チンポム

Making of the Sokushinbutsu

source: geiriki

本年6月から７月にかけ約一ヶ月のあいだ開催いたしましたChim↑Pom展“にんげんていいな”におきまして、悟りの体現として繰り広げられた、Chim↑Pomメンバー・稲岡求による断食プロジェクト『Making of the 即身仏』で、鑑賞者の皆様に見守られながら18キロもの減量を遂げ、ほとんど骨と皮だけと見えるまでにやせ細った稲岡の身体と茫洋とした精神への変化は、見るものに強烈な印象を残しました。この度の展覧会では、稲岡のその最後の姿を仏と見立て制作された３名の作家による仏像、仏画、仏写真をお披露目いたします。　会場ではディナーショーで稲岡が語った説法が流れ、現在は見る影も無く脂肪にまみれた稲岡本人が皆様をお迎えし、展覧会を楽しんでいただくべく作品のご案内を致します。その他18 日,19日はポップコーンの屋台が出るなどまさにChim↑Pomらしい賑やかな３日間となる予定です。（このポップコーンは会期中お布施をくださった方にお恵みとして差し上げます。注：22日にはポップコーンの屋台はございません。）また、初日には、従来のオープニングレセプションではなく、参加作家のスペシャルトークショーwith Barを開催致します！幽霊に強い関心を持つ西尾、戦争をテーマに据える風間、妖怪伝承を撮影し続けている写真家、梅川の三者を囲み、Chim↑Pomが彼らの真髄を暴き出します。更に、トークショーの後は作家、参加者入り乱れての大忘年会に雪崩れ込む予定です。半年前は寡黙でガリガリだった稲岡の、現在の姿を拝むまたとないチャンスでもあります。皆様この機会に是非、展覧会にお立ち寄りください。
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source: postatmomaorg

The members of ChimPom—Ellie, Ryuta Ushiro, Yasutaka Hayashi, Masataka Okada, Toshinori Mizuno, and Motomu Inaoka—have been working collaboratively since 2005. Perhaps best known for their performances and interventions made in immediate response to the 2011 Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant disaster, the group has continuously engaged with social and political concerns in their native Japan and abroad.
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source: contemporaryjapaneseartblogspot

Chim ↑ Pom out-spooked everyone at ArtGig event which took place in the abandoned hospital on Halloween. The place itself with its empty CT rooms, crematorium, broken windows and rotten tatami mats could be a location of a horror movie however the top of the bill was the rooms where Chim ↑ Pom installed a mummy sculpture of Motomu Inaoka. The inspiration for this piece came from the sect of Japanese Buddhism called Shingon whose monks mummified themselves. The whole process was called sokushinbutsu and started in 17c. in the times of horrible famine in Japan when one of the Shingon monk decided the best way to end the famine would to mummify himself alive. The other monks follow and upon many experiments they came up with the method which they thought would be best process of mummification.

Here is the Shingon-approved self-mummification process in a few easy steps.

For three years, eat nothing but nuts and berries.
For the next three years, only eat bark and roots
Drink a special tea. By drinking tea made out of urushi tree, a substance which
is poisonous and usually used to lacquer bowls. The latter supposedly made
the body bacteria proof.
Bury yourself alive.
Seal yourself in a giant stone tomb. The monks gave the mummy-to-be a bamboo pipe for air and a bell to rang it every day so the fellow monks know that he was alive. When they didn’t hear the bell ring, they knew that the monk had died.

It is not clear however if Inaoka followed any of these process but it was recorded that by the end of the performance during which he fasted for several days being on the display of the exhibition he lost as much as 18kg. The group claims that the artist was fine after the end of the whole ordeal.