Clouds, Bubbles, and Waves

“The flow of the river is ceaseless and its water is never the same. The bubbles that float in the pools, now vanishing, now forming, are not of long duration: so in the world are man and his dwellings.”
—Kamo no Chōmei, 1212

So begins “An Account of my Hut” in which a Buddhist monk recounts a series of catastrophes, both natural and man-made, that precede the description of his 100 square foot minimal dwelling, the site of his escape from the world of humanity. A classic of Japanese literature, the text reflects an underlying sense of the temporality of the built environment that continues to permeate Japanese architectural and cultural discourse. As in Kamo no Chōmei’s time, the last century has brought events of destruction from conflict (the mushroom cloud), capitalism (the bursting economic bubble), and nature (the tsunami). While each of these moments has had consequences from the tragic to the unimaginably horrific, the architectural and visual cultures that have risen from the (at times literal) ashes have been unarguably powerful, original, and globally influential. This series of challenges led to an architecture of extreme creativity in a context of scarcity of space and means. Other forms of cultural production embraced aesthetic excess, channeling trauma and uncertainty into works of originality, ingenuity, and surreality. This symposium will explore these parallel currents in Japanese architectural and visual culture that stem from calamity. Bringing together architects, artists, historians, and critics, the symposium will expound on how horrific can lead to cute, the constrained can foster the unexpected, and the unstable can undergird the cultural.

All presentations and panels take place in Hastings Hall, basement of Paul Rudolph Hall, 180 York Street, New Haven, CT 06511 unless otherwise noted.

Thursday, April 4, 2019
6:30pm
Keynote Address
Timothy Egan Lenahan Memorial Lecture
Sou Fujimoto
Sou Fujimoto Architects
“Between Nature and Architecture”
Lecture will take place in the McNeil Auditorium at the Yale University Art Gallery, 1111 Chapel Street, New Haven

Friday, April 5, 2019
Afternoon Session, 3pm
Introduction
Sunil Bald
Yale University

Mimi Yiengpruksawan
Yale University
“Building for the Unthinkable in Eleventh-Century Japan”

Ken Tadashi Oshima
University of Washington
“Trajectories of the Hut”

Anthony Vidler
The Cooper Union
“War Shock/War Trauma: Architecture in the Post-Atomic Era”

Moderator
Yoko Kawai
Yale University

Evening Session, 6pm—“Buildings and Natures”
Hitoshi Abe
Atelier Hitoshi Abe and University of California, Los Angeles
Momoyo Kaijima
Atelier Bow-Wow

Keynote Panel Discussion with Hitoshi Abe, Sou Fujimoto, and Momoyo Kaijima

Moderator
Deborah Berke
Yale University

Saturday, April 6
Morning Session, 10am

Akira Mizuta Lippit
University of Southern California
“The Soft Disaster: Representation After 311”

Miwako Tezuka
Reversible Destiny Foundation
“Arakawa and Madeline Gins: From the Coffins to Death-Defying Space”

Anne Allison
Duke University
“Managing Corpses in Downsizing Japan”

Moderator
Sunil Bald
Yale University

Afternoon Session, 1:30pm—“Atmospheres and Objects”

Kazumasa Nonaka
teamLab

Novmichi Tosa
Maywa Denki

Ryuta Ushiro
Chim↑Pom

Moderator
Midori Yoshimoto
New Jersey City University

“Clouds, Bubbles, and Waves” is convened by Sunil Bald and is supported by the generosity of the J. Irwin Miller Endowment Fund and the Timothy Egan Lenahan Memorial Fund. 

Hastings Hall is equipped with assisted hearing devices for guests using hearing aids that have a “T” coil.