2016
土時計 / 小須戸×306号室
Soil Clock / GINZA OKUNO BUILDING ROOM 306 PROJECT
"KOSUDO × ROOM 306"
Ginza Okuno Building Room 306 Project (Tokyo)
Soil, glass, and others
51×51×91mm、35×35×78mm
Cooperation: Hirofumi Kurota
2016
土時計 / 小須戸×306号室
Soil Clock / GINZA OKUNO BUILDING ROOM 306 PROJECT
"KOSUDO × ROOM 306"
Ginza Okuno Building Room 306 Project (Tokyo)
Soil, glass, and others
51×51×91mm、35×35×78mm
Cooperation: Hirofumi Kurota
"The Earth Clock" is a work that, while borrowing the form of an hourglass, questions the very flow of time. Inside, it is filled with soil collected from the land, and it does not move up or down. The soil, still inside the bottle, represents the present that separates the past and the future, and at the same time, it is an entity that connects them. It is difficult to see from the outside, but as you get closer, the unique colors of the land emerge. Unlike the uniform time that ticks away in everyday clocks, the slow time accumulated in the earth quietly takes shape between thought and imagination.
Ginza Okuno Building Room 306 Project
This project began with research tracing the life of a woman and the traces of the places and businesses surrounding her, starting with a sign for "Suda Beauty Salon" left in Room 306 of the Okuno Building in Ginza. From limited materials such as business cards, it emerges that Suda Beauty Salon opened in Ginza in the early Showa period, and that its owner, Yoshiko Suda, was involved in a business dealing in industrial oils and polishing agents under the name "Suda Trading Company" in addition to the beauty salon business. Based on fragmented address information scattered across Ginza, Meguro, and even the Nissan Museum and her hometown of Kakunodate in Akita Prefecture, we conducted extensive research using maps, on-site surveys, and interviews, but the full picture remained unclear.
However, what emerged during the investigation was not a definitive history, but rather the individual activities buried within the city, and the uncertainty of those activities themselves. In particular, the fact that a sign that had been missing for a long time was carefully preserved as a memento in Kakunodate strongly indicates that Room 306 was not merely an empty room, but a place of life that continued from the Showa to the Heisei era. Currently, the lost sign is displayed as a photograph in the hallway, continuing to exist in its absence. This project is an attempt to quietly unearth personal histories and urban time that have slipped through the cracks of records, through the traces left behind in objects and places.