Hotei
Hotei, where the exhibition is located in Nagoya, is a neighbourhood made up of traditional Japanese houses from before urbanisation. However, redevelopment was confirmed in 2005, and the old buildings are being demolished to make way for new residential and commercial structures. Even the gallery building, which took its current form over a century of change, is now destined to be removed due to road expansion in front of Hotei Station.
Some of the buildings in Hotei that are slated for demolition are selected and reproduced as models. These are simple 2-3 story residential and commercial buildings with basic windows and balconies, built after World War II. The models are grouped together and installed on the exhibition floor. Multiple video cameras are placed inside and outside the models, capturing both interior and exterior views. The footage is then displayed to visitors on monitors and projected onto the gallery walls.
Through the moving gaze of the cameras inside the empty model buildings, viewers see secretive and hollow interior spaces, other model buildings through windows, and the visitors themselves within the larger real space. Combined with the spectacle created by the models, these images suggest multiple possibilities for perceiving both virtual spaces and real objects. The intersection of gazes, seeing and being seen, around these models of disappearing buildings in an unfamiliar city serves as a metaphor for individuals buried within countless social relationships in urban life.
