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 HappyVol. 21

Kosuke Nagata
Eat2020.11.27 FRI — 2021.3.5 FRI
13:00 ‒ 20:00
Closed on Sunday, Monday, Holidays.
Entrance Free

Kosuke NagataBorn in Aichi, 1990. Locating fundamental components such as socialstructure, today’s media technology, and our sensory system to perceive
various phenomena in his artistic interest, artwork by Kosuke Nagata
continues to emerge ambiguity in the process of distinguishing one fromanother. He has recently participated in the following major exhibitions “AichiTriennale 2019: Taming Y/Our Passion” (Aichi Prefectural Museum of Art),“Open Space 2018: in transition” (NTT InterCommunication Center), and“The Yebisu International Festival for Art & Alternative Visions 2018: Mapping
the Invisible” (TOKYO PHOTOGRAPHIC ART MUSEUM). The essay titled‘Photography after Photoshop: Software of the “Photographic Apparatus”’
contributed to the Lev Manovich’s Japanese-translated publication “Instagram and Contemporary Image” (Tokyo: BNN, 2018）

Guest Curator

Arata Hasegawa

Support:Tokyo Art Acceleration
ANOMALY

1 Purée

2020
35 ′14″2 Découpage

2020
509×394 mm

2

3 Digest (Translation Zone)

2020
13 ′10 ″4 PC: The Last Night of the Stone Age (Prototype v1)

2020
h470×w485×d330 mm

entrance
34

In Maud Ellmann’s book The Hunger Artists: Starving,Writing, and Imprisonment there is a peculiar passage in thedebate regarding hunger strikes by women as a plea forwomen’s suffrage.
Our first experience of eating is force-feeding: as infants,
we were fed by others and ravished by the food they thrust
into our jaws. We eat, therefore, in order to avenge ourselves against this rape inflicted at the very dawn of life.
The compulsive eater, who feels attacked by food, understands the truth of eating better than the gourmand, whothinks that he is eating by his own volition, or the ascetic,
who thinks he can resist the imperative of food. All eating
is force-feeding 3 .

Let us go back to the experience of “eating.” There are certain
instances in which life as a whole, or a part of it is packed
into meals that are each time none other than special andfragmentary. Instead of eating to live, living and the act ofeating now equate to one another. That single mouthful caneven surpass living itself.
At the very same time as being in the midst of perceiving
this freedom with absolute speed, the mouth is inevitably
remade into a mouth that is different from what it was before.
In the experience of eating, the mouth is both far too free andfar too passive. The act of eating is filled with an overwhelming
experience that so to speak, appears to rewrite the entire“enemy” by means of thoroughly enforcing the freedom thathas half-heartedly been diluted, and actively thrusts it into
passive territory.
The appeal of Purée, above and beyond serving as a clue
to reconsider the scope of the subject, is found in Nagata’s
trust in the act of eating itself.

Pan-Constructivism
Meanwhile, the more it is emphasized that our mouths canbe reconstructed, the more this claim comes within close
proximity of issues such as “innovation” and self-transformation” that are proclaimed under our contemporary capitalist
regime. Akinori Kubo warns against this sweeping “pan-constructivist” attitude as he tries to simplify and explain Bruno
Latour’s discourse.
Pan-constructivism, no matter how reasonable andmarvelous the direction of construction may seem, aslong as it is employed by positioning us as constructors
as external subjects in the world, inevitably harbors
the possibility of lapsing into Machiavellianism or arbitrary decision-making, which states that “those able tocontrol the situation are correct regardless of the meansthat were used 4 .”1

The work Translation Zone can be viewed throughout the duration of theexhibition by accessing the following QR code:
https://vimeo.com/knagata/translationzone

2

The artist’s past works may be referenced by visiting his website.
http://knagata.org/

3

Maud Ellmann, The Hunger Artists: Starving, Writing, and Imprisonment,
Harvard University Press, 1993, pp. 35 –36.
Akinori Kubo, A Manual on Bruno Latour: From Actor Network Theory toExploring Forms of Existence, Getsuyosha Limited, 2019, p. 249

4EatHere, connections are drawn between “force-feeding”
that entails thrusting food into those on hunger strike against
their will in order to “keep them alive,” and the dietary assistance that is provided to infants who are unable to eat anddrink on their own. This claim by Ellmann that easily equates
the two seems highly extreme, and also neglects to think
about the suffering of people who are subjected to the violence of force-feeding. Confined to their cells and simply being
alive, those who have been imprisoned are literally treatedas mere “mouths.” However, in this exhibition Ellmann’s
claim cannot be easily dismissed despite the ethical issues
that it harbors.
The human microphone that serves to restructure one’s
mouth and the mouths of others while accompanied bycertain discrepancies and incongruities, illuminates anotherpractice of resistance, that is, the hunger strike which paradoxically attempts to voice one’s opinion by abandoning eating,and enables the act of force-feeding to emerge as its shadow.
Nagata’s claim that the act of “eating” cannot be realized bya single independent subject, and that the “mouth” is always
open to the possibility of being restructured, at the sametime summons Ellmann’s horrific thesis that “all eating isforce-feeing.” The overall potential of the subject that Nagata
seeks to explore in Purée is constantly being dragged down
into the territory of passive and powerless matter.

EatVol. 2

Independent Curator

Let us briefly look back on Nagata’s previous work 2 . Nagata
has been producing works by paying attention to the fact thatphenomena, which seem to clearly “copy & paste” reality, areindeed a cause for various “conflicts” and “confusion.” Particularly, in the early years of his practice, he sublimated the very
technology that serves expose the opacity and instability of
media devices into works of art. For example, in Postproduction(2018) he invalidates the ground and figure within the image
plane by taking advantage of how the automated “spot healingbrush” editing tool is unable to distinguish between “thesubject” and “the subject in the photograph.”
In Sierra (2017), Nagata traces the history of the mountainphotograph that is pre-displayed on the Mac desktop in orderto bring a “desktop background” to the “foreground,” while in
Audio Guide (2018), an audio guide is used as a means tofluctuate the “figure and ground” of the episodes as well as theattributes of the objects viewed in the exhibition. In such works
it is possible to recognize the embodiment of the “technologies” that the artist had researched and studied thus far. At thesame time they were also part of a process by which the artist
himself increased his awareness towards the fact that thevarious boundaries drawn throughout the world are note fixed,
but are rather highly arbitrarily, politically, and provisionallydetermined. It is not only the “spot healing brush” editing
tool that confuses “figure and ground” to result in the creationof unclear images. We ourselves are also constantly confused,making arbitrary decisions and drawing peculiar lines tosection the world. There is a certain reflection here.
Nagata does not infinitely expand this “reflection,” butrefers to it as a turning point that directs him towards producing his work. His works by no means simply resolve to point out
that the lines drawn throughout this world are arbitrary andunclear. This is nothing but a premise. The question here iswhat kind of lines one wishes to draw despite the given
circumstances. Translation Zone conveys that both “translation” and “home cooking” are monuments to the positive
attitude of those who try to live their lives even under inadequate conditions. What sets Nagata’s work apart from a mere
enumeration of interesting facts, is indeed his unfaltering will
and forwardness towards “making.”
In his new work Purée Nagata attempts to think about thescope of the “subject” while cooking the very dish from which
it derives its title. He contemplates the possibility that themouth may exist beyond the realm of the body, or more
specifically, a mouth that is not 1 but requires a decimal pointsuch as 0.9 or 1.24. The work traces the history regarding theact of eating, and considers reasons that are not transfixed byethics and responsibilities that extend endlessly from excretion
to digestion, cooking, distribution, and production.

All eating is force-feeding

Of course, pan-constructivism was first introduced as aninitiator to break the resignation and stereotype that society,institutions, and customs will continue forever, as well as
debates that presuppose the independence and self-relianceof the subject. It is necessary to emphasize its significance, andthere is indeed no doubt that Purée has also provided asufficiently appealing opportunity to reconsider the scope ofthe subject.
But as I have said, the open mouth has its enemies. If thebalance is lost even a little, human beings will be rendered asmere objects, or expelled to a wasteland where only the resultsmatter. It is a deception to acknowledge Purée while ignoring
this risk, and one could even say that doing so would be tounderestimate this work.

Halfway Happy

From / To Translation Zone

From here I would like to cultivate auxiliary issues concerning
Purée in a more in-depth manner as opposed to a “digest.”

αM Project 2020–2021

The Open Mouth and Its Enemies Arata Hasegawa

As the second installment in its exhibition series, αM Project
2020–2021: Halfway Happy presents Eat, a solo showwith artist Kosuke Nagata that centers on his new video
work, Purée.
As can be discerned from the titles of both the exhibition
and the works presented, the show focuses on questions about
eating and as well as “the mouth” itself. Here it is possible toobserve Nagata’s consistent interest that continues from his
previous work Translation Zone (2019) which was based on thetheme of home cooking. In fact, a digest version of Translation
Zone titled Digest (Translation Zone) is presented on this occasion (Digest also bearing associations to the consumption offood), indicating that this exhibition is indeed an extension ofthis previous work 1 .