The design is to envision a structure related to creativity. At this time, what kind of structure does creative act have in art?

Marcel Duchamp once defined the “Art Coefficient” and explained that the creative act is the gap between what the artist intends and what is realized (Duchamp, 1957). Conventionally, the Art Coefficient has been understood to be required by the chance encounter between a work and a viewer, as Duchamp mentioned the encounter between a work and a viewer as a concrete example. Only the inevitability that a work is interpreted independently of the artist’s intention has been focused on, and it has been taken as the significance of the Art coefficient. However, the true aspect of Artistic Coefficient is that it appears as the difference between what an artist intends and what realizes in creation. Creation, in other words, comes down from the potential outside of the perceived world in the gap between intention and realization. In other words, creation is external. Realizing what is inside the artist does not create a work that leads to creation. Therefore, the artist constructs a gap in a way that can actively but not completely control. In this sense, a work of art is a trap to make the outside come down, and the artist only constructs the mechanism and waits for the outside (Nakamura & Gunji, 2018). It is this thoroughly passive activity that realizes creation. Therefore, the coincidence of intention and realization, such as conceiving a work and reproducing its conception as much as possible, is not creative act. This is because if one actively participates in the outside world, one loses one’s creativity. What does this mean?

Giorgio Agamben considered “potentiality” as the modality of creative act, and explained that potentiality is the key to creative act (Agamben, 1993). The concept of potentiality is drawn from Aristotle. According to Aristotle, “when the blackboard is in a state of active force, nothing is written on it, but when it is in a state of latent force, letters are written on it.” The concept of potentiality is drawn from Aristotle. According to Aristotle, “When the blackboard is in a state of active force, nothing is written on it, but when it is in a state of latent force, letters are written on it.” In other words, the moment you write something on the blackboard, it has already become “actuality.” It is said that potentiality is the power of the latent to become manifest (Gunji, 2019). Therefore, if we touch the outside to express the outside, the actuality immediately comes into play, and we lose our mode of existence as a latent outside. In contrast to such anti-creative act, Agamben called true creation, which exerts latent force, “de-creation.” De-creation, in other words, is the state of being able to “Prefer not to do anything.” It is a passive activity, like waiting.

The specific method of de-creation can be found, for example, in Japanese ancient art. The green half-circle shape of mountains in many landscapes, especially in the Rimpa school, at first glance seems to be a poor representation for those who are familiar with the modern sense of reality, such as photography. Nakamura, however, found in this a structure of de-creation called “Kakiwari” (Nakamura & Gunji, 2018; Nakamura & Gunji, 2020; Nakamura, 2020; Nakamura, 2021). Kakiwari is a painted board plane, like a stage backdrop, since the back side is not depicted, a step backward would accuse the coherently composed “world” of not being real. Nevertheless, Kakiwari does not ruin the world as being just a piece of papier-mâché. By capturing the mountains as Kakiwari, he shows a completely different reality to the reality of the present force at hand. Gunji shows the argument surrounding this structure by the way “frontier” and “boundary” in our cognition (Gunji, 2020). The frontier refers to the other side, where we cannot even be sure whether it exists or not. On the other hand, the boundary is what separates the unrecognizable other side and the recognizable this side, allowing for a bird’s eye view of the whole. Therefore, the device that opens the gap between frontier and deviation, which is “the other side of frontier understood through boundary” and “deviation of the other side of frontier understood through boundary,” makes it possible to summon “the outside that exists though it cannot be perceived.” This is a device that opens the gap between frontier and deviation. The mountain of kaiwari found in Japanese ancient art is exactly the device that opens the gap between frontier and deviation. The series of mountains that form a real landscape in the abstract planes of kakiwari, while showing frontier with a finite separation from the simple other side that is actively accessible as a boundary, at the same time, it is said that “it cannot be conceptualized even as the other side of frontier” because there is no back side. At the same time, the lack of a back side can bring about the outside as a thorough other side that “cannot even be conceptualized as the other side of frontier.” In this sense, the mountains of kakiwari can be said to have a complete outside behind them. That is why the painting theme “descent of Amitabha over the mountain,” which has been painted repeatedly since ancient times, is actually possible.

As an art form, all we can do is to focus on setting up an empty papier-mâché called kakiwari, and stand in front of it, waiting for the outside to come. The only thing we can do is to wait for the outside to stand in front of the empty kakiwari. In other words, it is kakiwari that allows us to prefer to do nothing. There is such a reality.

The so-called “creation,” which is a pre-ordained realization, is based on the past. De-creation, on the other hand, can be described as envisioning the future. The future is just an outside. To design a mechanism to summon the future is to face the future and to envision the future. Designing for a creative future will become a reality as we train our sensibility for de-creation.

（Kyoko Nakamura）

Related Classes

Design Futures Course Visual Arts Fundamentals, Fine Art Practice and Theory

References

• Duchamp, Marcel. (1957) Creative Act. The New Art, Gregory Battock ed. E. P. Dutton & Co. Inc. pp. 23-26.
• Nakamura, K. (2021) De-Creation in Japanese Painting: Materialization of Thoroughly Passive Attitude, Philosophies 6(2) 35, DOI: https://doi.org/10.3390/philosophies6020035
• ジョルジョ・アガンベン (2005)『バートルビー 偶然性について』高桑和巳訳、月曜社
• 郡司ペギオ幸夫 (2019)『天然知能』講談社メチエ
• 郡司ペギオ幸夫 (2020)『やってくる』医学書院
• 中村恭子（2020）「書き割りの身をうぐいす、無限小の幸福」、『アフェクトゥス（情動）：生の外側に触れる』西井凉子・箭内匡（編）、京都大学学術出版会、pp.8-40.
• 中村恭子・郡司ペギオ幸夫（2018）『TANKURI―創造性を撃つ』水声社
• 中村恭子・郡司ペギオ幸夫（2020）「書き割り少女―脱創造への装置―」『共創学』2(1) 1-12（リンク）