Starting up a place where stories percolate together

We have spent the last few months in a state of indescribable anxiety. Even now when we have regained a measure of calm, we find ourselves living a life that requires maintaining distance between people. Art projects are developed in communities with the cooperation of many different people, so what are the possibilities for projects now, with our experience of the coronavirus crisis, in terms of meeting other people and creating the thoughts, ideas and relationships involved in the art project process?
“Yomeiri no niwa”(“Bridal Garden”)is a project in Sendai, Miyagi Prefecture currently being developed at Life no gakkou (social welfare cooperation). For this discussion focusing on the “Yomeiri no niwa” project, we welcome as our guests Nobuya Tanaka, chairman of Life no gakkou, and Miho Tominaga and Yasumasa Hayashi of tomito architecture, who designed the garden.
The starting point for “Yomeiri no niwa,” set in the garden of a nursing home for the elderly, was to remove the fence resembling a boundary between the facility and the sidewalk. More than simply the development of a project, the act of bringing in things as if for a bridal trousseau, such as trees and stones collected from around the neighborhood or favorite furniture, means that the thoughts and feelings of a variety of people blend with the context of the land, creating a place where different generations spend time together.
What thoughts, feelings and ideas lay at the root of launching an art project to open a garden? What innovations and dialog have been employed for establishing the garden’s landscape while assimilating the locational context, and for ensuring that the project percolates down into the neighborhood? Together with our guests we unravel the process of creating a place and the perspectives for enriching our lives, exploring what has come to light through this project, and the possibilities for practices going forward.