WORKS

What kind of landscape once existed at the bottom of the lake? This work is an attempt to reconstruct, both sensorially and spatially, the past landscape that was visually and spatially lost due to submersion. At the bottom of the lake surrounding the museum, vast rice paddies and cultivated fields once stretched along the course of the Yoro River, and settlements were formed at the boundary between the plains and the mountains. River floods periodically submerged the fields, and in the process, humus and Kanto loam flowing in from the mountains accumulated, creating a highly productive and fertile soil called "neto."

In this installation, the ground floor viewpoint of the open atrium is set to the current lake level, or 38 meters above sea level, and the physical act of descending the stairs is structured as a process of tracing back through time and geological layers. In the underground space, a surface formed from nets actually collected from the lakebed is raised, and farming tools, folk implements, and carts that were used before the lake was submerged are presented in a floating arrangement. Furthermore, the sounds and images scattered throughout the space evoke fragments of traces and memories of life that once took place on this land, leading the viewer into a perceptual space where past and present, geological history and life history are layered.