Placeless
“Placeless” explores liminal spaces in Tokyo’s cityscape.
Liminality refers to a state of ambiguity, to the in-between. In spatial terms it can be applied to spaces of transit, the physical spaces between two places, like a passage or a hallway.
Many of these spaces can be found in Tokyo: trains, rivers, highways, underground passages. The city is in a state of constant movement and so is the cityscape. As Tokyo has been destroyed and rebuilt so many times and continues to change; the city seems to forever linger in the in-between.
The heart of the work is an audio-based augmented reality. Audio-recordings of both my own contemplations on this city, as well as fragments of stories from other authors, have been assigned to places in Tokyo’s Shitamachi. If you enter one of these areas, audio will start playing and add layers to the reality you see in front of your eyes.
As the augmented reality as a site-specific work, so is the installation.
Shown in a narrow hallway, the gaze is pulled upwards by images of Tokyo’s liminal spaces that are turned upside down and distorted by the angle of projection. Cables that run along the ceiling serve as a projection surface of a constantly moving flow of text that invites the viewer to consider the space from a different perspective both by its content and placement.
