Sumiyoshi Walk, 2019, Museum Ostwall im Dortmunder U

In 1970 Norio Imai and the artist-collective Gutai Group participated
in EXPO 70 in Osaka. After meeting him in 2019 we walked though
Sumiyoshi, Osaka which is a very local un-special disctrict following
a walk by Norio Imai‘s, which he made 1973.

Die virtuelle, parallele Nähe von weit voneinander entfernten Orten, die Simultanität von Ereignis und Erinnerung interessiert uns.
Zudem haben wir seit 2018 Arbeit und Wohnen voneinander getrennt: wir sind mit dem ‚privaten Haushalt‘ aus dem Studio ausgezogen und haben so nun einen regelmäßigen Weg ‚zur Arbeit‘. Diese beiden Gedanken haben während eines Künstleraustauschs zwischen Düsseldorf und der Partnerstadt Chongqing zu einem neuen Walk geführt. Den Vorgaben der Route aus Düsseldorf folgend, verlassen wir unsere Unterkunft in einem neuen Stadtteil von Chongqing, und übertragen die Instruktion aus Düsseldorf auf den Stadtplan der chinesischen Partnerstadt, ohne über Ziel vor Ort etwas zu wissen. Durch unterschiedliche Proportionen, Straßenverläufe und Baustellen ist der Weg für uns vorab nicht klar erkennbar und wir folgen der Route durch Wohngebiete, Baustellen, über Autobahnen und vorbei an Shopping-Malls und Einkaufsstraßen.

This presentation of the »Japanese Lesson« was created for an »Avant-premiere book presentation« including all chapters of our Japanese work at Le Bal Paris in september 2017. It contains all chapters from Tokyo, Yokohama and Osaka, regarding different socially interesting districts of these cities; and also some areas in Ichinomiya and Tokyo transforming due to the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games.

The »Japanese Lesson« artist book consists of 13 chapters. Each chapter shows a ‚walk‘ either on a border of a district in Tokyo or Osaka which inhabitants experience discrimination and stigmatisation often due to the geographic history; or the walk could lead around or towards a (construction) site related to the Olympic Games Tokyo 2020. On each walk we take photographs every 100 or 200 meters in the the walking direction. In this way we create about 300 photographs during a 3 hour walk which later becomes a book, a video or a wall piece. Of each chapter of the artist book there also exist unique maquettes including 100 to 300 images (see page 18)

山谷 San’ya is an area in the Taitō district of Tokyo, located south of the Namidabashi intersection, around the Yoshino-dori. A neighborhood named „San’ya“ existed until 1966, but the area was renamed and split between several neighborhoods. It is a region with a distinct culture, an area of crowded, cheap rooming houses where day laborers live.San’ya dates to the Edo period.

Lower caste workers, butchers, tanners, leatherworkers, and the like, were forced to live in this undesirable region by the predominantly Buddhist authorities. It has retained its association with both lower class workers and with craftsmen. Within the past few years gentrification has begun to encroach on the area. In recent years, some of the rooming houses have converted to provide cheap accommodation for foreign backpackers.

Sakae Ōsugi (*1885, †1923) was a Japanese anarchist; an important socialist, later anarcho-syndicalist activist, publicist and theoretician of the Taishō period. On 20 Nov 1922 he got an invitation to attend the 2nd International Anarchist Congress in Berlin in Feb 1923. After borrowing the necessary 1.000 Yen in travel expenses from the writer Arishima Takeo and others, he travelled to Shanghai on 13 Dec. where comrades helped him obtain a false Chinese passport on the names Chin Chen aka Tong Chin Tangle. He landed in Marseille on 13 Feb on a French ship. He didn’t get the necessary foreigner‘s identity card issued in Lyon.
Nevertheless, he travelled to Paris. He canceled his plans to travel to Berlin instead he stayed in Paris and gave a May Day speech in the north Parisian suburb of Saint-Denis. There he was arrested by civilian police who knew about his presence in Europe. He was sentenced to three weeks in prison and deportation for passport offences. On 2 June he was sent back to Japan where he later was murdered – together with his second wife feminist and anarchist Itō Noe and a nephew – in Tokyo on 16 Sept 1923 by military police. The police used the chaotic situation during the great Kantō earthquake to cover up several murders of political prisoners. Sakaes murder is known as the Amakasu Incident.

In his book »My escapes from Japan« he mentiones a »workers’ hall« near the Basilica in Saint-Denis. Most likely he refers to the »Bourse du Travail« of Saint-Denis which was located in the Hotel de Ville at that time.
In April 1892 a workers union was created for the first time in Saint-Denis initially in the premises of the Hotel de Ville opposite of the Basilica. In April 1895,
several local trade unions formed a »Bourse du Travail« which was first located on rue Saulger, later on rue des Ursulines and rue Suger. The current »Bourse
du Travail« on Rue Génin was designed by architect Roland Castro. Since the 1980s the architect has been working on the idea of a Grand Paris (he is at the origin of the »Banlieue 89« think tank with the urban architect Michel Cantal-
Dupart). In Feb 2023, almost 100 years after Sakae Ōsugi’s experiences in Saint-Denis, Katja Stuke and Oliver Sieber walked from Hotel de Ville past Passage Saulger, rue des Ursulines and rue Suger until they finally reached Rue Génin.

Katja Stuke & Oliver Sieber. 2024
Sakae Osugi. Anarchiste Japonais.
published by Nouveau Palais & Böhm Kobayashi
with a text by Marie Tesson (fr.)
240 pages, 10,8 x 15 cm
110 photographs, Softcover
Ed. of 500 copies