene has made, I think, a very compelling case that this is pivotal work and in part you see them really visualizing space very explicitly, I think, for the first time. And so maybe what it was about this kind of spatial practice that offered them something that wasn't available in the previous practice or maybe this kind of abstract spatial exploration how it became focused or transformed into the specific build projects. Just to begin. Okay. First of all, I think the exhibition looks really beautiful. So congratulations to Irene and all the team here at Columbia. I really enjoy the show. Firstly because how the design really integrates what's drawn on papers and also what is built a supporting system for those framed works. As a North historian, I am really impressed by, first of all, beauty of those drawings. They're really quite amazing. And to me, it seems as though those series of drawings are trying to somehow create a new system of indicating different types of space rather than using a perspectival system. So it's almost like creating new language that leads differently from what we normally use as language. You can essentially read them as opposed to just seeing them. So there are two different ways of engaging with those works, I think. I think that's super interesting and just a quick follow-up. Do you feel like that's something that is rooted in the kind of diagrammatic aspects of Duchamp's influence? Because it feels very architectural in what it does, like a kind of notational system describing space. It certainly doesn't really look architectural, so I'm wondering where else it might have come from. Yeah, so I would immediately relate those compositions to, say, the large glass and how that composition itself not only visually presents what Duchamp conceived as space, but also the mystery behind it. So there's a lot more than just a kind of scientific way of analyzing the space, but there's a lot of kind of poetic aspect to understanding of space, which I think really is the uniqueness of Arakawa, and particularly when it comes to Arakawa and Madeline's works together. So yeah, then I guess the interesting question is how in their practice you feel that language continued? Well, first of all, I also was impressed by those beautiful drawings, and I've never seen them and then framed. Framed look different, right? And also I was surprised that many lines are repeatedly, you know, writing in a very strong way, handwriting. And I became very curious why Arakawa was so enthusiastic in writing, so in, how do you say, strong? Yeah, after the hatching pattern, the grids, you're saying, yeah, yeah. Because from the archival materials we also can see that it was a period that they started focusing more and more on perception and, you know, how people's body would relate with the space. So it's very curious to see that the both at the same time. Yeah, yeah. Well, that's a great point. And I'd love to actually hear from both of you more about this kind of paradox maybe of their relationship to the body because I loved, I mean, I was sorry to hear you injured yourself at the park, but it's interesting to have such a personal connection, right? And I also appreciate the way you said it's kind of indescribable. I mean, I've been to the Bioclave House and it is very difficult, I think, to relate linguistically or even representationally, maybe to these kind of very intense physical experiences, but at the same time, I mean, Moaco, for example, you showed the real rigor, analytical rigor of the relationship to language, the poetic relationship to language. There is so much kind of linguistic work that surrounds their practice and up to and including the reversible destiny, which is a sort of entire philosophy, you could say. I mean, how do you, both of you, think about the way they combine those two elements in tension? I mean, are they kind of separate strains of the practice? Are they necessary to support each other? I'm just kind of curious because it does seem almost paradoxical and I think in a way you see that even in the drawings. I agree that sort of the harshness and the dominance of the grid and then these small figures kind of being overwhelmed or crushed, et cetera. I think in Arakawa and Madeline's works, there are always sense of humor and play, so those two dichotomy creates this intensity of seriousness and playfulness and when playfulness interjects into this serious structure, there is some kind of explosion, this kind of energy or force that opens up to the new space or sphere or horizon. I don't know how to describe it, but I think when you see those drawings in series, that kind of moment happens repeatedly and it becomes kind of like a rhythm. You can sort of viscerally engage almost. So I think that physicality of their works is always there. It's a continuing thread through both seriousness of their work and a few more in the expression. So I think body really is very important in all of their works. I'm curious, specifically in the built works, how they almost thought about designing places for the body. What was maybe the conversation like? I imagine it's not as simple as just sort of putting a scale figure in your drawing like most architects might do. It seems like they conceived of incredibly specific interactions between body and space. I'm just sort of curious how they might have gone about designing that or working through it. For example, in the bioquive house, I know there are kind of poles at certain points because the floor is so unstable that you need additional support. I mean, that's just sort of not a kind of experience that architects really ever spend any time designing or wouldn't know how to draw or model or simulate. So I'm sort of curious how that relationship to the body entered into their design process, if you can talk about that. It's very difficult to explain, though. But I remember that Arakhan and Madan always were working with a team, you know. And the team is varied in their professions. One is, how can I say, a physicist, an artist, a singer, an athlete. And Arakhan and Madan loved to work with different professionals. And I think that's a very interesting point. And the other thing is they always were repeating that they learned a lot from children, like under three years old, before they start speaking, speaking language. Their body perception is, you know, everything. They don't have, before they get language as their tool to communicate with, all the perception are to be used maximum. So I think in that exhibition at the Guggenheim Soho, I remember that they had a panel of a baby in rainbow color. And I think that tells us the inspiring resource of Arakhan Ginza architecture. So that's almost like their version of a Vitruvian man or something. I mean, that's the kind of foundational concept is this, the perceptual model or something. Okay, that's interesting. Well, I'm also curious as far as interaction. Moaco, you mentioned, I didn't know that that's fascinating that the coffin pieces actually had lids. I had seen the pieces but didn't know that they were sort of interactive sculptures. And of course, with the Neo-Data group, there's a connection to kind of early happenings and performance work. And I'm curious how you see that as evolving kind of all the way into architecture because I'm more familiar with the context, say, Alan Capra in New York or a version of that that seemed sort of very stubbornly anti-architectural. I mean, if anything, that work I think in an American context kind of evolved into institutional critique sort of other legacies. So it's fascinating to me not that this is in any way typical architecture that we end up with but that at some point it becomes an impulse of wanting to create space or create building and structure. I think that's a really great question because I think if you come from the architectural field, architecture is a container, right? But I think from Aragawa's approach, body is the kind of instigator of information, generating information that then becomes a container. So it starts from the body rather than space. So body is the core that creates space around it. So one anecdote that I remember is that there are so many famous bizarre anecdotes that's associated with Aragawa when I think back in, I forgot, 2000s sometime, he was invited to speak at Tokyo University of Arts and during that lecture he was talking to a female student sitting next to him and he questioned, so what do you think two people would do? Would they just get married? But he said that's just boring. If you put two people together in the same space, something's going to happen. You don't even have to try anything. But try to think of you are going to marry this area. And I will come to you and ask, what, this area? And you should say, no, no, no, this area. So he's not starting to identify a person with a person figure. He's talking about a space that will be generated by somebody's presence. So it's really bizarre thing to say. But it is in line with what he's been doing in his painting and also sculpture. And when it comes to the infant, I skipped one slide which is from 1986 and it's entitled The Figure of an Infant. And it shows almost blank white canvas with this kind of irregular line, sometimes broken, sometimes connected. And in my view, that is how infant starts to sense the world. But that sense and perception is not yet quite coagulated. So infant is the creature who doesn't yet live within constructed actions or perceptions. And I'm quoting again Leotard. So it's this kind of coming into being, that active moment, which is the key to sort of deciphering Arakawa's painting as well as architecture. As they were always saying that there are a number of senses that we still don't know their names. And we usually tend to say five senses or six sense. But according to Arakawa and Madeline, there are hundreds or even thousands. And they want to figure them out, making more spaces to feel that, those senses. And as Miwa mentioned that Mita Kaloft's is, or other built works of Arakawa and Madeline, especially housing, are just, we can think of them just as extension of our body. So if we see our bodies, there are no vertical horizontal lines. So we don't need them. But of course, for modern living, we need to put sofa or bed or table. So yes, there are square rooms. I mean, I think when you enter Yoropark or also Mita Kaloft and Biosclete House, everything is so counter-intuitive. You're so conditioned to expect some pillar here or some element of furniture there, but nothing of that expected element is in their design. So that's my personal experience going there. Well, I agree. I mean, even just the lack of a flat floor becomes sort of incredibly startling and I think forces you, okay, who are winding down, but forces you to become more aware of stepping in your body. But I'm also curious how you feel, it's not just one body in a lot of these spaces. It's sort of bodies. And you mentioned even that their original kind of interest in architecture was in part because of its connection to social aspects. And so I'm wondering, I know many of those projects weren't realized, but sort of how this emphasis on one body and this kind of, you know, say awakening of the body or extra sensory perception, how does that add up into a kind of social organization? You know, what kind of communities were they envisioning and things like the Museum of Living Bodies, which seems totally fascinating. It's like taking some of these ideas, but it's a scale, you know, almost an urban scale at that point. Well, until some years ago, whenever we showed these images of Museum of Living Bodies or Reversible Disney Hotel, they just, people just loved about that. Architecture against the death nonsense. Right. How you can defy death. But I would like to mention one thing that I'm very interested. After the earthquake at Tsunami in Fukushima, I feel that the people's reaction had changed. Oh, interesting. Yes. For example, there was an architecture student who joined our architecture tour one day. And after the tour he said to me, I really would like to build this reversible Disney hotel in Fukushima because I'm from Fukushima. And I asked him why. And he said, well, as you may know, Fukushima is kind of abandoned area, untouchable because of what happened to the nuclear power plants. But he said, if we can build this reversible Disney hotel, I can imagine there will be many people coming and see the hotel and staying from all over the world. And it's really the project of reversing Fukushima's destiny. And I said to myself, wow, this is something, you know, we never had that kind of reaction, especially from young people. So I think people are now regarding the concept by Aragangins more seriously. And I still am insisting some cities to take this project. I like that. I think that's kind of, it's a nice note to end on that. Yeah, we're entering a new historical phase maybe in the life of their work and that there is going to be a new reaction. So, well, thank you guys both very much. Thank you very much.