The Art of Creating with Other Species

hi

i’m akinawater a contemporary artist

based in tokyo

at first i’d like to show you around my

work

car car girl do you know bhagwan

bhagwan is typo moss a common insect in

japan

bagwams usually make practical cases

from wheels and branches

and these become their own shelters when

i gave

them some pieces of women’s clothing

they made these cages using the clothes

the program skillfully connects separate

clothes with

thread they spit out their mouth

i called this my work but actually

these quantifications were not made by

me

creators here are the backgrounds

i was really surprised to see these

amazing cases

it was more beautiful than i had

expected

as you can see it is often not i

who is creating the work i’m

collaborating with

non-human animals today

i’d like to show you some of my works

it will show you how i created a bridge

between

human beings and other species

this is my longest series why not hand

over shelter to handcrafts

hermit crabs change their shares as they

grow

sometimes they are kicked out of their

children by stronger harmed crowds and

foster exchange shares

transparent shares that i made them

represent cities from around the world

such as new york city berlin guayaquil

and tokyo my journey started

in 2009 when i participated in

an exhibition called no man’s land at

french embassy in tokyo

the exhibition was held before the

destruction of the embassy

as an event to mark the demolition

i was surprised at the fact that the

land on which the french embassy was

located

belonged not to japan but france

the territory was returned to japan for

its demolition

in 2009 however i heard that

france is going to reclaim this surgery

in 60 years

i was intrigued by this story and this

became my inspiration for

why not hand over shelter to hermit

crabs

i associated this story with the way

that

hermit crabs exchange shelters harmed

clubs move from shelter to shelter

and they change their appearance

drastically

to me this dissembled how humans move

from shitty to city

crossing borders and even sometimes

changing nationalities

for hermit crabs the shell is not a part

of their own body

the shelters are interchangeable however

when reaching hermit crabs we identify

them

with the shells for example

i call one of the hermit crabs green

in japanese because its cell was green

there is a difference between how the

hermit crabs

barrier the shells and how we perceive

the shares

we also have a gap between the

perception from

others and how we perceive ourselves

in my initial attempt i made spherical

shapes

like ping pong balls this building on

top

however when i placed them in front of

the hermit crabs

the shells were not accepted by hermit

crabs

every morning i found the shells that i

made

discarded in the hermit crabs drinking

fountain

so i started using a shitty scanner to

study the shape with sea shells

and duplicate interior structure

i added interrogate sheet escapes on top

with ct scan share data and then

created shells using a 3d printer

by doing so i was finally able to create

a shell

called hermit crabs to move into

the reason why my shelters look like

this

is largely due to the dialogue i shared

with the hermit crabs

this design combines organic shape of

the shell

and an artificial design by adding

landscapes

i developed this method through a trial

and error process

in which i work together with harmed

clouds

there are many hardships in making

shelters

or humming clubs i experienced

many unintended consequences and

accidents

in my practice with other species

in the work of how to cup a sculpture

i set up wooden square poles and let the

beavers glow on them

the beavers created a variety of shapes

some mountain shaped

some bad like others reminiscent of

human body

some looked like the sculptures of

constantine bronchus

i do not know whether these shapes are

dependent

on the structure of the tree whether

they are the result of the peoples

carving only the soft parts of the tree

or whether they are due to the beaver’s

sense of beauty

of course the beavers have not been

observing and copying

human beings but their work looked as if

they were we cannot help but feel

the creativity in them in this project

i mean the republicans of the work that

the peoples had created

but raja since humans weigh

about three times as beavers i decided

to make replicas

that were three times the original size

this next artwork is named i wear the

dog’s hair

and dogs wears my hair and that is

exactly what i did

i made a cape for myself using my dog’s

hair and

a cape for my dog using my own hair

dogs and humans are two species

that have all evolved if there are no

humans

those stevie wolves and if there were no

dogs

humans could not have developed their

civilization like it is today

humans and dogs are irreplaceable to

another i wanted to conduct a

one-on-one exchange of our body parts

each of us representing our own species

through this process i wanted we

consider the human-centered relationship

between

pets and human beings

the coats made out of each other’s hair

kept us

both warm the dog gero was very excited

when i was cold made out of his hair

probably because he could smell himself

in the cold

he was sniffing me again and again

through this project i felt our intimacy

growing

however ironically i became

allergic to dogs it seems like i

inherit my dog’s hair too much

in the process of feeling large amount

of the dog’s hair

in the way that the body may reject an

organ plant the body of another

was also a foreign object to me

i found that while the body of another

could at times be accepted it was also

subject to court rejection

i went to study french for half here

taking a packet with me and made this

video

his name is wasabi

he can speak japanese a little such as

konnichiwa

and jodai i took him my french lesson

he went to sleep as soon as the lesson

started

i even considered giving up on this

project

however he started to want to join us

and he gradually started to participate

in our classes

and learned to say

this phrase seemed to have a similar

meaning to

what cho dai it means give me something

to eat

in japanese which he was originally able

to say

in addition he began to say wasabi

after six months he began to say wasabi

a parakeet was invited to the french

lesson by me

he brought the line between french and

japanese

and created a new language that feels

too this was completely unexpected to me

i came to realize that there are as many

as languages

as there are individuals language

cannot just be categorized into japanese

french

native and foreign we all

speak our own language that is unique to

each of us

so let me ask a question do you have a

roommate

my roommate was an octopus she joined me

to create my next artwork

one day i learned that an ammonite and

an octopus have the same roots the

octopus

originally had a shell but the shell was

discarded in the process of

evolution and ammonite disappeared

66 million years ago i got an

idea that arrows are glad octopus and

ammonites

to meet beyond space and time how do

octopuses feel

when they regain their phantom move i’m

not sure

if they have any memory of the ancient

ancestors

however i believe that i created

an unexpected accident for octopus

to reacquaint herself with ammunition

when i introduced an ammonite shell to

an octopus

she slept in the ammonite shell every

night

when i took the shell away in order to

clean it

she resisted by spraying shea water

i think she really liked the ammonite

shell

i had restored so

as you have seen i create works with

other

species every process

create a new relationship between me a

human beings

and another species it helped me

shift the default relationship to

something new

looking at animals i realized that

the act of creating is not exclusive to

mankind

originally humans were a different

species

and humans have the potential to become

a different

kind of creatures contemporary art

is around quite canvas we can challenge

experiment and create thoughts that

cannot be categorized

in the existing field of study

or it might be a place to question

the current categorical understanding of

reality

also contemporary art for me is a place

of actual practice which demands a

hands-on approach

through my art i would like to explore

co-instances and hidden possibilities in

the world

interacting with living creatures often

bring me

unexpected events my work

and i are constantly transformed by

engaging

with other species therefore

the most important thing in my art

practice

is not the force control over other

creatures

but to allow them to affect me through

our co-existence

opening your mind to learning from other

species or otherness

can allow your perspectives and values

to transform

and that for me is most exciting

experience

there is

you