This project is a site-specific work, providing the audience with spatial experience by interconnecting the two physically separate exhibition spaces through the surveillance cameras installed in the exhibition space. Reciprocal Viewing System, presented in “Asian Corridor” in 2017’, was arranged in two different spaces of the Kyoto Art Center, Japan, in ‘Gallery South’ and ‘Studio 2’. Discovering the blind spots of the CCTV cameras installed in each space, these blind spots were visualized by the covering of pink tapes. The CCTV cameras transmit the interior images of the exhibition spaces to the projectors installed in each space, but through the projected image on screen, they seem empty without the tape installations. The audience could actually encounter the visualized installation by an in-person visit to the exhibition space and find the difference between viewing through the projected images on screen and physical on-site viewing. On the other hand, Reciprocal Viewing System converts the CCTV system from the tool of unilateral surveillance to an artistic (communicative) tool, reciprocally connecting the act of ‘seeing’ and ‘to be seen’. The audience would have a simultaneous experience as the viewer as well as the subject of the viewer and use the surveillance camera to communicate with their peers in the other exhibition space. This method of suggesting the physical experience of the blind spots, divides, connects, and supplements the relationship between two exhibition spaces by the audience’s selection of enjoyment method.

This project connects the installation of Reciprocal Viewing System in the two exhibition spaces (Gallery South and Studio 2 at Kyoto Art Center) through a guiding performance by a blind docent. It further extends to the intersection of blind spots within the arts and socio-cultural blind spots as the visually impaired people play the crucial role in performance within the vision-centered art system. In My Blind Spot-Docent, the visually impaired docent guides the general public without disability, from Gallery South to the Studio 2, explaining the project. In this procedure, the blind docent uses white cane with a microphone inserted inside and through this, their physical activity (performance) is transformed into sound and delivered to the other audiences in the gallery space. This blind docent performance utilizes the non-visibility of the arts in order to displace the stereotypes of the ‘active’ and ‘passive’ and the social role of the ‘subject’ and the ‘other’.

Using powdered incense, I write the names of gay bars/clubs in the city that is hosting my exhibition on the floor of the exhibition space. The incense slowly burns during the period of the exhibition. The significance of the names is initially clear only to those who are familiar with these spaces. For others, they only appear as enigmatic words. An essential part of this work is the process of sharing the piece with the viewers by burning it. As the incense burns, the physical boundary of the piece expands unpredictably into space and even enters the viewer’s body.