Swaying with Laver

Swaying with Laver (ノリとたゆたう) from Art Project Laboratory, Osaka University of Arts (大阪芸術大学豊島アートラボ) directed by Daisuke Kaji (加治大輔) is a pretty unique piece of the Setouchi International Art Festival, as it is not as much art that you watch (or listen to) than it is art that you enter.

It is located in an old Nori processing factory in Karato on Teshima. The first thing you’ll see upon entering the building is… nothing!
The main room is quite dark indeed, not completely, but dark enough so that it takes a short time for your eyes to get accustomed to it.

Once inside, you put your stuff aside, take off your shoes and “climb” on the artwork itself. At first sight it looks like some sort of rock garden, except that instead of rocks, what covers the rectangle defined by Engawa wood floor is some sort of fabric like the one used for trampolines. Tall round shapes underneath the fabric had been placed, creating some sort of little hills in that quite unique “garden.”

So the main interest of the work was to simply lie down on it, feel the soft and bouncy surface and just enjoy the very relaxing atmosphere of the place created both by this strange garden and the very soothing lights and music.

I have to admit that once lying there, the will to forget everything became quite strong: the reason why we were there, all of the other art that we came to see on Teshima, the invitation that we had received a few minutes earlier (more on that another day). Everything suddenly became superfluous, optional, unimportant. The temptation to spend the rest of the day there or even more was strong, very strong. However, our sense of duty was the strongest and we did get up and went returned to our journey.

And as my pictures are less than stellar, here is a bonus video just for you (I didn’t shoot it, juts found it on youtube).

[iframe: title=”YouTube video player” width=”560″ height=”349″ src=”https://www.youtube.com/embed/9iAl2N1SP3g” frameborder=”0″ allowfullscreen]

What do you think?

Would you have stayed there all day?