HOO. Landscape and food works (hereafter HOO) is a unit by Tomomi Takaoka and Shikino Nagamori. The pair met at a landscape design office and started working together in March 2012. The artists say that “To live means to exist within a circulating landscape” (*1), reflecting the fact that we live by taking in the plants, animals and oxygen in the landscape and converting them into cells and energy. The two elements “landscape” and “food” in the artists’ name are therefore closely linked.

HOO’s approach is based on an ethnographic point of view that emphasises the relationship with the locality and the details of daily life, while at the same time expressing a strong interest in ecology, with a depth that encompasses the micro and the macro, the “one” and the “many”. It connects our individual lives with the larger world of global circulation and the environment, and shows us that both are constantly conjoined.

The exhibition “Standing in the Kitchen, the View from the Lighthouse”, held at Kurobe City Art Museum from October to December in 2020, is an installation work involving text and video. The text is based on six stories derived from interviews with local people, focusing on people’s daily activities in the seaside and mountainside areas and their relationship to the topography. The video is based on a performance of eating and reading, pre-recorded at the venue.

Although the stories are based on the personal narratives of people who lived from before World War II to the present day through the Showa, Heisei and Reiwa periods, the background of each story also reflects post-modern historical events such as going to the Northern Territories to work, fishing in the northern seas, working in a hydroelectric power generation company, emigrating to South America, experiences of war, and disasters. Questioning how to live now, through the lens of people who lived in this region despite the turbulence of many events, was a realistic concern for the artists making the exhibition under the turmoil of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The space is designed in such a way that the visitor naturally “stands in the kitchen” when entering the exhibition room, and on the other side of the kitchen, one can see a topographical model, mountains, the sea, a lighthouse and several dining tables. It is an abstracted landscape of Kurobe City.

The kitchen is situated between the viewer’s body and the landscape in the distance. The viewer sees the landscape through the kitchen. The artists have often used “food” as a medium, and this also coincides with their position as mediators, reflecting and presenting the landscape and local stories in their works. I was struck by this kitchen arrangement as a straight-forward presentation of what fundamentally underpins HOO’s practice and work. And then, walking through the exhibition space, the viewer encounters stories at the dinner tables.

Keywords such as “borders” and “mediums” relating to intervals are another layer of the exhibition. Along with the kitchen, the lighthouse also appears as an important motif, located between the sea and the land. It provides a birds-eye view illuminating both sides of the landscape. In Kurobe, there is the Ikujibana lighthouse, which was built after the war. In the exhibition, the Fresnel lens used in the past is displayed as a representation of a lighthouse. A common point linking the lighthouse and the kitchen is the use of fire. They encompass life and death, just as fire can make or break a living being. The quotation from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s poem “The Lighthouse” seemed to hint at the modern and anthropocentric aspects underlying our daily lives, including the six stories.

Through a variety of media, the artists carefully engage with the impressions and sensations of the viewers, attempting to reconstruct a complex, intertwined world. Like a wave, it moves back and forth between large histories, ideas and philosophies and small personal lives, between the biological person who lives with the cycles of nature and the social person who lives within various boundaries, taking a long time to think and return to its own life. A temporal space is opened to share such “now and here”.

Live video footage from the sea in front of the Ikujibana lighthouse, and a piece of amber sugar seasoned with local Kurobe salt. As you take in the sea of Kurobe, you may imagine the stories of the various grains of the land.

Infinite lives come to be and then disappear.Each one a small, unknown story.
Yet each one lives on.
In each and every place, stories are spun, accumulated,and become part of the landscape.
Look at the finer details,they are a collection of ambiguous points.
The scenery you saw, and the scenery I saw.
Sways over time, with the environment,ebbing and flowing like the coastline.
I confirm where I am.
Standing in the kitchen, the view from the lighthouse. (*2)

Chikako Shakudo, Kurobe City Art Museum

Translation :Naoko Mabon (WAGON)

*1 “HOO. Landscape and food works: Standing in the Kitchen, the View from the Lighthouse”exhibition catalogue, Kurobe City Art Museum, 2020, p.43

*2 Excerpt from the text of “Standing in the Kitchen, the View from the Lighthouse” in the “HOO. Landscape and food works: Standing in the Kitchen, the View from the Lighthouse” exhibition catalogue, Kurobe City Art Museum, 2020, cover

Image captions (all)
HOO. Landscape and food works “Standing in the Kitchen, the View from the Lighthouse”, 2020. Photography: Ryohei Yanagihara

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Standing in the Kitchen, the View from the Lighthouse

3 October – 20 December 2020
Kurobe City Art Museum

Organised by: Kurobe City Art Museum [Public Interest Incorporated Foundation Kurobe International Cultural Center]
Co-organised by: City of Kurobe, Kurobe City Board of Education, THE KITANIPPON SHIMBUN
Sponsored by: Japan Arts Council, The Kao Foundation for Arts and Sciences
With the special cooperation of: TRNK exhibition preparation, TAKAIYAMA inc., Hokuyo no Yakata, Kurobe City Library
Under the auspices of: Kitanihon Broadcasting Co., Ltd., Toyama Television Broadcasting Co., Ltd., TULIP-TV INC., milare TV, Niikawa community broadcast

– HOO. Landscape and food works –
Tomomi Takaoka, Born 1981 in Aichi, Japan
Shikino Nagamori, Born 1980 in Toyama, Japan

After working at a landscape design studio, the artists began activities from March 2012, and have been involved in a wide range of fields such as food presentations, art projects, and design.

Major works include: “Passing Days, what is there.” (Saitama Triennale 2020, 2020); “The story of the table for life” (Culture City of East Asia 2018 Kanazawa, “Altering Home”, 2018); “Invisible gods -Indigenous belief and food culture of Kasukawa-” (Foodscape We are what we eat, Arts Maebashi, 2016); “Where the Moon Rises, Past and Present” (Ichihara Art × Mix, 2014); “Fermentation room” (Beppu Art Month 2012, 2012), among others.

HOO. Landscape and food works “Standing in the Kitchen, the View from the Lighthouse” artist interview (Japanese)
HOO. Landscape and food works “Standing in the Kitchen, the View from the Lighthouse”
A document of Meals and Recitations (Japanese)

Translation :Naoko Mabon (WAGON)