A home is usually a building, something that stands on the ground in a certain place. At the same time, it is also a record of the stories of the people who live there, have lived there in the past, or by extension will live there in the future, and their families and friends. It is a sort of ambiance that pervades the house, something you can feel with your heart.

         Rope *1 is a medium that appears throughout Japanese culture, from 16,000-year-old Jomon pottery *2 to the heavy ropes worn by present-day yokozuna, the grand masters of sumo wrestling, and the shimenawa ropes that cordon off sacred objects and spaces all over the place. To anyone living in Japan, rope is an old and familiar material and tool, an intimate, tangible and real presence in the local cultural background.

         Expanded to the anthropological scale, ropes have probably existed since the birth of humankind, and connect to the latest superstring theories, pending verification, according to which the universe itself is supposed to consist of tiny strings.

         Rope is the medium with which we together tie a house crosswise. When a house is bound crosswise with rope*3, the rope becomes a medium between us and the house. It becomes a decryption device, a machine for translating into the language of art, a pictorially expandable matrix that transforms the house into a work of art.

         The basic binding pattern is a simple crosswise tie, like for a bundle of newspapers, that divides the house into four sections*2. After a certain period of time the rope is untied again. The house is released, now "tagged" with a memory, a trace of the rope. In continuity with the cord-marked Jomon pottery*3, the house has become a Jomon-style house, and a series of photographs are taken of the bound house to commemorate the craft of rope-marking and to keep as contemporary Jomon-style works of art.

         A home-binding is an event where many people get to appreciate rope as a medium in an artistic context and together create a work of art.
Notes:
*1 Rope: Including cords, lines, strings, wire, twine, etc.
*2 The name of the prehistoric Jomon culture (from about 14,500 BC to 300 BC) is actually the Japanese translation of "cord-marked," a term first used by the American scholar Edward S. Morse in 1877 with respect to its characteristic style of pottery.
*3 Division into four sections: When I was a child, I sometimes got dizzy spells when seeing groups of four. Ever since, I have considered groups of four as something that dismantles the binds of understanding, makes apperception impossible and renders powerless the ability to unify.

Caption:
A home-binding is an event where the family who lives in the house, their friends, the local community, and anybody interested in home-binding can join in.
When there are a number of participants, the ropes are put in place, linked, turned and tied according to everybody's varying senses of values and aesthetics into a shared work of art. After the rope is untied, the memory of the bound house will linger in the minds of the participants.
This series of projects has resulted in a complex and multifarious web of relationships, and while capturing the environment, at the same time leads to somehow flat, pictorial memories and traces of the crosswise bound and quartered houses that will eventually become a Jomon story.
                                                                                                                                     (Translated by Yan Fornell)