For the better part of the last two months, I’ve been preparing for my exhibition at Gallery Paradiso in Yoyogi-Uehara: A year of forgetting the pines, which went from June 20th - June 25th. The exhibition was a culmination of work that I’ve made over the last few years, primarily consisting of work made in the last year and a half. Today, I’m releasing a short film from the exhibition titled, Voice on tape.
A year of forgetting the pines 松を忘れた一年: Voice on tape テープ上の音声
Something tries to narrate in first person, sharing a story in fragments; layers of a memory within a memory: from a present day trauma in a relationship where words lost their meaning, to a generational trauma, where language was put aside, trading one for another in an attempt to assimilate, blend, adapt, and be seen.
There is loss of self, and loss of language. With this loss, the attempt of anything is a kind of orientation, or re-orientation.
If there are years and thousands of miles between you and the pine trees at your grandmother’s house, if we have forgotten them, then maybe we must return. To body, to remembering the pines; their change from green to red; their annual fall; a return to self, of some shape.
Film by Jes Kalled
Translation by Jes Kalled & Kana Kobayashi
Voice on tape テープ上の音声