Path Web Choice
Enveloping site-specific sculpture and performance by Midori
Artist's Statement

Opening Night Party and Performances: Friday, January 6, 2006. 7pm - 10pm
Installation viewable during gallery hours of Thursday through Sun, noon - 6pm
Come and tear it down! Closing / Demolition party: Thur Jan 19, 8pm

Where: Femina Potens Gallery,
465 South Van Ness, San Francisco CA 94103 (at 16th St. in the Mission) Tel. 415-217-9340 www.feminapotens.com femina_potens@yahoo.com

Come and take a walk on the path.
Enter the world beyond the path.
The choices are yours. All yours. It's always been yours.

Description:
The guest enters a long, gradually spiraling white cloth walled, white-lit hallway. It's very tall, narrow and clean. The cloth covered floor below crunches like the gravel path at Ginkakuji temple. At the end of the path is a small cul-de-sac. Along the way there are a few slits along the way where the guest can exit the path to enter the space beyond the path. If the guest chooses to enter the space beyond the path, she will enter into a chaotic, dark forest made of tightly woven rope. Small tunnels, like paths created by a giant ground spider lead her through various trails and clearings. The scent of the dirt and leaves covering the floor combine with the scent of hemp-jute ropes, evoking the olfactory memory of long gone Japanese farmhouses. Low, subtly audible sound fills this "forest" space, sampled from forests, monks chanting, sex, birds and insects.

At times the guests in the forest-web encounter an woman, kimono clad and seemingly mad, continually weaving and speaking to no one in particular in a blend of languages. Those who listen will hear a ballad like myth continually told.

Intentions:
Create an enveloping environment physically manifesting the journey and the forests common in folktales of Japan and other cultures. Like the characters of folktales, the guests must choose to create their journey to experience the piece. They must individually resolve the emotional discomfort created by the invitation to enter an art installation, a taboo for the modern urban citizen, to fully experience mystery and beauty.

Some choices. We may choose a controlled, clean, predictable and confined world. We may choose to consider and peek at the unknown. We may choose to enter into the unknown and chaotic. We may choose creation at the risk of destruction.

To make a conscious choice often creates distress and discomfort. The physical environment that we choose directly affects our emotional states, which in turn affects the next decision. The conscious act of the guest becomes motion in the space, affecting one another, and that in turn is part of the whole art piece. Decision and action consciously made by the participant blends with the creation of the artist. By entering into the artwork, the guest has the potential to experience collective unconscious. Two strangers, the artist and the guest, thereby become intimate in that experience - perhaps even to connect briefly. Connection to another soul, and weaving together of experiences, is a constant human search.