IPP #0: Landscape (Kyoto, 2012)

What is Inverse Perspective Project #0: Landscape?

IPP #0 Landscape was an exhibition held at GALLERY FLEUR, Kyoto Seika University, Japan, 6th ~ 21st January 2012.

Here we refer to 'landscape' as something that has a broad meaning and can be identified with nature, the environment, the world, etc. It could even be argued that by knowing how people in a certain region of the world at a certain time viewed the landscape and intended to deal with it under given conditions provides us with a better understanding of their culture and its development. 

A series of events which have taken place since the mid-1990s has forced us as Japanese people to review and renew a way of thinking based on the imported modernist culture of the West, which is still firmly rooted in us in the present day. Nowadays, in an age when human civilization has reached maturity, we have come to think of these events as pointing to the limitations of an over-dependence on the stereotypical subject-object relationship between human beings and the landscape. IPP was conceived with these thoughts in mind. Subsequent to this, the Great Western Japan Earthquake of 11th March once again fully impressed on the Japanese our inability to ever escape from the 'landscape' in which we live.

The title of our project, 'Inverse Perspective', signals our attempt at reversing the subject-object relationship between human beings and the landscape, and implies our will to regain humility before it, admitting and accepting the fact that we can never escape from the landscape. Back in the remote origins of human history, the landscape itself must have been a subject of awe, something to be respected. Within the landscape, we are nothing but 'accidental sojourners'. Acknowledging this, we have tried to take a relative standpoint and view human beings from there, so as to once again locate and identify our sense of physicality and consciousness as accidental sojourners. We hope that this will lead us to the starting line from where we can set out on a journey to find new insights into the future lives of human beings.

Who participated in IPP #0 Landscape?

Ten professionals from a range of fields took part in IPP #0 Landscape. Please click on the links in the side bar for more on each person's contribution.

   Etsutomu Kashihara – fine art 

   Nagahiro Kinoshita – history of thought

   Keisuke Sugiura – haiku

   Hiroyuki Tsubomi – brain science studies

   Keita Hayashi – video art   

   Minoru Morikawa – installation art

   Masako Yasuki – painting  

   Nobuo Yamanaka – photography

   RAD – architecture

   Yo Hamada – comparative religion

IPP coordinators

   Keita Hayashi

   Masako Yasuki