Folding Screens, Unfolding Stories | teamLab

Artworks

The World of Irreversible Change

This work is both somewhere in time and here and now.
The world of the artwork exists within the same flow of time as the real world. Morning arrives in the artwork with the sunrise in the real world, and when the sun sets, evening begins. If it rains in the real world of the work’s location, it rains in the world of the artwork, and the flora changes every day with each passing season.
The people’s lives also change continuously depending on the time of day and weather of the real world. Festivals and events are held with the seasons, and as various stories are added day by day, the lives of people continue.
The actions of viewers influence the world of the artwork. The people in the artwork respond when a viewer touches them. If the interaction is limited, however, they eventually return to their daily lives. But if a viewer continues to touch people in the artwork, fights break out amongst those who are near to each other. The fighting escalates into deaths, eventually spreading throughout the city, which becomes engulfed in flames. The flames last for over a year, and as the city burns to the ground, the people in the artwork eventually die out.
Once the world begins to burn, the world from before can never be seen again. The actions of viewers do not just cause a temporary reaction; it becomes the history of the world of the artwork, and continues to remain as an irreversible result. The viewers themselves are also those who cause this outcome.
In the ruined city where not a single person remains, the sun rises and sets with the time of the real world. As time passes, after a few months, new flora begin to grow in the burnt ruins of the city. Flowers and plants grow, bloom, and scatter repeatedly, changing daily within the real passage of time. In spring, the flowers and plants grow deeply, flowers bloom in profusion, and birds sing. As the seasonal changes of the flora repeats itself, the world continues.
Even if human activity ends, time does not stop. The seasons turn, the flora are born, and the world continues to change.
The viewers, as the cause of history, continue to live with that outcome.

About teamLab

teamLab (f. 2001) is an international art collective that seeks to navigate the confluence of art, science, technology, and the natural world. Through art, the interdisciplinary group of specialists, including artists, programmers, engineers, CG animators, mathematicians, and architects, aims to explore the relationship between the self and the world, and new forms of perception.

In order to understand the world around them, people separate it into independent entities with perceived boundaries between them. teamLab seeks to transcend these boundaries in our perceptions of the world, of the relationship between the self and the world, and of the continuity of time. Everything exists in a long, fragile yet miraculous, borderless continuity.

teamLab’s works are in the permanent collection of the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne; Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney; Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide; National Gallery of Australia, Canberra;  Amos Rex, Helsinki; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; Asian Art Museum, San Francisco; Borusan Contemporary Art Collection, Istanbul; and Asia Society Museum, New York, among others.

teamlab.art

Biographical Documents

Exhibition Overview

Folding screens have always functioned as both artistic objects and immersive portals. They map stories and physical space, conceal and reveal. From the Gardner’s renowned 17th-century Tale of Genji screens to a virtual cityscape that responds to the seasons, the works in Folding Screens, Unfolding Stories transform the gallery space and transport visitors into rich, narrative worlds that defy boundaries.