[日本語]
The place where art begins may not lie within language or theory, but somewhere prior to them.
If language and theory have come to operate beyond bodily sensation and the contours of life itself, then we may have already lost sight of the point at which art truly comes into being.
This text is an attempt to articulate—through making and practice—where that boundary ought to be.
1. Conditions of Making
My practice does not necessarily begin with intention, planning, or a predetermined idea of what I want to express.
Rather, it is precisely under conditions in which these elements cease to function that making becomes possible.
Simply deciding to draw and moving my hand is not sufficient; in such a state, I lose the ability to grasp the image as a whole.
Meanwhile, through everyday life, sensations that cannot be explained in words—discomfort, fatigue, and the accumulation of unresolved emotions—gradually build up.
When these accumulations reach a certain threshold, or when that threshold is lowered through actions such as cleaning the studio, a force that enables making arises independently of my intention.
The moment at which I begin drawing is often unpredictable. What starts as a brief note before a meal may unexpectedly shift into a state of hyperfocus.
For this reason, it is important to keep materials prepared as an extension of daily life.
There exists a sensation that is invisible yet undeniably present, and I remain in a condition that allows me to connect immediately to materials and techniques appropriate to that sensation.
The freedom to choose materials and methods is limited to what is permitted by my physical condition and environmental circumstances at that moment.
At certain times, I am strongly drawn to specific techniques. In such periods, I prepare conditions in advance so that those methods can arise without friction.
For the accumulation that precedes actual production to function effectively, making must be integrated even more deeply into everyday life.
For example, this may involve keeping materials in places where I spend most of my time, or working with simpler materials and techniques.
By doing so, I am able to preserve the subtle, pre-productive sensations that precede making—something akin to an ember—without allowing them to dissipate.
Even so, a body marked by sensory hypersensitivity and fluctuation cannot be fully controlled as a mode of production through intention articulated in language.
Nor do I feel any need for such control.
Even if there is a framework designed through thought, during the act of drawing the work is transformed into unforeseen forms by the force that emerges between the hand and the image.
As long as the accumulated sensations align with the sensation of making, it can feel as though I am able to respond freely to whatever and wherever I draw.
Such concentration begins without a clearly defined sense of initiation, and when the image reaches a state in which it can no longer be worked on—prior to the fulfillment of intention—I regard it as complete.
What remains afterward is intense fatigue, accompanied by either a powerful sense of accomplishment or a feeling of emptiness.
For this reason, individual works exist not so much as independent, finished objects, but as traces of the same underlying condition structure passing through different phases.
I perceive my work not as single, discrete pieces but as groups of works, because the conditions that give rise to making itself remain consistently unchanged.
The integrity of my practice is preserved precisely because these conditions are not manipulated by intention or language.
The practice of Andecian Art Project is also an ongoing attempt to explore and confirm these conditions from within, through making and shared situations.
2. Conditions of Verbalization
Verbalization, however, requires conditions different from those of making.
Language demands that events be placed within time, that causal relationships be organized, and that reasons—“why something happened”—be made explicit.
In my practice, however, thought and intention have already receded by the time making occurs.
When I try to explain my work in my own words, I often feel as though I am inventing reasons or meanings afterward—things that did not actually exist at the moment of making.
If I attempt to reflect pre-linguistic elements directly through language, the level of inquiry shifts away from where the work truly operates.
The more I refine my bodily sensitivity, the further my practice moves from language and institutional frameworks. This creates a paradox: over twenty years, it was not that I lacked words, but that no words existed that could describe the work without damaging it.
My practice maintains its integrity precisely because it cannot be fully verbalized by me.
AI-assisted verbalization helps to indicate these conditions from the outside, without interfering with the conditions under which the work is made.
When language turns making into a set of explanations or reproducible procedures, the work easily becomes something that can be managed and controlled.
Using AI as a mediating tool minimizes such interference and clarifies that the work exists at a depth prior to language.
For me, verbalization is not an act of explaining my work.
It is a way of confirming, after the fact, that making took place in a realm prior to language.
The very fact that it cannot be fully verbalized serves as a guarantee that the work has not yet been operationalized or reduced to a reproducible method.
3. Conditions of Art
What I am addressing here is not a new art theory or a new model of thinking.
What is at stake are the conditions that art itself has long taken for granted.
Since the modern period, art has often been explained through “concepts” and “meanings,” and treated as if being graspable through thought and language were a condition of its value.
This assumption, however, has structurally misunderstood certain fundamental modes of art.
The issue here is not the limits of thought or the inadequacy of theory.
What I am pointing to are vital conditions that are already at work between body and environment, prior to the emergence of thought and language.
Before art became a medium for transmitting meaning, it was an act that mediated tensions and transformations of life itself.
The life I refer to here may connect to terms such as “soul” or “shamanic,” but it does not point to a domain defined by belief or metaphysics.
Whether an artist works from a background of faith or from a strictly materialist standpoint, what ultimately matters are the real conditions of making.
These conditions appear as an unmanageable “depth” that exists prior to being absorbed into institutions or language.
When making that takes place at this depth is forced into systems of explanation, meaning, or concept, there is a risk that what is vital will be processed at the level of abstraction.
In this sense, the concept can turn into a form of violation against what exists at the level of life.
This is not an ethical accusation.
It is a structural problem that arises when things of different orders are treated under the same conditions.
If art nourishes life, it is not because it conveys ideas or messages.
It is because, at a depth prior to management by language or institutions, making has sustained and renewed the breath of life.
In treating this breath as something “unorganized” or “pre-theoretical,” and in believing it to be replaceable by concepts, modern art history has crossed the boundary of life through language.
Care must be taken to distinguish between words that predefine depth and words that seek to explore it.
If, in that process, art has lost its original role of sustaining life, then it can be said that a form of risk is embedded there—one that resembles the conformist pressures produced by religious authority.
What is occurring here is not the addition of new values.
It is a structural reversal of positions: against the assumption that explainability guarantees value, I point to a depth of making that has been preserved precisely by remaining unexplainable.
This reversal does not aim to mystify art, nor to reject thought or language.
It seeks to handle the sacred not as something managed by religious authorities, but as something that exists within the realm of everyday life.
That is what I understand as the “conditions of art.”
From this perspective, the way we regard those who continue to make work physically or mentally outside institutional frameworks is no longer a matter of social support, but of recognizing their practice as making that exists on the same horizontal plane.
This is an attempt to return to their precise place the fact that art once existed as the breath of life, prior to thought and language.
As a result, irregular and uneven corporeality emerges as the artist’s prerogative, and the boundary between art and religion becomes visible of its own accord.
Art thus regains its force as the last form of resistance through which human beings continue to remain human.
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