Ari Saarto

SUICIDE FOREST: being at this very site, at this very moment

At the northwestern lower slopes of Mt. Fuji, just after few hours drive from Tokyo, lies the forest of Aokigahara Jukai. This exceptional forest has grown onto 30 square kilometers of lava fields, which were a result of an eruption about 900 years ago. Jukai has an almost mythical reputation: almost impossible to orientate, breathtakingly beautiful - and about 50 people do commit a suicide in it every year. Official´s nylon lines mark the route to the finding sites of the corpses.

The panoramas of the series are shot in March 2006 and the installation includes also water in a cup (water, which is collected from a cave and doomed to vanish by evaporating) and a video work Amnesia, originally an 8 mm film shot in the forest.

The source of inspiration to the video has been article "Aokigahara-jukai: suicide and amnesia in Mt. Fuji's Black Forest" by professor Yoshimoto Takahashi (Suicide Life Threat. Behaviour. Vol 18, issue 2, 1988).

The Sea of Trees (literally translated, Aokigahara Jukai means "a sea of green foliage"), combines concepts of site, presence and vanishing. The series continues my work with landscape: Topography of Murder (Finnish Civil War execution sites, 2001), Topography of Fear (fear and threat in urban space, 2001), Aomori Water Walks (hiking and collecting creek water in northeastern Japan, 2004) and IN SITU (huts of the homeless in Finland and Japan).

IN SITU

Can there be human excistence without traces or memories? If not, how long can a memory, a piece of evidence or a relic survive?

These are the questions I have approached in my exhibition, examining the traces and evidence of human presence in the huts and shacks of the homeless. Traces, oblivion and vanishing are the prevailing themes of IN SITU.

In IN SITU the outcasts and their huts are the objects of landscape photography, as opposed to the approaches of traditional photojournalism or methodical documentarism. The builders of these huts are mainly invisible to us, located on the peripheral vision of society. However, in the images, their presence is still discernible - as if someone had just been there.

IN SITU continues my series of exhibitions focusing on landscape and visual re-mapping with images. Photography is a logical instrument for this work, an instrument, which is in very complex ways also believed to be neutral. The themes have varied from the executions and violence of the 1918 Civil War in Finland (Topography of Murder, 2001), the threat and fear in city space (Topography of Fear, 2001) and hiking (Aomori Waterwalks -installation, Japan 2004).

In si'tu [L.] In its natural or original position or place; in position; -- said specif., in geology, of a rock, soil, or fossil, when in the situation in which it was originally formed or deposited.

TOPOGRAPHY OF FEAR

Do you keep an eye in the night-time for the street-corners? Do you check the corridors before entering them? Do you feel yourself insecure, if someone walks behind you to the same direction? Do women choose different walking routes and different strategies, compared to men, and what kind of influence this has in terms of daily routines?

I am interested in the historic layers within the landscape, and particularly in the values which are added to the landscape and space. A picture of space can be seen also as a picture of psyche and mental processes. On the fringes of certainness and safety of the urban space, do exist grey areas, where lies the possibility of threat, danger and violence. This uncertainness shows in daily use of safety and surveillance equipment, and in our everyday routines.

The pictures of the series Topography of Fear are taken during the night-time in Finland, Estonia, Austria, Germany and in the United Kingdom. In stead of sociological processes, my object is space. The menace could become true: the space is empty in the pictures. It is full of possibilities, potential of emptiness, like an empty scene without actors and arrangement. Only traces are left from the presence of people or things which might have happened there. The basis for my work has been the concept of mise-en-scene - scenic emptiness.

A casual passer-by can become an eye-witness or a victim. We are part of a network of safety, insecureness and menace.

Fr 1 tech the arrangement of furniture, scenery, and other objects used on the stage in a play

2 lit or pomp the surroundings in which an event takes place

(the Longman Dictionary of English Language and Culture)