Mask/Project-the details and its evolution
IKEDA Midori (Artist)

1. Meaning of Act
In the spring of 2003, two incidents, which can be considered as An alarm bell for this century, have already hit this globe. One is the Iraq War caused artificially just as all the wars and the other is the outbreak of SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) for which the modern science has not yet found the treatment. SARS killed over 100 people and infected about 2800 people especially in Asia, and I am anxious to know how the situation goes. SARS is deeply related to a series of the art activity (Installation, Art Performance, Print Work, and Video Work) that I started as Mask/Project 4 years ago using the medical mask as a media (material). WHO (World Health Organization) encourages us to use medical masks saying that colonavirus is one of the cause and the patients saliva splash the virus. However, who on earth could expect the present situation of our using masks all at once besides for preventing us from hay fever or catching cold? In 2002, I carried out an art performance called Mask/Project From Green Park to the Museum on the hill(the related project with Tokachi New Era �｣ / IKEDA MIDORI )in the workshop organized by Hokkaido Obihiro Museum of Art. I, together with the citizens, put the masks on the 600 trees along the street of Midorigaoka Park in Obihiro City, Hokkaido. The trees with masks were later modified into installation work Silent Breath for Tokachi International Contemporary Art Exhibition DEMETER and the linked project Tokachi Environmental Art 2002. Reading now the concept in the project (*) I wrote at that time once again, I am surprised to know that it coincides with the present situation and I am confident of the meaning of my own art activity and motivated for the further activity.

2. Nature and Mask
The motive of putting medical masks on the trees has come to me suddenly in 1999. At that time I was preparing for a long-term art project Field of Environmental Art, SAHORO LAKE in Shintoku Town, so from that spring I used to interact with the nature, driving often for an hour from Obihiro to the forest just for getting some ideas for the project. One day, all of a sudden, if you allow me to use this word, just as Revelation, I saw the spectacle, the spectacle of green trees all at once with white masks! It was too silent and too beautiful to be said as a protest or suggestion from the nature, however, it was in a sense a strange spectacle that could not be accepted in our sight, sense and brain in the normal circumstances. I just can say that it was the moment when I heard the silent breath from the trees. (The surprise I got that time becomes later the objective of the work shaking and poking the flat wavelength of human hearts, even though a tiny shock by a needle, it should stay in our memory as the shock sensed for the first time). Like this I started to use the medical mask as a new material for realizing the spectacle I saw (could see), replacing the blue jeans that had been used habitually for long in my oil paintings. Well, the masks on the trees, One situation 2000 trees with masks, being exposed to the weather and the air, getting the dirt by the respiration of the trees, they change colors. They do slightly with time and it can be considered as the visual barometer for the global environment that deteriorates so fast and the pollution. We can sense the invisible time and space (forever and ever) by the working of nature measured by the limited time. I tried to add this concept to my work by placing the masks reminding us of Breath / Life / Air in the time flow. The masks were collected regularly and formed into specimen as MASUKU SPECIMEN Saholo 7months / 12months / 21momths / 24 months / 33 months. By the way, putting on and taking off the masks from 2000 tress was not an easy and time consuming job because we had to plow through the thicket of the bamboo grass which was at our height in the mountain, and we put a stepladder each time to place a mask on the tree (considering the appropriate direction and height in terms of artistic forms). The mountain ground was not flat and firm and there were a lot of mosquitoes and habitats for bears and snakes. We took off 873 masks that were 7months old on March 19, 2000, but that time it was prohibited to go there because of deep snow until May, so we had to wear rackets for trekking. However, the good thing was that the snow height was about 2 meters and we did not need the stepladder and we felt ourselves like Gullivers.

3. In Germany
I went to Germany less than one month after the mask work for Field of Environmental Art, SAHORO LAKE in Shintoku. The exhibition TOKYO SHOCK by Japanese artists was organized in Koln and I went there as a staff. It was a fortunate experience that I got involved from the preparation to the completion of the exhibition with the gallery owner. The more fortunate thing was that I could develop the idea using the masks. Actually I was carrying 100 masks in the suitcase intending to put them on trees in a forest of Germany. However, there were no trees in a big city like Koln, and as the solution I decided to walk to Kassel putting the masks on sign boards, fences, ladders, dustbins and door knobs. Unexpectedly many people reacted to see my work and talked to me. There were even people looking at my work and lingering to leave the place. Japanese medical masks made of gauze (cotton) had an unexpected power in such a progressed country like Germany where the government and its citizen are tackling together with environmental issues. I fully enjoyed the conceptual art performance. Some part of this work was shown by a series of five works, Germany with Masks 1999 , hanging from the well-hole style lobby ceiling of Hokkaido Obihiro Museum of Art at the exhibition of Tokachi New Era �｣ / IKEDA MIDORI . After that I carried out similar art performances in Obihiro, Northern Europe, Echigo-Tsumari, and in New York and you can see them in video and slide work and also in folding postcards as the artwork. There are still a lot to be done in this field. I intend to get some reaction by communicating with people all around the world by using the mask as an art language and also Iﾕm eager to continue and develop my work furthermore.

4. In New York
I stayed in New York from May 2001 to March 2002 for the purpose of acquiring the techniques in printing (collotype and others), supported by Hokkaido Foundation For Cultural Activities. The encounter with the 9/11 attacks during my stay there was another turning point in my work. On October 11th, just 1month after the 9/11 attacks, I was recording my video work at a studio in Manhattan. The performers had been applied and there were 43 citizens at the audition, some supported my idea and others were interested in my work by reading the concept in newspaper. They talked freely what they thought and their emotions towards the 9/11 attacks and I asked them to perform by eye movements to express them. And I selected one word for each one that I thought important and edited and overlapped them with the picture and that is Silent Breath 10/11/2001 NYC (Speak). In this work, performers were speaking no words with masks in order to emphasize their eye movements. Silent Breath 10/11/2001 NYC (Hand movement) is the work expressing ﾒBreath as a source of life only by Hand movement. The speed of the movement was slowed at the stage of edition and it turned out to be the one I like. Five were selected among the performers and Silent Breath 2001 New York, one-hour video work, was recorded later at an off broad-way theater after rehearsing the choreography. In this work the picture is actually like a wall and you cannot see any movement in it at a glance, but after a moment or after your touring in the exhibition venue, you will see another slightly different wall-like picture. Yes, that's right, the purpose is to steal people's consciousness by the picture passing, or the expressive picture . I feel some regret that it was shown only on a small screen in the exhibition at Hokkaido Obihiro Museum of Art. I hope to have an opportunity to show the picture as a real wall some day. Anyway, this series of three picture works would not have been born without the encounter with the 9/11 attacks. As an artist I had been worrying about the global environment and hoping to put some brake on its progressing deterioration, and now I feel like awaking people that the breath is the source of life and that we should think about the various phenomena deriving from it the existence of human being, human acts including the one to control and deprive ourselves of breathing and the risk of life that might occur to all the life early or late.

5. Mask Tree as a symbol
The work I want to create now is Mask Tree. It was named after Christmas Tree and it is simply fun and enjoyable to see the masks dangling from the branches and swaying by the wind just as the white faces looking at us in leafy green. For opening Tokachi New Era �｣ / IKEDA MIDORI , on an early rainy morning when the Typhoon No.6 was coming, together with Mr. Hiromichi Terashima, the chief of the cultural section and Ms. Noriko Ishio, the curator of Hokkaido Obihiro Museum of Art, getting soaked by the weather and we put about 400 masks on each tree in the front yard of the museum, and that was the start of the whole project. I tried different mask samples by the different manufacturers and now I am using the one (with 16 layers of gauze) by Kowa Healthcare, Ltd., because of its good quality resisting the use as our work. I would like to purchase a large quantity of them and realize literally Mask Tree in a forest near future because the mask is a messenger as the wisdom of human being and conscience of our spirit.

*Note: Now the importance of the breath as a source of life is reconsidered globally. We should realize the importance of clean oxygen and get rid of unhealthy circumstances for breathing such as the act of war and make the environment as comfortable as possible for the future. I would like to express this message to the adults and children across the boarder by using the medical mask.
［Pen of art 109 2003 spring］