Art for the 21st century - Renga

This project, with roots in traditional Japanese collaborative poetic forms of renga and haikai, is an attempt to break modern art from it's soliloquistic tendency. The focus on this project is on the process and not the result, and the intent is to create a new art form through interaction between individual works. In this way the form is similar to renga, which is composed of a sequence of linked songs.

Renga from the Muromachi period and haikai of the Edo period were created through collaboration and the meeting to create these works provided an opportunity for socialisation. The renga and haikai were construkted as follows:
First a waka or haikai poet made a composition composed of 5, 7 and 5 syllables. Then a different contributor added a couplet formed of 7 and 7 syllables, completing the first work. Another contributor then created a related 5-, 7-, 5-syllable composition, then another added a 7- and 7-syllable couplet and so on.

The two forms differ in that renga aims for beautiful form and expression while haikai focusers on capturing appropriate daily topics. In the Muromachi and Edo period, everyone enjoyed participating in the compositions, which helped to spread art throughout society. this project ties to recapture this communal spirit of renga and haikai by using modern median including fax and telephone.


Structure

All the fragments of the project are done on A4-size sheets of paper. These fragments can be drawing, photo, poem, diary exerpt, cartoon... anything that can be copied to a piece of paper. The project started from a picture of a cherry blossom, a photograph of a wasteland in Australia and a white piece of paper.
With renga and haikai, the individual verses can be connected in 3 different ways. One way is to use material from the previous verse, or a direct quotation. Another way is to write about the hidden images or perceived meanings of the previous verse. The final way is to expand upon the atmosphere or mood of the previous verse.
This relationship building becomes more complicated in visual art, but the prozess is basically the same. One can use a fragment as the background, use it in a collage, use a part of the fragment and so on. Or the work may look totally different from the previous one, but have the same mood or atmosphere.
Renga and haikai grow in a linear manner; each new person creates a new verse. In this project, however, each fragment is returned to the organizer, who copies and send them to multiple people. Threfor this project expands exponentially. This project thus keeps growing. And as it grows, it is a living thing.
I present this project here for you, hoping that you will catch a glimpse of the life present in a work of art created by hundreds of people.

Noriko Keien Nagata