Shigeko HIRAKAWA
- Gods' Slide


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Gods' Slide 2006  (66 meters long)










Les Environnementales 2006
The 4th Biennial of Contemporary Art
"In" and "With" the Nature

May 6 - July 2, 2006


Organization of
Tecomah / Ecole de l'Environnement et du Cadre de Vie,
Jouy-en-Josas, France


Commissioner of the Exhibition: Jean-Marc Barroso


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Gods' Slide 2006

The whole of our planet has been transformed into a gigantic economic garden, in which everything is considered in terms of monetary value. In the meantime, the planet has been suffering from its evil effects such as greenhouse effects and climate changes, threatening lives on Earth. I have been working with the French environment for more than two decades; the global vision described above, however, makes me and my work turn more and more toward larger, planetary environmental concerns.

In Japan, the garden was originally a secluded place where people, wishing to cultivate the fields successfully in the midst of savage nature, prayed to calm the soul of nature. Once upon a time, we had 8,000,000 gods. Amongst these were two gods of the garden – one was NIWATSUHIKO and the other was his brother, NIWATSUHINOHIKO, the sun of the garden. Both of them were the sons of the god of agriculture and helped people to maintain morale.

In order to calm our fear faced with the anger of nature and bring peace to our souls, I have decided to create a landmark which would guide and help the gods in descending to earth. It is well known that Gods came down to earth from their country TAKAMAGAHARA with the help of high trees. I thus came to the idea of making a large-scale slide suspended on high trees with which the gods would came down more easily.
It took me two and a half days to find two suitable high trees for the project in the domain of Tecomah (School of Environment). They are about 30m high. The length of the Gods' Slide, calculated from the dimension of the trees, is 66m. The vertical dimension of the installation is 20m x 10m. Two sorts of technical fabrics (aluminium and PVC) are used. Other materials are 100 hoops, ropes etc. I conceived the Gods' Slide concept in winter 2004 and realized it in 2006 over two and a half months. The exhibition was held by the School of Environment as the Biennial of Contemporary Art "With and In Nature" from May 5 (the opening) to July 2, 2006.



Gods' Slide: conception in November 2004, realization in March-April 2006
66m long in total, technic fabrics (aluminium, pvc) for agriculture, 100 hoops
Installation on two 30-meter-high trees,






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Gods' Slide 2006

66m long, technic fabrics (aluminium, pvc), 100 hoops
Installation on two 30-meter-high trees





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Two months passed - at the end of the exhibition in July

Catalogue:
Les Environnementales, the 4th Biennual of Contemporary Art, "In" and "With" the Nature
Texts Jacques Leenhardt
Publishing: Tecomah/ Ecole de l'Environnement et du Cadre de Vie (School of Environment),
Chemin de l'Orme rond 78350 Jouy-en-Josas,  France