一冊の街

立川市役所に恒久設置

立川市内の自アトリエや中学校でワークショップを催し、ここで出来たものを市役所へ設えるアート作品にしていく。
ワークショップの内容はいたってシンプルで、原始的だ。ひたすら真っ赤になった鉄の廃材を、みんなで叩く。1300℃を越えるコークスの火力は「冷たい、堅い」といったスチールのイメージを排除し、金槌を介して「熱く、柔らかい」感触を味わう。まるで生きているかの様に変容した工業製品の姿に、鉄の素材本来の純粋さを見出すことが出来た。小さなお子様や年配の方まで参加していただき、ここで得たモノや賑わいの時間は、「街の記憶」として鉄素材に刻まれた。

記憶を遡ると、それはスチール製品そのものにも強く宿っている。廃品となるまでにさまざまな人の手に渡り、例えば傷や歪みという姿でモノに刻み込まれるのだ。愛用されたものも、酷使されたものも、モノは素直に、無言に、痕跡を残している。こういった道具の記憶を掘り下げていく作業は、その過程で数多くの「人の気配」と出会う仕事でもあった。
そして、「動」から「静」へ。
紙の様にぺらぺらにされ、集められた記憶たちは一冊の本に集約される。文字も数字もないこの本は、無言でありながら、数多くの市民の気配を語る。この街の営みを照らし出す史書、あるいは未来を書き綴るスケッチブックだろうか。いずれにせよ、この彫刻に関わる全てが街と深く結びつくものであり、冷え固まった鉄は不変の記録となる。「一冊の街」と題した。

A book of town

Permanent work at Tachikawa City Hall

Workshops will be held in their own studios and at junior high schools in Tachikawa City, and the works created in these workshops will be turned into artworks for the City Hall.
The workshops are quite simple and primitive. Everyone hits the scrap iron that has turned bright red. The heat of coke, which can reach over 1,300 degrees Celsius, eliminates the image of steel as cold and hard, and the participants experience the “hot and soft” feeling of the steel through the hammer. In the appearance of an industrial product transformed as if it were alive, we could see the original purity of the steel material. The objects and the lively time that were gained from this event, in which even small children and the elderly participated, were etched into the steel material as “the memory of the city.

Going back in memory, this is also strongly present in the steel products themselves. Before they are scrapped, they are passed through the hands of various people and imprinted in the form of scratches and distortions, for example. Whether they have been loved or abused, objects leave traces in an honest and silent manner. The work of digging into the memories of these tools was also a work of encountering many “signs of people” in the process.
And from “motion” to “stillness.
Flattened like paper, the collected memories are gathered into a book. This book, without words or numbers, is silent, yet it speaks of the signs of many citizens. Is it a history book that illuminates the activities of this city, or is it a sketchbook that describes its future? Either way, everything related to this sculpture is deeply connected to the city, and the cold hardened iron becomes an immutable record. I titled the work “A book of town”.