Hiroyuki Hattori | From "The Forest as a Museum" to "The Forest as a Commons"
ACAC director Hiroyuki Hattori reconsiders coexistence and the forest as a commons amid climate and environmental change.Summary
A text by Hiroyuki Hattori, director of the Aomori Contemporary Art Centre (ACAC). Founded in 2001 in a forest at the foot of the Hakkoda mountains, ACAC focuses on artist-in-residence programs. In recent years, the region has seen extreme heat requiring air conditioning, concentrated heavy snowfall, and bears appearing in urban areas. The founding principle of "coexistence between nature and people" was shaped by first director Goji Hamada, who described the forest itself as a museum, with the forest as the subject rather than art. Hattori questions what "coexistence" and "commons" really mean, noting that vegetation has always changed and all beings influence one another. From 2026, ACAC runs the two-year program "Land & Learning: Even if Coexistence Is Difficult, Could This Forest Become a Commons?", including Val Lee's performance "Voy!" and the outdoor sculpture dialogue series "Remaining, Disappearing." He discusses decaying outdoor sculptures, the removal or transformation of works such as Tsuchiya Kimio's Landscape of Memory and Tsuji Kei's Aomori—En, and argues for nurturing an art center within the forest as a multi-species commons, while valuing the original principle that the forest is the museum.
(Source：artscape)