Mumuko
Visual Artist
Born in China and came to Japan for college. When she was 20, she felt “Not Chinese enough without life in college in China. Not Japanese enough without life before college in Japan. Mix the two? Well, South America sounds perfect!”. So, she left, for Argentina, alone. In the years she stayed there, she learned that love and violence, freedom and poverty go hand in hand with each other. Lived with a shaman in the Amazon, Mumuko’s past life as seen through therapy was apparently “a witch in rainbow colors”.
“I want to see the view that only those who reach high ground can see.” That’s the starting point of her production. For freedom, she left her country, left her home, living out of one suitcase. Since COVID, she’s been talking more to animals and plants. Swimming freely like a transparent (and poisonous!) jellyfish, “I’m not qualified to be a human yet.”, she laughs, and continues her journey.
Mumuko sublimates suffering and cruelty into brilliant entertainment. She is an artist who continues to search for the possibilities of expression while riding the waves of the times.
István Zárdai
Philosopher
A researcher in philosophy and ethics, with a deep interest in politics, international relations, literature and other social and human concerns. He currently lives in Japan and works as a lecturer at Juntendo University. He is also a visiting researcher at Keio University, and collaborates with the Tokyo Institute of Technology, Soka University, and the High School of Kogakuin University.
His current focus is on understanding Group Agency and Responsibility, aiming to provide a theory of what group agents (like states, militaries and companies) are, and how and why we should attribute responsibility to the individuals working in key positions in these organisations, and also to the organisations themselves. He is also actively working on the ethics and nature of war, moral psychology, and teaching methods.
Abstract
"It's war, let's marry" is a multimedia art piece that tells the story of a war-torn Ukraine through a series of photographs, recorded sounds, war diary taken by MUMUKO during her two visits to the country. This exhibition presents a photographic installation entitled ‘War Wedding’ that attempts to capture the reality of war as seen by an artist, rather than a journalist. In Japan today, where there is a lack of a sense of reality about this war, it seemed to me that it would be better to express ‘war’ as a real fantasy. In this huge fantasy of a war wedding, we were made keenly aware that war is still a fantasy for us, and the exhibition expressed the tenuousness of our ‘living’, the sinfulness of it, the shallowness of it, the thoughtlessness of it, and the nature of humanity, which has no choice but to accept everything, whether war or peace, and move forward.
Philosopher’s Comment
Sometimes philosophy lifts the veil on the workings of our emotional lives at the core of our personality, and enables us to understand something bigger. The photos and the philosophical ideas I write about are I think both surprisingly relevant to current political tragedies—Russia’s brutal war on Ukraine, and the IDF’s ravaging of Gaza. Here is something surprising: during wars people suffer, are displaced, and lose their loved ones. If one doesn’t think about it more carefully, it is easy to say ‘I would have run away, I wouldn’t have stayed in a place following its bombing.’ But would we really do so? How is it that Ukrainians go on living in their cities despite shelling, that Gaza hasn’t been deserted a long time ago?
Japanese photographer Mumuko spent time in Ukraine during 2022-23. Her series titled ‘There is a war, let’s marry’ was exhibited at the Tokyo Photographic Art Museum in Ebisu (TOP). The photos show people making food, dancing, partying, having conversations in front of burnt-out tanks. The war is omnipresent: blackened, crumbling buildings, holes in roofs torn by explosions. One of the most arresting of her photos shows a massive bomb site in the playground. People nevertheless take their kids to play there.
The impact site is surrounded by people. They take a look, and then carry on. They came to let their kids have a chance to relax and burn some energy running and playing. The photo—as all of Mumuko’sphotos—are vibrant. Colours are vivid and saturated; people are interacting;energy is abundant. The sky is blue, the lovely old building in the background is a pleasant fresh creamy yellow, the intense autumn leaves make us feel the fresh sharpness of the air.
Still, an ambiguity permeates everything. Parents and children stay close to each other. A child in the foreground looks across the photo, to something outside the frame, and assumes a strangely motionless position. As in many of Mumuko’s pictures the figures in the foreground seem to be lit up. The flash evokes the light of an explosion, when someone becomes the focus of all attention for a second. Is the picture oozing positive energy, or alertness, readiness, nervousness? This duality creates an interesting tension: the will to go on with life and enjoy it, and the weariness both appear fleeting, as if ready to intensify or become extinguished in a second. The camera seems to transport us into this setting, making the viewer experience the same ominous mood. That the pictures speak so honestly of the life of besieged people makes the question even more urgent: why stay, why go on with your routines during times of war? I think this is the point where—to our second surprise—we can turn to philosophy of action for an answer.
One of the most exciting of our unique human abilities is our decision making, enabling our freedom and autonomy. This comes at a price of course: if we would have to decide about every little thing at every junction of our lives, freedom would be unbearable.This is why routines, habits, and a somewhat stable core of personality help.When we think—reason—about what to do,we usually form long-term plans and preferences. These provide the skeleton of our personality: our lasting character traits—sometimes called policies—which give a structure to our decisions. Every time we decide something—often unconsciously and very quickly—the basic decision policies we formed help structure such choices. Plans, values, and preferences help us save time and energy. This stable existence throughout time is called diachronic agency. It makes it possible to carry out long-term projects requiring commitment like writing a book, bringing up children, developing a new product, participating in social movements.
This is the answer as to why people go on with their lives and don’t run: the paralysing lack of knowledge of the future that is so well captured in Mumuko’s photos makes people yearn for more stability. And the sturdiness of our agential structure—the set of stable core motivations and policies—provides this stability. New facts—new reasons—do move and change us. But they do that mostly gradually, unlike at the stroke of a magic wand. Philosophy of action helps here to spell out what the inner workings of our personality are—the needed ballast of stable motivations to anchor the freedom of our decision making ability—that shed a light on what we see happen in Ukraine and Gaza. People rarely run away until they’re forced to, and seek to get on with their work, their routines. And even fall in love, marry, and have children.