A person standing on a foggy beach operating a weather station or signal device with a large horn speaker, near the shoreline with waves in the background.

To The Fog

2020

"To The Fog" is a requiem, farewell speech, and memorial to a loss in the pandemic.

As the loss of a family member becomes public tragedy when it's caused by COVID-19, we are facing the new reality, where the sense of direction in time and space has been lost: the unrealistic reality.

In the work, Tateisi sits on a beach next to a horn speaker, announces his experience, which public and private, static and dynamic, real and unreal are entangled, publicly to the fog, which distancelessly connects our countries.

Referring to Antony Gormley's 'Another place' and Hiroshi Sugimoto's 'Seascapes', Tateisi carefully composes the image of another seascape.

To The Fog

「To The Fog」は、2020年春に作家身辺で起きた悲劇へのメモリアル作品である。

見舞いにもいけず、看取ることもできず、燃え上がる肉体を見送ることもできず。ある日とつぜん行方不明になったような感覚で日々を過ごすように、われわれは空間と時間の方向を五里霧中のように見失っているのではないか。霧の向こうにある、戻れなくなった地に向かって、公/私、静/動、実/虚が織り交ざる想いを投げかける。

To The Fog
2020
1 channel video (5min.37sec. / 2.35:1 )
In memory of Yoshio Tateishi

Person with short hair facing the ocean on a foggy day
A person standing alone on a foggy beach near the sea, with a large light or spotlight on a tripod nearby.
A family in a living room, with a man sitting at a table with a young girl and boy playing, the boy holding a toy sword. The room has a clock on the wall and a large window with white curtains.
A person sitting at a desk reading a paper while speaking into a microphone.
Person in dark clothing holding a piece of paper or a thin book near a foggy or cloudy sky.
A black and white buoy with a red circle on top, mounted on a tall pole in the ocean during foggy weather.

I lost my uncle in the pandemic. It was 17 days after he complained a pain of breathing, 16 days being unconscious, and a day being with family. He was sent to a crematorium straight from the hospital. For the first time since the hospitalisation, he showed up being in a little white pot.

Without seeing him or sending him away, it was almost like as if he went missing and I'm still searching for his whereabout. Did the families feel the similar way when Tsunami take thousands of their people? Or wrecking because of the icebergs? I'm not sure, but despite, I find myself and my family that we still talk about him as he's living somewhere.

What we see is the sea of fog. The fog separates us from the future. The future walked into the misty curtain, and disappeared silently, yet, it shows us the ghosts of ourselves like the mirage that rose up by the light beyond the curtain.

Oh, the city of fog on the isles. This trip has become 20 times longer than it originally was planned. Who could know that we now have to give up you? We're missing a sense of direction, the direction of not only the space, but also the time. And I'm sitting in another present, the archipelago in far east.

The fog holds us gently. The fog connects this archipelago to the isles. There are only islands existed in this remote reality. The meanwhile, the sea, will begin seeking the meaning of being. Instead, the fog has been inserted as partitions to separate and connect the reality, in the same time.

We lost our reality in the pandemic. Without seeing it or sending it away, it was almost like as if it went missing and we're still searching for its whereabout in this fog.