［essay］Introduction / Eriko Mukai

https://gyazo.com/0350af6d8b088c6df7612dfe7fb2bf2a

My hometown, Suma New Town, was made on the site of what remained after parts of the Mount Rokko area were removed for use in land reclamation during the construction of Port Island. It is a residential area that sits atop a hill.

Built from 1966 to 2009, Port Island is an artificial island that functions as both a port and urban district. Gravel from Mount Rokko was transported down to the sea by conveyor belt and poured into the Seto Inland Sea to make the island.

From a young age, I was fascinated by how though the residential district and sea are quite some distance apart, a conveyor belt was employed to link two separate places.

I am exploring the sense of distance and positionality by using a sewing machine to trace maps of Port Island and the land made from the excavated soil onto fabric sculptures, which I place at slightly warped distances and heights.

The project began with research into drained land at Lake Biwa in Shiga.

For the fabric sculptures, maps of the drained land sites were printed and laid over cloth, and then a sewing machine was used to sew on different colors of thread for the roads and waterways.

Following the roads with the sewing machine, I come to realize the structural difference between drained land, a residential district, and industrial land.

The normal process for my practice engages with the invisible phenomena and systems that exist in our world, researching those mechanisms, replacing them with devices, and then creating performances in which those devices are turned on to activate the systems. Making these fabric sculptures for Kansai Studies corresponds to the research phase prior to a work coming about.