"Babel of the Sea" is the latest project in Akira Fujimoto's Marine Debris series. One would ask; what exactly is the "Babel" of the "sea"?
According to the Book of Genesis, King Nimrod ordered the construction of the Tower of Babel. He “began to be a mighty one on the earth” and was reputed as a "mighty hunter before the Lord” . Being an earthly king and a hunter are synonymous; for Nimrod became king by hunting, capturing, and enslaving by force those who were God's servants.
To become an earthly king, he raided God's resources, built a city known as Babylon, and accumulated the spoils within its walls. The Tower of Babel was the result of vertical aggregation of those resources. It is known that Nimrod's deeds were later punished as a transgression against the Lord and the tower was shattered, incurring his wrath.
Later on in Genesis, after the parable of foolish rebel King Nimrod, Abraham (Abram) appears. Abraham, a shepherd, did not rob and capture like a hunter, but led his people as a merciful prophet and became the father of faith.
The stories of Nimrod and Abraham shows a clear contrast between hunting power and pastoral power. The stories were also illustrative of two models for acquisition, operation, and management of "resources" (Nimrod, who robbed and aggregated resources, and Abraham, who roamed with them).
Sitting on a beach covered in marine debris, Fujimoto's act of creation, in which he diligently piles up "works of art", is reminiscent of Nimrod's obsession with building the tower as well as ludicrousness that haunts the construction.
However, Fujimoto is not a hunter. Most marine debris is bona vacantia, and Fujimoto merely gathers but hunt. To Fujimoto, marine debris is a "resource", but it is not generally (or even legally) regarded as such. To an untrained eye, Fujimoto would look like a janitor, picking up marine debris that local residents and even the government do not touch.
And Fujimoto does not create "cities" either. When he first began his marine debris series, Fujimoto brought the trash he picked up on the beach back to his studio in Tokyo, where he created his works and exhibited them in a gallery. In essence, he was accumulating resources in his own territory, processing them, and selling them on the market. However, when he saw the overwhelming amount of marine debris that continued to wash ashore, Fujimoto soon abandoned this method and devised a style in which he would stay on the beach and create his works on the spot.
It would be naturally tempting to see Fujimoto's figure as a wandering herdsman, moving from beach to beach, adrift with his "resources". However, his plan to pile up the resources to build a tower betrays this expectation.
ARTIST
Akira Fujimoto's
STATEMENT
“Babel" of the "sea” . This project, which bears at its core a contradiction, moves back and forth between hunter and herdsman, and reveals another alternative position as an "artist", in front of vast resources of the earth.
Before jumping to conclusions with such a shorthand dialectic, let us invite some further confusion (Babel) through analytical look at the work itself. The Marine Debris series is essentially an assemblage of molten plastic trash, but what makes this series unique is its original production technique. After abandoning the idea of bringing a large amount of marine debris back to his studio, Fujimoto came up with an idea to use fire and an iron plate to create the work on the spot. He would start a bonfire on the beach, place a huge paella pan on top of it, and melt the marine debris in the pan. For larger pieces of debris that do not fit in the pan, he would heat a large steel plate and melt the debris on its surface.The reason why this series of works seems to resemble avant-garde paintings or junk art of the 20th century, but yet gives a different impression, is that these works were "cooked" with utensils such as pans and griddles. The smooth surface, with its rich colors and blending of different ingredients, is like a dough that has been baked to perfection. The marine debris heated in a paella pan would dissolve into a soup, into an industrially-defined circular shape; whereas on a large griddle, it would spread out like a crepe.
In recent years, Fujimoto’ s Marine Debris series has often been acclaimed in the context of SDGs, but in reality, it is cooked and piled up like pancakes and fried noodles sold at Japanese beach houses in the summer.
Thus, Fujimoto not only disturbs the two models of power over resources, but also becomes a suspicious chef who haunts the seashore, shaking up the identity of works of art, and of artists. “Babel of the Sea" is a project that brings up at once the multiple Babels inherent in the “Marine Debris series” .
