
5Greenscapes
Shinobazu Pond, Ueno Park, Tokyo, Japan 2012
Ichi Ikeda created a temporary artwork "5 Greenscapes Shinobazu" through the collaborative work with over 500 people. This project is sending a strong message "Let's Create a New Landscape for the Future from the middle of Tokyo", expecting the power of multi-layered greenery of Tokyo today when we try to restructure the renewed relationship between the nature and the human beings after the disaster of 3.11, 2011 in Japan. This work becomes the huge lens through which people can observe the greenery of Tokyo.





Water Wheel
5th Greenscape
1st Greenscape Waterway Viewing

Three large circles entitled "Viewing Circles" made of reed
growing in Tokyo.

Inbetween images of huge lotus growing in Shinobazu Pond are inlayed.
Through the viewing circles, landscape like a kaleidoscope is afloat.

Contaminated water pour into the river. Waste materials are dumped on the land. Dirty gas including PM2.5 are exhausted into the air. We tend to think that these things are not big deal and not influential in our surrounding environment. But now we know that these unwise actions suffer the people on the earth and give serious problems with the global scale. We can say what happened formerly in the remote areas on the earth is now next to our daily life. As our earth has never become smaler, we ourselves should have global consciousness for the future.
2nd Greenscape Waterway Breathing

Underwater garden surrounded by the green columns with grass on the top. Imagine what kind of world is spreading over the bottom of water. Steps extended toward the pond and water breathing out from the surface, playing for clean water.

Among the green columns, cross-shaped water breathing out from the surface. Structures called 'Floating Isles' expecting seeds falling on. Steps extended inside the pond. While installing these structures in the underwater garden, we all look forward to emergence of new residents in this garden.

3rd Greenscape Waterway Cruising

20 years and 30 years later from now, what kind of landscape will be developed over the Shinobazu Pond or Tokyo? The 3rd Greenscape entitled 'Future Vessel' is fully laden with lots of heartfelt loads of wishes and hopes of people for the future.

Getting close to the pond, you recognize that enormous imagination presented by many participants are accumulated on the 3rd Greenscape 'Future Vessel'. Students of junior high school, senior volunteers, neighbors and children, foreign exchenge students are participated to the process of creating the artwork. Supporters consisted of various nationalities: Brazilian, Korean, Chinese, Mongolian, African etc. Actually this artwork is the accumulation made by more than 500 people. Cells with different images and messages are gathering and a new living organism comes into being. On this line, new democratic relationships will emerge---we felt positive response.
4th Greenscape Waterway Forwarding

Pure water scooped up by hands of Water Senders. Through water-relay, water grows the leaves of lotus. Subsquently lotus has bud and blossom. This image is nothing else but the drama of coexistence of human life and nature. This symbiotic relationship is extending on the rails floating on the water surface.

Cycle of coexistence of human life and nature. Hoping to advance to the desirable future, water wheel is rotating slowly.

It's a grave problem that solely lotus monopolizes the pond. It's unfair to place emphasis only on water problem. We need to grasp the natural situation as a complex ecological system between plants, water, light etc. The Shinobazu Pond has the potential energy to function as the complex ecological system? We all are tested to enhance this potential energy.