Useful Days

This project is an installation that uses Kawasaki city museum’s rather dated display of its permanent collection. The exhibition space is divided into five historical periods: “primitive age”; “ancient times”; “medieval age”; “early modern”; and “present age”.

Firstly, I held a workshop in which the participants build a machine using everyday items. Secondly, I shot a video of the participants introducing the purpose of the machine. Thirdly, through discussions with the museum curators, I defines the interpretations of the machine for each period. Finally, I created videos based on the supposition that “how would the machine be interpreted if it existed in different periods in history?”.

The purpose of this work is to bring out the diversity of relationship between a thing and its meaning. Using the machine that was built by public collaborators in a workshop, I created a series of videos based on the interpretations, using the architectures and the display of the museum. The videos correspond to each period of the museum display. By proposing multiple meanings to the machine, I attempt to expose the arbitrariness in the relationship between a thing and its meaning.

この作品は川崎市市民ミュージアムのいささか時代遅れな展示を利用している。 展示空間は各時代ごとに「原始」「古代」「中世」「近世」「近代」と５つに分かれている。 そこで私は博物館として不完全な展示を「もしある機械がそれぞれの時代にあったらどのように解釈されるか」 というテーマに基づいて映像をつくることで再構築しようとした。