In the March 9th talk, we take you on a 40-minute journey starting from our decision to quit the ‘normal’ life, and the subsequent decade of migratory life spent making films, exhibitions, and community projects. You can watch the full talk and Q&A session below…

Art and the “Ecological Being” Lecture

Two works were acquired during the exhibition, one of them by a farmer who lives in the small town of Gurye, at the foot of Jirisan National Park. Her reason for buying the work was “so Gomsil Forest and Jirisan Forest can have a conversation.”

We were curious what that meant.

This past month we payed a visit to see the artwork in its new home in Gurye, and to see what exactly the farmer meant in saying she wanted the two forests to “have a conversation.”

On arrival to her home in a small hillside village, we immediately understood. The place the farmer chose to hang the artwork was beautiful. The work is not inside a climate-controlled museum.

It’s not even in a building at all.

The work hangs outside, next to where the dogs sleep, where it is treated to a nice view of the local Jirisan Forest.

Quite a nice sentiment by this farmer/curator, and I feel it’s probably a situation that Gomsil would appreciate. Now a collaboration of sorts, the work continues in its own way by Jirisan, a constant state of transformation.

At the end of the visit, we all decided to affectionately call this place the Gurye Contemporary Art Museum (GCAM).

If you are curious to learn more about Forest is the Artist, there is a short film about the exhibition available on the City as Nature YouTube channel.

More Images

The Hankyu Umeda store is one of the first places I filmed b-roll footage (illegally) to help highlight consumerism in Japan’s major cities. That b-roll eventually found its way into Final Straw: Food, Earth, Happiness — in several places. Having the chance to legally hang work inside here is a bit chilling. Walking through to doors of the store on the install day brought back memories of filming scenes here several years ago.

Actually, as I left after installing everything, I re-traced my path through the crazy food market, the centerpiece of one of the film’s musical sequences. It hasn’t changed substantially over these past several years.

The machine is still humming away.

Now of course, I should let you in on a secret, that Hankyu is also the operator of one of my favorite train lines in Japan. There’s a rumor around here that it was David Bowie’s favorite train as well. He had good taste. The Hankyu train, which travels primarily between Kyoto, Osaka, and Kobe, is a model example of punctual, comfortable, yet inexpensive regional rail, subsidized by the train operator’s real estate holdings nearby the stations. But that’s an urban developent story for another time.

The event at Hankyu features arts-oriented bookmakers, small publishers, and artists, and is organized by a local art and culture magazine called IN/SECTS, who are very supportive of the small and local. Importantly, IN/SECTS are also very proactive in building relationships with artists in other Asian countries. We’re very happy to be a part of what they are doing.

So what did we choose to display here? That’s the fun part.

Suhee and I are displaying images, along with (delightfully anti-capitalist) quotes, both of which are sprinkled around the entire exhibit area. The quotes are culled from our years of interviewing farmers around East Asia, and they tie in directly with the fact that the exhibition is a few floors above one of the country’s largest supermarkets…

To reveal beauty is synonymous with revealing truth, and so health includes beauty. However, there is no beauty inside a supermarket. You will not find it.

Kazuaki Okitsu, Tokushima

As is normal with our exhibition materials, it’s mostly up-cycled. The quotes are mounted with lacquer onto pieces of wood from a nearby demolished house.

On the 27th, we’ll be giving a short talk, and Suhee a workshop about making herb teas with locally collected plants. Besides the talk and workshop, the overall event itself is well worth checking out if you’re in Osaka.

The role of the arts exhibitions and performances was to help challenge the framework of established knowledge, allowing new ideas for sustaining cities to be generated in collaboration between disciplines and species. The art installation included several components related to our documentary Final Straw: Food, Earth, Happiness, including film clips, a tree meditation workshop by Emilio Fantin, and a bookshelf highlighting knowledge from Masanobu Fukuoka, Larry Korn, Yoshikazu Kawaguchi, and others.

At the beginning of this year, we released the short film “Food, Earth, Happiness,” and it has been selected for two festivals recently. Strano Film Festival in Italy has picked the film as one of 29 films to be screened at their compelling festival. Their tagline, “A FESTIVAL OF THE LAND,” is not just lip service, but a call to action for a region to re-connect their way of living again with the land. As well, the film was selected by the International Nature Film Festival, which takes place in Gödöllő, and will screen films in 30 other locations in Hungary.

Here in Japan, Suhee and I been invited to give a talk and exhibition of images from the film the ASIA BOOK MARKET which takes place in the center of Osaka’s main commercial district at the Hankyu Department Store. This store was the location for a few scenes in our film (the scenes that poke fun as consumerism). Thanks to IN/SECTS Magazine, we have the opportunity to do a bit more of this, from the belly of the beast so to speak. The events will take place from July 24-29 at Hankyu Umeda, located directly in the central Osaka train station. As well, I’ll have a talk in Kyoto for the Kyoto Value series, hosted by Chisai Fujita, more on that when I know the details.

Lastly, there’s a map project for our neighbor, AIR Osaka hostel…

The idea that we can develop and use our personal talents (and we all have personal talents) to make the world around us a better, more interesting, more fun, more ecologically and socially well place, is an idea that has become important to me. Sometimes we forget that we have the choice each day, to share our good energy, curiosity, and creativity with the world around us. Sometimes we feel we don’t have time. Sometimes we feel it’s economically unwise. Sometimes we don’t even realize the use of sharing our gifts at all. But whether it’s a drawing, an offer to share the things we love, or just a smile, that effort tends to build well-being for ourselves, and the people we engage with. Often it does so in ways we could never calculate. A small act can ripple effects throughout the world.

The owner of AIR is a good friend who has helped us innumerable times here in Osaka, and this map is just one of the little ways to give back something. Plus, I just really enjoy working with maps, so a few days of planning and drawing isn’t such a burden. It’s in pieces now, but when put together, the map will help guide visitors of AIR (and The Branch) to the useful things in the neighborhood, from sushi restaurants and shopping streets, to art galleries and parks.

The exhibition was produced by City as Nature in collaboration with placeMAK gallery in Seoul, South Korea. You can read more about this exhibition on the Forest is the Artist project page and at City as Nature.

Below is an introduction of sorts, to the what and why of the exhibition.

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As our society becomes more aware of the ecological peril we find ourselves in, so too have we become aware of a need to cultivate more equitable relationships between ourselves, our cities, our industries, and the rest of the natural world. Within this awareness, the question of how we can better listen to nature is a critical one.

Unfortunately ‘listening to nature’ is unfamiliar territory for most of us.

This exhibition “Forest is the Artist” is in part, an attempt to help us engage with this unfamiliar job by placing it in a familiar context.

A Relationship with a Forest

I’ve known Gomsil Forest since 2011. My wife and I visit often to say hello, and to spend time with a local natural farmer named Seonghyun Choi. You could easily argue that Choi’s work as a farmer is similar to that of an artist, delicately woven into a practice of listening to nature. Indeed, the act of my own hands working in the soil on many occasions here—along with many late-night discussions in Choi’s traditional Korean farmhouse, usually about nature and culture—have greatly influenced my own desire to form a deeper relationship with nature.

On one particular visit, a brisk autumn morning in the autumn of 2017, I carried ten blank canvases with me into the mountains bordering Choi’s farmland. Together with a small group of local natural farmers and friends, I presented these ten canvases to Gomsil Forest, with a request that the Forest spend a year working on the canvases for an exhibition.

One year later I returned with curator Joohee Gu to pick up the works and bring them to placeMAK gallery in Seoul.

The works on display are these canvases.

The contemporary art gallery, for all of its shortcomings, is one of the few places left where our culture allows itself to curiously and openly interpret the world. The secret is of course, that we can enter this curious state of mind anywhere.

One hope for this show then, is that a curiosity about nature’s voice can begin to grow in our minds over the course of the exhibition, and more so, that it may ripple out, beyond the white walls of this space and into our everyday lives.

The Artist and the Coordinator

Many artists have worked directly with nature—and indeed most of us agree that nature is in one way or another, the source of inspiration for all art—but in the end the human tends to claim ownership of the process, and of the end product.

To me, this feels somewhat disingenuous.

It’s time to give credit where it is due.

My job in this exhibition is not as an artist, but instead to take care of the things which are impractical for Gomsil Forest to accomplish alone. I purchased and transported canvas, prepared the artworks for hanging, made a short film, and wrote words about all of it. The creative content of the artworks themselves however, are from Gomsil Forest’s own artistic intention.

In this situation, Gomsil Forest is undeniably the artist.

I am merely a coordinator.

Looking at the works in this gallery, they are really quite extraordinary. The use of texture, subtle color shifts, and patterns; they are a united body of work, compelling, and yet each one says something completely different from that of the next. As the coordinator of this exhibition, I hope we might each find something in the voice of Gomsil here, in these artworks.

Any profit from any works sold will be taken to Gomsil Forest after the exhibition closes, and placed on the forest floor in the approximate location where the sold work was produced. Korean Won will be used for this payment as this is the only system used to value art in contemporary Korea. Considerations will of course be made, if we become aware of an alternative valuation system beforehand.

The exhibition runs from February 9^th – 24^th 2019 at placeMAK gallery in the Yeon Hui district of Seoul, South Korea (open Wednesday–Sunday). There is a public opening event from 5pm–9pm on February 9th.

placeMAK Gallery
open 12:00 to 19:00 (Closed Mondays and Tuesdays)
Seoul, Seodaemun-gu, Yeonhui-dong, Hongjecheon-ro-4-gil, 96
naver map | google map
placemak@naver.com / 017-219-8185

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About The Artist

Gomsil Forest (Hongcheon Province)
Gomsil is a small, early-career forest in Hongcheon province, a mountainous region in the north of the Republic of Korea, not far from where the Winter Olympics were held this past year. She boarders a small natural farm, enjoying life relatively free from pesticide and herbicides. A typical small Korean forest, her outer borders are primarily deciduous trees which explode with vibrant color each fall, while her inner core along the hill ridges is primarily shadowed, pine forest. The canvases were spread randomly throughout her studio space, and so reflect this variety.

About placeMAK

Founded in 2010, placeMAK is one of Korea’s foremost experimental art spaces; a convening point for various individuals and groups—writers, planners, children, scientists, and the general public—to participate in artistic relationships without boundaries. Formerly located in Yeonnam, placeMAK moved to its current location in Seoul’s Yeonhui district in 2016, and also operates a second location in Incheon.

www.placemak.com

About the Coordinator

Patrick M. Lydon (b. 1981, San Jose, United States / lives in Osaka, Japan)
MFA, Art, Space & Nature, University of Edinburgh
BA California State University San Jose
An internationally exhibited artist, storyteller, and filmmaker, Patrick’s community-engaged arts practice inspires empathic relationships between humans and the environment, drawing on years nomadic study with farmers, monks, and environmentalists in East Asia. He is founder of City as Nature art and media lab, and arts editor for The Nature of Cities.

www.pmlydon.com

Image Gallery

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This article was originally published at City as Nature

We began by building a small centerpiece for the mandala, and then setting a framework for a larger shape to take form. As people came by, we invited them to participate by placing leaves within the mandala, following three simple rules:

1. Slow down and consider the beauty of each leaf, working only with one at a time
2. Feel where to put your leaves, rather than thinking about it
3. Instead of passing judgment, simply be aware and accept whatever happens in the mandala

As Usual, a Child Shows the Way

Bustle of shopping carts around, people from ages 3 — 70 stopped to pick up single leaves and as they did, their pace noticeably slowed.

The most beautiful moment must have been witnessing a little girl who, for at least half a minute stood there calmly, looking at her leaf so carefully, feeling its shape and texture, peering down at the other leaves in their places, then back at her leaf. Finally, she walked to the edge of the growing nature mandala, bent down slowly, and placed her leaf. As she stood up, her face was determined, almost meditative, as if she had just made an offering. She continued to work in this way until her parents—who were also busy placing leaves, yet not quite as elegantly as their child—coerced her away.

Speaking of parents, a good handful of them were more focused and involved than their children.

Growing Your Seed

I don’t know whether or not these acts ever make a big immediate difference in people’s mindsets or habits, but frankly I don’t think they need to. To measure such things would be a disservice to what this kind of community engagement is about. This work focuses on tending to the seeds inside of each of us, giving them a bit of water and light. You can not easily measure the effect of such exercises. As such, these little moments of beauty are often ignored or brushed aside by most others in the environmental movement.

However, when I see parents, kids, and the elderly, stopping in their tracks to consider the beauty of a leaf, I already have all the information I need to know that something good and useful is happening. I have enough information in front of me in such moments, to know that, whether they sprout today or not, the seeds which our society needs to grow within ourselves are being tended to for a moment.

One of our chief needs as a society is to increase the occurrence of such moments. 

Each of us can do this quite easily. We each help to grow these seeds, in ourselves, in our neighborhoods, in our cities. A nature mandala in particular is not a difficult thing to do. You could make one today with your children, or with friends. You could do it in a park, on a sidewalk, or in your backyard. All you need are leaves (or any natural materials), a mind that is ready to cultivate its relationship to nature, and a centerpoint from which to start working.

While you’re doing it, you might just feel that seed within yourself growing, sprouting, flowering, too.

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This project was produced by the team at City as Nature
This post was originally published on The Branch Osaka blog

Today one quite old, well-dressed woman stopped in her tracks and looked straight at me, asking “what are you putting in the bag?” In my limited Japanese I answered “leaves,” opening the bag to show her the bright fall color pallet inside.

Her reaction was unexpected.

This elderly woman’s face lit up. “Oshibana!” she shouted softly, as she ran off the pathway and into the leaves with me. “Oh you should get some ginkgo leaves too. Look at them. Bright yellow. Beautiful.” Suddenly, I had an accomplice and for a few seconds I could only stand there in amazement at the old woman who just a moment ago was moping along a pathway.

The leaves will go to MUJI in Kitahanada this weekend for a public workshop that Suhee and I are giving on connecting with urban nature.

If there is anywhere near as much energy in the participants as there was in this kind old woman, we’ll be having a good time.

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Image: Collecting leaves in Kitakagaya Park, Osaka, Japan / CC BY-SA, Patrick M. Lydon

MUJI “With Nature” Events

The exhibition includes a series of events, so if you are in the area (Osaka/Sakai) come join us!

3-9 December
Film Stills from Final Straw: Food, Earth, Happiness

8 December, 13:00
Film Screening — Final Straw: Food, Earth, Happiness 
https://www.muji.com/jp/events/14923/

9 December, 10:30-12:30
Workshop — Building a Nature Mandala
https://www.muji.com/jp/events/14924

9 December, 13:30
Workshop — Making Music Instruments with Trash
by Erdem Temel and Melike Bozkurt

All events take place at MUJI — Sakai Kitahanada
〒591-8008 Osaka Prefecture
Sakai, Kita, Higashiasakayamacho, 4−1-12
Google Map

This award is given annually in recognition of an outstanding contribution in the field of environmental arts, and administered by the Chartered Institution of Water and Environmental Management (CIWEM) and the Centre for Contemporary Art and the Natural World (CCANW).  Two organizations received commendations in addition to the award winner. 

Recognition of The Branch is especially touching for us given that this year’s winner was Common Ground, who are a great inspiration to our own work, and have been working since 1983 — when I was still living in a crib — to connect people with nature, inspiring individuals to be responsible stewards of their local environments. Other past winners of the award include The Harrison Studio and Richard Long.

In the words of CIWEM, the award celebrates an artwork, project or field of activity by an artist (or group) that has contributed innovatively to CIWEM’s vision of “putting creativity at the heart of environmental policy and action”. This high-profile award recognises excellence in work by arts practitioners, or environmentalists engaging with arts practices, whether well-established or newly emerging, in the UK or elsewhere in the world.

We’re thrilled and inspired to have the commendation. If anything, it gives us some fuel to push our space and our actions even further.

About The Branch

Developed and built as an arts and environment project by myself and partner Suhee Kang — along with dozens of volunteers and donors — The Branch opened in March 2018 as an ecological art space, pocket farm, and community cafe in Osaka, Japan. We are aimed squarely at cultivating relationships between people and nature. Our space welcomes locals and visitors from abroad to explore the nature of sustainability together through interactive exhibitions and workshops featuring a wide range of artists and practitioners.

Find us at http://branch.sociecity.org and on Facebook and Instagram @branchosaka