At Le Forum, the transition from 2023 to 2024 unfolded through a sustained dialogue and keen attention to ecology. Following on from Jaeeun Choi's solo exhibition "La Vita Nuova" in autumn 2023, the new year begins with "Ephemeral Anchoring", the second part of a diptych entitled "Ecology: Dialogue on Circulations". Bringing together four artists, this exhibition explores the circulation of energy between nature and people, and looks to unveil every facet of this phenomenon’s potential.
French photographer and visual artist Nicolas Floc'h (b. 1970), renowned for his images of underwater seascapes, presents a series of prints that document the invisible impacts of human activity on marine ecosystems. Returning to dry land, the "Riding Modern Art" series by visual artist Raphaël Zarka (b. 1977) reveals how the monumental sculptures found in public spaces are reinterpreted through an unlikely medium, namely the skateboarders who appropriate these works to perform their tricks. Meanwhile, an artist who works in situ with an acute attention to her surroundings, visual artist Kate Newby (b. 1979) from Auckland, Aotearoa New Zealand, presents ceramics created collectively between her curent base in Texas, United States, and Mashiko-machi, a village in central Japan renowned for its pottery. Her creations reflect at once her everyday life and the environment from which they derive. Finally, Japanese artist Takeshi Yasura (b. 1984) adopts an interdisciplinary approach to technology, the living world, inanimate objects and humans, creating installations that attest to an outlook infused with ecological thought. Committed to environmentally responsible artistic practices, the questions raised by the exhibition are extended through a programme of talks with participating artists and through a partnership with "Our Ecology: Toward a Planetary Living", a parallel event at Tokyo's Mori Art Museum till March 31 that also features Kate Newby and Takeshi Yasura.
Ecological considerations are also at the heart of the “Earth-Life Learning” event at Le Forum, a three-part presentation – on creation, activation and dismantling – programmed as part of the current Skills Academy Japan edition dedicated to earth. The project explores the constructive properties of this elemental material, one of the few that can be used to build by hand without using tools. Over the course of three weekend-long workshops led by architect and architectural historian Terunobu Fujimori, a dozen teenagers will build an earthen house set in the landscape. Designed on a human scale, this symbolic architectural structure will host talks and skill-sharing sessions. At the same time, it will interact with other earthen pieces installed in Le Forum, from contemporary works to historic artefacts and creations from the Skills Academy workshops dedicated to earth that took place in spring. As the summer draws to a close, the public will be invited to reflect upon the return of this ephemeral architecture to the earth from which it was made, and to consider the many possible connections between this universal material and our contemporary urban lives. This rich programme seeks to raise visitors' awareness of the many different aspects of tsuchi, a Japanese term that refers both to the planet Earth and to soil and clay.
