Archē series “Orruct”

Archē
- A Fossil of Memory, a Quickening Being -

As people live, they become covered in countless "memories" — culture, belief, values.
Before you know it, your own existence has been shaped by layers of such memories.

Through the work, what appears once those things are shed away,
It explores a universal, primordial memory that lies deep within humanity, beyond individual memory.

The clay I use is the accumulated trace of countless lives upon this earth, and
It is also a sediment of memory.
Placing my hands on the clay, conversing with the unconscious,
Scooping up faint fragments,
Through fire, its existence is fixed into this world.

This series of acts is the excavation of fossils of memory,
it is also a matter of looking anew at human beings as living things, and living anew.

Archē (arukē) is a Greek word meaning “beginning” or “origin.”
But the “beginning” I am exploring is not only a point of origin that existed in the past, but
It is also the beginning of existence, found only after casting off something once ingrained.

We live without even being able to choose the outline of our own selves.
Precisely because of that, before culture and value become attached,
Isn't there meaning in contemplating life itself?

This work is a fossil of memory, a being that quickens within.
Touching the memories that lie dormant within each viewer,
A device that prompts you to reconsider who you truly are.

＜The Origin of the Name＞
A composition of foreign intrusion, with reddish-black thorn-like protrusions piercing a smooth, unadorned body. Themed on the eruption and intrusion of memory and emotion, its name is a coinage of "Erupt" and "Construct."

Sakai feeds images of his finished works into an AI, then adopts, as the work's title, a coined word the AI generates from that visual information.