Ghost Gardens
Installation in a vacant shopping mall warehouse featuring damaged digital tablets displaying text from the Sakuteiki, an old Japanese manual on garden design, and a 'garden' made of concrete debris and tarpaulins from Tokyo demolition sites.
The tablets with broken screens, sourced from second-hand electronics shops, display fragmented text from the Sakuteiki, particularly its passages on rock arrangements and their taboos. The texts, spoken by artificial intelligence narrators, produce a layered auditory environment with the intermittent repetition of the Japanese word “rock,” mapping the visual noise characterized by the repeated presence of rocks in the installation.
The concrete pieces are arranged in island-like formations, each consisting of a large central piece and smaller pieces surrounding it. Resembling rocks yet hollow within, the tarpaulins mimic natural forms while echoing common visual motifs in urban environments. Evoking construction-related activities like temporary coverings, storage, and protection, they reflect the dynamics of Tokyo’s swift urbanization and gentrification, characterized by rapid cycles of demolition and reconstruction.
The concrete pieces come from a Tokyo recycling facility specializing in leftover demolition material. Chosen with the same meticulousness as rocks for a traditional garden, each piece carries its own memory from various Tokyo structures, contributing to a temporary garden that highlights the aesthetics of the everyday.