Archē series “Etrava”

Archē
- A Fossil of Memory, a Quickening Being -

As people live, they become covered by countless "memories" — culture, belief, values. Before we know it, our very existence has been shaped by those layers of memory.

Through this work, I explore the universal, primordial memory that lies dormant deep within humankind, beyond individual memory, revealed once those layers are shed.

The clay I use is the accumulated trace of countless lives laid down upon this earth—and also a sediment of memory. I place my hands upon that clay, conversing with the unconscious, scooping up faint fragments, and fixing their existence into this world through fire.

This series of acts is an excavation of fossilized memories — a way of looking anew at oneself as a living being, and of beginning to live again.

Arche is a Greek word meaning "beginning" or "origin." But the "beginning" I am exploring is not only a point of origin in the past — it is also the beginning of existence that dwells beyond the point where something ingrained is cast away.

We live without even being able to choose the outline of our own selves.
Precisely for that reason, there may be meaning in contemplating life itself, before culture and values attach to it.

This work is a fossil of memory, a being that quickens within.
A device that touches the memories sleeping within each viewer, prompting them to reconsider who they are.

＜Origin of the name＞ Once a guide, an outlet for emotion — now a being that only wanders. A vestige of vague feeling. Like a mask, an empty husk of memory that goes on performing something.

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.