#4 Interview with Rie Kawakami

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03/09/2016
Blog Art Spy > Research residency

by Sonia Fernández Pan

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"And can you offer me a proof of your existence? How can you, when neither modern science nor philosophy can explain what life is?" Ghost in the Shell.

It was with Rie Kawakami and Nio Devigne with whom I visited the Tomakomai Museum, located in a small town 70 kilometers from Sapporo. That same day I had the opportunity to discover Rie’s studio and home in Ishikari, close to Sapporo. In a time when most artists belong to the so called post-disciplinary art practices (marked by the absence of a permanent workspace and using laptops as main tool), to enter an industrial space as Rie’s one, meant an experience considerably different. It was then that Rie said, in relation to her sculptural work process, that she somehow feels “like a dinosaur”. As she pointed out later, this idea is a common joke among her and her friends. It was this specific comment, in addition to her passion for science-fiction, what prompted me to interview her. I had the opportunity to maintain a long conversation in which we reviewed the clichés about the future within Japanese society from a subjective point of view. In addition we talked about products of science-fiction as Mighty Atom or Ghost in the Shell. When it comes to imagine possible futures, science fiction is one of the most effective tools we have, but also a speculative territory conditioned by the socio-political present in which it has been created.

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Barcelona based Sonia Fernández Pan is the Curator-in-Residence at S-Air Sapporo from August to September 2016, researching around the notion of future in Japanese society.