TED speech Draft-1
Hello.
This blog is a record of Japanese artists who are aiming to appear in TED conference overseas.
TED speech Draft-1
Art can change the image of death
（Beginning）
Three years ago, I received an email like this.
(The text is displaryed on the back screen, and recorded Anna's voice plays)
Dear Hideki,
Your sculptures are beautiful.
I wonder, do you take bone donations?
I am looking for an artist to donate my bones to once I die, to be crafted into artworks.
I am not planning to die soon, but one never knows!
Warm regards, Anna
How mysterious it is!
She requested to use her bones for my artworks when she dies.
I didn't know this woman named Anna at that time.
Why did I receive such an unusual email?
I will talk about it.
（Main subject-1 Introduction of Bone Flowers）
I'm an artist.
These are my artworks.
Can you guess what these flowers are made of?
They are all made of animal bones and furs.
I make flowers using the original shape of bones.
I don't carve or cut.
I don't use wires or attachments.
I assemble to the same size as the actual flowers using only glue.
I'm looking for a common structure of nature by transferring the form from animals to plants.
This narcissus is a combination of mouse chin bones.
The Chinese lantern plant is made of the mouse's heads, tails and spines.
And the balloons are made of many ribs.
The hydrangea petals are a combination of rat scapulas.
Fur is reborn as leaves.
Then, when the flower is complete, I take photos.
After that, I go to a place with a good view with the bone flower,
and carefully bury it in the ground.
People often ask, why don't you save it?
But I think beauty is ephemeral.
The flowers are beautiful because they scatter.
So I don't leave bone flowers.
I leave only the photos, finally,
That means I leave only memories.
My art values action more than object.
I think this sense is also influenced by the culture of Japan, where I was born and raised.
We prefer beauty with faulty rather than perfection.
The whole process, from taking bones to returning in the ground, is my art.
I named it “Honebana” and have been doing it over ten years.
“Hone” means bones in English, “Bana” means flowers.
("Honebana ＝Bones Flowers" is displayed on the screen)
I've made 17 kinds of flowers such as lily, dandelion and hydrangea.
（Main subject-2 About the Frozen Rodents）
To make one whole flower, I use more than 100 bones, sometimes more than 200.
The bones that I'm using are rodents of mice and rats.
Where can I get so many of them?
That is not they were killed for my artworks.
They are foods for pets.
They are sold frozen in pet shops as the reptiles and raptors foods.
If you own big snakes or owls, you may know that.
I didn't know them at first, so I was very surprised that such things were sold.
“Frozen mice and rats” are born in the small gauges, raised, killed, and fed for human's pets.
I felt that they were the symbol of the artificially managed nature of the modern society in which we live.
I dissect all of them one by one, clean the bones and remove the fur too.
It takes several months to finish one flower.
This bone-taking process takes the most time.
I'm a coward.
I don't like watching horror movies or seeing blood.
So at first, I didn't even want to touch frozen mice and rats directly.
The image of them is generally bad, isn't it?
Because they often carry pathogens such as plague, high fever, and so on.
But since frozen mice and rats are pet foods, they don't have pathogenic bacteria.
Still, preconception remained.
However, I gradually began to self-project to frozen mice and rats, and they became more familiar.
Rodents and humans are the same mammal, so the structure of the skeleton is very similar.
I transform their lives into flowers that are symbols of beauty and life.
It's artistically intended to reconstruct the birth and death cycle.
（Main subject-3 Trigger, Experience of Raccoon Dog）
Why did I start using bones for my artworks?
The trigger is this.
(I show the raccoon dog skull to the audience)
This is a raccoon dog skull.
It was my first time I experienced animal dissection.
At that time, I was apprenticed to a beekeeper and kept bees in my hometown.
I've always loved living things since I was small, and I was thinking of trying to become a professional beekeeper.
It was around that time that I became interested in bones.
I read a book called “Bone School” that was written by a science teacher at junior high school.
That tells students how to make skeleton specimens.
It was a very interesting book with a detailed explanation of how to dissect, and attracted me to try taking bones.
It was written that raccoon dog is the most suitable animal for beginners of dissection.
Because medium-sized animals are not too big and not too small, they are just best size.
But that being said, it's difficult to see a dead raccoon dog.
One day in the morning, when I was driving a motor scooter in a mountain road, I found a lying wild raccoon on the roadside.
It must have been a traffic accident.
Blood had come out a little, but a deep wound seems to be not much.
I took the raccoon dog home cautiously.
I laid it in the bathroom and opened the book “Bone School”.
That says, “First cut vertically on the belly”
However, when I tried it, I couldn't even touch directly, much less cutting it.
Moreover, I couldn't even look straight in to its eyes.
The worst thing was that I couldn't even judge if the raccoon dog was really dead.
A cold raccoon dog didn't breathed anymore, no pulse.
However, the doubted that it's just fainted.
If I cut it with the blode, it might regain consciousness, and runs around my room with its bloody internal organs out.
Can you imagine?
It's a terrible nightmare.
If I wasn't 100% sure of its desth, I couldn't cut the belly.
I couldn't even do the most basic for creature, the distinction between life and death.
That fact brought me a heavy shock.
After I hesitated about 3 hours in the bathroom, and confirmed that it didn't move any more, I took courage and pressed the blade on his belly.
Still, my hands in the vinyl gloves tremble and didn't move forward.
While, a strange feeling gradually hit me.
The parts that I cut nervously were similar to the "Chickin thighs" that are always sold at supermarkets.
I usually touch a chicken without scruple even eat it.
What is the difference between this dead raccoon dog meat and the chicken?
Both are the same “dead animal”.
My head told me so.
Nevertheless, my hands refused it.
My hand and head didn't connect well
With such a strange feeling, I took the bones out finaly based on the instruction from the book.
I don't remember how many hours it took.
When it was over, I was just exhausted badly.
After the dissection, while boiling the bones in a large pan, then I comeback to my senses and realized.
Now that I come to think of it, at the throat of the raccoon dog, it had something like the white drainage hose bellow the washing machine.
Oh, that was a trachea.
Also, at the chest, it had something like film.
Oh, that was a diaphragm.
I knew the both words the trachea and the diaphragm.
I was going to know.
But I didn't understand anything.
Raccoon dogs and humans are the same mammal too.
Although the size is different, the structure of the body is very similar.
I realized for the first time that I had lived for decades but didn't know anything about my body.
The fact that death is not known, in other words, is that life is not known.
"You know nothing about life and death"
(I show the raccoon skull again)
Its seemed to talk to me about it.
（Main subject-4 Bone and Flower Connect）
After that, I went to Tokyo.
Because, the beekeeper who was my mentor said me "You can do bigger charenge," and I decided to become a pro photographer.
But it wasn't easy.
Despite aiming to be a photographer, I have never exhibited.
On the contrary, I couldn't even show my work to other people, and as a forklift driver, I went back and forth between the factory and my home every day.
While struggling, I was constantly seeking “Photos that only I can take”.
And finally, it was a dusk in cold winter that I received the revelation of heaven to break through the depressed situation.
When I passed a busy intersection, it suddenly began to rain.
I entered a nearby café to shelter from the rain, and gazed at out from the second-floor window.
The rain gets stronger, and the asphalt gets wet and black.
Cars come and go, and red and yellow tail lights reflect in the rain.
People walk fast.
At such an intersection, some umbrellas open.
The scenery was like that lotus flowers blooming on the surface of the water.
At that moment, I saw a vision of lotus flowers made of bones in the middle of the city.
Aha! It's a flower!
The idea of “making flowers of bones” came down from heaven as if struck by lightning.
Flower is a symbol of beauty and life for all cultures and religions.
The act of laying flowers on the dead is universal, beyond race.
In addition, lotus flower in the mud is known as religious one in the Orient.
I immediately went home and started looking for a way to make flowers using bones.
How can I make flowers using bones without cutting them?
How do bones look like flowers and leaves?
After much trial and error, I finally got my first bone flower works ,Lotus, in bloom.
After that, I has been this art active for more than ten years.
During the time, the raccoon dog voice, “You don't know anything about life and death,” has been at the heart of the heart.
For me, Honebana was the act of replying my own answer to that voice.
Looking back now, I feel that way.
Honebana is made up of the integration of conflicting elements.
Life and death, animals and plants, beauty and ugliness, color and monochrome, natural and artificial, and creation and destruction.
I believe that the important role of the artist is to consider the divided values and reconnect them fundamentally.
（Conclusion About Anna's Email Again）
This speech is finally coming to a close.
Let's get back to the beginning.
After receiving the email from Anna, I replied too.
First of all, I need to know more about you.
Because I can not make art without knowing your life.
Could you tell me about yourself?
Anna, the English woman, always carries an organ donor card and wanted to donate not only blood and organs but also bones.
And she knew my art online and contacted me.
She is younger than me and published two books as a writer.
We who differ in nationality, faith and gender, began to exchange many ideas.
About life and death, past experience, and the power of imagination.
Also, we shared each perspectives of what we saw, heard and felt from childhood memories to the present moment.
During many exchanges, I began to seriously consider her offer.
And now I want to extend this adventurous attempt to others more.
"You bloom as the art"
This is a next “Honebana Project” as a new funeral.
I started collaborative research with the optical instrument manufacture.
We are aiming to develop a special 3D printer, that uses the powder of real human bones.
The objects that are made can be broken by hands, and the hardener can be returned to the soil.
Such device do not exist in the world at present.
With this device, I can make beautiful flowers with delicate and thin details like a graceful lace by using human bones.
It can also be colored.
The hardness can be adjusted too.
Anna hopes to become a poppy.
She said, it's not for the association with fallen soldiers, but for its silky combination of resilience and fragility.
（photo）
Modern society tends to cover up death as negative.
Death is hated as a taboo and is handled in a hospital isolated from everyday life.
The form of the funeral also remains bound by old traditions and religions.
Forms or strict conventions are given priority over our personality.
Some people here would be thinking I am open to death, no taboo.
Such a person also, please try to consider this.
Your funeral, you are the main character, is your life last of culmination.
Have you ever thought about that design deeply in the same way as the hairstyle you decide every morning, the shirt you wear on a date, and the lighting in the bedroom?
People are not all standard products.
Every life is different.
If so, shouldn't there be as many designs of funeral as there are lives?
I want to release the form of death with the art.
More beautiful, more positive, and be more true to yourself.
I propose a new design of death that reflects our each life as self-expression.
Art can change the image of death.
I learned it from that raccoon dog and frozen mice and rats.
And, now from here, the next new adventure begins.
I am very grateful to be able to share this memorable first step with you.
Let's make a new way of death for each person together.
Finally, I will finish this speech with my favorite Anna's phrase.
（The text is displaryed on the back screen, and I read the sentence）
Much of what we do is motivated by short-term gain, whereas art can provoke us to think beyond our lifetimes.
Thank you.
How was that?
I would be encouraged if you give me your thoughts, advice.
Thank you for reading.
