It is this time of the year to meet the annual art exhibition, Laboratory of Forest Art, in the forest next to the Yokohama Zoorasia. On September 29th, 2019, the annual art exhibition is opened its 12th show. It will be held till 14 October, organized by GROUP the Creation and Voice of the Woods 創造と森の声. (Phone/FAX: 045-933-1460, Email: morinokoe7@yahoo.co.jp, labforestart@gmail.com. Their HP is here.) As there is no parking, the access to the venue is by bus. The most convenient transportation is a bus ride to Yokohama Zoorasia, from JR Nakayama 中山 station, Sotetsu Tsurugamine 鶴ヶ峰 Station, or Sotetsu Mitsukyo 三ツ境 Station. (Time tables are here.) Get off the bus at Yokohama Zoorasia, and proceed further along for about 400m to the direction of #2 Parking of the Zoo. On the right, there will be a small gate with the sign GROUP the Creation and Voice of the Woods. If you visit the place during weekends, many buses will take us to the North Gate of Zoorasia (terminal stop) that is the closest to the exhibition entrance. When you leave the terminal stop of Zoorasia North Gate, go back a bit along the bus road, and on the left there is the sign for the GROUP. Bonus: this year, the City holds a Flower Show in the location for last year’s Satoyama Garden Festival. To facilitate the access to the show, the Office is experimenting autopilot bus, free of charge, between Zoorasia and the Flower Show location which is right next to the Zoorasia North Gate. You can enjoy a bus ride of tomorrow by using this service. 😄 From the sign for the GROUP, enter the forest; the road is a relatively wide walking promenade. On your left there is an entrance, and you can see a big banner over there saying “the Creation and Voice of the Woods 創造と森の声.”
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| Those
are the autopilot busses to the Flower Festival from Zoorasia bus stop. |
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| From
the Flower Festival / North Gate of Zoorasia, the GROUP shows the way to the exhibition. |
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| The gate to the forest for the Exhibition from Zoorasia |
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| The entrance to the exhibition. Welcome! |
The GROUP actually had public display of art creation in the forest between September 15-27. Then, a day before the opening, the Group built a yurt brought from Kyrgyzstan. In the yurt, they had a mini-concert on September 29th. Inside the yurt was cozy. The GROUP also opened half the wall of the wool tent so that we could enjoy the concert outside as well. The yurt will be there till October 6th to have a mini-market with goodies from the Central Asian region (11:00-15:00). Please come and enjoy delightful yurt surrounded by Yokohama’s art and forest. They also have art tours on October 5th (13:30-) and October 13th (14:30-). On October 13th, Noriaki Oka presides a workshop to create “Curious Sunbeams from the Canopy” from 10:30 (: cost = 500yen). On the final day, October 14th, they arrange the last art tour from 10:30, and a symposium from 13:00. If you are interested in them, please come to the entrance of the exhibition at those times. When you enter the forest, there is a reception desk where we can have free pamphlets and the map of the forest for the show.
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| This year’s map for the exhibition |
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| The yurt |
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| At the
entrance, last year’s vignette has new design, which includes |
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| these dancers. |
The music we enjoyed during the opening was by the musicians of Dombra, and a music unit Fu-Ching-Gido. Four lady musicians, three Japanese and one Kazakh played two-string instruments from the Central Asia. The tunes they chose for this occasion were from classics to modern, but all of them had a very warm tone wafting from the Yurt. Above the roof of the tent, the canopies of tall trees surrounding the open space were gently swinging. A swallowtail butterfly, probably Papilio protenor, danced leisurely above us. That was a very relaxing experience for Sunday afternoon … The dombra musicians passed the baton to Fu-Ching-Gido. They normally played with PA system, but today their performance was purely acoustic. Up-tempo tunes of their music sound very gentle and simply merry, or, I would say, no-hysteric atmosphere. It’s like my activated parasympathetic nerve system with dombra naturally switched to still-relaxing Sunday afternoon sympathetic mode. I loved that. The existence of yurt in the forest gave us a sort of basecamp to get comfortable for forest art. Yurta was a very good idea for an art exhibition in the forest.
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| There
were audience who could not enter the packed-Yurt. It was all right to listen to relaxing music surrounded by the forest. |
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| Four muses. They were lovely. |
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| Chairs were provided outside. |
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| Merry music of Fu-Ching-Gido |
8 artists have installed their work for the 2019 show. This year, they utilized the size of their forest more than these recent years. They are getting used to their 2nd home, I guess. As the last year, each installation shows a QR code that can lead us to the concept of the work explained by the words of the artist. I show you the link for each manifestation of the concept, which is the same web-page you can open from the QR code.
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Installation
1: Haruna
Chikada, “Sinking into the forest 森に沈む”
https://labforestart.wixsite.com/mysite/haruna-chikada-1 |
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Installation
2: Noriaki
Oka, “Arch of Sunbeams from the Canopy 木洩れ日アーチ”
https://labforestart.wixsite.com/mysite/noriaki-oka |
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Installation 3:
ASADA, “Home in the Forest, Forest in the Home 森のウチ、ウチの森”
https://labforestart.wixsite.com/mysite/asada-asada-1 |
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Installation 4: Akatsuki Harada, “Regeneration
再生”
https://labforestart.wixsite.com/mysite/akatsuki-harada-1 |
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Installation 5: Kazuo Ishikuro, “Mori Mori モリモリ”
https://labforestart.wixsite.com/mysite/kazuo-ishikuro-1 |
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Installation 6: Youichiro Yoshikawa, “Green
Circle in Green 緑の中の緑のまる”
https://labforestart.wixsite.com/mysite/youichiro |
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Installation 7: Yoko Kiga, “Out from the
Frame 枠組みの中から”
https://labforestart.wixsite.com/mysite/youko-kiga-1 |
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Installation 8: Kazuma Horie, “Exuberate 繁茂する”
https://labforestart.wixsite.com/mysite/kazuma-horie-1 |
Probably, all the artists are “getting used to” the creation within the forest. No installation was a war declaration that we could find in, say, 4 years ago. Their forest has lots of trees destroyed by the strong winds of Typhoon Faxai on September 9th. Whatever. It seems to me GROUP’s creation is nonchalantly staying together with the torn trunks of Quercus acutissima. It’s something in this age of SDG. This year till October 5th the Group also has an exhibition booth in the Flower Show that is held at the next forest where the autopilot buses are coming and going. The Group is changing every year.
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| The booth for GROUP the Creation and Voice of the Woods at Flower Show |
If you find a problem
in the site introduced in this post, the best contact address will be GROUP the
Creation and Voice of the Woods.
The city
office which is in charge of this forest is
Office for the Park
Greeneries in the North 北部公園緑地事務所
Yokohama Municipal
Government Creative Environment Policy Bureau 横浜市環境創造局
Phone: 045-311-2016
FAX: 045-316-8420
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