2017年にトーキョーアーツアンドスペースで行われ、その後2018年に沖縄に巡回した展覧会「不純物と免疫」（展覧会ホームページ）。改めてこの展覧会についてお話したいと考えました。この展覧会では、作品が引用するさまざまな歴史が絡み合っています。しかしその複雑さゆえに、この展覧会が扱おうとした問題にアクセスできた人が少ないように感じたんです。本展のキュレーターである長谷川さんと対談をする中で、展覧会の主題と深く結びついた構造を紐解いていきたいと考えています。
まず土木、エネルギー、日本近代史、作者の移動や、場所、物質など要素が展覧会の随所にみることができます。そしてこれらは一点に焦点を結ぶのではなく、絡まりをなしている。その上でお聞きしたいのですが、そもそもあるテーマを用意しそれに関連する作家を選ぶ、という多くの美術館で行われているようなキュレーションの方法「ではない」方法で展覧会が組み立てられていますね。
長谷川新(H):
もちろん展覧会を完遂させることにはそれだけで高度な専門性が求められますが、そもそもの公共性の発現の仕方を軸として、展覧会システムの設計、再配置、批判的検討をするのが自らが制度でもあるインディペンデントキュレーターに求められた役割だと考えています。
昨今の国際展はそれが行われる場であって、大きな国際展の作り方のひとつとして大テーマを決めてそこからサブテーマを設定し、さらに作家を配置していくという方法がありますね。中央の大テーマを中心にしたツリー構造によって構成されている。それに対して、前回のドクメンタがわかりやすい例ですが、近年のマニフェスタやイスタンブールビエンナーレ、リバプールビエンナーレ、ベルリンビエンナーレなどにツリー構造への批判意識、いかにこうした構造を使わず展覧会を組織するかというキュラトリアルな問題意識を見ることができます。
アダム・シムジックがキュレーションをした『ドクメンタ14』では、小テーマのある作家と、別の小テーマのある作家の文脈が接続するように設計が行われている。あるいは全体中で偏った位置に重要なモチーフが置かれるようにできている。このように単に作品を並べてみせるだけでなく、制度設計の書き換え自体が行われ、その設計がひとつの思想を提示するものになっています。制度設計を書き換えること、それは公共のあり方のアップデートを意味するからです。
I:
制度設計の書き換えは、それ自体が展覧会の主題と結びついているということですよね。ではそのような探求の中で「不純物と免疫」はどのように作られているのか。迎英里子が扱う原子力、佐々木健が作品で扱う有毒な絵の具であるシルバーホワイト、あるいは百頭たけしが撮影する郊外にある建築資材や不法投棄物。複数の時間／場所を「強い物性」が貫くことによって作られた展覧会だと感じました。またそれを支えるように、第二次世界大戦中にウランの研究をしていた理学者、飯盛里安がウランの採掘を進めた石川町についてカタログの論考1本（長谷川新『民主主義と石』）が割かれ、特別な役割が与えられています。
H:
飯盛の実践はこの展覧会におけるひとつの起点になっています。第二次世界大戦中、日本軍が極秘に進めていた原子力爆弾を開発するため、飯盛はウランの研究をしていました。この研究は失敗に終わるのですが、その採掘を行っていたのが、福島県石川町にある採掘場です。この土地は東北で自由民権運動が生まれた土地でもあるのです。展覧会の準備の中で出展作家のうち何人かと、実際に石川町にある採掘場に足を運びました。
また、この展覧会は美術史的な動向であるランドアートについてのリサーチが発端になっています。ランドアートはアースワークとも呼ばれていますが、アースワークというのは「土木」を意味する言葉でもあります。東日本大震災が引き起こした福島第一原子力発電所事故。「ポスト福島」と呼ばれる現在の状況と向き合うために、人間が地球にある物質とどのように関わってきたのかという歴史と、作品制作の問題を重ね合わせることができるのではないかと考えたのです。第二次世界大戦の中飯盛が福島で研究したウランと、2011年に起き、そしてすでに私たちが生きている間に解決することはないと確定している福島第一原発事故を引き起こしたウラン、両者は同じものなのです。
私がこの展覧会を組み立てる上で考えているのは複数の時間の並走、絡み合いです。私は「美術史」と「歴史」を主従なく同時に扱うということを基本に据えたいのです。
I:
展覧会が前提にしている歴史観はフーコー的なモデルですね。同じ「狂気」という言葉がある時代と別の時代で異なる分布をし、別なる意味を持つことについて論じた、フーコーが「地層」と呼ぶ歴史観がこの展覧会には根づいています。
H:
生物学者であり哲学者でもあったヤーコプ・フォン・ユクスキュルが『生物から見た世界』の中で論じた「環世界」概念も念頭にありました。ダニは熱と触覚だけを感じることができる。木に登ったダニは、下に動物が通過したことを熱により察知し、枝から落ち、動物の皮膚を感じたときに反射的に針を伸ばし、血を吸う。そしてもし地面を感じれば、再び木に登るという単純な仕組みだけで生命を維持することができる。ユクスキュルが論じるには、このようにダニは人間とは全く異なった知覚、異なった世界で生きている。しかし、それと同時にそれぞれの動物が同じ世界をそれぞれ別のやりかたで知覚しているが、それらの知覚が同じ物理基盤の上に成り立っていることもまた指摘しなければなりません。
フーコー的な歴史観と「環世界」概念の接合。近代(モダン)と現代(コンテンポラリー)が連続したものであると同時に、並置され移動可能なものとして私には思えてなりません。私は村上春樹の『ねじまき鳥クロニクル』に強く影響を受けているのですが、この著作もまたこのような歴史観によって書かれた書物です。飯盛が見たウランと現代から見たウランが重なり合う。北海道の熊部隊が作ったテニアン島の飛行場、そこから飛び立ち広島へ向かうB29、リバードが見たニューメキシコの砂利採取場、そこで現在行われているウラン採取、世界初の原爆実験である「トリニティ実験」、これらは時間も空間も異なる事象であると同時に、相互に結びついています。それらを束ねる物質があります。両者は環世界においては別のものとして見えているが、物質レベルでは同一のものである。そうしたアイデアからこの展覧会は構想されました。
I:
事前に「ポスト福島」がひとつのテーマだと聞いていたのですが、これは非常に手に負えない物理現象であり、だからこそエネルギーや価値、複雑な社会問題を生み出す「放射能」を扱う展覧会です。その扱いにくさや危険さそのものがキュレーションになっている。それが「放射能」という政治的な表象不可能な問題に対しての応答になっている。
それについて最大限に肯定した上でこの批判をしたいのですが、展覧会タイトルとそれに付随するステイトメントがこれらの問題を捉え損ねているのではないかと感じました。そのせいで、展覧会を見た人で展覧会が扱う問題にアクセスできた人が非常に少なくなってしまったのではないかと思うのです。「不純物と免疫」にはタイトルを説明するそれ自体非常に意義深いステイトメントが与えられているのですが、そこでは不純物とそれに対する免疫作用を社会的な運動になぞらえています。
しかし改めて「強い物性」とは何なのだろうかということを考えれば、それは免疫や解毒のような、打ち消しの作用が通用しないということが重要なのではないかと思うのです。放射能には免疫は働かず、それを浴びた人は細胞を遺伝子レベルで破壊されてしまう。シルバーホワイトや鯨油も、海に流れ出したらそれを弱める手段はなく、汚染され続けてしまう。そのような対処のしようのない物質の持つ危険さ、しかしだからこそ人間社会において価値を持つことこの展覧会の鋭さを、ある種手なずけやすい鈍い問題へと回収してしまっているように見えたんです。
H:
展覧会から半年が経ってからこういう話ができるのは嬉しいです。本当にありがとう。
Impurity Courses Through the Strata of History:
A Brief Conversation and Diagram of "Impurity / Immunity"
Iioka Riku(I):
Today, we will talk about "Impurity / Immunity" （http://impurityimmunity.jp/）, held at Tokyo Arts and Space in 2017 and traveled to Okinawa in 2018. This show fascinated me with the various artworks' historical references entangling each other. However, I felt only a few people could access the main point because of its complexity. Therefore, in this conversation with Hasegawa Arata, a curator of the show, I would like to elucidate the exhibition structure associated with the subject issue.
At first, visitors could find elements of civil engineering, energy, modern Japanese history, place, material, and mobility of the artists throughout the show. These elements don't assemble toward a place but rather are intertwined. On that basis, I would like to ask you, this exhibition was not organized in a curatorial way that establishes a single theme and selects artists related to that as many museums do, was it?
Hasegawa Arata(H):
Even though a high level of expertise is needed to complete an exhibition generally, I believe the role of an independent curator is to design, reorganize, and critically examine the exhibition system to explore how to embody publicness. This is because being an independent curator itself is also institutional.
One of the ways to organize a large-scale international exhibition is to decide on the big theme, establish subthemes from there, and then arrange artists accordingly. It constructs a tree structure centered on the big one. On the other hand, you can see a critical concern regarding the tree structure and a curatorial attitude and how to organize exhibitions avoiding that. Documenta 14 (2017) is an explicit example, and also the recent Manifesta, Istanbul Biennial, Liverpool Biennial, and Berlin Biennial.
Documenta 14, curated by Adam Szymczyk, was designed to connect one artist in a subtheme to another context in a different subtheme. Besides, key motifs were placed in minor positions throughout the exhibition. These ways are not merely displaying the works but reorganizing the institutional plan, which shows a thought. The reason is reconsidering the institutional design means updating the concept of the public.
I:
You mean reorganizing the institutional plan is linked to the exhibition's subject. Then, as an extension of these explorations, how is "Impurity / Immunity" organized? Mukai Eriko deals with nuclear energy, Sasaki Ken uses silver-white, toxic paint in his paintings, and Hyakuto Takeshi photographs building materials and illegal dumps in the suburbs. I felt the exhibition was arranged by the "intensity of substance," penetrating multiple times and places. To support this, the whole of an essay ("Stones and Democracy" by Hasegawa Arata) in the catalog focuses on a small town Ishikawa in Fukushima, where Iimori Satoyasu, a scientist who studied uranium during World War II and promoted uranium mining in there, given a unique role in the exhibition.
H:
Yes, Iimori's practice is one of the starting points for this project. During World War II, he was conducting a study on uranium to develop a nuclear bomb, which was secretly promoted by the Japanese military. Although this development failed, Ishikawa, with the mining site for uranium, is also the cradle of the Tohoku region's Liberty and Civil Rights Movement. I visited the mining site with some participating artists during the preparation period.
The project was also inspired by research about "land art," a historical art genre, also known as "earthworks"; it also means "civil engineering." The great East Japan Earthquake causes Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster. In response to the current situation called "post-Fukushima," I thought it would be possible to overlap the history of how humans have interacted with substances on the earth with the issue of artwork production. The uranium that Iimori studied in Fukushima during World War II and the uranium that caused the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster in 2011, which we already know will not be resolved in our lifetime. Both are the same, ultimately.
What I have in mind in assembling this exhibition is the juxtaposition and intertwining of multiple periods. I want to treat "art history" and "history" simultaneously without subordinate–superior relationships.
I:
The idea of history that the exhibition assumes appears like Foucault's model. The show may be rooted in the concept of history Foucault called the "Strata," which discusses how the same word "madness" is distributed differently and has a different meaning in one period and another.
H:
I have also inspired the concept of the "Umwelt" discussed by the biologist and philosopher Jacob von Uexküll in "A stroll through the worlds of animals and men." A tick can feel only heat and touch. A tick climbing a tree senses by heat that an animal has passed below, therefore falls from the branch, and when it percepts the animal's skin, it extends its stinger and sucks blood. And if it is the ground, climb back up the tree. Namely, this simple mechanism can sustain life. Thus, Uexküll argues that ticks perceive and live in a completely different world than humans. But on the other hand, we should point out that each animal perceives the same world differently but that these perceptions are based on the same physical foundation.
The junction of Foucault's view of history and the concept of "Umwelt." Modernity and contemporary are continuous, but it seems like they can be juxtaposed, and we can course between both. I am strongly influenced by Murakami Haruki's Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, a book from a similarly historical perspective. The uranium, as seen by Iimori, and the uranium, as seen from the present day, overlap. The airfield on Tinian Island was built by the Hokkaido Bear troop, the B-29 Superfortress flying from there to Hiroshima. The gravel pit in New Mexico seen by Liburd, the uranium mining taking place there now, and the Trinity test, the world's first nuclear weapons testing: They are different events in time and space but interconnected. Substances bind them together. They appear to be different in "Umwelt," but on the substance level, they are the same. This exhibition was conceived from the idea.
I:
I heard you were facing "post-Fukushima" in this show beforehand. Then, the completed exhibition deals with radioactivity, a highly intractable atomic phenomenon, creating enormous energy, value, and complex social trouble. Its unwieldiness and hazardousness are curated, responding to the political scientistic issue, the unrepresentable radioactivity.
After evaluating these practices maximally, I would like to make the following critique. "Impurity / Immunity" has a significant statement, likening impurities and immunity to social movements. They seemed to fail to capture these points. I guess this is why only a few people could capture the essence of the exhibition.
Once again, considering what the intensity of substance is, I think it is important to note that countervailing actions, such as immunity and detoxification, do not work. Immunity does not work for radioactivity, and people exposed to it have their cells destroyed at the genetic level. Silver white and whale oil also have no way to weaken it once it flows out into the ocean and will continue to pollute.
H:
I am glad to have a discussion about the show six months after that. Thank you so much.
A Brief Conversation and Diagram of "Impurity / Immunity"
Today, we will talk about "Impurity / Immunity" （http://impurityimmunity.jp/）, held at Tokyo Arts and Space in 2017 and traveled to Okinawa in 2018. This show fascinated me with the various artworks' historical references entangling each other. However, I felt only a few people could access the main point because of its complexity. Therefore, in this conversation with Hasegawa Arata, a curator of the show, I would like to elucidate the exhibition structure associated with the subject issue.
At first, visitors could find elements of civil engineering, energy, modern Japanese history, place, material, and mobility of the artists throughout the show. These elements don't assemble toward a place but rather are intertwined. On that basis, I would like to ask you, this exhibition was not organized in a curatorial way that establishes a single theme and selects artists related to that as many museums do, was it?
Hasegawa Arata(H):
Even though a high level of expertise is needed to complete an exhibition generally, I believe the role of an independent curator is to design, reorganize, and critically examine the exhibition system to explore how to embody publicness. This is because being an independent curator itself is also institutional.
One of the ways to organize a large-scale international exhibition is to decide on the big theme, establish subthemes from there, and then arrange artists accordingly. It constructs a tree structure centered on the big one. On the other hand, you can see a critical concern regarding the tree structure and a curatorial attitude and how to organize exhibitions avoiding that. Documenta 14 (2017) is an explicit example, and also the recent Manifesta, Istanbul Biennial, Liverpool Biennial, and Berlin Biennial.
Documenta 14, curated by Adam Szymczyk, was designed to connect one artist in a subtheme to another context in a different subtheme. Besides, key motifs were placed in minor positions throughout the exhibition. These ways are not merely displaying the works but reorganizing the institutional plan, which shows a thought. The reason is reconsidering the institutional design means updating the concept of the public.
I:
You mean reorganizing the institutional plan is linked to the exhibition's subject. Then, as an extension of these explorations, how is "Impurity / Immunity" organized? Mukai Eriko deals with nuclear energy, Sasaki Ken uses silver-white, toxic paint in his paintings, and Hyakuto Takeshi photographs building materials and illegal dumps in the suburbs. I felt the exhibition was arranged by the "intensity of substance," penetrating multiple times and places. To support this, the whole of an essay ("Stones and Democracy" by Hasegawa Arata) in the catalog focuses on a small town Ishikawa in Fukushima, where Iimori Satoyasu, a scientist who studied uranium during World War II and promoted uranium mining in there, given a unique role in the exhibition.
H:
Yes, Iimori's practice is one of the starting points for this project. During World War II, he was conducting a study on uranium to develop a nuclear bomb, which was secretly promoted by the Japanese military. Although this development failed, Ishikawa, with the mining site for uranium, is also the cradle of the Tohoku region's Liberty and Civil Rights Movement. I visited the mining site with some participating artists during the preparation period.
The project was also inspired by research about "land art," a historical art genre, also known as "earthworks"; it also means "civil engineering." The great East Japan Earthquake causes Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster. In response to the current situation called "post-Fukushima," I thought it would be possible to overlap the history of how humans have interacted with substances on the earth with the issue of artwork production. The uranium that Iimori studied in Fukushima during World War II and the uranium that caused the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster in 2011, which we already know will not be resolved in our lifetime. Both are the same, ultimately.
What I have in mind in assembling this exhibition is the juxtaposition and intertwining of multiple periods. I want to treat "art history" and "history" simultaneously without subordinate–superior relationships.
I:
The idea of history that the exhibition assumes appears like Foucault's model. The show may be rooted in the concept of history Foucault called the "Strata," which discusses how the same word "madness" is distributed differently and has a different meaning in one period and another.
H:
I have also inspired the concept of the "Umwelt" discussed by the biologist and philosopher Jacob von Uexküll in "A stroll through the worlds of animals and men." A tick can feel only heat and touch. A tick climbing a tree senses by heat that an animal has passed below, therefore falls from the branch, and when it percepts the animal's skin, it extends its stinger and sucks blood. And if it is the ground, climb back up the tree. Namely, this simple mechanism can sustain life. Thus, Uexküll argues that ticks perceive and live in a completely different world than humans. But on the other hand, we should point out that each animal perceives the same world differently but that these perceptions are based on the same physical foundation.
The junction of Foucault's view of history and the concept of "Umwelt." Modernity and contemporary are continuous, but it seems like they can be juxtaposed, and we can course between both. I am strongly influenced by Murakami Haruki's Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, a book from a similarly historical perspective. The uranium, as seen by Iimori, and the uranium, as seen from the present day, overlap. The airfield on Tinian Island was built by the Hokkaido Bear troop, the B-29 Superfortress flying from there to Hiroshima. The gravel pit in New Mexico seen by Liburd, the uranium mining taking place there now, and the Trinity test, the world's first nuclear weapons testing: They are different events in time and space but interconnected. Substances bind them together. They appear to be different in "Umwelt," but on the substance level, they are the same. This exhibition was conceived from the idea.
I:
I heard you were facing "post-Fukushima" in this show beforehand. Then, the completed exhibition deals with radioactivity, a highly intractable atomic phenomenon, creating enormous energy, value, and complex social trouble. Its unwieldiness and hazardousness are curated, responding to the political scientistic issue, the unrepresentable radioactivity.
After evaluating these practices maximally, I would like to make the following critique. "Impurity / Immunity" has a significant statement, likening impurities and immunity to social movements. They seemed to fail to capture these points. I guess this is why only a few people could capture the essence of the exhibition.
Once again, considering what the intensity of substance is, I think it is important to note that countervailing actions, such as immunity and detoxification, do not work. Immunity does not work for radioactivity, and people exposed to it have their cells destroyed at the genetic level. Silver white and whale oil also have no way to weaken it once it flows out into the ocean and will continue to pollute.
H:
I am glad to have a discussion about the show six months after that. Thank you so much.