Pulling Time

Ropes come out of holes in the walls and gaps in the floor. When a visitor pulls one, something moves at the other end, out of sight—and often the pull comes the other way too: someone in another place, whom you cannot see, tugs on the rope in your hands. Each rope leads to another rope, or to a bag that sways, letters made of rope that change color, a line that tightens in a room no one can see. No one can follow what all of them are doing at once. Since 2023, Pulling Time has been made at Kirishima, Tokyo, Tottori, and Mito.

Pulling Time begins with a simple gesture: pulling a rope in front of you. Yet the motion affects something not visible here and now—something distant, perhaps even hidden within time itself. The ropes extend beyond the gallery, weaving through corridors, walls, and out into the open air. When a viewer casually pulls a rope, elements in other locations shift in response. However, these changes remain unseen by the person who initiated them. Someone else may encounter the result without knowing its cause. This sense of disconnection and invisible connection lies at the heart of the work.

The phenomena that emerge—bags swaying or moving, the color of text shaped by rope changing, ropes stretching or contracting in unseen spaces—appear as tangible expressions of this hidden network. No viewer can perceive the whole system at once. Instead, they rely on partial sensations and trial-and-error to grasp spatial relationships.

Here, pulling becomes a quiet act of drawing out unseen relationships—an attempt to reach beyond the immediate. The viewer, perhaps without realizing it, becomes a sender: setting something into motion that may unexpectedly enter another’s field of vision.