Technology cultivated by each individual should not be used inpart or trivialized for compromise. Art is a series of “technology ofreturn” that is, the means by which to return from points such as“Art is a capitalist game and is meaningless” or “I’m gonna die
someday, and there’s nothing left.” The wilderness of emptiness andrelativity is never an ultimate objective, even if it is your current
destination. While it indeed could be meaningless, there is stillsomething that you want to do. That’s why you turn on your heels toreturn, instead of compromising in the wilderness and pretendingthat it is your destination.

Consider compromise as being “halfway happy.” What it
potentially harbors is the time of future. This year, αM project
presents exhibitions with five artists, who each through theirindividual approach, attempts to study and share technologies
of return for believing in the future in this day and age in which
they live and die.

αM Project 2020 — 2021
Halfway Happy
Vol. 32

Natsuki Kuroda
The Photograph Begins
2021.3.16 TUE — 2021.6.5 SAT
13:00 ‒ 20:00
Closed on Sunday, Monday, Holidays.
Entrance FreeNatsuki Kuroda
Born 1988 in Kanagawa Prefecture. Graduated from Chuo University in 2011. Received the Grand Prize in the 8th 1_WALL Photography Competition in 2013. Her major exhibitions include, Hidden
Indications, Guardian Garden (Tokyo, 2014); The person who grabs
my arm, Nikon Salon (Tokyo/Osaka, 2017); and Photos (taken byfriends), Gallery OGU MAG (Tokyo, 2018). Since 2016, she has
participated in the annual media art exhibition HIKARU-ZOO at
Yokohama Municipal Kanazawa Zoo. In 2019 she organized a groupexhibition of photography and video works, The Eyes of the Zoo,
Yokohama Municipal Kanazawa Zoo (Kanagawa Prefecture).

Guest Curator

Arata Hasegawa

1 Photos (taken by friends)

2018 (2021)
25′
2 Photos (rooms)

2021
28′

Please do not take photos, as the video contains some personal information.

1You can take photos in the waiting room (outside the screening area).

00

Photos (taken by friends)

30
1400

Photos (rooms)

Photos (taken by friends)

30

Photos (taken by friends)

2018 (2021), 25′00

Photos (taken by friends)

30
1600

Photos (rooms)

Photos (taken by friends)

30
1700

Photos (rooms)

Photos (taken by friends)

30
1800

Photos (rooms)

Photos (taken by friends)

30
1900
30

Photos (rooms)

Photos (taken by friends)

Photos (rooms)

Please do not enter during the screening of Photos (rooms).

Photos (rooms)

2021, 28′

Since around 2017, Kuroda has intermittently engaged infilming and interviewing various people working in thefield of long-term care. The photographs handed to thecaregivers are those that capture the rooms of thepeople they had once nursed and cared for. What do they
discover and remember through these photographs, andhow do they personally relate, respond, and talk about
their thoughts and experiences?
Kuroda accompanies these people as theyview, reminisce, and each tell their stories about
the photographs.

The Photograph Begins

In May 2018, Kuroda held a workshop for children atYokohama Municipal Kanazawa Zoo. The children
walked around the zoo in two groups: a “question team”
that used photographs to create questions, and a“solving team” that worked to solve those questions. The
workshop attempted to explore the kind of interactions
that would take place through photographs in theabsence of face-to-face contact between the two groups.
This is a partially re-edited version of a work that wasscreened for a limited period of three days at Gallery
OGU MAG in December 2018.

15

Photos (rooms)
Vol. 3The photographs displayed on the walls will be periodically replaced by Kuroda.
Simone Weil, Gravity and Grace, Japanese translation: Mayumi Tomihara, Iwanami Bunko, 2017, p. 250.

13Halfway Happy23

αM Project 2020–2021

Kuroda’s website is as follows.
https://www.kurodanatsuki.com/

Screening Schedule

Independent Curator

1FilmsThe Exposure Time Arata Hasegawa

The third installment of αM Project 2020–2021: Halfway Happy is Natsuki Kuroda’ssolo exhibition The Photograph Begins. Presented on this occasion are screenings of
two video works, Photos (taken by friends) and Photos (rooms).
Since admission to view Photos (rooms) will be on a per screening basis, visitors
are invited to perceive and engage with the venue as if it were a waiting room. The
duration of each video work is approximately 30 minutes.
Natsuki Kuroda is a photographer 1 , and each of her works include the word
“Photo” in their title. Although several photographs are framed and installed in thevenue, rather than as subjects of exhibition, they more so present themselves as
implicitly being a part of the scenery that is likened to a waiting room 2 . The main
focus of the exhibition are the two video works. Herein lies a certain twist whereby
video works are named “photographs.”
This twist however will soon come to unravel once viewing the work. In bothPhotos (taken by friends) and Photos (rooms) photographs are set to serve as inimportant tool. In Photos (taken by friends), children are divided into two teams whileon a visit to the zoo and are instructed to take photographs and write letters, yet themembers of each team never meet or come into direct contact with one another. InPhotos (rooms) the caregivers talk about their own thoughts, memories, and experiences while looking at photographs taken by Kuroda, yet as listeners, we never in fact
see the actual inhabitants of the rooms. There are some people whom we are only
able to turn a contemplative gaze towards through photographs, or to be more
precise, by retracing the words that have been spoken about them. In Kuroda’s videoworks, photographs neither function as a mirror nor window, but exist as something
like a wall of sorts.
As Simone Weil had once written, “the wall is the thing which separates thembut is also their means of communication 3 .” Photographs, like exposed concrete, do
not communicate anything in themselves and are highly impassive. Yet this does not
signify the coercion of silence, nor does it only allow narratives of the most sophisticated and magnanimous to be conveyed. Words, no matter how inaccurate, exaggerated,faltering, or far too scrupulous, have the ability to convulsively shake the wall.
In the practice of photography there is a constant relationship between “photographing/being photographed” and “seeing/being seen,” and its asymmetricalstructure inevitably gives rise to problems of power and violence. It goes without
saying that true sincerity means confronting this fact. Furthermore, it should not beoverlooked that there are specific people whose emotions may be hurt. With this inmind, Kuroda employs her techniques in a direction that is different to displaying
awareness towards the potential harm that photography could inflict. Kuroda does notwithhold her attitude in the face of this violence, and neither does she insist upon
us to share these concerns. The message that she communicates is clear through andthrough. That is, the vivid suggestion that photography can indeed be a part of ourlives –the idea that it is fun to look at and talk about photographs.
It is no doubt wonderful to turn to photography as source of inspiration fromwhich to develop one’s ideas, like the American writer Richard Powers, who wrote along and complex novel from an actual black-and-white photograph. Having said that,what unfolds in this exhibition is more like a practice of repeatedly engaging inminimal acts of translation, from photographs to words, and from words back tophotographs again. In addition, Kuroda started working on Photos (rooms) around2017, before she commenced work on Photos (taken by friends). Rather, the two works
were developed in parallel to one another, both in terms of their time period andKuroda’s thoughts and mindset. One would like to refer to this passage of time, which
by no means can be described as linear, and is interdispersed with small rifts andpauses, as “the exposure time.” Both video works were true eye-openers that enabled
one to realize the sheer potential that photographs yet continue to harbor. Theirexperience truly instilled one with the sense that “photography has begun,” not only
for myself, but even for those who I most likely will never meet at all.