Book Launch – Katusra Hito
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22.03.2023
Marjolein van der Loo
We warmly invite you to the book launch of Katsura Hito by curator Marjolein van der Loo.
The book Katsura Hito orbits around the Katsura tree. This tree is an elemental spirit of the Japanese landscape in the fall season. As the transformation of the Katsura’s coloured leaves and their enchanting sweet scent changes the sensorial experience of their environment, they remind us of our connection to the seasons. The tree’s embeddedness in Japanese folklore and traditional storytelling leads us to a yokai supernatural spirit, legend, and gardener: Katsura-Otoko, or, in Chinese, Wu Gang. His efforts in pruning the Katsura tree on the moon to cause lunar cycles connects cosmology to ecology as a natural part of our earthly existence. The story’s premise serves as an inspiration and starting point for this project.
This publication introduces the Katsura tree as a point of departure from which to map a rich ecology of relations and experiences with materials (recipes, exercises, and images) that accompany stories—fictional and “factual”—of a multi-sensorial experience of the fall season.
The writing questions modern/colonial binaries like east and west, nature and culture, fact and fiction, higher and lower senses, and the human and non-human. It calls readers to not only exercise awareness of their environments but also to imagine along with them.
During two residency periods in the winter of 2021 and 2022 at ARCUS Project in Ibaraki, Japan, one online and one on location, Marjolein worked on the project and produced the book. Returned to Maastricht, she will present the book during a launch at Limestone Books, where Katsura Hito, published by Hand Saw Press, Tokyo, will be for sale.
More info: marjoleinvanderloo.com