Shadow Project

Hiroshima August 1988

of Ruggero Maggi

Almost one year was spent from when 1 spoke with some Japanese friends and artists: Fukushi Ito and Masataka Kubota of the Group SOU about my idea to realize the Shadow Project in the same town of Hiroshima.

Finally I received the first of a series of letters of various Japanese artistic pacifist organizations. In these letters we began to determine the necessary arrangements for the project.

Shozo Shimamoto, a Japanese artist, the director of Group AU, but more imortant thing to say, a great friend of mine, put me in contact with the Group of Art Week of Hiroshima. I met the director of this Group, Ishimaru Yoshimichi in Hiroshima at the Ist of August for an International Mail Art Symposium in which I participated and with him I discussed the last details.

The Hiroshima authorities were informed about the Project by articles published on Japanese newspapers before the realization of the initiative.

They called Ishimaru and began to raise objections to concede the necessary permission: One of the motivations for the eventual denial was the fact that, for them, the Hiroshima people wanted to forget what was happened 43 years ago.

Sometimes to think into oblivion, especially if they are dramatic memories, is almost necessary, but unfortinately it can become also dangerous. In each town where I have realized before the Shadow Project the people have been impressed by-the dramatic situations which were created from time to time. Imagine for a moment the effect and the particular pathos which was created in Hiroshima.

I should be completely insensible to not understand how these visions can have troubled many persons, but how I have told before, could this deep wish to forget become also dangerous? Would it be perhaps better to remember especally to the youth that similar visions have been and could be yet possible and that it's necessary to fight because this does not happen more?

However, at the end, the Hiroshima authorities conceded the permission giving some time limits( we could work from 8,30 to 11,30 only 3 hours which, however, were enough!)and fixing the place of the actions near the Atomic Dome, dramatic symbol of the nuclear holocaust of the town.

I returned to Hiroshima at the evening of the 5th of August for the last preparations with a series of paper silhouettes made by the varous artists who accompanied me in this initiative: Shozo Shimamoto, Ryosuke Cohen and Shigeru Nakayama (J), John Held Jr. and Gerard Barbot (USA), Daniel Daligand (F). Early at the morning of 6th of August we met all us at the hall of the hotel where we spent the night, and before to begin the works, almost in pilgrinage (!) we went near the great Mausoleum which the inhabitants of Hiroshima built to celebrate the event.

The Japanese Prime Minister made a short speech and after some moments, exactly at the 8:15 (hour of the explosion), a silence full of significance, very touching, "broken" only by the usual naturalistic sounds (like the rustling of the leaves, cicadas, birds...) for a minute slow like the eternity, replaced the words, blocked up the road traffic, interrupted each conversation, each thought, everyone were turned to that horrible instant of 43 years ago.

Yet stirred by the event we began to work. The shapes began slowly to "slide" on the ground. The people stopped and asked informations to which an Art Week group of girls answered. Friends, artists, passers-by, all were working very much, collaborating together to the realization of the project. Little by little the time was spending and the summer heat raising, became suffocating.

About all this I remember that, bent on my "loved" figures, I was working when I began to see some small sweat drop from my forehead, which touched the ground dried them-selves immediately. Also the white washable painting which we decided to use dried itself by the heat at the same moment when it was spread on the ground.

However, in spite of these small mischanges, the work was continuing well and a croud of people, made curious, stayed near us. Some journalists interviewed me to have more details about the project.The Initiative interested really the same Japanese people in spite of the premises.

At the end of the work we wanted to burn all the silhouettes like a sort of ... post-atomic purifier rite. In particular I wish to thank the artist mentioned above, the AU group of staff members, the SOU group: Hayasaka, Ito, Kubota, Manabe, the Art Week group, Paula, Christiane, Lilly, the great photographer Keizo Kobayashi, Satoru Ogawa who has realized an excellent video on all the manifestation.