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No.1/6

The RE/MAP project aims at re-organizing spatial senses of the city in several ways. It cuts, connects, moves and transforms anything in the city; people, the noise of cars, show windows, billboards, electric light poles, smell in restaurants and bars, laughter, music, rubbishes and animals such as cats and dogs. Then, with these fragments, it tries to create an alternative space in which we may live in otherwise. The RE/MAP may be similar to DJ's musical work in clubs: a DJ collects, samples and remixes all types of music. However, this does not meant that the DJ merely replays music of the past, but that he or she creates something new at the same time. The DJ does not only restore the past, but produces something different by bringing the present back to the past. I other words, it produces a twisted-time consciousness in which the past mixes with the present and in which the present miraculously emerges in the past. We are not saying that the DJ style is a privileged resource of our project 's concept. The RE/MAP focuses on all physical senses of sight, touch, smell and taste, while the DJ mainly promotes a sense of hearing. The RE/MAP hopes to demonstrate an alternative relationship between space and the body through the development of all the senses we have. However, it would be still useful to consider an analogy between the RE/MAP in visual forms and the DJ style in music when we recognize their flexibility and mobility as common characters. The RE/MAP project should not and cannot be enclosed only within a physical space of Kitakyushu City.

No.2/6

The RE/MAP 2002 in Kitakyushu is one of the ongoing processes we are taking. It may accidentally emerge in different cities and at different times. It may relate itself to different projects and then multiply in different places. It may even travel by itself in the same way as a DJ can do only with records. This does not mean that the RE/MAP is an art exhibition traveling around the world in an ordinary sense, because it is completely open to change by different people in different contexts. The RE/MAP may look one of the fine art projects, but it is more than that. We do not deny that the RE/MAP 2002 consists of many artists presenting artworks. But at the same time, we should emphasize that we are also trying to criticize a traditional idea of 'Art' that only few genius artists can great artworks. Drawing maps is different from traditional art practices such as paintings and sculptures, because it is an everyday practice in which anyone can enjoy. The project aims at promoting the creativity of everyday practices. In the RE/MAP, all participants are asked to draw maps at their starting point. However, needless to say, drawing maps is not only copying a face of the city as it is. Ordinal two-dimensional maps we know are merely ones of the possible maps. We can experience the by walking through the city, but not from the above. The atmosphere, sound, smell and personal human relationship are as important as spatial relationship on the map in order to understand what the city is like.

No.3/6

The body is the most important means of understanding of the city. Walking in the city should be understood as one of the key practices of'mapping'. Walking in the city reorganizes all the senses so that you figure out a whole image of the city. Therefore, the RE/MAP invites all to walk in the city. Do not stay in the museum. Let us go out of the Laforet Museum, go to see the Gallery SOAP where we have another related project and then go walking in the street in Kokura. We also suggest that you should try to find fragmented experiences you may have seen in artworks at the museum. We promise that walking in the city will change you from a 'passive audience' to an 'active participant'. Let us put a brief pre-history of the RE/MAP. The first RE/MAP project was held at Gallery SOAP between 23rd and 30th September 2001. This was the first time we intentionally started to use the term 'RE/MAP' or 'RE/MAPPING'. However we also have another pre-history in works of an art unit 'the second planet'. They launched an art guerrilla activity entitled 'Parasite Project'in which they problematized the relationship between art, the city and politics. Metatkank (1994-1995) was one of the best examples of the Parasite Project, to show how they appropriated the face of the city. The artwork of Metastank was a simple object, a huge bucket in the street with its own postal address. Of course, the address was not officially approved, but what the artists temporally gave.

No.4/6

Letters could be sent to the address. On the first day of the project, a postman delivering letters wandered around the bucket as he could not find their address. He, then, asked the shopkeeper where the address referred to. The shopkeeper who knew the project of Metastank answered 'yes, you should put letters into the bucket in the street'. The postman left the letter as the shopkeeper suggested. As a couple of days passed, delivering letters to the bucket became a regular work for the postman so that the bucket eventually came to have its original address. However, the project had to stop at a certain moment as it was reported in a newspaper. Policemen and city officers came to the bucket and ordered to leave it off. They said 'You are not allowed to make your address without permission. Then the second planet had to give up Metastank. The second planet's project on the city was one of the most important starting points. They haveÉnalso organized two collaborative projects, 'Dream On' in 2000 and 'Transit' in 2001. The RE/MAP can be situated in the context of a series of their project. The RE/MAP in 2002 recognizes that the cityscape has been radically transformed through the process of globalization. Just before the RE/MAP in the last autumn, we faced 9.11 Attack in New York. Some of us watched this tragedy on a video projector screen when we were setting up the RE/MAP symposium. The image of 9.11 Attack could be seen as if it were an aesthetic part of our artworks.

No.5/6

We sent messages on the attack and the war in Afghanistan with project reports over the world. We received many responses, some of which were from the artists we have in the RE/MAP 2002. Under the concept of 'mapping', the RE/MAP 2002 invites more than ten artists, groups, curators and critics from Tokyo, Nagoya, Sydney, Baguio, Karachi, Honk Kong and Berlin. It can be seen as an effect of globalization. Sometimes globalization is regarded as synonymous with homogenization of culture, emergence of a unified world market and Americanization (or even McDonaldization!). Globalization seems to create a new 'Empire' that has no outside any more, expanding endlessly. However, the RE/MAP would like to focus on another side of globalization effect, which is creating a new relationship among those who have often marginalized, differentiating and fragmenting everything. If we consider this alternative globalization effect, we can easily find the dichotomy of center/margin outdated. This does not mean, needless to say, that economic and political margins are disappearing so that the problems of poverty and conflicts are being solved. Instead, we would like to suggest that those who have been economically and politically marginalized are now becoming able to organize their own network in several ways. This situation would eventually deconstruct the relationship between center and margin. The RE/MAP may be seen as a marginal project, as it is geographically located in Kitakyushu, far from the city of Tokyo.

No.6/6

But since we do not believe in the center/margin dichotomy, we are not proposing a critical intervention from the margin. We are more interested in new way of thinking on space in the age of globalization. It might be difficult for those who live in the old paradigm to understand what we are proposing, because our new spatial practice is just being launched in a tentative way. You might feel even uncomfortable, if you are still in the center/margin paradigm. But if you are brave enough to enter the new way of understanding of space, you could have a new global 'world map'. And if you walk in the street with this map, you could have a new revolutionary body.

text: Yoshitaka MOURI

No.1/2

RE/MAP is the general term of the multiple project developed from many sides, making a "map" into a key word, in order to reorganize city space. We are going to clear the alternative space in a certain form by (re) using the existing space. By doing so, we will be able to re-gaze at a city everyday life from the different angle from usually. Probably, this will also become that changes our recognition to a city. There are a various method and various form. For example, it is the fieldwork. Walking around a city, observing various buildings and advertisement and the face of a man, and listening to the noise of a town, or stand talking, and touching, smelling, tasting food is the best means for grasping city actuality. Conference and talk show is also one of the form of RE/MAP project. Here, the boundary line of a narrator/panelist and a listener is broken down intentionally. And free discussion in connection with how to use city space or how to walk in city is performed here and there. Of course, there may also be an exhibition. The art work about city, space, and a map offer the wealth examples of what the artist are doing the commitment to actual city space. RE/MAP project will rearrange the city space through these various form or means.

No.2/2

People in connection with such a project are very various. They are an architect, a designer, a sociologist, a graduate school student, a college student, a housewife, a part-time jobber, a musician, DJ and VJ, a corporate manager, and an artist. It is the principle of this project that everyone can participate equally regardless of the special talent and a special status. Probably, this open project not only extends the concrete network which connects person and person, but also will bring diffusion of the RE/MAP project itself to somewhere. RE/MAP is not necessarily limited only in Kokura, and is able to move to another city. Moreover, in such movement, the project itself may change to something else, involving in various the elements and person of each city. Probably, such extension and diffusion show us new the "map" as the trace of dislocation or movement. We can call it alternative globalism.

No.1/3

RE/MAP, as an action started in the city of Kokura, gives fresh air to the familiar city and daily mundane by plural interchanges and various changes of the mode, and by the direct personal/private connection taking place under the global situation invite us to go further than 'the third place' beyond the interference that might occurs in between different natures. RE/MAP is launched by an artist unit Second Planet (Hisao Sotoda, Keiichi Miyagawa, Hidenobu Mori, based in Kitakyushu) and Yoshitaka Mouri (an associate professor of Kyushu Univ./comparative cultural studies and sociology). According to their statement, RE/MAP is not a project of 'art' in a narrow sense and aiming at propose new form of the Project, Exhibition and Presentation just like as a flexible complex which allows to make commitment by various people and would be change to plural form. RE/MAP2002 is an exhibition took place at Laforet Museum Kokura and parallel events took place at gallery SOAP (one of the leading alternative art space in Japan) where Miyagawa runs for 5years in Kokura. It is realized with following process after 1week of workshop (orientation, lecture, fieldwork for re-mapping) which is held in September 2001 and Discussions in February 2002 as A development of this flex project. Those artists who came from Kitakyushu, Fukuoka, Tokyo, Nagoya, Hong-Kong, Baguio, Berlin, Sydney and Karachi plot re-mapping with her/his point of view. Naturally, none of the artist present any map which literary re-mapped, but gave us particular proposal.

No.2/3

Second Planet's 'at noon' send the questions at every noon to all over the world by e-mail and diffuse very personal reply into the public space. Phillip Horst made hitch hikes in Berlin with the card with the words like 'happiness' or 'success' instead of the topological destination. He was trying to make expedition into emotional space of anonymous people with those words just like as an off-lined or analogue search engine. Then he reconstruct those happenings and communications during his expedition onto the website 'Expedition Berlin'. 'NON BROADCASTING TIME TNC' is moving images of the void space. *candy factory shoot the TV set of the common local news program when it is not on broadcasting, this static and aesthetic images are far from our common image of these familiar mass media space which is usually so noisy and this gap between two different image of the same space gives us incongruity feeling and suggests us to examine the distortion of the image of same space. Because of many of the artist shows their works by projection, it is tend to be just like a black box as art tendency today. But Masao Yahagi commit exhibition space as project architect and made installations using scaffold especially for the projections of proceed artists and Emil Goh , Howard Chan and NG Tsz Kwan, and those flat screen become looks like billboards and it gives the feeling of cityscape in the exhibition space.

No.3/3

Another remarkable was, both of participating woman artists invite people to participate to complete their works together ask them to personal commitment on their project. One is a 'island project' of Are You Meaning Company which you can picked up a tiny house model and place on the imaginary island wherever you like. The other is 'Meetha Pani' of Durriya Kazi who came from the country where Map doesn't exist (if you made a map you would be caught in a jail). She ask a people to plot the memorial place on the map of Kitakyushu and ask them to write the epithode about the place. The exhibition has closed but, the project seems already heading for the next destination. Where it will be? And How it will be? It is worth expectation for their coming action.

text: Machiko HARADA

gallery SOAP (Keiichi MIYAGAWA) 1-8-23 Kajimachi,Kokurakita-ku, Kitakyushu City,Fukuoka,802-0004 Japan Tel. / Fax. +81(0)93 551 5522 Url. http://www5e.biglobe.ne.jp/~soap/ Mail. real@mvg.biglobe.ne.jp Laforet HARAJUKU KOKURA 2-1-4-5 Asano,Kokurakita-ku, Kitakyushu City,Fukuoka,802-0001 Japan Tel. +81(0)93 533 9511 Fax. +81(0)93 533 9513 site produce: trivia