For me, 'ART' signifies an individual attitude in society. When people gather together, the idea of 'another' appears. The notion of a relationship between others will encourage the concept of 'social'. Thus, my art activities are between you and me, and function as a communication tool.

Today, our bare social reality has caught up with the epoch of the empirical, transformative condition called globalization. Currently in modern society, all our social fate; the customs, experiences, politics, economics and environment have engaged in this reciprocal relationship which John Tomlinson called 'complex connectivity'. The notion of this complex connectivity lies at the core of globalization's discourse. From a cultural point of view, I am interested in the social phenomenon which this complex connectivity brings about.
Through rapid technology improvement, the physical long distance places have started mutual dependencies where indeed juxtaposed places interact to characterize modern social life. The idea of long distances encounters were once difficult, but now are widely established as a routinely realizable possibility. For instance, physically through travel or via technological 'terminals' like the Internet or telephone.
This state of society generate a lot of intense images and metaphors like, 'Our Global Neighborhood' and 'Global Village'. Under this kind of intense high-profile context, just as a subtle color under the hard lights starts halation. The obvious differences of local cultures from tradition flow are slowly losing their obviousness. Intrinsic local obviousness, which has an intimate relationship with the geographic situation. Localness is difficult to define through translation. Locality is being pressed to represent or reconstruct themselves into the global context but through the translation the nuances of culture can be lost. What is local and normal is different for the others. The definition of the obviousness sometimes kills its obviousness. We now have to reconsider again the obviousness, for example what the word 'we' implies under this globalized situation.

As an integral aspect of globalized consumerism, there is a tendency towards the standardizing of consumer services. From a capitalistic point of view, 'technological terminal' (both the meaning of airport terminal or computer terminal) needs standardizing for smoothing functional business. The characteristic cultures extracted from the locality are functioning mostly as 'local seasoning' for these pieces of equipment. Also, these characteristic cultures are elaborated and commercialized according to 'consumer needs' and every day deliver to the other side of the earth via a global production line. This is one of the most emblematic effects that connectivity generates. In brief, in either case cultural essences extract from the localities, or install into other localities. There is an increasing complex connectivity and, in particular, it is a very contemporary social-cultural issue that globalization promotes.
I am interested in observing the locale that has not been internationalized, and seems almost meaningless. I trust that the most banal, routine and seemingly meaningless practices of everyday life contain the most integral aspects of culture. The culture essence is indeed, what I would like to explore and grasp through my art activities and I try to visualize this, as well as represent it within my art project.

My creation begins from the observation of "usual" life. I adopt mainly installation. I am not just installing the works which are already completed in a studio, rather, I add minimum transformation to the peculiarity, (mostly at the locale of the found objects/ideas) symbolizing the imagination as site-specific installation art work. To visualize this cultural essence, I install my own individual imagination (which is already unusual in the local culture) into the usual situation; likewise, paradoxically, I feature the signification of usual habitude.
To capture the site-specific inspiration undoubtedly, I do not have formal methods. Most of my art works do not seem connected, both in terms of materials and the completed form. However, by adding a symbolic form to the peculiarity, I am trying to rouse people's attention and aim at shifting their unconsciousness into a concrete vision. Thus, my works function as a site-specific work at the creation site.
For covering this temporariness of the works, I employ video art. This is not only to archive the project but functions independently as an artwork itself which presents another approach to discover the project from other angles.

(Reference; Globalization and Culture: John Tomlinson 1999)

07.07.2008 Jun'ichiro ISHII