2025.01 Teshikaga Hokkaido
A dialogue with ice at minus 20 degrees.
What kind of exchange unfolded between me and the Jikū Ranentai under such extreme conditions?
[Records and Memory]
Memories are stored deep within the inner world—consciousness, spirit, and soul.
If we define subjective information as “memory” and objective information as “record,” where, then, is the boundary between the two, etched into our minds and bodies?
If we could retrieve the recorded information engraved within ourselves and recall it, could we say that “a record becomes a memory”?
Assuming this, memory may not be limited to neural connections in the brain.
It may reach back to our genes, our molecules, even to subatomic particles.
If we could trace any memory deep enough, might we arrive at the very origin of the universe itself?
A vast landscape removed from daily life, an environment so harsh it brushes against life and death, ample time to dive inward, and a fervent will to explore—
when these elements converge, we may finally approach the primal source of our own existence.
To transform the frozen records within myself into living memory, I traveled to the midwinter wilderness of Teshikaga.
[The Parallels Between Self and Cosmos]
Under the sunlight, I carve into transparent ice—searching for forms hidden in the dark.
What could the shapes that emerge here possibly mean?
At the very least, it’s clear that something within myself and something in the external world worked together to give form to the ice.
Was the impulse to carve born from knowledge and experience? Or was it a record already embedded within my body?
The block of ice, as it is carved away, begins to resonate with my inner self—gradually revealing its true form.
The shapes that rise from tracing elusive sensations, swirling in the depths of my consciousness, are at once expressions of my inner world and of the cosmos itself.
This hypothesis has begun to assert itself—quietly, yet unmistakably.
Inside the ice, I found myself.
And I saw the universe.
