PINEWIND

museum memories - Wild: Untamed Mind

Note: This is a last-minute submission for this month's Indie Web Carnival hosted by James.

One of the most memorable museum experiences I've had was at the 21_21 DESIGN SIGHT in Tokyo Midtown in the autumn of 2017. The exhibition was titled "Wild: Untamed Mind". The central topic was the concept of "wildness" and where it can be found - not only out in the wilderness, but also in our everyday lives.

I've always liked museums, but the "Wild" exhibition made me realize for the first time that museums don't just show you neat stuff from the past. Instead, an exhibition's concept, selection of exhibits, their arrangement in relation to each other, and even things like the use of the museum space and its soundscape come together to offer a unique experience, and a view at the world from a different perspective. Of course, one of the main goals of a museum is to inform. But they can also surprise you, let you uncover new concepts, or discover new and interesting aspects of things you've always taken for granted.

Based on the title, you'd imagine wild animals to play a big role in this exhibition. However, this wasn't the case. It started off with a series of poster-sized photographs of large, round stones called maruishi, which are connected to animist / folk religious practices in rural regions of Japan. Next was a section on the eccentric biologist Kumagusu Minakata, showcasing examples of field notes from his studies on slime molds. Then, visitors were lead into a large space with an installation. On the wall, there was a projection of mirror-like spheres connected by thin lines, and it reacted to the visitor's movements, endlessly changing and morphing, accompanied by sounds that sounded vaguely (but also not quite) like the chirping of birds.1 The next section in the "big room" of the museum featured a large, abstract sculpture piece made out of discarded seed pods, carved statues of bears, and a series of artificial tree stumps that water was dropping into from the ceiling, one drop at a time, at irregular-but-not-quite-random-feeling intervals.

Now, I get why some people would probably be annoyed at this. "I went to an exhibition about wildness, and you're showing me stones and and abstract sculptures?!" And honestly, I also thought that some of the connections the exhibit tried to make (Hello Kitty being one of them) were a bit of a stretch. But at least for me, it also just ... worked. Somewhere along the way, I decided to go along with it, and started thinking about this more abstract concept of "wildness" the exhibition was trying to convey - and it clicked somehow. It was an almost meditative experience that had a strong impact on how I view museums, and deepened my appreciation of them. It had lasting impacts on me (my appreciation for field recordings as a form of ambient "music", my interest in multi-species ethnography), and its influences reaches into the present (I have a book by the exhibition's director in my to-read stack right now).2

Of course, not all exhibitions can be a "hit" like this. We're all different, and sometimes the messages of the exhibition or the individual pieces don't quite reach you. But when they do, it's a magical experience that makes museums one of my favourite places to spend a free day.

Additional materials

I - Director's message for the exhibition

"Imagination derives from experience, yet the world we share as background to our contemporary societies is becoming ever more homogeneous. This may hinder us from exploring the unknown - the world we have never previously understood - and we may all end up dreaming the same dreams. Nevertheless, parts of the mind still remain uncontrolled, or rather, untamed. We refer to this as the Wild Realm.

It is impossible to make any new discovery, or be creative in any field, unless we retain contact with this Wild Realm.

But how to access this Wild Realm of the mind? How can we open pathways leading to it? This exhibition, "Wild: Untamed Mind" takes its theme in finding keys to the door behind which this Wild Realm lurks."

Shinichi Nakazawa

Footnotes

  1. Another big concept playing into the exhibition and its content was engi, the an idea originating in Buddhism according to which all things that exist are connected with each other in some way, even if the connection is not apparent. This installation felt like an abstract representation of engi.↩

  2. Writing this reminded me that I also have to add Lévi-Strauss's "The Savage Mind" to my stack...↩

#bear blog #carnival #museums #nature