Tomohito Wakui Solo Exhibition "Long,Long,Long"

Saturday 7 May - Sunday 5 June
Closed on Wednesday 14:00-20:00
Opening Party：Saturday 7 May 18:00-21:00

Talk Event
Saturday 21 May 5pm - 7pm
Tomohito Wakui × Sekai Kozuma
"depiction after humans are gone"

Venue：Garter ＠Kitakore Building
166-0002
3-4-13,Koenji-Kita, Suginami-ku,Tokyo
info.chimpom@gmail.com
Admission fee: donation

Garter presents “Long, Long, Long,” an exhibition by Tomohito Wakui. Known for combining audio with found “junk” items through programming, Wakui explores the fundamental aspects of technology in a humorous fashion.
For this exhibition, Wakui focuses on the tools and programming he uses as the method for his works. He explores the essence of the “data” that serves as the central component for such mediums. He addresses the idea of data as a primitive, elemental concept, removing it from the current dialogue of post-internet society. He approaches this topic with the fundamental question, “What is data?"
This exhibition title “Long, Long, Long” is a name of the Beatles’ song on the White Album and it’s also the next song of “Helter Skelter” which means a disorderly confusion. In this modern era, every matter, such as materials, consumption, politics and wars, are in the chaos. And people have made a judgment and set a standard at certain points with “ a large framing” of religions, ideology and thought. In contrast, people and things are existences which only profiles have been needed as a component or portion belonged there.

This exhibition consists of works which can be classified into four groups, “open-sourced programs,” “films made by an artist, Wakui,” “device to play films” and “data floating in the Universe as an electric wave.” Wakui named each group to make them exist equally, without the imposing “framework” that exploits people, things and data.

One of the groups, “data floating in the Universe,”symbolizes the likeliest possibility for overcoming the current social system that aims to circulate among humankind. “Data,” is essentially an electromagnetic wave that, in the moment of transmission, becomes light that is transmitted into the Universe. Wakui says, “it is one of the very few man-made phenomena that is infinite in both space and time.” Unlike the Voyager, which travels the universe to contact extraterrestrials, it has no purpose or goal; however it travels at a much higher speed and a huge quantity of information compared to the Voyager. (Perhaps the first discovery of earth by extraterrestrial beings may be from such “data” - originating from GPS signals.)

It is said that Marcel Duchamp dubbed various artists who depicted material society in the post-Industrial Revolution era, “Impressionists of Material Society”. Rather than focusing on what is depicted, the “material”, as the Futurists did, Duchamp wished to change perspective itself, by calling a urinal “Fountain”. This brought about the very fundamental question of “what is a thing?”which has since greatly influenced ontological discourse on humankind and society. Today, after the IT revolution, various new artists have arisen, as well as discussions on Technology Singularity. It seems that we are entering an era in which we will live in a new layer of awareness. Although there have been plenty of discussions on the “impression”of data, there has yet to be an ontological discussion on what data is.

Wakui focuses on the “tree” as a metaphor for data and the internet in this exhibition. The “tree,” sustains our existence by acquiring nourishment from the earth and the sun, and through photosynthesis producing oxygen. The internet, similarly, endlessly gathers information while at the same time transmitting it out. The endlessly growing world of the web, the “network”of data, is suggestive of a form of “order” that governs chaos; it can be said that it is a microcosm of the vast and magnificent natural system that is universe.
For the next step after the disorderly confusion of “Helter Skelter”. While this exhibition, “Long,Long,Long”, has themes of the length of time and extraordinary distance, you will see the “next song / era” played by new generations.

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