YANOBE KENJI 1969-2005
05 CINEMA IN THE WOODS [2003-2005]
【Chapter 05】2003-2005 CINEMA IN THE WOODS
Yanobe invested his entire life as an artist to hold MEGALOMANIA at the site that was the starting point for his creations. This exhibit was a story of Kenji Yanobe as the protagonist, and it ended leaving behind a question for people about the future from the intersection of “Delusion” and “Reality”. At the end of this vast time trip that Yanobe conducted on the site of the former Osaka Expo, the site where the museum once stood again became “The Ruins of the Future”, as if it were the epicenter of a vast delusion. “Naniwa no Torayan” appeared on the site as if it had descended from the heavens.
“Naniwa no Torayan” appeared without warning at the MEGLOMANIA City. It was a mobile ventriloquist’s dummy that appeared wearing Mini Atom Suit. With this character of mystery that seemed to be a fusion of an adult and a child as the hero, Yanobe began to create his next stage for the world. The result was his production and exhibition of Cinema in the Woods. The curtain rose on a new tale that was Yanobe’s next challenge for the real world.
CINEMA IN THE WOODS
At the MEGALOMANIA City depicted by Yanobe, Mini Atom Suit looked up at New Deme and Standa. This resembled Yanobe, who played in “The Ruins of the Future” as a child. The suit stood still as if waiting for the person who would wear it, protected in complete safety in Queen Mamma. Mini Atom Suit was created for a three-year-old child, based on his own child and Bakudan, whom he met at Chernobyl. It was the culmination of Yanobe’s view of the world of vast delusion linked to the future, leading us there as if it were another entrance.
Staring MEGALOMANIA through the eyes of a child enabled one to sense Yanobe’s imagination and the energy that adults invested in the future, and which was contained at the former Expo site. Yanobe brought forth everything inside himself for the former Expo site that inspired him as a child. At that time, however, his expectations already were focused on the future potential of those children who experienced MEGALOMANIA.
“Naniwa no Torayan” (hereinafter referred to as “Torayan”) literally appeared before Yanobe; it was impossible to predict his very existence. It was originally the dummy in the ventriloquist’s routine Yanobe’s father began after he retired. It was called the Ken-chan dummy. His father could produce only a gravelly voice, however, so the dummy was remodeled with a thinning, comb-over hairstyle and a short moustache to produce a character that was a combination of a child and middle-aged man. It was dressed in the uniform of the Hanshin Tigers baseball team and wore one of the team’s bandannas, creating an unusual sight. The dummy was then renamed “Torayan”.
At his father’s insistence, MEGALOMANIA’s opening event was a ventriloquism performance that featured Torayan’s debut. At that time, its size was perfect for wearing Mini Atom Suit. (Torayan’s clothes also were the size of a three-year-old child.) Thus, with Mini Atom Suit, Torayan formed a strange triangle with Yanobe’s own child and Bakudan, the boy he had met in the red forests of Chernobyl.
That winter, Yanobe secretly reproduced his father’s original character in his private studio. He used it for the first time by incorporating it in Cinema in the Woods.
Cinema in the Woods was a movie theater for children built to resemble a mountain hut that Yanobe produced to protect his own child. The interior had a two-layered structure that was covered with thick steel, giving the theater the additional function of serving as a shelter. A peek through the window revealed a table and chair for children, a film screen (liquid crystal video monitor) with a curtain that resembled a theater, and a lot of candy. One Torayan that Yanobe had duplicated hid under the table in the middle of the theater, and another hid in a barrel on the roof. There was also a Dancing Torayan that wore a helmet and stood in front of the hut. It would sing and dance whenever it received radiation.
Yanobe became involved with film production to show films in the cinema. Titled “The World of Torayan”, this was an educational film for children in which Yanobe’s father (the grandfather role) used Torayan to teach children (the grandchildren role) ventriloquism techniques during the war. This story explained the existence of the amazing Torayan, whose figure was scattered throughout the cinema, as well as the role of the shelter.
Midway through the film the scene “Duck and Cover” appears as a cartoon interlude. Featuring the Torayan character, it was remake of a short film produced in 1950 by the U.S. Department of Defense for children teaching them how to protect themselves from nuclear weapons. Torayan is clad in Mini Atom Suit, and it is as if he has used time travel. This is evidence that the film still has a function despite the passage of 50 years. While the viewers laugh at the exchanges between Yanobe’s father and Torayan, “The World of Torayan” reveals the gravity of life during a war through the cartoon interlude. It is as if the child begins talking, indifferently in snatches though sporadically.
This was Yanobe’s first work after MEGALOMANIA. It represented a new challenge for the artist. Compared to his previous works, it does not feature Yanobe himself. Instead, there is a sense of discord in Cinema in the Woods in which Torayan appears as the main character. Nevertheless, Yanobe’s individual aesthetic sense and the strengths of the personal setting, function, and message the film contains are reinforced by further enveloping the film in a sense of reality. Yanobe’s weltanschauung, seen as an individual story that transcended his filters, began to function more directly with people on a sympathetic wavelength. That was clearly expressed at the Mori Art Museum and the Daigo Fukuryu Maru Exhibition Hall. The adults who saw “The World of Torayan” were forced to the realization that they and everyone else were the ones questioning the future that Yanobe presented to the real world.
Torayan as devised by Yanobe was a new performer that served as a medium between the world that Yanobe created and the real world. While assuming a bizarre pose from which time seemed to have been excised, it accurately measured the radiation and broadcast a warning to the future.
Torayan appeared before Yanobe, who had removed Atom Suit at the site of “The Ruins of the Future”. The structure of the drama that unfolded against the backdrop of Cinema in the Woods was the dissection of the artist himself and the discovery of Torayan’s potential. It was extremely interesting in the sense that the repetition of the mythological destruction and creation was spun out as a real story. “The World of Torayan” that Yanobe newly depicted for children grew to include many adults. Torayan is a trickster that sings the Polish folk tune, “Mori-e Ikimasho” with a lovable expression on his face. What reversals and surprises will he and Yanobe have in store for us? That story has just begun.
MAMMOTH PROJECT -MAMMOTH ROBOT 20TH CENTURY-
In the spring of 2004, the Chunichi Shimbun asked Yanobe to create an art project to be conducted during the Aichi Expo (The 2005 World Exposinon, Aichi, Japan). The Expo was due to start just one year later.
The theme of the first exposition of the 21st century is “Nature’s Wisdom”. The Expo has such an awareness of arguing environmental issues from a global perspective that it seemed as if it had assumed the burden of original sin. Public opinion toward the Expo at that time also tended to be extremely quiet. Yanobe was cautious about participating in the Expo at first, but he thought he could be a major factor in energizing the Expo itself. That was the role of the art project he had assigned himself, and he also believed that no one else was capable of fulfilling that mission.
Thirty five years ago, the Osaka Expo brought a tangible form to the belief in the future that everyone expected, and to the hopes of the people. From that time until the present, it was the element that had driven all of technology and culture. It goes without saying that for Yanobe, the Expo was the consummate romance a site for the experiment of the future, where one sensed immense dreams, and a site for exhibiting the coming age. This Expo was just about to be held before his very eyes. Just what would be the vision of the future that would be newly depicted now? Yanobe’s expectations swelled with his first participation in an Expo and he had a clear objective in mind.
At that time, the Aichi Expo was moving ahead with a project sponsored by the Yomiuri Shimbun for bringing a mammoth preserved in the frozen tundra of Siberia and exhibiting it as one of the primary attractions. This attracted attention as an exhibit that would rival the Moon Rock of the Osaka Expo, which fired the imagination of so many people.
Yanabe then conceived the 20th Century Mammoth Project. This mammoth was a huge, four-legged robot, 20 meters long and weighing 20 tons, that could walk driven by diesel power. The materials were the shards of the dream dropped by the Industrial Age, including iron shards. Belching black smoke, “The 20th Century Mammoth” would be displayed at the site of the Aichi Expo. It would then be lifted by a large helicopter and dance in the skies above the city of Nagoya like Dumbo and land again. Then, it would leave the city and walk towards the port.
This mammoth would feature a sharply pointed metal design with smooth, curvilinear beauty, and make a creaking sound every time it rubbed together. Leaving behind black soot and the smell of oil, “The 20th Century Mammoth” was to be placed on a large boat and head for Siberia and the frozen tundra where the excavated mammoth to be exhibited at the Aichi Expo had been preserved for 10,000 years. The plan was to bury “The 20th Century Mammoth” where it would be dug up 10,000 years in the future. In one sense, it would be a time capsule that emerged from the 20th century dreams of humankind that themselves had grown to mammoth proportions. Yanobe set out. to exhibit this in a symbolic manner in the 20th century with the energy that would use the latest developments of science and technology to make this tangible in the form of a giant, four-legged robot.
“The 20th Century Mammoth” concept came to a standstill, however, starting with the mammoth and the giant robot. There were also differences of opinion with the sponsors over their view of art as well as limited funds. Finally, he also was presented with reasons related to corporate interests. To continue, Yanobe conceived the G.-T.R.Y. (Giant Torayan) Project, a giant robot that would follow only those orders given by children. In the same way, the plan he presented to the Aichi Expo failed to gain the full understanding of the organizers, and the entire project failed to materialize.
Rather than being the symbol of the merits and demerits of humankind in science and technology, “The 20th Century Mammoth” might well have had an existence that balanced on the one hand, as a scrupulous depiction of the fear of the people who saw it with the evolution of consciousness that occurred within people by burying it. It directly touched the dangers inherent in the hypertrophied desires of humankind to build a new future. In that way, did not Yanobe hope to use the Expo as an opportunity and a site for the maturation of people as one species living on the planet? That summer, young people inspired by this project concept based on a huge delusion opened “The Mammoth Project Office (M.P.O.)”. They cooperated with robot researchers and assisted in the plan to scout Siberia for likely sites. They presented the results of their research at the Artzone in Kyoto. They billed the event as a commemoration of the opening of their office, and exhibited a diorama detailing the story and all the changes in the project, as well as a promotional video.
These young people had awakened from a fantasy, and deciphered this project by excavating it from the depths. They expressed the reality of human beings who open a path to the future while seeking a direction. Yanobe was stirred to action by their energy, set into motion by a reality that transcended speculation. He created a “The 20th Century Mammoth” sized for children and presented it to the public. The ongoing activities of the Mammoth Project Office continue to grow. This became a project more important than Yanobe’s City of Children Project, which it preceded.
THE CITY OF CHILDREN PROJECT
The project studio in an a皿ex of the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa, is a studio facility unusual for Japanese art museums, because the artist can stay there while he creates. Yanobe became an artist in residence for six months at the studio concurrent with its opening in October 2004. His principal subject became the City of Children Project. He would build the city for children, the hope for the future, leaving behind a city where children could thrive even if there were no adults. This was the birth of a gift to a magnificent future that adults made by working together. This durable yet attractive miniature town sized for children was a project not based solely on Yanobe’s world view; many other people also became involved. Cinema in the Woods was the spark for the City of Children Project. Yanobe said he wanted many people to think about children, who represented the potential of the future. The artist set this project in motion to further expand this idea. Upwards of 300 adults and children became involved in this project. They included many Kanazawa residents, such as city employees, nurses, and their family members, young artists, art school students, and “The Mammoth Project Office”. The Mammoth Project Office presented 2nd story, Mammoth Pavilion (with “The 20th Century Mammoth” in ice) as one pavilion in the city.
The group of pavilions began with Cinema in the Woods and then multiplied with the City of Children Rail ways, the City of Children Broadcasting Station, and the Children’s Disco, which finally were rushed out of the studio to the museum. In a flash, rails were laid around the site, and 21 pavilions completely encircled the museum
A magnificent opening was held for “City of Children -Prismatic Fortress-” at the end of March 2005. It became the story of how a studio in a museum annex took over the entire museum. It became either a children’s Expo unlike any seen before or the embodiment of everyone’s childhood dream.
The studio, named “The City of Children Project Laboratory”, was a tale woven m residence over six months in which the creators and the viewers became equals as performers. “The City of Children Project Laboratory” (Project Studio) was a free space in which anything could be created. It was large enough to be used as a site for live exhibitions showing the manufacture of articles and the progress of a project itself. It also had welders and power tools. Yanobe quickly enhanced the features of the studio after the Lab opened to display the site as he completely revealed himself. These features included the joy of making things, sculpting techniques, and the creation of concepts. He began work on Mini Tanking Machine under the recreated Sun, surrounded by Marking Dog, which hoisted the flag of “City of Children”, Cinema in the Woods, Micky Mask, as well as Standa, which was in the process of being built. Tankingu Machine stood in the interior as if watching protectively over the scene.
Yanobe’s neighbors were the several groups working on the production of the Children’s Disco. They set to work, swapping ideas and techniques, and gained the cooperation of many Kanazawa residents. The scenes inside the Lab changed rapidly as a competition broke out to build the pavilions. Survival Gachapon was revived as “City of Children GACHA-PON” for children. A television tower and original programs were created for The City of Children Broadcasting Station. Yanobe countered the appearance of citizens who brought in a mini railway they built themselves, which already a reputation in the community, with a lead car named Torayan Head Train. A rainbow-colored station was built as the departure point for the mini train. There also was a small art museum that promoted communication through hands-on experience, the car created from an entirely different perspective, and the city hall. The town became hypertrophied through the creation of pavilions with the many different functions required for children to survive in the future. At the same time, Yanobe launched “Zawart”, a friendship society for the museum, and The Next Door Dinner Project. He visited the homes of Kanazawa residents to gather information on local life as he shared in their meals.
The Torayan Festival was held as an event at the museum while the pavilions were being created at a dizzying pace. Yanobe held these festivals once a month, as well as workshops for children. New characters were created for “City of Children” with each event, and additions were made to the pavilions. Every day, the site echoed with the sound of metal being worked to create new objects, as if it were part of a performance. Debates were conducted as if they were being sung This production environment spurred the incentive for creation in everyone and overwhelmed visitors. When a new staff member arrived, another staff member opened the door to reveal Kenji Yanobe and Torayan.
The symbol of the fusion of adult and child, Torayan became the symbolic character of “City of Children”. It was mass-produced by many people, turned into an artwork, and a narration was created around him. This included a cartoon feature, character goods, a theme song, the Torayan Band, and “Toravy (Travision)”, a stuffed toy. It stimulated the creativity of many different people, and “The World of Torayan” visibly grew and multiplied. Its existence was an enigma, and it became popular. The trickster with great potential and expectations continued to proudly wear Mini Atom Suit.
The 21st pavilion Yanobe built was Giant Torayan (G.-T.R.Y), a monument symbolizing “City of Children”. Yanobe marked off a border around it when he began its construction, changing the atmosphere inside the Lab. To build it, he mobilized the entire staff, which had honed its skills over a long period of time. He devoted his abilities to the Giant Torayan to make it celestial, rivet attention, and jolt the people who saw it. Either that, or it would change them into different people altogether.
“Didn’t the participation of so many adults in this project provide them, at a minimum, with the opportunity to think about the future? If the worst conditions resulted because most adults were satisfied with the present-day world, wouldn’t the world change in a positive direction because even a few more people thought about the next generation?”
Yanobe’s approach was consistent from beginning to end, starting with the stage of conceiving The City of Children Project. Yanobe’s intention was to create a city of the future for children with all the adults working together that would become an educational program for adults to think about the future.
The artist explained, “We live in an age today when it is extremely difficult to create an image of the future. We are struggling every day to discover that image.” During his childhood, Yanobe had played at the Osaka Expo site, which became the starting point for his creativity. He by no means had forgotten that the many adults who had clearly shown him a vision of the future were the backdrop for his creativity. He believes that now, he should be an adult that clearly shows the same to today’s children, and that is his message. He had many opportunities to interact with children, through the Museum Cruises and invitations to local primary schools. His belief and message grew as a result. Once a fantasy, the G.T.R.Y. Project became a reality with the help of many adults.
Giant Torayan was a huge robot that reached 7.2 meters in length. It would follow only those order given by children. It sang, danced, and belched fire, making it the ultimate weapon in a child’s dream. After it was completed, it had been placed in a sitting position. But this dream giant began to move with children’s prayers. Many children called out “Torayaaaan ! “, and spirit and energy were invested in the giant, who opened its eyes with the many incantations. “City of Children -Prismatic Fortress-” had a spectacular opening with the unveiling of this giant symbolic monument and a parade by a band of drummers and flautists.
The many staff members who had participated in this project were adults who had built “City of Children”. They were also the adults who could be the closest to the project. In one sense, they were a fortunate generation. They presented a phenomenon rarely witnessed in history to society as a reality, and they bore a heavy responsibility as the people who were the link to this reality.
Yanobe had sought pavilions that were works imbued with the individual ideas of the creators, and planned for “City of Children” concept to be created by the multitude of independent pavilions. Ultimately, however, he did not want these people to be merely the pavilions’ builders. He wanted them to be visitors with a critical or analytical eye who were the witnesses of the age.
On the evening of the final day of “City of Children” the 21 pavilions that had surrounded the museum were again assembled at the front of the Lab. The creators, the visitors, and Yanobe all stared as viewers at a large white screen hung in the Lab. The video shown on that screen was “The World of Torayan”, a new film featuring them all as performers over a six-month period. With Giant Torayan, who sang and danced, the entire museum had become one immense work, Cinema in the Woods. They were enveloped in the shocking reality of Yanobe’s world.
The City of Children Project had developed from its original conception as a link. Cinema in the Woods, the inspiration for the project, was a father’s drama presented to children. The project had grown by drawing in the involvement of many people. It is no exaggeration to say that it was a drama by adults given to the future. Everyone directly confronted this immense symbol, together with this drama that had been put together at the studio. The deep universal love for the future that had become the energy for building the city of the future was newly woven by the hands of these participants. This might have been the form of “City of Children” that Yanobe tried to realistically depict.
The flame belched out by Giant Torayan at the conclusion of this appearance of “City of Children” was not directed to the children at all. But Giant Torayan, who entrusted the aesthetic judgement of the future of this world to the children, might be the symbol of despair, desire, and hope of the world that repeatedly alternated between destruction and creation. The trickster Torayan who had descended before Yanobe at “The Ruins of the Future” was both a character who was a savior broadcasting a warning to the future, and, on the other hand, a figure who could become a demonic presence that could destroy everything with flame. The magnificent gift of “City of Children” that had appeared as a giant symbol may have again applied pressure on the children who would be responsible for the future. What message would massive Torayan buried in this huge chest convey to children?
This six-month drama that took place at the museum was extremely moving in that sense that it viewed the one reality of the building of the city of the future from innumerable perspectives. By chance, the Prismatic Fortress was created in the middle of the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa, by the recreation of the SUN, the key to “City of Children”. The site could not be controlled from the museum annex, despite being on the museum grounds. It was even more difficult to control from outside the museum, or should we say, by the visitors. The Museum Hijacking Project was created within this boundary, however, and the project developed as if it would swallow up the entire structure. It may well have been the most revolutionary installation in contemporary art.
In the words of Ponteus Furuten, the first curator of the Pompidou Center, hailed as “an open museum”, and the current curator of the Moderna Museet (Museum of Modern Art) in Stockholm, “An open museum” is not an anti-museum. It is a site where contact between the artist and the public naturally occurs by exhibiting the most modern and creative elements. A museum of this sort is not only a site for preserving works of art that have lost the individual, societal, religious, and public functions. It is a site where the artist and the public can meet and where the public itself becomes the creator. (Twenty Years for Information and Culture: the Pompidou Center, Yasuto Ota, 2000, “The Transformation of a Museum: The Museum of Modern Art in the 20th Century”)
There is a legend that a treasure is buried at the end of the rainbow. They say that no one will know what that treasure is because no one can go to the end of the rainbow. Luckily, the appearance of “City of Children” meant that the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa, became the end of the rainbow. At the same time, it could be said that “an open museum” opened in a true sense with the creation of this structure.
“City of Children” was a magnificent gift to the future with a transient beauty. It was a parting gift carved out from Yanobe’s body of work that would lead to rebirth. The number of visitors to this city reached 40,000, and both the adults and children believed they would find something to enjoy and to learn by going there. What did the children visiting the site find, encounter, and experience? While believing it was the potential of the future, adults will continue to imagine and create the city of the future.
