Expecting Spectators

At the Chiba City Museum of Art, twelve bags were suspended along the building’s 70-meter-tall exterior wall. Inside, a small handle on the fourth floor allowed visitors to set the bags in motion. This installation quietly reconfigures the relationship between interior and exterior, between those who act and those who merely witness.

When a viewer turns the handle in the gallery, a bag hanging on the wall moves. The response is visible—but the work does not end there. The rope extends beyond the gallery, running through the architecture and outdoors. Elsewhere, the same gesture causes movement, but this effect is hidden from the one who initiated it.

This is a work shaped by spatial and temporal disjunction. The result of an action may appear in another place, at another time. It might go unnoticed, or be discovered days, years, or decades later by someone who happened to be there. Who is the audience, and when does the encounter occur? The work is addressed to “none or more than one.” It includes passersby, building staff, or someone who realizes long afterward that they had already witnessed part of the work.

When a viewer turned the handle, it caused a bag or wall inside the gallery to move. In fact, there was also a rope connected to the outside of the building, stretching up to the rooftop. There, twelve bags hanging from the exterior wall of the museum repeatedly moved up and down in sync with the movements inside.

Exhibitions held across the world generally aim to attract thousands or tens of thousands of people, but it’s okay to include some works that do not serve that purpose. I find it more interesting to encounter a special scene unexpectedly. It sometimes takes time to find or notice a special scenery.

Expecting Spectators starts by betraying the audience’s initial feelings. What happened and what they see in the gallery is half of the elements that comprise the entire installation. A person’s action—turning a handle, pushing the wall, or pulling the rope—may affect the experiences of a person viewing a work elsewhere.

For my solo exhibition at Art Center Ongoing (Kichijoji, Tokyo) in 2019, I filled the second-floor gallery space with structures that appeared as walls. The space was made very tight. The viewer would lean or push against the wall. Then the wall moves with rumbling sounds, revealing another space. The viewer wonders, “What? The room just became bigger?”

The movable walls did surprise some visitors, but that was not the aim of the work. Actually, there was a white structure protruding from the gallery window, almost falling onto the road, and it was connected to the structure inside the gallery. The viewer inside the gallery could not see the structure jutting out of the window.

In my 2021 exhibition at the Chiba City Museum of Art, there were handles in the gallery on the fourth floor. When visitors turned the handles, the bags suspended on the wall of the exhibition room moved. The visitor wonders, “What? The work is just about moving the bags?”

However, there are twelve bags suspended on the exterior wall of the museum, which are connected to the bags on the fourth floor by ropes that are several hundred meters long. Here, the viewers in the gallery space couldn’t see what was happening outside.

Something unexpected begins elsewhere. The viewer is moving the artwork without knowing it. The results of the attempts and actions of the viewers could be seen in different locations at different times. That was the mechanism of the work.

I hope there will be at least one person who happens to witness it. The act of experiencing artworks will always exist in the gallery space as long as there are exhibitions on earth, so it feels just right to use it in my work.