Invisible garbage | Akira Fujimoto

Though marine garbage and marine plastic are social issues that have been getting a lot of media attention in recent years, there are actually very few opportunities to see the real thing. Having been astonished by the numbers, photos, and other information about marine plastic that I had been exposed to through others, I took advantage of this exhibition to do my own research on the west and north coasts of the Noto Peninsula in Ishikawa Prefecture, and in the Goto Islands—Fukue Island and Narushima Island—of Nagasaki Prefecture, places where marine garbage is said to be concentrated. I would like to offer my frank impressions of what I saw and heard in these places.

The first beach I was taken to, on Fukue Island in the Goto Islands, was completely free of litter, and the water was perfectly clear. However, the rocky beach next to it, which I found by accident by passing through a thicket, had a huge amount of marine litter. The local people were just as surprised as me, but here was the essence of the marine garbage collection issue. Beaches that are sightseeing spots have many visitors, are easy to clean, and are worth keeping clean because they are directly linked to local revenue. City hall is clear about the prioritizing of beach cleaning, and cannot afford to allocate money to places where people (tourists) do not come. The garbage collected after clean-up is incinerated for the most part, and anything that cannot be burned on the island is transported to the main island (Kyushu). On beaches where there are large amounts of garbage, there are usually traces of burned garbage as well. It may be that local residents, in an effort to do what little they can to reduce the amount of garbage, burn some of the garbage on the spot. I had thought the government would naturally be conducting some sort of resource recycling, but while such solutions are becoming technologically feasible, cost remains an issue, and they have been shelved on the grounds that taxpayers’ money cannot be wasted. Moreover, nearly all the efforts of waste plastic recycling companies collapsed after the termination of administrative support due to an inability to achieve profitability.

From my first day of interviews, I was already starting to feel “despair.” Plastic production is still increasing, and the amount of waste plastic flowing out to the sea is also increasing proportionally, and even researchers are still not clear about where all that non-biodegradable plastic goes—whether it is floating somewhere or has broken up into fine particles and sunk into some hidden depths. I asked the high school students tackling the marine garbage on Fukue Island what they thought of this slightly malicious “despair.” While they were perfectly aware that this is no longer a local sea problem but rather an issue that can only be resolved if dealt with on an international scale, they spoke of their desire to start from where they can, by cleaning this sea that has been polluted by adults, with the hope that their actions will spread, and have some positive effect on the future. On hearing their words, I felt an even deeper sense of “despair with no one to blame," and lost the will to pick up marine garbage. I headed to Noto Peninsula wondering if there was anything for me as an artist other than to convey the current situation.

At the end of my fieldwork on Noto Peninsula, where marine garbage washes up more dynamically, I spoke to a third-generation shell diver who noted in a matter-of-fact tone, “It doesn't have any particular impact on fishing,” “It's been like this since I was a child, and I don't get the impression that marine garbage has increased in recent years,” and “Even if you clean it up, it immediately goes back to the way it was.” That was when it hit me. We humans have been under the illusion that the sea is clean and beautiful, and that someday garbage will disappear. In fact, the amount of waste has not increased in recent years; rather, we have simply swept our efforts to maintain our comfortable lives out to the sea, but this is not a problem we can solve in the sea. Even if we succeed in cleaning up the places we can see and touch, garbage will continue to exist in the places we can't see. It was an eye-opening realization. In times of peace, we talk about environmental conservation, but when social losses such as wars and disasters occur, the environment is no longer a priority. I don't know what will happen with the current surge of interest in marine garbage, but it does seem that, with the establishment of reducing garbage as an international goal in recent years, social awareness has changed. My job is to form a connection to society by bringing in the concept of “marine garbage of land” and put it—as I have done in the past—in a form of expression that transcends disciplines. A variety of people, who wanted an artist trying to get to the core of the problem to speak for them about the essence of the issue, cooperated with me with no consideration of their own personal gain or loss. This is the strength of art, and I want to express my gratitude to all these people.

In fact, without specific information obtained from personal networks and people who are willing to cooperate, it is difficult to visit places on Japan's long coastline that have a high concentration of marine garbage. In other words, garbage is not scattered all over the sea; rather, one has to look for it in order to find it. By exposing this hard-to-find physical evidence, and descriptions of it, in a gallery, I am sharing my own experience (despair) in the belief that the thoughts it arouses in others will go beyond the level of gossip and lead to individual action.

Akira Fujimoto
Born in Tokyo in 1975. Studied at the Graduate School of Design, Tokyo University of the Arts. Became active as an artist after working at FABRICA (Italy) and as an assistant teacher of Intermedia Art at the Tokyo University of the Arts. Hosted “Sono Aida,” a project that utilizes temporal and spatial spaces in the city. Using a variety of media, his exhibitions and art projects have as their motif social phenomena that are beyond the control of people. His major works include “TOKYO 2021,” “NEW RECYCLE®,” and “Zero Project,” a Hiroshima-New York project on the theme of nuclear weapons. “2021,” a project he started in 2016, is still evolving.