Yukihiro Taguchi's "Books domino" has something humble, thank God!
But is a homage to books, thank God! And indeed a homage to our books.
We know Yukihiro since a few years and he knows the part books play in
our lives; he has always been aware that here in the place books are the
greatest treasure.
He directly launched into it head-on in spite of our hesitation: we joined
all our books together in the shelves and in chronological order for years…
With his installation "Books domino" for our art space Het Plafond,
Taguchi had a double reaction to the space given.
As mentioned he was fascinated by the huge collection of books in our
studio close to the Plafond space.
Taguchi also reacted in a spatial way to Het Plafond ("the ceiling"):
he constructed a domino trail high in the space just above our heads
to the ceiling. He put books on it. Into our monographic section he picked
out books about the heroes of our culture.
Of course the books don't stand on the trail like that but rather in
your hands or on the table in front of you if necessary. Books on the
shelves fall without ending one on another in a beautiful metaphor to
say that their authors need each other and inspired themselves reciprocally.
And Taguchi makes it on purpose that no single book stands alone.
Books stand on the shelves in an unsteady equilibrium. It's also a nice
metaphor for the insecure position of the individual on the one hand,
but also for the mental energy that's contained in the book on the other
hand.
By chance Taguchi's range of books is similar to our chronology on the
shelves, it starts with a book about Buddha, then the Old Testament and
Plato, and it ends nowadays.
This also made it appear very clear that our collection is reflecting
us, we have obviously few classical or medieval books and the large majority
of our heroes were born in the 40 first years of the 20th century… All
those books stood poising as long as possible on the trail, all around
us, sometimes very close to our heads, and it's how it has to be sometimes
with heroes.
During the opening of the installation, the first book that is about
Buddha, who denied every kind of permanence of things, fell against the
Old Testament, that fell against Plato and so on until novel by Daniel
Kehlmann, booklets about Willem Besselink and Yukihiro Taguchi himself,
and in the very end this text. A very long range of books fallen each
on the other. What a beautiful picture. They all have transmitted their
energy to the other.
It's a pity that it was just a linear move, from "then" until "now".
It is of course not the case with culture. The spirit goes where it wants
and thank to our books we can travel back into time. But through "Books
domino" Yukihiro Taguchi showed what was important for him.
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