Eri Saito

New Trees​

2024, single channel video with stereo sound, 17min

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I participated in the artist-in-residence program Katsurao AIR in Katsurao Village, Fukushima Prefecture, where I explored the lingering effects of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant disaster and the development of wind energy as part of the region's reconstruction efforts.
This video is my response to witnessing the transportation of the blades of a wind turbine at dusk. Shining under floodlights like enormous wings, loaded on trailers and guided by workers, they resembled omikoshi (portable shrines) carrying deities. It was a fleeting yet precious sight, unique to that place and moment.
However, the rows of white structures piercing the mountains evoked an eerie sense of unnaturalness, stirring ambivalent emotions within me.
In this work, I liken the wind turbines to "new trees" as a way to reflect on the psychological seduction of the myth of nuclear safety and the uncertain future of this altered landscape.
How to bridge the temporal and spatial disconnect that lingers in the Noyuki district of Katsurao—still far from what could be called "reconstruction"—remains unclear.
Yet I believe that how we choose to see or not see this landscape from the mountains tests the limits of our own imagination.