www.simonwhetham.co.uk
Artist-in-residence at AiR Koganecho, Yokohama, Japan
I am extremely honoured and priviledged to have received support from Great Britain Sasakawa Foundation to participate in the residency programme at AiR Koganecho in Yokohama, Japan, and have also received Koen nominal support from British Council Japan.
During the residency I proposed to make new collaborative works with Japanese artists Suzuki Elico, Minoru Sato and Ohta Takamitsu. These are artists I have admired the work of for many years and I am extremely happy to be working with all of them at some point. These will be outlined below.
Commissioned by Koganecho Bazaar to create work for the exhibition in September 2026, I also developed new 'Deconstructed' works that take donations of unwanted and disused electrical consumer products and opens them up, presenting them in a way that resembles the exploded diagrams of products found towards the end of instruction manuals that would have accompanied the objects when first purchased.
The video to the left shows the completed installation which is presented in the Hachibankan part of Koganecho art village. Normally a space for video projection and works, the dark space is ideal for showing these objects, opened up to expose their inner workings, some suspended so all parts can be regarded easily.
Regarding the work, I have been exploring the notion of opening up the black box to expose what is going on inside, however with most technology it is still a mysterious world of electronics and cables. But that they are still operational even when opened up creates an unusual dynamic, like waking up during a medical operation.
I also drew on the legend of Tsukumogami, which tells that after 100 years discarded and disused tools and kitchenware come to life, and it seems are angry that they are no longer of use. Because of the acceleration in technological advances, I feel that the period of 100 years has also been drastically reduced and these products are now possessed by modern-day Tsukumogami.
The video links below show the first stages of making new 'Deconstructed' works, the first being a CD Walkman that was donated to my project Made to Malfunction in Chiba commissioned for Chiba City Art Triennale 2025. I managed to salvage some of the donations, plus a great deal of the electronics purchased for the project last year.
The second is a CD-ROM reader tray that I took from a used desktop computer tower bought from Hard-Off, mainly for the power supply. Hacking it to open and close I also managed to activate the LED indicator.
Deconstructed Radio #9 is the latest analogue radio I have been given (thank you to artist Keiso Yo) and presented in this way. The unusual shape made it a little tricky to 'explode' but the results can be seen in the third clip.
The television in the fourth clip was kindly donated by AiR Koganecho from their storage space and has proved to be more of a challenge than expected, but the results are satisfactory.
One of the aims of my residency at AiR Koganecho has been to begin new collaborative projects with three particular artists I have admired for some time. Ohta Takamitsu is an artist I met on my first trip to Japan, at a concert I gave in Osaka and we have stayed in contact since. He has made some intriguing audio works and has a great duo project with Anne-F Jacques.
He kindly agreed to try a new project with me and we spent a couple of hours trying out ideas in the amazing space SC Laundry in Kyoto.
Another collaboration I really wanted to work on is with musician and media artist suzueri. We discussed the possibility last year while I was working on my project in Chiba City but I was not confident I could perform in an improvisatory way to work with another artist.
Over this past year I have tried out some approaches that actually work well and are flexible enough to allow me to perform in a more intuitive and responsive way when working with another artist.
On 11th August she came to my exhibition space in Koganecho and throughout the afternoon we made a number of recordings which are currently seeking a home for release.
I want to thank both artists and Sato Minoru who was the third artist I approached to make a new project with, however our schedules have not allowed for the possibility to work together - hopefully we can find a way in the future.
