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The 29th EU-Japan Fest Support Projects (Jan. 2021- Mar. 2024)

* To Japanese

n this month me and my girlfriend managed to change quite many realities - Graz (AT) - somehow a quiet and organized European city with messy Sofia (BG) and from there to our mountain village - Kruvenik and the "house with no neighbours" that we have.
This was also the place where we used the mirror. While making the photos we thought and talked about the contrast between the there and the city and how detached from nature the modern people had become. And still there is this wave, this movement of young and conscience people
that feel the need of reconnection with nature. Here there are our photos.
The mirror will continue its travels in the coming days :) ©Georgi Petev


Mirrored Journey

 
Main program

Date: 1 Jun.2021~31 Jan.2022
Venue: On the internet
Artists: Kazuhiro Yajima, Violeta Ivanova

 
Official Website and Instagram

https://mirrored-journey.com/home
https://www.instagram.com/mirrored.journey/





Online
Photography


"Can you imagine life outside the city? Outside the human realm? Living on a fertile soil, breathing fresh and clean air, warmth by the sun and drinking from pure rain. No need to rush, no thoughts to overthink, no commodity to be fulfilled. A life full of growth in balance with the natural flow. What happened to me, happened to many of us. We have no weapons to fight with, our asset is wisdom. Nature is on our side."
Ode from a dead Tree

©Ana Lazarevska


this photo was taken down an alleyway close-by to where I live and is part of the journey I used to take often when I went for walks during lockdown life, when there wasn’t much else to do other than walk from your home. I always enjoy traversing through this alleyway because of the textures, patterns, colours and lichen on the walls. It often looks like a large mural or abstract painting in my eyes.
©Abbi Jones


ASHEN is a series of photographs based around the phenomenon of Ash Dieback, a highly destructive disease of ash trees that was first detected in Ireland in 2012 after being unknowingly imported from continental Europe. The ash is the most prolific tree in Irish hedgerows, and the highly invasive disease is now rampant throughout Ireland, causing the majority of ash trees to die within a few years. Already clearly visible, its effects are set to profoundly change the appearance and character of the Irish rural landscape. While this project focuses on this particular phenomenon, it also reflects upon the spread of other recent diseases, and the impact of human activity on our fragile planet.
©Ian Wieczorek


The architect Adolf Loos used many mirrors in his architecture. I would like to visit Loos's architecture with a mirror and reconsider mirrors in Loos's architecture.
Emil Löwenbach Apartment (1913)
©Kazuhiro Yajima


Abbi kindly invited me to your mirror project, and after a long Brexit-delayed mail journey, I took the mirror with me on my hiking trip to Poland and Czech.

It feels interesting to place a perfect and artificial object, like a mirror, into the rough and chaotic nature. It feels displaced and at the same time perfectly aligned, from an anthropocentric and human perspective. The material of the mirror turns into a prosthetic element that allows to create multilayered stories.
The first picture is created at an old ruin that is situated in the Polish mountains. The building embodies human memories that I can feel but not detect, and it seems like a past is waving to me into the present. My visit becomes part of a passing history that I capture in this image.

Even though I wanted to take another image, the mirror fell to the floor and rolled a few meters next to the ruin. Rather than trying to manipulate the situation, I looked at the image, letting the agency of this place become part of the project. The leaves that surround the mirror were not touched by me, yet it looks quite scenic, and it feels like a similar idea, in which the past (the fallen leaves) on the ground, are connected with the present liveliness (the leaves on the tree), and connect with one another– rather than standing in opposition. The apparent living state and the end of life forming a perfect circle, in which it becomes clear that even the past is not ended.

The third picture was taken today, in the czech mountains. While I observed how the rocks had fallen into one another throughout a pre-human history, I captured this seemingly fragile state of equilibrium. The mirror is situated between two rocks, reflecting the image of a tree that appears to grow between them, thereby providing them a delusive, human-made stability.

I will send the mirror to a friend in the next days. Hope that you are all well.

©Monika Dorniak


People go through this circle and wish for the end of the COVID-19. (Image of circle)
Location : Kamakura, Japan

©Mizuki Ogawa


One day I went to a park located a little away from my house and found a small stream. The surface of the water was shining in the sun and the sound of murmuring resonated comfortably in my ears.

My son was sleeping soundly in the stroller.

I took the mirror out of my bag and gently floated it on the stream.

I was fascinated by the relationship between a static material surfaces of the mirror and a fluid surface created by nature.

The compressed and flattened space in the mirror creates a new proximity relationship between the surroundings. It is the ‘in reach’ allusiveness and becomes a new perspective through viewer’s awareness.

Nozomi Watanabe / Yokohama, Japan / Nov. 3 2021
©Nozomi Watanabe


At first glance quite different, the three photos are connected by a common theme - leaving traces in time, leaving a legacy. Each of them approaches the topic from a different angle.

In the first, on closer inspection, fingerprints can be seen in the ceramic shards. The photo was taken at an excavation location of the ancient Roman city of Deultum in Bulgaria. These traces, perhaps accidentally made in the clay almost two thousand years ago, left a deep impression on me- а very intimate, unpretentious human touch from the past.

The second photo shows two emblematic buildings built in the city of Linz during the Nazi regime in Austria. They are an example of Hitler's heritage and just a foretaste of his ambitious plans for one of his favourite cities.

Unlike the first two images, the third gazes not into the past but directly into the future. In it, a seven years old girl draws a self-portrait during an art class. This photo emphasises the role of all people who transfer knowledge, experience and skills to the next generations and thus leave a significant mark on the development of tomorrow's society.

©Violeta Ivanova


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