THE WAY I HEAR, B.S. LYMAN The 5th Movement Polyphony for collective imagination THE WAY I HEAR, B.S. LYMAN 第五章　協想のためのポリフォニー

The artist mamoru (1977-), who has a background as a musician, develops works and performances that through the act of listening, enable visitors imagine times and spaces that cannot be experienced directly. The installation THE WAY I HEAR, B.S. LYMAN 5th Movement Polyphony for Collective Imagination, comprising of text and sound, is based on various studies of Benjamin Smith Lyman, an American geologist and miner who was hired by the Meiji government at the end of the 19th century to conduct geological surveys of Hokkaido. In 1874, when B.S. Lyman was surveying the Yubari River, he found a lump of coal on its riverbank and was convinced that a large coal seam lay underneath. Thereafter, his assistant discovered the Yubari Coal Mine that forms a part of the Ishikari coal basin containing the largest quantity of coal in Japan. This had led to the development of Yubari as a coalmining town, and as a result became an energy source that was quintessential in promoting the modernization of Japan. If such is the case, the moment Lyman discovered that lump of coal, is also perhaps connected to our current that lies far ahead of those times. Exploring this idea, mamoru researched the vast amount of survey records and literature left by Lyman, and actually visited Yubari and collected the sounds that Lyman would have heard while tracing the footsteps of the survey team led by him. The fragmented records and memories of the same places in different times visited by Lyman and mamoru, through the spoken words repeatedly corresponding to and becoming out-of-sync with the texts presented across the two screens, serve to evoke various images and soundscapes within visitors. They indeed could be regarded as an attempt to access times and spaces that cannot be experienced directly through the act of listening.