Say to Day (2020)

Intending to explore the digital architecture of online platforms, they started with Instagram and a new purpose-built website, as testing grounds to better understand and illustrate the architectural characters and limitations of the virtual environment they are dealing with as artist and curator. Whether it is Instagram or website, they all have their own “space”, just like the conditions and layout of a physical space that deserve artistic attention.

The endless possibilities in the digital world allow nonlinear narratives and make ways for illogical approaches. The only limit is our existing knowledge and habitual behaviours, which has been built up over years and accumulated since the day we were in touch with a digital device. The way we swipe the screen for browsing – the sideways, up or downwards movement of our finger – has a natural connection with our eye movements for viewing. Have you ever questioned why we all seem to know clicking on an underlined coloured text will take us to another ‘space’ on the website? While we are exploring our work with these existing knowledge, we are also trying to unlearn, question, and actively seek for alternatives.

This collaboration is also a multi-linguistic experience, focusing on creating inter-cultural dialogues which sometimes is non-communicable. Both artist and curator had been brought up in their own cities – Tokyo and Hong Kong, they had also been living for a long period in the UK, where they met while studying in the university. The decent experience of living and working overseas encouraged them to rethink and look back into their own culture and up-bringing from a distance.

Inagawa thinks Japanese is good at domesticating everything foreign and make it their own. This can be regarded as a strong uniqueness of Japanese to continuously pursuit their traditions through absorbing nutrition from various sources. However Inagawa has his doubts. By taking this project as an opportunity to re-examine what is foreign and reflect on his experience of a Japanese living abroad, he hopes to find out to what extent foreignness is perceived to be true, and how much is actually filtered, or framed by one’s personal knowledge and experience?

All these are supported by Inagawa’s deep rooted interest in linguistic mistranslations and a polarized notion of what is outside/ inside in Japan. With hindsight, his upbringing and childhood environment in Tokyo was insular and mono-cultural, where domestic and overseas were pigeonholed into twisted snapshots in a carefully curated Japanese way. These mistranslations are obvious in his works, where the text or images he used can take on a literal and also social meaning, that leads to various references and interpretations at personal and cultural levels.

Say to Day is a project celebrating the transformation and mistranslation across multi-disciplinary platforms and culture. It’s the beginning of a series of exploration through arts.

Supported by: Onomichi City University

Media partner: Glass Magazine