FUTURE UNKNOWN DUE TO DRAGON CROSSING

created for the 25th anniversary group exhibition, Portals into Our Future, Waterfall Arts, Belfast, ME

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We offer Unknown Future Due to Dragon Crossing in the spirit of nobori (flags and banners commonly displayed at Japanese festivals, temples and public events). Our outdoor installation of six nobori creates a walk-able “portal to our future” in the form of an outdoor passageway leading to Waterfall Arts’ door. The project's design and messaging aim to both acknowledge and celebrate the courage, creativity and spirit that all humans will need to muster in order to meet what promises to be a wildly unpredictable “next 25 years” of artmaking and existence. As an extension of smudge studio’s ongoing work, Unknown Future Due to Dragon Crossing signals the more-than-human forces of change and reconfiguration currently playing out at planetary scales. At the same time, it summons playful and encouraging acts of creativity and imagination as means for wayfinding into the future. As the first months of Waterfall Arts’ “next 25 years” unfold for all of us, we invite visitors to witness the nobori’s unpredictable transformations by the environmental forces surrounding them.

Installation includes, six 24” x 72” cotton percal nobori
nobori text includes:

Unknown Future Due to Dragon Crossing

There is a lot of Space in the Sky

One Step. One Step. One Step.

Continuation is Power.

A signed edition of risograph prints of each design are also available.

The project also included a two-day workshop open to the public at Waterfall Arts:

image from Kyoto City Archeological Institute, newsletter 140, August 2000 (pdf)

Four Guardian Animals (四神)
朱雀 Suzaku, the Red Bird of the South, landform: Ogura Pond (no longer exists), protective shrine: Jōnangū
玄武 Genbu, the Tortoise and Snake of the North, landform, Mount Funaoka, protective shrine: Kamigamo Jinja
白虎 Byakko, the White Tiger of the West, landform San-indo 山陰道／山陽道, protective shrine: Matsuo Taisha
清龍 Seiryū, the Azure Dragon of the East, landform, Kamo River, protective shrine: Yasaka
Central Protective Shrine: Heian Jingu

玄武 protector of the North, riso print postcard (federal blue and gold), printed at Handsaw Press, Kyoto, smudge studio 002025

INSTALLATION VIEWS FROM OPEN STUDIO EXHIBITION, BRIDGE STUDIO

The installation, a 3D Protection Landscape arranged in the four directions prescribed by Kyoto’s geomantic design and the four guardian animals, included polaroid photos, omamori お守り (amulets), talismans, drawings, goshuin- cho 御朱印帳 (sacred stamp book for temples and shrines), candles, paper ephemera and riso prints collected during 26 days of walking in Kyoto, Japan (March 002025). The landscape activates both the floor surface and the space above it. The audience was invited to step into the space created by the composition–which will cast a dome-like field of protection as guardian objects and images interact to form a spatial collage. 

FIELD NOTES FROM VISUAL/MATERIAL RESEARCH WALKS

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