You are both artists with a well-developed and clearly defined
individual production. When and how have you begun to collaborate
for the first time? In what aspects does your work as an artistic duocomplement and enhance your personal artistic paths?

ANTEMPI DI CRISI

Elisa Caldana
andAki Nagasaka

GPThe seed of our collaboration was sowed a long time ago when we bothstudied under the artist Simon Starling at Städelschule. We talked about
a possible collaboration but it didn’t happen then. When we met again inLondon in 2016 we talked about our life situations in Europe and Japanand we shared a similar feeling of precariousness. We kept sharing ourthoughts about it and, from that dialogue, we decided to work together
to investigate the precariousness we are feeling and the causes of thisfeeling.

ECTIMES OF CRISISIt began with a fascination towards each other’s practice, as we bothemploy storytelling within our work, but in different ways. I like to thinkthat we took each other as a (rearview) mirror, a place of reflection toexpand from our individual or sometimes fixed positions. Speaking as in a
double voice, we moved from our personal stance to a larger perspective:on the ongoing precariousness that can affect a collectivity or a generation
to the point of becoming a constitutive part of its identity. Our dialogue
finally catalyzed toward addressing and deconstructing precariousness,seen as the condition of several ongoing, simultaneous crises. Some
crises happen, others are provoked. And it is fascinating and frightening
how “crisis” is a vague, fuzzy concept, like an abstraction that can referto diverse, multiple, albeit concrete realities, but also a device and systemof control that can shape society and individual lives or reiterate injustices
and inequalities.

Do your different cultural origins influence your work as individual
artists? If so, how do they combine when you work together?

ANI grew up in a newtown in the suburb of Osaka, Japan in the 1980s-90s
and left for the United States when I was in high school. I received all myart education in the West but as I continue my art practice I recognize
more clearly that my worldview and the way I think and position myself
have largely been shaped by Japanese culture and Asian philosophies.
When Elisa and I work together, we constantly communicate about how
we see things and I gain a different perspective from it. However, I try not
to forcefully combine our perspectives or gestures because I believe that

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in
conversation
withGiulia Pezzoli

GP87

EC

We frequently talk about how we share a similar position or pull toward
the figure of the outsider. It is in this position or gaze of the outsider that
our interests meet. Similarly to Aki, I grew up at the periphery of a city. In asmall town on the outskirts of Pordenone, a province in Northern Italy. Our
places of origin share the trait of not being at the centre. And this point ofview, that of the outsider, stands as a recurring presence within our works.

GPHow would you define each other’s artistic practice and what
fascinates you most about each other’s practice?

ECTIMES OF CRISIS

What fascinates me most about Aki’s work is her attention toward thepoints of view of the more-than-human. In this sense, I feel she approaches
the role of the outsider in a more radical sense by including other species.
I would say that her practice is multi-layered, precise, ephemeral. I am
also intrigued by the part of her work that remains unseen, as it does not
get frozen into straightforward documentation. That includes the research
processes that she engages in, allowing her to enter into the viewpointsof other beings to include their perspective and narrative into the work. I
enjoy how she makes worlds and constructs stories, mapping and weaving
singular, complex ecosystems.

AN

Elisa is insightful, playful and open to explore unknowns, which is why I
enjoy working with her. But what I find most fascinating about her practice
are the tensions created from different impulses; conceptual/elegant andpunk/anarchistic, theoretical/dramatic, robust/light, and etc. The way
these tensions balance and are manifested give energy to her work andit changes every time, but I see this unique quality as the signature of herpractice. Her boldness to engage and express dramatic elements in life isalso an aspect I admire in her work.

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The project you are presenting on the occasion of ROSE_05,
Times of Crisis, began in 2018 with the Tokyo Arts and Space,
the international residency program of the Tokyo Museum ofContemporary Art. That of Bologna therefore constitutes a second
phase of reflection. How was Times of Crisis born and how do theresearches developed for Tokyo and Bologna relate to each other?
Can we talk about a “European variation” of the project?

At the very beginning, we were attracted to general notions designed toaddress different groups of people, like that of the Lost Generation. We
wanted to look for these notions in the concrete and visible fabric of acity, in which the other person would play the role of a counter-voice, forexample, by being in a situation in which I was the visitor, and she (Aki)
was the local, and vice versa. In Tokyo, we spent a significant amount oftime walking in the city and talking with local people, with the deliberateintention of going back to the basics of a first-person encounter and direct
experience of being in a specific city at a particular time. Personally, themore I attempted to engage with and live in the place, the more I wasentering into a void: most of the idea of the place remained fictional andgenerated through mediations, translations, stories, filters, etc. After theexperience in Tokyo, there was a long time of incubation. Bologna becamea place for catalyzing this incubation that happened separately and in
dialogue remotely, in a timeframe stretched by the pandemic. In this timeframe, the word crisis was mentioned more and more in relation to somany aspects of life and assumed a global dimension, taking in the climate,
the pandemic, the availability of resources, to name but a few. Bologna isa European continuation of the project because we inhabited and unfolded
its second chapter right in conjunction with the city’s layered scenarios. At
the same time, the previous chapter got unrooted from Tokyo and became
the lens through which we entered the new city. In a sense, Times of Crisis
reflects a colliding of multi-localities.

ANThe Tokyo part gave us intense and overflowing experiences of closely
looking at different issues and situations manifested in particular areas ofTokyo or particular Tokyoite individuals. It challenged us to understand thecrisis from multiple perspectives; economically, politically, ethically, andecologically. Personally, it also challenged me to think how art and artists
can be useful for others and society beyond the frames of exhibitions andart communities. All these issues and questions are universal in their roots.
After almost three years of internal reflections, our ongoing conversationand individual practices, we are trying to present the essence of Tokyoand the life of Tokyoites in Bologna through storytelling. As Elisa says, animaginary city emerges from the intersection of our stories and incidents
and situations taking place in this imaginary city have universality andresonance to audiences from all localities.

危機の時代GPECTEMPI DI CRISI

coexistence of multiple perspectives and expressions and tension createdfrom it are part of the vital elements in our work.

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that the type of streets that are generated when all shops are closed havea name in Japan: シャッター通り (Shattā-dōri, literally “shutterstreet”).
During the pandemic this image of the closed shops became global. Whilein lockdown myself, I started recording the voicemails of closed businesses
all over the world, as a way to find and give back a voice to the stillness. It
resulted in an accumulation of voices and messages in different languages
that are similar in content and give the impression of a shared collectiveexperience. In Bologna too, I have been observing the closed shuttersof the shops under the arcades, with their hand-written messages,
their drawings and stickers. They are like boards and halfway spaces, inbetween the private and the public, and they embody the changing spiritof a city.

Given the complexity and the relevance of the issues covered andthe duration of the creative process of the entire Times of Crisis
project, how did you choose the development and implementationof the works presented on this occasion?

TIMES OF CRISISEC

For example, the work Shutterstreet and its different configurations
originated from walking and observing the shopping streets in Tokyo, fromthe noises and overcrowding in Kabukichō, and in the shopping arcadesof Nakano and Koenji. I was attracted by the plurality and multitude of anever-growing accumulation of shop-signs, all competing to catch and holdthe attention of the passersby. In contrast with their noisy appearance,
there was the nighttime silence of the shops with their closed shutters.
Their presence felt immobile, in standstill, fixed in time. There I discovered

GPIn this second step you have chosen to use comics and thetraditional illustration technique of Manga to bring a selectionof stories set in Tokyo to Bologna. The realization will take placethrough the involvement of professional Manga illustrators whowill give form to the social stories that you have created. Why did
you chose Manga to illustrate these themes? What are the socialaspects that you wanted to deal with in your narratives?

ANEven in our individual practices, Elisa and I fuse real and fictional elements
in our storytelling, but especially for this occasion of transplanting ourTokyo stories in Bologna for Italian and European audiences, we knewthat the level of abstraction would be the key variable. We thought thatsome kind of illustration would be adequate to achieve the level we werelooking for and by using Manga illustrations audiences would immediately
associate the work with Japan. When Elisa mentioned that Bologna has
been a capital of Fumetto illustrations and picture books, it felt inevitablefor us to work with Manga illustrators to create images that would
accompany our stories.
The points I try to illuminate in my stories are: power inequalities andmuted violence manifested in different situations in society, the wisdom
individual people and creatures make use of to live through thesesituations, and inclusion of perspectives from other creatures and entities
into society. For example, in one of my stories no humans appear, only
jellyfish. When we were in Tokyo, we started seeing jellyfish in the canalclose to our residence at certain times of the day. They commuted backand forth from Tokyo Bay to the canal via the Sumida River with sea tides.
Their presence taught me that the force of nature is still at work despite
the city being highly developed and controlled. I was also intrigued by their

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On one side, we let time work with our impressions of the city of Tokyo.
We had gathered these impressions while in Tokyo and, afterwards, weindividually allowed time for the unprocessed materials to come to thesurface. With distance, a vision and memories of Tokyo emerged that
had more to do with the imaginary than with something traceable. This
movement toward vagueness and uncertainty interests me. It opens a
space for turning concrete and ephemeral situations into settings devoidof specificity, empty grounds waiting to be inhabited by alternative
narratives. With this in mind, we employed storytelling and fiction asdevices for testing and speculating on some situations of crisis, for testing
approaches or alternative positions - counternarratives. Each of us started
from different points to develop various trajectories while reporting onconnection points. The works in the exhibitions are access points, doors orwindows, to these worlds that were generated in the process. I was, andstill am, haunted by the thought that it is in the means, and strategies, inwhich you try to escape a crisis that you risk repeating the same systemsof oppression that generate the crisis in the first place.

TEMPI DI CRISI

GP91

TIMES OF CRISISGPIn fact, on this occasion, you went out of the exhibition venue todisseminate your stories in the urban context of Bologna throughthe printing and posting of large format posters, equipped witha QR code in such a way as to allow the public to listen to thenarratives connected to the series of images. How does this part ofthe project integrate with the works exhibited in the Villa?

TEMPI DI CRISI

adaptability and passivity: while their bodies are almost all constituted bywater, they adapt to live in diverse qualities of water including warm waste
water from factories and the relatively dirty water of the Sumida River.
And they have to keep moving to stay alive; they don’t swim themselves
but make use of the tides and waves. When I was observing all the office
workers commuting everyday in packed trains I thought that there was agreat deal of wisdom we could learn from those jellyfish. It made me think
about a future in which there were no humans but only jellyfish living inTokyo.

ANThe combination of our inclination to expand our work outside the art
context and various obstacles caused by the pandemic gave us an idea
to not only use the villa but also the city of Bologna as a space to show
our work. This turn of events has surely given the project more energy
and it would help us reach a wider audience that we might not reachotherwise. While posters in the city would offer audiences and passers-by
a fragmented image and story of Tokyo or an imaginary place embedded in
Bologna, the work at the villa would offer audiences a full immersion into
the imaginary city of Tokyo and the individual stories.

GPHow constitutive is the relationship with the audience in Times ofCrisis?

EC

In Times of Crisis, we gave up on having complete control of the visitors’experience when encountering the works. We did not stage a fixed way ofexperiencing them. Our intention is that their stories address an expanded,extended audience. Anyone will access their stories in a fragmented way,by chance at a bus stop, or they can listen to the narrations from theirbedroom. To us, the existence of the works is not limited to the walls ofa building. The stories and the experience of them are thus fluid, unfixed,
and can be mixed, rearranged, and eventually rewritten, adding to thedifferent contexts. We considered this to give it a form that could spreadand provide the possibility of encounters in other settings, not totally under
our control, outside of our control, outside of the frame.
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