[2025] Asynchronous Objects (Empire and Environment)

A Setting for Research and Care
Historic wooden furniture, 3D printed specimen, reference library, poster, narrative script (English/Japanese) for performative reading
Approx. 700 x 700 x 200 (dimensions variable)

Departing from the Kyushu University Museum collection and research into forestry, biodiversity, material knowledge, and Japan’s history of lumber-trade in pre- and post- World War II, Asynchronous Objects follows wood as a natural resource in furniture and design against the background of the complexities of Japan’s liberation from the West and its own colonial interest in South East Asia.

"The objects have arrived. And, having arrived, what then do they do? Assembled with obsessive care and endless yet minimal variation. Silent and unmoving. Aren’t artifacts, regardless of whether they are pieces of high art or implements of everyday life, first and foremost historical effects of institutionalizations and classifications? The endeavor takes place alongside other works that have focused on the meaning of a collection as both a formal space and an ideological construct. Objects transferred from the storage areas into the gallery spaces, to subvert traditional notions of connoisseurship and aesthetic display. However, isn’t the exhibition an obsolete format of communication? Shouldn’t the objects be in the world, with their own different temporality, experienced there, in order to produce the effects of knowledge? Could they be cast as active narrators of their own histories—affect-laden, garrulous, animated? Isn’t the exhibition everywhere?* […]" – Excerpt from Asynchronous Objects (Empire and Environment)