WEBVTT

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HIROSHI SUGIMOTO:
This is my studio in New York,

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and I am on the 11th floor
facing north sky.

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This is a very traditional
19th-century painters

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studio in Paris.

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And I... I'm not using
any artificial light here.

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And all I do is this, you know,
shading up and down

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and then
I can control the light.

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To me, this system,

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this method, still makes
the best quality picture.

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Uh our, uh... we think
we keep making inventions

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and makes tools as sophisticated
as possible,

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but to me
contemporary people tend to...

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tend to rely onto
the computer method

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and all the machines.

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That's not good enough.

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You need something more
than that.

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So this system,
it's very hard to control,

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but it still makes
the best picture.

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So I'm against
a kind of evolution, you know,

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this is...

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[ laughing ]

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I am sticking to
the traditional method.

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[ machine beeping ]

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I am very craft-oriented person.

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But at the same time,

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I want to make
something artistic.

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The fossils works almost
the same as photography.

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To me, photography functions
as a fossilization of the time.

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[ liquid dripping ]

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How my architectural series
started,

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I visited so many early
20th-century architecture.

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They are all famous.

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They look so beautiful
in the book,

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but if you actually go there,

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it's 60, 70, 80 years old.

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They are, most of them,
in very bad conditions.

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To make them out-of-focus picture, 
all the wrinkles disappeared.

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Stillness, well,
that's something

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I'm not intentionally,
you know, promoting it,

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but most of the people sees it

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and it's very quiet and serene.

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Uh seascapes case,

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my subject matter is
water and air.

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That's the kind of...

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most kind of abstract theme.

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I find a spot
that I want to stay,

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and I stay there

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maybe sometimes one week,

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sometimes a couple weeks,
two, three weeks.

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And then I just stay there, and just feel like
I'm a part of this, you know, nature and landscape.

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So far, I visited
so many different seas,

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but I never be on the boat.

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I have to be on the ground.

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I start feeling this is
the creation of the universe

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and I'm witnessing it.

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Well, this is my miniature
seascapes, Day and Night.

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And I wind this up
and it shakes.

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So this is my, you know,
famous Japanese earthquake.

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Shall I do it here?

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Whoa.

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Well, this is one of
my fossil collection,

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450 million years old.

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And in this cabinet...

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I call this cabinet
as my Shinto shrine,

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portable Shinto shrine.

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I have this mirror here

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and, well, the Japanese
Shinto shrine,

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they always keep the mirror
inside,

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that's probably the reflection
of the old memory, ancestors.

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And, you know, this is...

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I'm worshiping our ancestors.

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This is the earliest stage of
the life formation in the world.

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So this is what I have
to pay respect.

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Two years ago,
I was commissioned to build

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a Shinto shrine in Japan.

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You know,
it's a religious institution

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and it's still active,

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but the building itself,
it's so old and deteriorated so

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I was commissioned
to rebuild this Shinto shrine.

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So this is exactly 30 years

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since I first came to see
this Large Glass,

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to see this Duchamp piece.

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Actually that was the year

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I came to New York
from California, after spending

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three years in
California as an art student.

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And...

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that was
the first things I did,

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make a short trip
from New York to Philadelphia

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to see this Duchamp piece.

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It seems strong and important.

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The way you read it
is your own creation.

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He is kind of stimulating
a kind of very abstract thinking

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of the kind of metaphors.

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So there's no one answer
to describe this, you know.

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Well, this is the miniature
which I made.

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This was actually photographed
in Tokyo,

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and what I photographed was
the replica of The Large Glass.

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I use eight-by-ten camera.

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This is the original
negative here

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sandwiched between
the two thick glass like this.

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And then this side is
the positive actually,

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the contact print
from the other side, negative.

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I wasn't so aware
of Duchamp's influence, but...

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but after reaching
at my age now, I...

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I feel very strongly
how... how much

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effect that he did affect

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on my career in art.

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What I'm working on now
is my show at the Cartier Foundation
in Paris.

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The Cartier Foundation,
it's a glass box,

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it's a huge glass box.

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I'm presenting
a three-dimensional Duchamp

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Large Glass presentation
in my way of presentation.

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This is the bachelor section.

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And this is the bride section.

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This is each nine figures
as a bachelor

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that's being represented

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as more like
a machine-like figure.

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That's why I'm related
to this

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collection of my machine photographs.

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The machine models were
19th century.

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They served to demonstrate

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the very basic machine movement
for the student.

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We are getting into
this upper part of the section

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called the "bride section."

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So this is...
there's supposed to be a bride

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with this very interesting

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formation of cloud-like shapes.

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That's kind of feminine to me, so

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I decided to compare with my 
mathematical forms, like this.

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This was made to be... to show a student
what's the mathematics,

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you know, three-dimensional
mathematic theories can be seen

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in actual
three-dimensional models.

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I was very bad in mathematics

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when I was
a high school student.

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I loved physics, but my lack of
understanding of mathematics

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made me think that
I am not the proper person

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to get into physics.

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You know, I found that
I'm quite a visual person;

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I have to confirm everything
by my eye.

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So I became more like
a visual artist.

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Every museum show,
I try to design the space.

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It's very important.

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It's not just
a photography show.

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It's more like
I'm designing the space.

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It's just a...

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like a space sculpture, like.

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I want people to get puzzled
first, you know.

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As people walk in, the first...

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probably people may think this
is a minimalist sculpture show.

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And then came all the way
into the space and came back

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and all of a sudden
this is a photography show.

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So people pay only
one admission

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and get to see two different
kind of show.

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It's... very heavily discounted.

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I have so many ideas being
cooked in my brain

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and they seem like
all impossible.

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But sometimes it's...

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it becomes reality.

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So this is through my
translation of my visual,

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like, visual understanding
of how... how I see things.

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And then make...
make imagination possible

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to be able to show to everybody

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that's the task of artist,
I think.