“Catastrophe and the Power of Art” Work #4: Chim↑Pom REAL TIMES
2018.11.21 [Wed]
Formed 2005 in Tokyo, where it is currently based.
REAL TIMES
This is a video work shot one month after the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant accident at a Tokyo Electric Power Company facility located near the plant. It shows artists wearing protective clothes as they walk up an eerily deserted road leading to an observatory, a famous spot for watching the sunrise, along with the huge cracks and subsidence on the ground. Arriving at the observatory, they draw a circle with red spray paint on a white cloth to make the Japanese national flag, then change it into a radiation symbol and hold it up like a flag with the nuclear power plant emitting white smoke in the background, as if they had just climbed to the summit of Mt. Everest or landed on the moon. Chim↑Pom continues to explore the Fukushima issue, such as conceiving, implementing, and participating in the 2015 exhibition “Don’t Follow the Wind,” which is being held inside the Fukushima exclusion zone and which no one can go to see until the evacuation notice has been lifted.
REAL TIMES
2011
High-definition video installation
11 min. 11 sec.
Collection: Mori Art Museum, Tokyo
