ARIKAWA Shigeo

• TOP >
• Archives >
• Residency Program >
• ARIKAWA Shigeo

ARIKAWA Shigeo

Participating Project	Exchange Residency Program (Japanese Creators sent abroad)
Activity Based	Japan
City / Place stayed	Berlin / Kunstquartier Bethanien
Period	2019.10 - 2019.12

Purpose of the residency

It needs more multi-directional consideration on matters of states and history in a current world where polarization and exclusiveness occupy. The city of Berlin is one of the best city to tackle the issue because of its racial, social, cultural, and political diversity. Working with people, moved to the city as migrants or refugees, would drive me to a new approach.
What I want to focus on is not the “stereotypes” which we imagine easily but is more individual aspects. Something which we can see through the micro perspective such as tiny habits has to appear. I aim to make stereotypes back on the drawing and capture flexibly the relation between the place and people moved there.

Plan during the residency

・Thousands of people were displaced from Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq, and Iran in 2015 and have migrated to Germany since then. Researching how they are living in 2019, and what response Germany does to them.
・Focusing on a specific person or family and looking deeply into their own stories, customs, and whatever belongs to them, or otherwise, newly aquisited behavior.
・Segmentizing what I found, combining each element differently or shifting the meaning, in order to explore the possibility of a new state of behaviors, objects, and their circumstances.
・Working on a video installation based on the idea.

Activities during the residency

An artist who tries to rediscover the image as fluid, using video, photographs and sound, etc., to intervene in the act of seeing, Arikawa did research on the current state of immigrants in Berlin. Inspired by a memorial to the victims of the Holocaust that covered cobblestones with brass plate, he created a video installation in which a Syrian man talks about his experiences through the act of "Piling up Stones." The result was a layered work of personal histories interjected with interpretations of the act.

Creator Information