I first decided to live as an artist at the age of thirty-eight, after having worked in IT first and later on several organic farms. I realised that I needed more freedom and that I have to create art. Maybe, and because of my many identities I like to look at myself and my environment from a different perspective. What I am trying to do is to expand the possibilities of the medium in unconventional ways. Through trial and error, I have found a way to incorporate, infer, retrace, or dissolve my photographic works into installations. The photographs increasingly break away from notions of framed, classical formats. Instead, they take on their own architectural function in space. I use unusual materials to connect photography, the support and space. What is interesting to me is that in this era where everything happens on a flat surface, as a kind of reverse reaction, the originally flat photographs gradually become multi-dimensional objects and appear in the real world. 

I am also trying to bring some of the aesthetics and habits of East Asian art into my own work. This is a very meaningful thing to me.

Einan Kaku （郭 映南）
*1976 in China, lives and works in Stuttgart, Germany

This is a 48 day diary that was created during the COVID-19 lockdown period. In spring 2020, I took pictures of the dining table at the same time every day. Without a tripod and more like a ritual out of hand. The dining table had never been the center of my life, but as I was home everyday in the spring of 2020, I was often in the kitchen. Incredibly, it was sunny every day for three weeks.

这是一部48天的日记，是在Covid-19封城期间创作的。在2020年春天，我每天都在同一时间给自己的餐桌拍照。不使用三角架，完全用手机记录，它更像是一种每天的仪式。餐桌从来都不是我生活的中心，但在2020年的春天，我每天都在家，大部分时间呆在厨房里独自面对着它。令人难以置信的是，那三个星期，每天都是阳光灿烂。

The video documented a performance showing a series of photos in a large format. The work was made up of A4-sized individually parted photographs, which created a white grid structure over the images. These large format prints lie on a pile and are pulled out of the picture one 

 using two hands in white gloves. The size determines the movement and flow of the image sequence.

During the first lockdown, I did not have a large printer or a studio so everything was done from home. I printed 786 pages of A4 paper and pasted them into 48 pages of A0 size photographs. It was a process during which private life turned into an art work.

这段视频记录的是一场表演，展示的是一系列大尺寸（A0）的照片。每一张A0照片是由16张A4大小的打印纸连接组成的，因此在可见在照片上有一个白色的网格结构。这些大尺寸的照片重叠被放在一起，用两只戴着白手套的手一个接一个地从画面中拉出来。手和一部分身体的出现可以让人推想到照片的尺寸。在第一次封城期间，我没有大型打印机，也没有工作室，所以一切都在家里完成。我用家庭小型打印机一共打印了786页A4的纸，并将它们粘贴成48页A0尺寸的照片。这是一个私人生活变成了艺术作品的过程。

I knew I should finally get away from the 768 pages of the prints and the THINGS that I photographed every day for 48 days. But the second lockdown came and I had to sit down at the table again and watch the same THINGS all over again. Winter 2020.

From a bird’s eye view, one could see several printed papers and objects lying around, scattered and partially torn. It looked as if a wastebasket had fallen to the ground. From the crumpled or torn papers, one could clearly see the original images from the performance video. The handwritten date remained legible. Some objects, such as a disposable mask or an envelope could also be seen creating their own three-dimensional effects.

The extremely long, narrow format refers to the Chinese tradition of scroll paintings; the aesthetics of the falling objects refers to Chinese Jinhuidui painting (China's '8 Brokens'锦灰堆).

我知道我终于应该丢掉那768页的纸和这些我在48天里每天拍摄的餐桌。但第二次封城来了，我不得不再次坐在同一个餐桌前，重新观看同样的场景。这是2020年冬天。

这个系列作品是以俯瞰的角度，可以看到一些打印纸和物品，散落着，部分被撕碎。看起来就像一个废纸篓掉到了地上。从皱巴巴的或被撕碎的纸张中，人们可以清楚地看到表演录像中的那个原始图像。手写的日期仍然清晰可辨。也可以看到一些物体，如一次性口罩或信封，物体和图像构成奇特的三维效果。

这一作品的格式符合中国卷轴画的传统，落物的美学也和锦灰堆画有一定的关系。

During my life I have spent some time living on several small islands in China, Japan and Taiwan. Now I am mostly living in Europe and it always happens that when I see the Atlantic ocean here, I envision the Pacific ocean on top of it.

A light blue image of waves from the Atlantic Ocean moving in a diagonal motion is projected on the wall. Within this projection is a dark blue image of the Pacific Ocean printed on paper with waves running horizontally. The Atlantic Ocean and the Pacific Ocean - both do not exist independently and inevitably overlap each other.

在我的人生中，我曾在中国、日本和台湾的几个小岛上生活过一段时间。而现在我主要生活在欧洲。所以总会发生这样的事情，每当我在欧洲看到大西洋的时候，我就会看到它上面重叠着的太平洋。

墙上投射着一幅浅蓝色的图像，这是大西洋。波浪由右上角向对角线方向延伸。在这个投影中，有一个打印在纸上的太平洋的图像，深蓝色。它的波浪是水平展开。大西洋和太平洋--两者无法独立存在，不可避免地相互重叠。

As a result of staying home for a long period during the COVID-19 lockdown, I had forgotten the feeling of real nature.

I rummaged through my archives for old photos and tried to find my feeling for nature again. Or maybe I can say that my feelings for nature have become a little strange. They 

 alone in my memory, twisted and distorted.

2020年和2021年，新冠大流行的年份。第一次封城是在2020年4月，然后是11月的第二次封城。
由于在封城期间长期呆在家里，我好像已经忘记了真正的大自然的感觉。我翻开我的老照片想找到一点大自然的感觉。在我的脑海中，天空和石头就变成了这种，扭曲，折叠，间接于平面与立体东西。

Finally, the images become three-dimensional.

Kare-san-sui (Dry Garden) is a garden of subjective imagination created by Zen Buddhist monks during their practice. For these works, I drew on the concept of symbolist thinking, showing individual images of nature, for example parts of the sky, stones, water or shrubs. These images were attached to a various materials. I still wanted to 

 my feeling for nature through my photographs. My subjective imagination, however, dominated over the actual natural landscape. Thus, through my inner perception of nature, I created my own fictitious garden, which consists of individual parts of my remembered nature 

. I must say, that in the process of creating new spaces, I found comfort in this kind of Zen meditation with my photo-objects.

然后2D的图像就变成了3D的物体。

"枯山水"（Kare-sansui ）无水之庭是日本写意园林的一种形态，是佛教禅宗僧侣冥想修行过程中产生的极简美学。我用它作为标题，所取的正是我为我的摄影作品重组的象征主义的概念。这些摄影作品展示了自然的个别断片，例如天空的一部分、石头、水或灌木，并附着在各种不同材料上。在新冠大流行期间，我尝试用我的旧照片来重新找寻我对自然的感觉。主观想象力支配着实际的自然景观。通过内心对自然的感知，我创造了一个属于我自己的虚构的花园，类似于冥想的禅宗花园。而且我不得不说，通过制作这个庭园，我的身心得到或多或少的治愈。

Inspired by the short story “Hello, come out!” (Original title: Ooi, Detekoi ! おーい、でてこーい), written by the Japanese author Hoshi Shin’ichi in 1952.

One day an infinitely deep hole suddenly appeared. People were very happy because they were now able to solve their huge garbage problems. From then on they threw all sorts of things that they no longer needed into the hole.

I am fascinated by Japanese science fiction, which often deals with technological advances and future societies, but also with human emotions and ethical dilemmas. It also contains elements of fantasy and combines real and fictional worlds.

1952年に発表された星新一の短編SF小説 "おーい、でてこーい "をメタファーにした作品。ある日突然、ある村にあらわれた、なぞの穴。古い日記、動物実験の死体、機密文書、浮浪者、原子炉カス、、、なんでも飲み込んでくれる穴のおかげで都会はしばらくはきれいになったが。

日本のSF小説の特徴として、科学技術の進歩によって生じる社会的な問題や倫理的なジレンマを探求するという点があります。この点に私は惹かれ、今回の作品を生み出す発想の原点となりました。

小説中に登場する穴。空から落ちてくる、かつて人間に捨てられたもの。これらをビジュアル化し、鑑賞者をより具体的な身近な問題として引き込む装置になっています。

According to the German Environmental Aid (DUH), in Germany, 320,000 disposable takeaway coffee cups are thrown away every hour. But how many are 320,000 actually? If you stack them up in an area of around one square meter, there will be 1893 layers that are together about 10 metres high.

ドイツ環境保護協会（DUH）によると、ドイツでは1時間に32万個の使い捨てコーヒーカップが捨てられています。しかし、実際には32万個とはどれくらいの数なのでしょうか？1平方メートルに積み上げると、1893層にもなり、合わせると約10メートルの高さになります。

"Ooi, Detekoi" (Hey, come out!), is the original title of Hoshi Shinichi's novel and my work is a metaphor for this. I am re-telling the story based on one of my earlier works. The full text of the story is projected as a subtitle on the screen of the previous installation, the images overlapping, one real and one imaginary, evoking a certain sense of déjà vu. There is also an intention to 'recycle' the previous work. Hoshi Shinichi's novel from the 1950s is quite a testament to our current situation. The tower, ten metres high, printed with disposable cups that have been made into cushions, shows my desire to re-use the cups. Another projection shows the cups raining in the forest. The red writings on the floor are all the things in the novel that people have thrown away and no longer need, having fall from the sky with the cups.

--Original text--
After the typhoon, the sky was a splendid blue. The typhoon had caused damage in a village not far from a large city. A small shrine near a mountain outside the village had been swept away by a landslide.

The following morning the villagers heard about it, and some came to the site saying to each other, “How long had the shrine been there?”

“No, I think it was a bit over there.”

Just then, one of them shouted, “Hey, What on earth is this hole?”

There was a hole in the ground about one meter in diameter. They looked down into it but it was so dark they couldn’t see anything. But it seemed deep, as if it went right through to the center of the earth. I wonder if it’s a fox’s hole,” someone said.

“Hey, come out!” a young man shouted into the hole, but there wasn’t even an echo. Then he picked up a pebble and was about to throw it into the hole when an old man stopped him.

“Don’t do it or you might be punished.”

But the young man threw it in with all his might. But there was still no echo from the bottom. The villagers cut down some trees and tied them together with ropes to make a fence around the hole. Then they went back to the village.

“Why don’t we build a shrine over the hole like there was before?”

A day passed without anything having been decided. The word soon got out, and carloads of reporters rushed to the village. Soon a scholar came. He walked toward the hole wearing an expression on his face which said that there was nothing he didn’t know. Then some curiosity seekers appeared, among them some with shifty eyes, who looked like grafters. The local policeman kept on guard so that no one would fall into the hole.

One of the reporters tied a weight to a long rope. The rope went down endlessly. But when he came to the end of the rope, he tried to pull it back up, but in vain. When a couple of the others helped him pull on with all their strength, the rope broke at the edge of the hole. One of the reporters who was watching them with a camera in his hand silently untied the rope which he had wound around his waist.

The scholar phoned a laboratory to send a powerful loudspeaker. He wanted to use it to check echos from the bottom. But there was no echo, however he varied the sound. The scholar scratched his head, but couldn’t stop the experiment since everyone was watching him. He put the loudspeaker right next to the hole, raised the volume, and kept sounding it for a long time. The sound would have been heard tens of kilometers away on level ground, but the hole swallowed it as if it were nothing.

The scholar was secretly bewildered but, pretending to be calm, he turned off the sound and said in a grave tone of voice, “Fill it in!”

The safe thing was to eliminate what you couldn’t understand.

The onlookers were about to disperse, wearing expressions which seemed to say, “ Is that all there is to it?” Then one of the grafters, who had pushed his way through the crowd to the front, made an offer.

“Give that hole to me. I’ll fill it in for you.”

“I’d be grateful to you for filling it in,” the mayor replied, “but I can’t give it to you, because we must build a shrine there.”

“I’ll build you a better shrine later. Shall I build one that has a village meeting hall?”

Before the mayor could answer, the villagers cried,

“Really? Then we’d like to have it nearer the village.”

“It won’t hurt us to give you a hole.”

So it was a deal. Even he mayor didn’t object.

The grafter’s promise was not an empty one. He built them a small shrine, with a meeting hall, close to the village. Just as the villagers were celebrating the fall festival in the new shrine, the company which the grafter had established to fill in the hole put up a small signboard on a hut near the hole.

The grafter had his men carry on an energetic campaign in the city. “ We have a splendid, deep hole. Scholars say that it’s at least 5,000 meters deep. It’s an ideal place to dump radioactive wastes from atomic power plants.”

The government gave permission. Atomic power plants signed contracts one after another. The villagers were a little worried, but they were satisfied when they were told that there would be no damage to the surface of the earth for thousands of years, and that they would receive a share of the profits. Besides, a splendid road was soon built from the city to the village.

Along this road came trucks carrying lead containers. At the hole, the containers were opened and wastes from nuclear reactors were thrown in.

Officials from the Ministry of Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Defense Agency came to dispose of boxes filled with secret documents that were no longer needed. The officials who came to supervise talked about golf. The low-ranking officials talked about pin-ball as they threw papers into the hole.

The hole showed no sign of filling up. It seemed that either it was extremely deep, or that it widened out at the bottom. The company gradually expanded its business.

They brought the bodies of animals which had been used in university experiments on infectious diseases, and the bodies of vagrants who had no relatives to claim them. They even drew up a plan to carry the wastes from the city to the hole through a long pipe, saying that that would be better that dumping them in the sea.

The hole gave the people of the city a feeling of security. They were so keen on producing things one after another that they all had hated to rack their brains over how to get rid of the wastes. And they had wanted to work only for manufacturing and sales companies, and no one had wanted to be a junk dealer. But the hole seemed to be solving their problems little by little.

Girls engaged to be married threw their old diaries into the hole. And there were people who threw pictures of themselves with their former sweethearts into the hole and then began new affairs. The police felt at rest now that they were able to dispose of skillfully-made counterfeit money which they had confiscated. And criminals were relieved as they threw incriminating evidence into the hole.

The hole accepted anything that people wanted to get rid of. With the city’s dirt and wastes flushed away by the hole, the sea and the sky seemed to get cleaner than before.

New buildings were built one after another, soaring into that sky.

One day, a worker, after having finished riveting a steel frame high on a building under construction, was taking a break. He heard someone overhead cry, “ Hey, come out! ” But when he looked up, he saw nothing but the blue sky. He thought that it must have been his imagination. As he returned to his former position, a small pebble fell from the direction where the voice came, almost touching him.

But he was looking idly at the skyline of the city, becoming more and more beautiful, and didn’t notice it.

Absolute silence in cemetery in Europe for century.
Perhaps I may create some sounds.
A communication between I and strangers, the dead and the living. With full respect.

Cemetery has so many different materials: stone, metal, wood, concrete, glass, porcelain, plastics, plants and also actually a lot of unknown. But it is quiet.
All things can actually make different sounds.
I have always been interested in another dimension. What can be behind the visual plane? Can you also hear from deep under the earth? Through my action I expect to create a sonic dimension. So that a liveliness is created in the cemetery: Hello? Hello! how are you?

I look at myself in the mirror.
Sometimes I can not believe that it is me.
I talk with myself.
The one me only speaks Chinese with the other me who only speaks
German.
We’re helped by a Google translator ...

我看着镜子里的自己。
有时我不相信那是我自己。
我与自己交谈。
一个只说中文的我和另一个只说德语的我。
交谈。
我们之间是谷歌翻译器。

“Where are you from?”, is not a question I like to answer, because I cannot answer such questions that easily. I was born in China, hold a Japanese passport and have been living in Germany for a long time. During my life, I have actually lived in 13 cities across 4 countries. I cannot simply define myself as one identity. But who has only one identity?

Since 2017, I made several trips to the 12 cities where I used to live but where I haven't returned for a long time. Strangely, I could barely remember the surroundings of the places. Still, there are many stories about me there. During these trips I met MYSELF again. I felt like I was travelling through my old photo albums with my memories gradually being recalled.

"你从哪里来？" 我不喜欢回答这样的问题。因为我不能简单回答。我出生在中国，持有日本护照，在德国生活了很长时间。实际上，到目前为止，在我的人生中我已经在4个国家的13个城市生活过。我的身份不仅仅是一个。但谁的身份只有一个呢？自2017年以来，我几次前往我曾经生活过但已经很久没有再去过的12个城市。奇怪的是，我几乎记不起这些地方的地理细节。虽然那里有很多关于我的故事。在这些旅行中，我感觉再次见到了我自己。我觉得自己就像在翻看自己的旧相册，我的记忆逐渐被唤起。

I was permitted to utilise the three rooms of the former Projekt Raum LOTTE. I filled the first room with photography, the second with a video installation and the third room with my reading performance, “One Month and One Day”.

Even if it sounds like a real animal, the green koi does not actually exist. It represents a mixture of what I am. The photographic and projection works 

 from various literary and cinematic references. The woman in the pink jacket 

 from Haruki Murakami's novel, "Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World“, an image which one associates with the cold, efficient urban life of Tokyo, however, 

graph was taken on the streets of Munich. The video work, "Window“, is inspired by Wong Kar-Wai's film, "In the mood for love“, from 2000. Voyeurism and cautious observation is the underlying narrative tone of the film. With this atmosphere I perform my reading, "One month and one day", a diary in which I wrote all my daily meals in the language where each food and drink originated from, and each item was a read out in its original language.

我被允许独自使用 "洛特项目 "的3个房间。我在第一个房间里展示了摄影作品，在第二个房间里摆放了视频装置，在第三个房间里表演了我的现场阅读《一个月和一天》。

即使它听起来像一个真实的动物，绿色锦鲤实际上并不存在。它代表了我的身份的一个混合物。穿粉红色外套的微胖的女人来自村上春树的小说《世界尽头与冷酷仙境》，这个形象让人联想到东京冰冷、高效的城市生活，然而这张照片是在慕尼黑的街头拍摄的。投影作品《窗》的灵感来自王家卫2000年的电影《花样年华》。偷窥式的谨慎观察是这部电影的基本叙事基调。在这种氛围下，我表演了我的阅读作品《一个月和一天》，这是一本日记，我写下了我所有的日常饮食，用每种食物和饮料的来源地的语言，然后再用它的原文读出来的。

The theme is about the "point" of view.  Maybe because of my experience of living in lots of foreign countries, I like to look at myself and my environment from the different perspective. So in many cases, the works are showing what I am looking and be looked at. And I just like a bystander by my side.

視点についてです。 外国にたくさん住んだ経験からか、自分自身と自分の環境を違う視点から見る癖があります。多くの場合、作品は私が見ているもの、見られているものを示しています。そして、私は自分自身の傍観者のようなのです。

1. Since the 3rd millennium BC, the ancient Chinese considered all things in nature to be a combination of yin and yang, which was summarised as an understanding and explanation of various natural phenomena and used to divine weather, wars and all kinds of life. The famous book YIJING is actually a concept of a dual system, which includes about 64 permutations and combinations of yin and yang that explain the laws of everything in the universe. Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz(1646-1716) attached great importance to the book YIJING, introduced it to Europe in the 17th century and developed the dual system in the field of mathematics.
Nowadays, modern mathematics has developed computer technology and artificial intelligence using the dual system.
Then you actually have to associate an idea:
As part of nature, humans are also products of 0 and 1. When we use 0 and 1 to make robots and imagine virtual reality, have we ever thought that we and our world could also already be a product of some kind of cyberspace?

2. We embraced and danced together. Circle after circle. God said, "Eat no fruit from the tree of knowledge." Zeus said, "None may bring fire to men." Dr Stephen Hawking warned, "AI could be the worst thing to happen to mankind. " I'm just giddy with excitement. The fruit will still be eaten again and again and someone will always give us the fire, even if they were punished badly for it every time. It is impossible for us to stop. We will pass on our fruit and our fire. We keep on dancing. Circle after circle...

古代中国人把自然界所有事物视为阴与阳组合，人们将其归纳为对各种自然现象的理解和解释并用于对天气，战争以及对人生种种的占卜。著名的易经实际上是一种2进制数学系统的概念，就是关于这阴阳的64种排列组合，它解释着宇宙万物的规律。Leibniz十分看重易经，将它介绍给17世纪的欧洲，并发展了数学领域里的二进制。

现代数学又利用二进制发展了计算机工学以及人工智能。

人类作为自然界的一部分也是0和1的产物，我们在用0和1 制造机器人，假想现实的时候，是否想到过自己也可能是某种假想现实的产物？

我们相拥在一起跳舞。一圈又一圈。神说，不要吃智慧树上的果实。宙斯说，不准赋予人类火种。霍金博士警告，人工智能会毁灭人类。越转越眩晕。智慧树上的果实仍然一次次被吃掉，火种总会有人送给我们，即使每次都受到严厉的惩罚。我们不可能停下来，还要转下去。我们将传递我们的果实和我们的火。一圈又一圈。

After leaving Japan for 10 years, I was back.
As always, it is quiet, clean, polite, tidy. At the same time, it is
noisy, crowded, oppressive and messy. It is so exotic, so foreign,
but also homely. I feel at ease. I almost go crazy.

10年間離れていた日本に戻ってきた。
まるで昔みたいに、静かで、清潔で、丁寧で、整然としている。と同時に
騒がしくて、混雑、圧迫、雑然。とても異国情緒的で、しかし、懐かしくもあった。とことなく安らぎを感じていて。気も狂いそうだった。

In my work, I use unusual materials to connect photography, the support and space. The photographs increasingly break away from notions of framed, classical formats. Instead, they take on their own architectural function in space.

These photographs are as much about the installation view as they are  the work itself.

在我的作品中，我使用不属于传统的材料来连接摄影、图片载体和空间。这些照片越来越多地打破了有框架的、传统的格式的概念。相反，他们在空间中承担了自己的建筑功能。

这个系列作品既是装置的视觉图，也是作品本身。