Exhibition Haus der Kunst-Naturwissenschaft: First Impressions of “Nebel Leben”, by Fujiko Nakaya

Gone are the bare walls and muted lighting. Having entered the room described as a ‘multiverse of historical events’, we found ourselves surrounded by images, text boxes, and swirly silver lines plastered on the walls. The space has a uniform greenish blue tinge to it, as if underwater, inviting the visitor to swim through the many fragments of events in the modern history of visual technology, experimental art, ecological scholarship, and environmentalism. It is a room dedicated to Nakaya’s formative experiences and prescient environmental concerns. Not unlike the walnut orb-weaver spider, she strings together East Asian and Western artistic and technological ideas into a web of discourses that will be familiar to Environmental Humanities scholars. ~ E.A.T. ~ Atomic clouds ~ protest art ~ video cassettes ~ Greenland glaciers ~ weather forecasting ~ “Parliament of Things” ~ artificial snowflakes ~ earth-monitoring satellites ~ cyberpunk “Dumb Type” ~ geo-engineering ~ The International Day of Mother Earth. A written summary wouldn’t do justice to the experience.

What is noteworthy is how democratically these fragments are displayed. This is not just the work of an artist with an interest in science and technology, nor that of an environmentalist interested in art. Nakaya manages to speak to all these spheres at an equal level. Her productive relationships with scientists, technicians, artists, and environmentalists is a testament to how her work exceeds the sum of its inspirations. If ever there was a model for inter-, cross-, or transdisciplinarity, surely this would be it.

‘You must listen to ice if you want to learn about ice.’

The final room that we visited is distinct in several ways. Its location on the first floor – separated from the rest of the exhibition by a large staircase – creates a sense of distance. This distance is accentuated by the decor. In contrast to the moody blues and greens on the ground floor, here the light is cream. There are traditional museum display tables, a few paintings, and some old-looking objects. At first glance it seemed like a space disconnected from the journey below, but in fact our final destination had taken us back to the start; the room is dedicated to the artist’s father, whose work greatly inspired hers. Ukichiro Nakaya (1900-1962) became famous for growing the first artificial snowflake in a laboratory environment in the 1930s (needless to say, a significant event for Floris’ project). A physicist by training, he sought to understand how atmospheric conditions affected snow-crystal morphology, producing many important publications and accruing a lively community of researchers around him in his Hokkaido mountain lab. But his work on snowflakes extended beyond the lab. In 1949 he co-founded Nakaya Laboratory, a science film studio which in the following year became Iwanami Productions. In the subsequent 48 years, the studio produced nearly 8,000 educational films, and fostered a new generation of Japanese film-makers; in the post-war period. This room is dedicated as much to this work as to that of its co-founder.

On display are: numerous photographs of laboratory-made snowflakes, arranged in a back-lit light box for visitors to admire their sheer and delicate diversity; images from Ukichiro Nakaya’s work on spark discharges, plastered on the wall; a display case with a copy of his famous book, “Snow Crystals: Natural and Artificial” (1954), alongside photographs, drawings, and booklets produced by the Museum of Snow and Ice in Kaga City; and original instruments used by Nakaya and his team to create and observe artificial snow crystals. Not on display is the suspended rabbit hair from which the crystals were grown – a little natural-technological detail which would have resonated nicely with the spider’s installation downstairs. Finally, a program of selected films by Iwanami is projected onto a screen at the far end of the room, showcasing rare footage of Nakaya and his team at work in their laboratory. That all these historical documents and objects are exhibited alongside Fujiko Nakaya’s work goes a long way in making explicit the influence these experiments have had on her work, not to mention the fascination with minuscule water bodies. By placing her father’s largely scientific work in the context of an art exhibition, and emphasizing his contribution to educational film-making, Fujiko Nakaya continues to fog up the boundary between the sciences and the arts.

Leaving the exhibition a few minutes before closing time, we were left with the impression that Fujiko Nakaya’s work does seemingly effortlessly what we’re struggling to do: overcoming disciplines. She fuses different media, aesthetic experiences with activism, concepts of art, nature, and science, in ways that are not at all forced, but rather entirely productive (and – dare we say – natural), such that it becomes difficult to imagine they were ever separate. With these thoughts we quickly stopped by the bookshop opposite the exhibition entrance. And as if to confirm our suspicions that this was actually an Environmental Humanities operation in disguise, there, next to the 2012 catalogue of fog sculptures, we recognized many names: Tsing, Latour, Ingold, Haraway, Ellis, Horn. If these are familiar to you as well, you’ll probably find something in this exhibition that speaks to your interests.