toshiaki tomita

Could you come or not come to our hometown?

artist book consists of collected objects, photographs and texts in oriental-style souvenir box. edition of 1.　Weekly Mansion Project, Tokyo, 1998.

The objects, notes, and images that were placed inside the red souvenir box showed the relationship between me and the people I encountered during my two month stay as “an artist” in Chongwu Town, Hui’an District, Quanzhou City, Fujian Province in the summer of 1997.  The people in this town saw me as having different images.  I saw new possibilities in playing various roles I had never considered before.  This thought had occurred to me from the different images of me that the Other had seen in me ? such as a reporter, a Japanese, a humanist, a person from the northwest of China, an interpreter, a trader, a tourist, and a friend.
The title of this work was taken from my notebook, which was written by a boy named Zhibin, one of the children I had met at the beach and with whom I had spent several days.  I could only answer his words, which signified an invitation as well as a question, through my actual act and attitude.  I felt as if he was asking me if I could transcend all oppositions, such as “you versus me,” “this side versus the other side,” by thinking about the Other as if thinking about my own self.  I also felt as if he was asking me if I could stand close to the Other and look at the Other’s world from his point of view, instead of judging the Other’s values by looking at them from only my own.