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