Zephyr

Located in a depopulated area of the peripheral Japanese region of Niigata, the sunflower fields suddenly emerge among the farmland and beside the roads as a surprising monumental landscape of summer for the residents and the travelers. Most of the residents of this area are aging farmers, some of whom are the artist’s grandparents who are no longer able to cultivate their land. Belonging to them, these sunflower fields were once tilled farmland, one part of the surrounding agriculture.

The gentle sound of a soft  breeze allows the viewers to dwell in the near silence of an aging village,  a space within which to experience this sensate audio-visual landscape tickling their ears as though they were standing in the massive open field under the sky. Intersected by the automotive space, the sensate space of the zephyr, drifting over the perishing memories of farming, aesthetically emerges as the stillness against the speed embodied by the time-space compression of automobiles. The apotheosis of economic growth and speed that modernity and capitalism embrace have proliferated uneven geographical development and demography. Zephyr consoles life in peril of diminishing.

In the whisper of the myth of growth, land remains fertile.