Why can't you touch Art? 作品を触っちゃダメって何？

The lady in her lurid yellow fitted jacket raced over to me and told me not to touch the artwork.

I told her, "But I'm the one who made it; this is my artwork!"

She frowned and did that Japanese suck-air-through-your-teeth thing and said that if I touched it, other people would think it's okay to touch it too.
In the moment, I couldn't gather my thoughts well enough to give a level-headed response so I just sort of nodded. What I really wanted to say was "So what?! What if I actually don't mind people reaching out and touching my work? Its fabric, it's washable, it's FINE!"

Pretty sure it's not just me that sees something like this fabric and hears a little voice scream "touch me!!!!" こういうのを見て、触りたくなるのが私だけじゃないでしょう？！

派手な黄色スーツ姿のおばさんが走ってきた。「すみません、作品にはさわらないでください。」

「あっ、でも、私の作品です」と返事したら、黄色のおばさんが困ったように歯の間から息を吸って、「すみませんが、他のお客様が触っているのを見るなら、触ってもいいと思ってしまうので」と言った。
その場で上手く返事ができなかったけれども、言いたかったのは「それで！？別に触ってもいいんだよ。生地だし、洗えるし、逆に触って欲しいかも」

This was just another glimpse of conservative Kyoto that I got when I exhibited at the Kyoto Museum last month.まあ、京都のミュージアムでも、世界のミュージアムでもそういう態度ですね。

The work I recently exhibited at the Kyoto Museum: "floriferous - 咲き乱れる"　

京都文化博物館で展示した作品です。

Perhaps a MUSEUM is not the place for textiles.
ミュージアムという場所は、もしかしたら染色の作品を展示するには合ってないのではないか？

As a kind of pipe dream, I would love to make textile installations. Wait! Don't roll your eyes at the word "installation", often used by arty-farty types as a blanket term to legitimise anything from a room full of bits of garbage to an empty room with a soundtrack on loop.
いつか将来に作りたいの一つは「染色インスタレーション」なのです。「インスタレーション」という言葉がこの頃使われすぎで、意味なくなるぐらいように色んなものがインスタレーションと呼ばれています。(何も置いていない暗い部屋がインスタハレーションだとか、古い工場の床に散らされたゴミがインスタレーションだとか)

Fly free my pretties! "Freshly" dyed and washed pieces of fabric hanging out in this wicked autumn wind as if trying to get free. It was a beautiful sight and I stopped there and thought: "THIS! this is what a textile is supposed to be like"　水洗いしたあと、乾かしている生地の動きが本当に綺麗で感動した！その瞬間に「テキスタイルってこれや！！」と思った。

What I mean is, a room or even better a semi-outdoor space full of hanging dyed fabric, that you walk through, look at, which moves as you walk by and shows off the best of Australia's brilliantly coloured scenery or birds. And it would be something you are free to touch.

そういうわけわからないインスタレーションではなく、私が作ってみたいのが自然光がたっぷり入る一部屋(または半野外の場所)に染めた生地をいっぱい吊り下げたインスタレーションです。生地にオーストラリアの鳥や色や言葉を。人が通ると生地が動く。森へ覗きこんでいるように感じる。何よりも、触ってもOKの物を作りたいと思っています。

This time there was no gallery minders and no alarms to set off!
卒展で自分の作品をよく触ったよ！

You can't do this kind of installation in your average museum or city gallery-type space. For one thing, they often don't allow you to hang anything from the ceiling (another sticking point I'm still annoyed about with the Kyoto-city Municipal Museum of Art), which reduces you to hanging against a wall or to creating some kind of nifty wall-fittings. And then there's those sneaky Gallery Minders (as in the ones in yellow suit jackets) who are going to tell you off for touching, photographing, getting too close, using your phone, reaching for a pen... This kind of stuffy, rigid atmosphere somehow doesn't allow the artwork to be what I intended.

普通の美術館または博物館では、こういったインスタレーション作品は無理ですね。できない理由の一つは、ほとんどの場合、天井から作品を吊り下げるのは不可。それと、触ろうと・携帯を使おうと・ペンを出そうと・近すぎに行こうとしたら、最初に書いた厳しい当番の人に言われますね。このかたい雰囲気で作品が楽しめますか？？

Sneaking a photo amongst my own work at Some-seiryukan Gallery in Kyoto, November 2014. 自分の作品に入って写真を取っちゃった。去年の11月、京都の染・清流館で。

I liked the way the author of this article “PLEASE DON’T TOUCH THE (TOUCHABLE) ART” described this gap between museums and the art shown in them: 

"...more and more contemporary art is created by artists who intend you to play with it. The full meaning and experience of the work requires you to interact...
Unfortunately, for...contemporary artwork that gets its primary meaning, emotion and significance from interacting with it, keeping it locked behind glass isn't good enough. Most museums and galleries have not caught up to this idea...All objects, regardless of the artist’s intent, are treated the same."

＊私の適当な訳＊「作品と遊んで欲しい作家さんが増えています。その作品を理解・経験するには、作品と接する必要があると。しかし、ミュージアムでのガラス張りの所に展示したりすると、そういった作品の意味がなくなる。殆どのミュージアムやギャラリーはこのギャップを気付いていない。つまり、作家（が触ってほしいなど）の意志にかかわらず、ミュージアムで展示するすべての物は同じく扱われる。」＊

So it doesn't really matter how eccentric or open an artist might be about displaying their work, when you go it stick it in the museum mould, you're stuck playing by their rules.
つまり、作家さんが作った物に対していくらでも自由に考えていても、ミュージアムで展示してしまうと、ミュージアムでのルールに従わないといけないですね。

Weee--ooooo---Weeee-ooooo! Can you hear the alarms going off?

It's an unfortunate catch 22 (which is probably changing for the better but still remains, especially in the considerably conservative art scene of Kyoto) that artists feel they have to exhibit in museums or art galleries to feel validated as a "real", "made-it-and-can-afford-to-stop-eating-cereal-as-dinner" artists when those are the very places curbing the unique creative streaks which make them artists in the first place.
作家たちが、いわゆる「プロの作家」になりたかったらギャラリーやミュージアムで展示しなきゃと思ってしまうですね。でも、そういった場所はルールがいっぱいあるから、作家になるには必要な「創造性」こそが抑えられます。ジレンマですね。。。

Another part of this is the way we've managed to make art so precious and segregated; raising it to un-touchable status (literally) in galleries and museums. The art world manages to segregate itself with it's words too.
この問題に含んでいるのが、Ａｒｔが手が届けないもの（文字通りの意味でも！）にする概念です。ミュージアムやギャラリーで展示することによって偉いものにしてしまうし、ＡＲＴについて話す時に使う言葉によっても、別の世界にしてしまうことがあります。

An old favourite, http://www.artybollocks.com/ which generates random artist statements and shows you just how meaningless they really are

and you can refresh and refresh the page into increasing obscurity...

I was reading this really great article by Steve Lambert about artists using vague speech and losing the chance to engage ordinary people because of their wordiness. Here's a quote,

"artists are already too cloistered off from the rest of our culture; isolated in elite institutions, appreciated by small numbers, and/or segregating ourselves in confusing social difference alone as some kind of admirable attribute. Around 45 years ago John Berger disparagingly called this phenomena the needless “mystification” of art. If we want to change this, and we should, we need to speak clearly in a language people can understand – not by adopting academic language for institutional appeal or trying to cover over our insecurity with pompous nonsense"

＊適当な訳＊
作家さんはもう一般社から離れすぎている。偉い学校に閉じ混んでいたり、少人数にしか認められていない。あれは尊敬する資質のように思っているのか？45年前にジョン・バージャーさんが、この行為を「アートの秘訣化」と呼びました。この事情を変えたたかったら （変える必要がある）、使っている言葉を変えるべき。学的な言葉や、自分自身不足を隠すようなわけわからない言葉じゃなくて、皆が分かるような言葉ではっきり表現しないといけない。

The way we show and speak about art has the potential to scare people away. The kinds of airy-fairy words as in the randomly generated statements like the ones above can make people uncomfortable. Hey, even just the word ART can make some people feel out of place.

アートについて話す時に使う言葉を考える必要があると思います。ＡＲＴというだけで、避ける人もいるから、もっとリアルに作品やコンセプトを説明したりしないともったいないと思います。

There's a need for artists to be less exclusive and more relate-able. One way to do that could be to bring art out of the museums and galleries and put it into real life. I don't mean reproducing artworks onto cushions for the masses or in the sense of having beautiful things in our homes, I mean actually putting the real deal artwork into public places. Why not? What's the point of making art if you're going to show it to only some  people, or let it be touched only sometimes ?
美術の作品をもっと日常の物にすればいいじゃないか？作品をより日常生活にありそうな雑貨にするのではなく、美術作品自体を色々な場面に出すのはどうでしょうか？

Maybe it's fabric dyed with plants that hangs from a naturally lit ceiling in a shopping centre? Maybe it could be dyed birds and John Gould text across the walls of the cafe? Maybe it's a see-through hanging beside the rest area in a hospital? Maybe it's an artwork in an office space, as a giant room divider? Maybe it's in artwork hanging in a national park information centre?
例えば、モールの天上から草木染の生地の作品を吊り下げる？カフェの壁に鳥と鳥類者の文章が染めてある作品を展示する？大きな半透明の作品を事務室の間仕切りに使ってもらう？病院の接客室に掛ける？国立公園のビジターセンターに展示する？

I touched that thing endlessly to make it, but for some reason, you're not allowed to touch it once its done. 作る最中は触るばかりのに、出来上がった作品は触っちゃダメだ。不思議だなぁ。

I don't know but I'm getting the feeling that making artworks needs to involve an act of generosity, of adding value to peoples lives. Not the unconscious act of telling people they are not worthy because they are not "art people".
色々が分からないし、考え方は甘いかもしれないですが、最近はこういう人々にすこしでも何か貢献する作品は一番いいだろうと思ってきました。ちょっとでも日常生活にアートとの接する機会があると。

Because in the end, we are all born artists and you show me one person out there whose first natural instinct is to NOT touch the artwork.

だって、人間はみんな生まれながらのＡｒｔｉｓｔだもの。本能的に作品に触りたくない人間って世の中居ないはずのだ。

Kyoto's backstreet Textile Industry 京都の裏道にある染色世界

When people call Kyoto the Textile Capital of Japan, it's easy to write it off as some kind of nostalgic comment.
京都が「染織の都」と呼ばれているのは、昔を懐かしむくせに過ぎない、と思いやすいですね。

But there is still a very real and functioning network of textile companies in Kyoto today, tucked between carparks and petshops, incomprehensible from the next house on the street besides a small company sign, and taking up multiple floors on non-descript 1980's office buildings.
しかし、決まり文句っぽいのに、今でも本当にその通りです。もちろん、昔のように盛んでいるとは言えないですが、今の京都では染織関係の会社がいっぱい残っています。コンビニとペットショップに挟まれたり、80年代っぽいオフィスビルや何も目立たない町屋で営業しています。

Looks like any old house right? 普通の家に見えるでしょう？

Almost all of the signage and information about these companies is in Japanese, of course, so visitors to Kyoto probably don't even notice. These businesses also tend to be concentrated in pockets of the city that are removed from the tourist areas, so it's easy to miss them. I think even Kyoto residents don't even really notice.
この会社の看板はほとんど漢字で書いてあって、観光客はもちろん、京都人でも気づいてないだろうと思います。場所的に、街からちょっと外れている通りに集中しているから、気づかないでしょう。

近く見たら、染織関係だ！看板小さいね。A closer look at the building above shows it houses a Textile Artists' Association and a decorative textile research office.

As a kind of experiment last week, I walked around some of the streets I know to be textile areas just to see how many of these companies I could spy. The answer? In just 30 minutes, stacks!
先週、京都市内の染織が有名な町を散歩したら、何軒の染織関係の会社が見えるのかという実験をしました。その結果は？いっぱい見えました！

I was excluding those specialising in weaving (you can hear the whirrs and clacks of the looms beyond the frosted windows); trying to just narrow it down to businesses related to dyeing and the kimono industry. The number is practically exponential, once you start looking up and reading the signs.
織物関係を別にして(窓の向こう側に織り機のカシャカシャが聞こえます!)、染物屋さんだけに限りました。それでも、上を見て看板を探し始めたら、数え切れないほどあります！

A company specialising in dyeing Black. Black is known as a very technically difficult colour to dye well, hence entrusting that step to a separate business. 黒染屋さん。黒って、染めにくいから、分業して、黒染専門の工場が作られたでしょう。

黒染屋さんの看板。着物の形。Black Dyeing shop with it's Kimono shaped Sign.

tiny sign to indicate this is a dye workshop. In the Nishijin district of Kyoto. 西陣にある染め工房。

This one was a triple line-up. Dyeing workshop with the blue signs, then a business that does dye finishing processes and then a flag business. 三つも並んでいた！

Right next to a pet shop, this one is more weaving oriented, silk fibre company. 

Typical looking house on a typical looking street.. 普通の通りに普通に見える家は

but it turns out to be another business that does specialised Black Dyeing. 黒染屋さんでした！

Business making chirimen silk kimono

Another dyeing company...

and another...

And another...

and another!!

This business sews Japanese clothing like kimono or haori etc.

This one specialised in Kyoto style embroidery. Probably for embellishing kimono

the shop with the red noren curtain sells kimono lining fabrics.

これは紅型の会社だそうです。This one is a Bingata (okinawan style stencil dyeing) business.

I think you can start to get a sense of how numerous these businesses are. There were many others I didn't take photos of because it felt rude. I know there were also many more that I missed or that are not specifically marked on the building even though they are operating some kind of textile business. You can see below where these businesses are concentrated.

the red dots are dyeing-related businesses in Kyoto

Now that kimono are no longer standard everyday wear, many businesses such as these presumably have less work than they used to. I wonder what will happen to them in the future? They are powerhouses of knowledge and specialised equipment as well as links in the chain of kimono production. The division of labour means that when one business closes down (such as a steaming company that shut down 2 years ago) then the rest of the chain is affected. As more start to close, the chain will end up with some big holes. Can the individual businesses find ways to keep their services relevant in future? I guess it remains to be seen.