Generative Japan
Folding Cosmos Japanese Tea House: A Shalom Project of The Folding Cosmos Committee & IAM
Folding Cosmos Japanese Tea House: A Shalom Project of The Folding Cosmos Committee & IAM
Throughout the week preceding the tenth anniversary of 9/11, the International Arts Movement hosted tea time at the organization’s midtown office, Space 38|39. IAM offered a cup of comfort and empathy through the Japanese art exhibit and interactive tea ceremony entitled ‘Folding Cosmos’. It’s the stories, the particulars, that all add up to make the events of September 11, 2001 so painful and shocking and resonant. For one who was not in New York City on that day, I feel as if I don’t belong at some of the commemoration events; I am a foreigner to this grief. I am detached. But it’s the personal accounts that allow us to feel and to feel for one another. ‘Folding Cosmos’ was not a large observance in a stereo-speakered stadium, but an intimate and participatory cultural confluence. It was a stance of solidarity and an embrace of empathy in a macrocosmic meeting place.
International Arts Movement was founded by Makoto Fujimura in 1991. Eleven years ago, the Japanese artist and his family lived only a few blocks from Ground Zero. And so on the tenth anniversary of 9/11, Fujimura read an excerpt from Fallen Towers and the Art of Tea, an essay from his book Refractions, its provenance being a blog encouraged and enabled by his children. What was once a collection of essays that Fujimura might describe as "incomplete gestures" is now one of several cultural artifacts that sprang from his reflection upon the events of that day. Refractions is a piece that became a published work with generative force.
Also from the ashes of 9/11 came Tribeca Temporary. Seeking to demonstrate something larger through his work, something wholly different from the ‘egofest’ of the contemporary art world, Mako Fujimura and other ‘Ground Zero’ artists collaborated to establish TriBeCa Temporay, a not-for-profit art gallery. Here was a space where, according to Fujimura, “incomplete gestures were acceptable, even preferred.”
After Fujimura’s reading, we were invited to step into the ‘Folding Cosmos’ for tea. Two benches squared around a table that swirled with a fluorescent oil, almost like a magic eight ball rolled topsy turvy, but with neon streaks simulating cosmic light. Fluorescent oil sliding through thin Plexiglas tubes stood in for the corners of the tea house within the greater space. Each person received a sweet pastry, as we awaited our tea. Inconspicuously kneeling, the tea master was hard at work, never breaking form, never taking a break. Ladling hot water over the green matcha essence, she whisked the mix together into a frothy broth of energy. Each bowl-like cup, an ample serving, had been thrown or cast by an IAM-affiliated potter. Each was special and delightful in its design--and used in the presence of the potter. A twice turning of the cup, cup by cup, and every guest received their tea in turn. Each serving received individual attention, yet was crafted in the same careful fashion by the tea master. What a gift for New York City in 2011 to receive from Japan--only months down the road from the earthquake and tsunami that swept away some 12,000 people, displacing hundreds others. ‘Folding Cosmos’ was given out of mourning, from people still reeling from their own loss to others remembering their grief.
An internationally recognized artist, Fujimura has already reached far beyond Tribeca. Yet a new project set to launch this year, Generative Japan, will focus more on revitalizing the arts as an essential step toward healing in that nation. As an effort of the International Arts Movement, he hopes to see more projects unfold, like the ‘Folding Cosmos’, as restorative acts. Around Christmas of this year, Fujimura will travel to the northern provinces of Japan to give back and to see how he as an artist and how art itself can work towards the long-term regeneration of Japan. No matter how “incomplete” the gesture might be.