{"id":3915,"date":"2013-04-28T17:56:56","date_gmt":"2013-04-28T08:56:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tatsuomiyajima.com\/?p=3915"},"modified":"2021-03-22T17:42:53","modified_gmt":"2021-03-22T08:42:53","slug":"death-clock-tatsuo-miyajima-catalogue-of-marking-time-museum-of-contemporary-art-australia-2012-essay-by-haruko-tomisawa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tatsuomiyajima.com\/chinese\/texts\/death-clock-tatsuo-miyajima-catalogue-of-marking-time-museum-of-contemporary-art-australia-2012-essay-by-haruko-tomisawa\/","title":{"rendered":"‘DEATH CLOCK: TATSUO MIYAJIMA’ Catalogue of “Marking Time”, Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, 2012 (Essay by Haruko Tomisawa)"},"content":{"rendered":"

DEATH CLOCK: TATSUO MIYAJIMA<\/span><\/p>\n

Haruko Tomisawa<\/p>\n

Japanese artist Tatsuo Miyajima has created three works containing the word \u2018death\u2019 in their titles. They are \u2018Death of Time\u2019 (1990 \u2013 92), \u2018Mega Death\u2019 (1999), and \u2018Death Clock\u2019 (2003 \u2013 present). <\/span><\/p>\n

Miyajima began to express two kinds of deaths \u2013 natural and \u2018artificial\u2019 \u2013 in his art works starting from the early 1990s. For Miyajima, natural death means a kind of death that gives us a premonition of the next life welling up from within us.<\/span><\/span>1<\/sup><\/a><\/span> Conversely, artificial death means an unnatural death that arises from the desire to do as one likes with another person\u2019s life \u2013 death prematurely imposed through human intervention.<\/span>2<\/sup><\/a><\/span> <\/span>Miyajima\u2019s works exploring the devastating legacy of the atomic bomb reflect on the concept of artificial death, on an epic scale. Two works that visualized the stark contrast between these two types of death \u2013 one a part of nature\u2019s cycle and the other forcibly imposed \u2013 were \u2018Death of Time\u2019 and \u2018Mega Death\u2019. <\/span><\/p>\n

To begin with, the iconic digital counters in Miyajima\u2019s works depict the rhythmic passage of time from birth to death. The numbers count down from 9 to 1 and then fade to black, only to repeat again. They refer to the Buddhist notion that life is eternal, as is reincarnation. The fade to black that happens during the regular motion of numbers symbolises the concept of a natural death. <\/span><\/p>\n

In \u2018Death of Time\u2019 \u2013 a series of sculptural forms that are lined up lengthwise \u2013 there
\nare counter gadgets that stay dark without counting down, forming about the width of a human body. Miyajima invests his deep feelings about the atomic bombing of Hiroshima in this work. \u2018Death of Time\u2019 symbolises the enormous death toll in Hiroshima through this darkness that has no beginning or end. <\/span><\/p>\n

\u2018Mega Death\u2019 is presented in such a way that there is one un-illuminated area within the gallery. Should an audience member pass by that place, all the gadgets are shut down forcibly and the gallery sinks into complete darkness. After a few minutes, the counter gadgets light up slowly, one by one, and the space returns to a gentle light blue. The sudden, complete darkness symbolises mass death. <\/span><\/p>\n

Prior to undertaking \u2018Death Clock\u2019, Miyajima was thus able to visualise death as a phenomenon without shape or image, as darkness, in a way that was at once compelling and persuasive. He created an experience in which viewers were confronted with an unnatural mass death that happened to other people. <\/span><\/p>\n

Alternately, \u2018Death Clock\u2019 creates a place where one can confront one\u2019s own death. People who register with \u2018Death Clock\u2019 are asked to type in their own date of death. But this death is a different kind of death; it is like the aforementioned welling up of an intuition that makes us sense the next life ahead. The reason Miyajima did not create a system alluding to artificial death is so that, even if a person dies unnaturally after their registration, it still values and records their desire for a natural death. Through this work, Miyajima declares that no man can interfere with the right to life nor harm the dignity in life and death. <\/span><\/p>\n

It should also be noted that while the earlier two works form memorials to the traumas of the past, \u2018Death Clock\u2019 looks towards the present and future where an individual\u2019s death lies. In this regard, Miyajima\u2019s thinking has arrived at a point where he believes \u2018those who can teach how to die can also teach how to live\u2019.<\/span>3<\/sup><\/a><\/span><\/span>\u00a0<\/span> <\/span><\/p>\n

\u2018Death Clock\u2019 places emphasis on the second of three operative concepts that underpin Miyajima\u2019s art practice: \u2018Keep Changing\u2019, \u2019Connect With All\u2019 and \u2018Go on Forever\u2019. He describes this concept as \u2018where Tatsuo Miyajima forms a relationship with everything\u2019.<\/span>4<\/sup><\/a><\/span><\/span><\/span>\u00a0<\/span>Put simply, \u2018Death Clock\u2019 connects the artist with an ever-growing number of people, who are in turn connected to one another through their participation in the art work. <\/span><\/p>\n

Everybody who registers with this work enters a dialogue with the artist when they register. Miyajima speaks to each participant five times in the process from the beginning to end. <\/span><\/p>\n

In response to these words, the participant submits their name and their date of birth; they express themselves by taking a photograph of themselves; they determine the day they will die; and finally they confirm their contract with the artist. Before finalising the registration, Miyajima checks for people\u2019s consent by informing them: \u2018once the Death Clock button is pressed, the count-down to death cannot be stopped.\u2019 People open their hearts to this series of requests, and as proof of that relationship, they press the registration key. Throughout this dialogue Miyajima is committed to drawing out the personality of the participant. What appears on the computer screen is the expression of the person at the moment they commit to a date
\nto die and the beginning of their own numerical count down, but there is no indication a dialogue took place. Yet, the relationship formed through this dialogue lies at the centre of the work. <\/span><\/p>\n

\u2018Death Clock\u2019 is a complex work that organises, harmonises and expresses the death that exists within every life through aggregating the relationships formed between Miyajima and all the individuals who have entered the participation process. In turn, people who have registered with the project are transformed into \u2018messengers\u2019 who embody the message of the work, and in turn form relationships with many things that lead back to the epicentre that is \u2018Death Clock\u2019. This mutual interaction is the most notable aspect of the work. <\/span><\/p>\n

The installation of \u2018Death Clock\u2019 in the Marking Time <\/i>exhibition<\/span>5<\/sup><\/a><\/span><\/span> \u2013 comprising 500 individual photographs and three monitors rapidly counting down \u2013 recalls the exhibition space from \u2018Mega Death\u2019. If the current work represents 12 years of development Miyajima has undertaken since \u2018Mega Death\u2019, then it is worth us comparing the two works to gain insight into Miyajima\u2019s thinking. <\/span><\/p>\n

\u2018Mega Death\u2019 was a work that focused on unnatural or \u2018artificial\u2019 deaths on a vast scale. \u2018Death Clock\u2019 focuses instead on the natural death that exists within every individual life. The former was a work that made us understand mass murder in the abstract. The latter is a work that manifests the will towards a natural death through each voluntary participant. <\/span><\/p>\n

The former is structured around an abstraction of life and death while the latter is structured around an existing life and its inevitable death. <\/span><\/p>\n

More than ten thousand people have registered on \u2018Death Clock\u2019 to date, and this has become an undeniable value in itself. In a world of war, natural disasters and man-made horrors, what encourages us all is the connection between people who live this life to the limit. \u2018Death Clock\u2019 is such an expression. <\/span><\/p>\n

\u2018Where death waits for us is uncertain; let us look for him everywhere. The premeditation of death is the premeditation of liberty; he who has learned to die has unlearned to serve. There is nothing evil in life for him who rightly comprehends that the privation of life is no evil: to know how to die delivers us from all subjection and constraint.\u2019<\/em><\/span>6<\/sup><\/a><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

(Translated from Japanese by Arthur Tanaka)<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

DEATH CLOCK: TATSUO MIYAJIMA Haruko Tomisawa Japanese artist Tatsuo Miyajima has created three works containin […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3915","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-interviews","category-texts"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tatsuomiyajima.com\/chinese\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3915","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tatsuomiyajima.com\/chinese\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tatsuomiyajima.com\/chinese\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tatsuomiyajima.com\/chinese\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tatsuomiyajima.com\/chinese\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3915"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/tatsuomiyajima.com\/chinese\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3915\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4979,"href":"https:\/\/tatsuomiyajima.com\/chinese\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3915\/revisions\/4979"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tatsuomiyajima.com\/chinese\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3915"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tatsuomiyajima.com\/chinese\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3915"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tatsuomiyajima.com\/chinese\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3915"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}