OOKARIVER DAISY ⟫
Video Installation
Ooka River Daisy
Video installation, 4min, Hachibankan, Koganecho, Yokohama
Playing a slow rendition of "Daisy Bell", once a popular song, beloved of my grandmother and her generation, I pull the petals from a flower, he/she “loves me, loves me not", the gesture is reminiscent of a whimsical child/adolescent game of the past. It represents a sense of naïveté and wistfulness. In the Japanese version of the game “loves me, loves me not” is replaced with “love or hate,” which makes it surprisingly even more extreme.
In Koganecho, a former redlight district come arts area "love" has a different kind of history, and the meaning of the song and gesture changes. It asks the question what is real and not real and what is the nature of love. As the petals flow into the nearby Ooka River you can sense time passing with the current. Then if you wait long enough the jarring sound of an overhead train passing by might jolt your senses. When I first moved to the area, the crashing sound of the trains moving literally above the ceiling of the spaces, and shaking that accompanied them every five to ten minutes was such a shock to the system each time until I became used to it as just a part of the background rhythm of the city. Through this site-specific work I wanted to give the same accustomization experience to visitors. This music-box-like montage, through it’s rhythmic composition of flowing water, whirring trains and falling petals all to the slowed down tune of an old song, is an ode to my time spent in this tucked away part of Yokohama.
