Site
The site of Shima is the Shigemori Residence, Kyoto, a
traditional town house dating from the middle Edo period (1789) with an
adjoining garden and tea ceremony pavilion. Both garden and pavilion were
conceived by Mirei Shigemori, seminal 20th century Japanese garden architect
and theorist, who acquired the house for his family in 1943 from the local
Shinto order.
The main garden is composed of four rock configurations
symbolising the Elysian islands Hojo, Eiju, Horai and Koryo, which are
placed on raked sand. The garden is overlooked by a veranda and a sparse
main room with shoji screens, tatami mats and a ceremonial niche. In contrast
to most of the ninety religious and profane gardens designed by Shigemori,
this garden co-exists with a house which is domestic in scale and connected
to the rhythms of everyday life.
Project
'Shima means the silent mountain floating on the white
crested waves'. Mirei Shigemori
The title of the project signifies 'island' in Japanese
and refers to the compositional and conceptual essence of the Japanese
garden, namely the pond garden (with islands for divinities) and the islands
of rock and moss enclosed by seas of raked sand.
Shima is a series of artists' projects occurring within
different sections of the house and garden, produced through the visits
of the artists and curators and their resulting dialogue. They include
models, screens and ephemeral objects. Analogous to the rock configurations
in the garden, each intervention forms a distinctive 'shima' within the
site.
The projects mediate the complex spatial and conceptual
relationships embodied in the site and by implication within the Japanese
garden/house. They reflect the co-existence of the garden and building
as interlocking entities and the garden's unique function as a locus of
contemplation - the framing of the garden as a tableau from inside the
room and its contemplation from a fixed, seated position.
In contrast they also reflect the garden as a site of
passage: the unfolding of the garden as a succession of temporalised frames
through movement along the veranda. Like the traditional scroll with its
blank spaces, the veranda embodies in-between moments (ma), intervals in
space and time, which allow for the previous impression or frame to fade
away. The garden is also reflected as a site of ritual, its inset stones
forming a path (roji) to be traversed during the tea ceremony.
Finally, the projects gravitate around the notion of microcosmos:
the modus operandi underlying the Japanese garden is to generate vast spatial
illusions in highly constricted space through techniques of abstraction,
miniaturisation and relativisation of scale, thus inscribing the infinite
within the finite.
Shima is accompanied by an archive of Mirei Shigemori's
writings in Japanese and English.
Mirei Shigemori Residence
34 Kamiojicho, Yoshida Sakyoku, Kyoto 606-8312, Japan
Fax +81 (0)75 761
8776 E-mail shima753@hotmail.com
Due to limited access by appointment only
English | Japanese
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