Director's Note 004
Embedded Art September 17, 2002

Peter Gabriel created a CD-Rom artwork entitled EVE. When I first walked into the stable area of the Obihiro Horserace Track, there I saw the world of EVE. Thus, EVE was my initial vision for the Demeter exhibition.

EVE is a journey. It is organized into four worlds. Each combines one Peter Gabriel song with the art from one artist to create a musical and visual framework: Yayoi Kusama’s world of “Mud,” Helen Chadwick’s “The Garden,” and Cathy De Monchaux’s “Profit,” and Nils-Udo’s “Paradise.” EVE is Adam’s journey to look for Eve, who left Paradise, and the story of the two sexes being reunited.

I just wrote “four worlds,” but I don’t mean to say that they are separated. They are more like four different aspects of one landscape evolving over a course of time. We can see a 360 degree view, and the view changes as we continue with the journey. The odyssey begins with a world of mud, and a growing variety of plants, evolving into “the garden.” The garden becomes industrialized and becomes the world of “profit.” After ruin, the land revives and returns back to “Paradise.” EVE is a game and the journey filled with mysteries. Game players explore the landscape with Adam and encounter many enigmas. They have to explore, listen to the words of many people, and collect “art pieces” hidden by the artists in the landscape in order to enter the next phase. As they solve the mysteries, new gates are opened and the world keeps changing its landscape.

What is interesting here is that the world only changes through the players exploring the landscape, searching and solving many mysteries embedded in the world. “I” affects the world and those changes will affect “me.” Such endless process of interaction between spirit and landscape are embodied as a journey.
I saw the world of EVE in the landscape of the horserace track. I planned to design the contemporary art exhibition Demeter as a journey. The artworks are embedded in the horserace track and Demeter becomes a journey for the people to explore.
We embedded art in a landscape. As an exhibition, it is not so convenient for the audience. They cannot just walk sequentially through the art works. The audience has to actively look for the art. The racehorse track has many attractive objects with which the artists have to work hard to compete. In other words, Demeter offers us opportunities to ask the question, “what is Art?”

(Written by Serizawa Takashi)