Emily Ilett on Susumu Shingu

The Friday Event is a series of lectures given by international speakers – artists, architects, designers, historians and cultural theorists. The talks take place in Glasgow Film Theatre each Friday morning of the school term. Beginning the 2010 series Japanese artist Susumu Shingu talked of his dreams with us; dreams in which art can be the giver of a healthier and more respectful relationship with our environment. Originally trained as a painter, Shingu has been working with kinetic sculpture for more than forty years.

To describe Shingu’s work as ‘kinetic sculpture’ is an understatement. This term stills the sculptures. It’s a naming that anchors Shingu’s practice firmly in the realm of fact, of labelling, diminishing the tender poetry of his work. Instead Shingu allows an opening out through his lyrical titles: ‘Silent Conversation’; ‘Resonance of the Sea’; ‘Memory of Waves’; ‘Wings of the Earth’; ‘Silhouette of Time’; ‘Moon Boat’. These let the pieces continue to move slowly, hypnotically, in our minds. Released from physical, factual description, Shingu’s work softens itself into nature, until the line between the two becomes blurred and wind becomes breath becomes earth.

For more than forty years, since the beautiful moment when he painted a shape on a canvas, felt it restricted by the square frame, cut it out and suspended it outside to be blown by the wind, Susumu Shingu has been working with sculpture that moves. That is, sculpture that is moved by natural phenomena.

Often large in scale and brightly coloured Shingu’s sculptures merge with the environment in which they are placed, not by physical appearance, but in the fluid majesty of their movements. Sails of colour and metal planes gracefully harmonise with subtle or stormy air currents; choreography of the invisible made visible. Whether in an airport (Kansai International Airport, 1994), a university (National Tsin Hwa University, 2007), or a water company (San Pellegrino S.p.a, 2006), the sculptures move in reverence to the space and the forces which carry them: gravity, water, and wind.

After watching, enthralled, documentation of many of Shingu’s sculptures, we listened as he began to talk of his growing anxiety about the delicacy of this planet’s future. So, the wind that moves his constructions eventually moved him and January 2000 marked the beginning of the global project ‘Wind Caravan: Observation of our Planet’, an exemplary social, ecological and artistic venture which spanned twenty months. Shingu travelled with a horizon-opened mind, searching for six sites without electricity at which he could place 21 sculptures for a period of two weeks. During this time research on wind energy would be carried out with the collaboration of Dr Izumi Ushiyama, and cultural activities planned with local children. The six sites chosen were: Rice paddies in front of Shingu’s studio, Sanda; Motukorea, Auckland; Inari, Finland; Tamdaght, Morocco; Undur Dov, Mongolia; and Cumbuco, Brazil. So the caravan planted these sculptures at each site, and Shingu, his wife and group, stayed there using electricity, when needed, generated from four windmills on top of the house/crate. For each hauntingly beautiful landscape Shingu exchanged the colour of the sails for another of equal brilliance.

The scope of this project is vast in its warmth, generosity and humility. As well as carrying the poetry of his sculptures to eyes that would otherwise never have seen them and initiating wind energy research in unique locations, the wind caravan was a bridge between cultures and places. From the rice paddies of his home Shingu not only carried the sail sculptures, but sushi made from rice planted and harvested by the local children of Sanda. This was given to the many Maori people who gathered around the same sculptures in Motukorea, a small uninhabited island in Auckland. Between the Sami people of Inari and the villagers of Aït Benhaddou – the village of soil – there also became a sharing. Weathervanes made by Sami children were planted in the ground at the Morocco site, and kites drawn by children in Mongolia were flown in the winds of Cumbuco, Brazil. Softly and with humanity Shingu shares the winds of places, reminding us of shared breath. From this most intimate of exchanges, there must grow more – the exchange of learning. The indigenous people who welcomed the wind caravan have unique relationships with nature that we can, and need to, learn much from.

While the sculptures entwined wind around themselves and the windmills on the caravan generated energy, there became a gathering of people for opening ceremonies at each location. At these, amongst other events, Shingu gave a short talk on ‘What we can do for the Earth now’; food was shared; UAKTI, a Brazilian music group, created sounds from their own handmade instruments; and children danced with dignity under the tuition of renowned choreographer Jirí Kylián. The project can only be considered as the entirety of all connections made, reindeer soup shared, smiles received and given. This gives a new breadth and sincerity to the term ‘public art’. It forgets this ambiguous word ‘public’ and replaces it with ‘human’. And so there is warmth.

Here, there is a global audience. This artwork does not close in on itself; it opens out onto the streets and lands and internet. Visibility is a sharing; a desire to share the wonder of nature and excitement for wind energy rather than to publicise an artist’s skill. It is the children, however, whom Shingu is reaching out to; those who continually encourage him by their smiles. Within this work there is a recognising that nature will be a little less for them because of us, and how this can change with the appropriate awe and respect. There is a Native American proverb that goes: ‘we do not inherit the earth from our ancestors, we borrow it from our children’. In Susumu Shingu’s project there is an acceptance of the responsibility of this loan.

And so to ‘Breathing Earth’. A collaboration. Shingu’s work is not that of an individual. It represents a multitude of collaborations and exchange and support; a great coming-together of experience and imagining. ‘Breathing Earth’ is the most ambitious collaboration so far.

There is our breath, which goes out from us and returns. Then there is the space in which our breaths mingle where our minds often will not. Shingu dreams of creating a place where ideas can mingle like breath. This will take the form of ecological sustainable settlements built across the globe, communities for exchange and research into more sophisticated windmill design; where the eyes of children can meet those of scientists, artists, architects, designers and philosophers and see their own curiousity and eagerness for knowledge reflected in the gazes held.

This self-sufficient project powered by sun, wind and water has found a place in Shingu’s mind, and in the minds of those that hear it – now it will be drawn out into a place. Shingu is collaborating with Glasgow School of Art staff and students in the search for a suitable site to build such a village in or around Glasgow.

This project teaches of a way to create harmony between art and nature and science. Here is a demonstration of public art that falls into many different realms, blurring boundaries between artistic disciplines, accepting its own weaknesses and opening itself to the sharing of knowledge and experience in the search for a more symbiotic relationship with nature.

For, as Shingu says, ‘When our mind will be able to harmonize with the movement of Nature, our vision shall be expanded and enriched to the Infinite. We shall then achieve comprehension of the universal truths and we shall even experience profound emotions and spiritual pleasures in our contact with nature.’

We must allow ourselves to be moved by the same wind that moves the white, yellow, red, blue steel sculptures; the same wind that blew the kites in Brazil and the weathervanes in Morocco; and not forget that we breathe the same into our own windpipes. We are ourselves an instrument for the wind to move, beautifully, if we let it.

¹ Note to image: “With the cooperation of the members of the Iwakura Children’s Association, children in Iwakura performed the traditional rice planting by hand with Mr. Shingu in the paddy field where the works were exhibited. First, Mr. Harino, the owner of the land, demonstrated rice planting while carrying a balance containing rice sprouts, then Mr. Shingu planted rice following his instructions. Next, the children slowly entered the rice field and carefully planted each rice sprout, while occasionally losing their balance in the mud. In his speech, Mr. Shingu said that when these sprouts grow and the rice is harvested, he wants to send some to New Zealand so children there can try eating this Japanese rice.” Extract from Wind Caravan – Observation of Our Planet http://www.wind-caravan.org/en/saites/japan/sanda2.html and http://www.wind-caravan.org/en/frame.html

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Nicola Wright on Steven Holl

Steven Holl’s lecture this week promised to be both a popular and contentious event, as an introduction to the practice of an architect who will soon remodel GSA’s campus in an ambitious project to be realised at the site opposite the Mackintosh building. Perhaps because of this, despite the GFT giving over extra space in a second theatre, the event sold out in record time and I found myself – along with the few other stragglers with below-par internet capabilities – viewing a shaky live net stream in GSA’s student bar, the Vic. While it felt strangely suitable to be watching Holl’ s lecture on the very site the works will replace, Holl was emphatically not present to discuss the project on Renfrew Street. However, the innovations and intents of the works discussed within the lecture facilitate speculation on the kind of potentials Holl’s designs could hold for GSA.

Of particular interest was Holl’s award-winning Hybrid Complex (Beijing, China 2003-9). The skyscrapers which proliferate metropolises compete to dominate the skyline as singular statements, taking their height as a competitive and potent assertion of authority. These become like blockages, erecting barriers within the urban space; Hybrid Complex however, offers an alternative model, appearing as a evolving network, its eight structures ranging from eight to twenty-one stories, linked by walkways at varying heights. The building cleverly responds to Chinese urbanism, taking in elements of feng shui while offering a counter to the homogenized, mass produced architecture of the city and the super-grid formation of Beijing’s landscape, as inherited from the Hutong blocks. Holl seems to call for a revived epistemology for space, where the ‘partial and fragmented views’ of the contemporary city become porous, interconnected spaces. Holl describes this ‘porosity’ in terms of ‘freedom of pedestrian movement’, citing Walter Benjamin’s writings on Naples as an example:

“building and action interpenetrate in the courtyards, arcades and stairways…to become a theatre of new unforeseen constellations…Porosity is the inexhaustible law of the life of this city, reappearing everywhere.¹”

Hybrid Complex defines public spaces not only at ground level, but at altitude, with both areas consisting of open parks and gardens. Bridged by the vertiginous walkways, they create a network of connections which both encircle and unlock the concourses, and ultimately allow for social activity to intersect through every level of public space. Drawing multiple lines through the horizon, the building seems to aspire to something like Benjamin’s unforeseen constellations.

Within Hybrid Complex then, public space traverses through, around, above and below, creating versatile and intricate spatial tiers. This ‘open city within a city’ aims to promote

“interactive relations and encourages encounters in the public spaces … and constantly generate random relationships.²”

The premise here is to create a newly adaptable and flexible way of navigating the spaces between and within the city, engendering social as well as physical interconnectivity and a sense of communication and integration. What Holl seems to be recommending is a way of re-mapping the spaces of the cityscape, and perhaps most interestingly, the uses of public space. The ‘encounters’ and ‘random relationships’ which the buildings schematics support counter the boundaries created by privatized space in urban planning and perhaps held notions about what exists or is accountable as ‘public’ or ‘private’ space.

So what can these re- designations of space, and their occupants movement through them, mean for the new building at GSA? Apart from the need to improve upon student facilities, there appears to be a possibility to change the schools relationship with the surrounding city (and its inhabitants) in addition to, crucially, the way students make use of these spaces. The proposal for the works, as it currently exists, describes a building which is composed of

“…studio volumes shaped by light and connected by a “circuit of connection” which encourages the creative contact central to the workings of the school.³"

Holl’s work seem to propose the potentiality for, not only changed and enhanced spaces for students, but a refreshed connectivity, mapping new ways for spaces to be used and perhaps changing the very modes of production and exchange that exist between both departments and practitioners; a space for renewed collaboration, exchange and dialogue. At its most utopian then, Holl’s design could not only effect the physical use of spaces, but how art making is practised within them.

¹ Walter Benjamin Reflections cited in Steven Holl, Urbanisms: Working with Doubt, Princeton Architectural Press; 2009 p.22

² See http://www.stevenholl.com/project-detail.php?id=58&type=&page=0

³ See http://www.stevenholl.com/project-detail.php?type=educational&id=111&page=0

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