Supplementary Notes for IN-BETWEEN
This document serves as a supplementary resource for the video installation by Fujikura & Ohmura presented in IN-BETWEEN. It outlines the conceptual background and the critical questions that form the foundation of our work. The document will be updated regularly throughout the exhibition period.
Our ongoing exploration focuses on finding pathways to paradisiacal landscapes and a sense of fulfillment, emerging from the impoverished sceneries and experiences that characterize modernity. The "fictional renovation" explored by Fujikura & Ohmura in IN-BETWEEN is one such approach—a reimagining of reality through artistic practice.
Takahiro Ohmura
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Contemporary Landscapes and Their Workings
The landscapes distinctly characteristic of our time are being produced not so much in cities as in the suburbs and hinterlands. Picture, for instance, those abandoned agricultural fields now overrun by solar arrays, those skylines studded with wind turbines, or those middle-of-nowheres where enormous datacenters and distribution warehouses unexpectedly loom. It is in capitalism’s nature to continually seek opportunities for expansion by entering untapped frontiers, where it can exploit the discontinuities and differentials arising from inherent social disparities and spatial/temporal differences. This is why the current situation—where outlying, unurbanized lands, dismissed as having no value throughout modern times, are now being targeted as sites for capital expansion—warrants attention. Contemplating the workings of these non-urban contemporary landscapes might just help us formulate a new logic of habitation that breaks from what continues to be prescribed to us by the enduring modern framework of urban-centric development. To this end, it is essential to understand the central forces propelling development, which have undergone a decisive transformation. Previously, the primary drivers were the sectors of physical distribution and energy, which rose on the waves of postwar globalization and the information revolution. Now, they are mining (extraction) and logistics. Our focus will be on the evolution and interplay of these two key sectors dictating the behavior of capital today.
Modern City
Pre-modern proto-urban environments formed defined, self-contained domains of habitation by virtue of the fact that they subsumed “particularities” of the land (that is, they encircled land with productive capacity). The modern city abandoned this approach, adopting instead an extreme strategy of managing a core domain that relies almost entirely on external supplies. Its viability rested on two conditions: first, the extensive development of transportation/distribution infrastructure beyond the core domain, and second, the drastic intensification of land acquisition and resource extraction processes facilitated by this new urban supply network. Excessive connectivity and extreme dependency both became defining characteristics of the modern city, and together they enabled the creation of a center for unprecedented capital accumulation. At the same time, however, they exacerbated intra-city overcrowding and spawned a plethora of extra-city spaces intended solely to benefit urbanites, such as bedroom towns (depoliticized residential environments deprived of places for communal engagement or dialogue, as well as self-sufficient energy or food production capabilities), the various sites feeding into the urban supply network (land used for food production, forestry, mining, transportation infrastructure, energy production, utility infrastructure, waste treatment, etc.), and roadside commercial strips (self-perpetuating spaces of consumption). These exclusionary mechanisms were conceived as ad-hoc solutions to relieve the modern city of the problems that accompanied the rise of industrial capitalism, such as severe pollution, epidemics, and slums.
Suburb
A suburb, as its spelling suggests, is an attachment to a city (sub- “near” + urb “city”). More specifically, it can be defined as a place that was transformed by the logic of, and emerged simultaneously with, the modern city it borders. Its origin can be traced to eighteenth-century Britain, where the groundwork for the first modern cities was laid with the formation of localized market spheres encompassing factory-based hand manufacturing hubs (Manchester, Liverpool, etc.). What fundamentally distinguished the proto-modern city from cities of the past was its immediate proximity not only to ports but also to rural villages. This made it a convenient place for manufacturers to procure temporary unskilled wage labor from the villages and for villagers to buy and sell goods they had previously produced self-sufficiently or bartered, such as textiles. Over time, as this localized market sphere continued to grow as a largely self-sustaining system that could maintain and regenerate itself without significant dependence on external trade, it began to be troubled by the aforementioned spatial problems, such as pollution and slums. The idea of setting a boundary around the market sphere to establish a core domain that relies on regions beyond its limits not only to supply its needs but also to deal with its problems—the modern city—was invented as an expedient solution to these issues. When implemented, the wage-based economics of the city spilled out into the surrounding countryside, transforming nearby rural communities into suburbs. In addition to simultaneously giving rise to the modern city and its suburbs, the spatial system of the near-rural localized market sphere also recast the inhabitants of these areas into wage-earning workers and consumers en masse. Essentially, this resulted in product-producing workers also becoming the consumers of the products they produced. This duality was critical because it marked the point at which increasing labor productivity through technological innovation (thereby reducing the relative cost of labor power) became virtually the only viable means for manufacturers to generate surplus value (this is one of the key systemic forces that propelled the Industrial Revolution). Eventually, suburbs, aided by the arterial roads and expressways of the urban supply network, would shed their inherent property of being attachments to the modern city, sprawling further outward into the countryside and coalescing into a homogeneous, meshed landscape with seemingly no end.
Roadside
The highway roadside landscape represents a crowning achievement of industrial capitalism and modernism. All its hallmarks—supermarkets, convenience stores, dining chains, affordable shoe and clothing retailers, big-box electronics stores, auto parts stores, pachinko parlors, and so on—collectively embody a space idealized by modernism. How so? Because the roadside landscape is the embodiment of the urban supply network, the very thing that ensures the simultaneity of the modern city and its suburbs, while facilitating the superabundant flow of externally sourced energy, food, labor, information, and technology into the core domain. And so, it turns out that the culmination of the modern city—the grand project that humanity went all-out to complete from the nineteenth to the twentieth century—is none other than the banal suburban scenery we have grown wearily familiar with. One just has to strip away the flashy signage and décor to see it. What should remain are the cheaply and efficiently fabricated structural frames of steel and concrete, repeated at uniform distances without any waste. The sight of these buildings inhabiting the landscape linearly, endlessly, in a highly abstract manner, is the quintessence of modern architecture.
Extractivism
Sandro Mezzadra and Brett Neilson explain the dependency intrinsic to industrial capitalism—and, by extension, the modern city (the core domain and supply network system)—in terms of “extraction”, for which they offer two definitions: “literal extraction” and “expanded extraction” [1]. Literal extraction describes the forced removal of raw materials and lifeforms from above and below the Earth’s surface. For example, mining operations continuously carve out new extraction sites in search of untapped deposits of commodifiable materials, such as the rare earth elements integral to the development and functionality of today’s compact electronic devices. Thus, through extraction, resources formed over vast geological timescales are converted into energy and industrial products, which in turn drive social transformation by expanding the scope of new media and infrastructure. Expanded extraction, by contrast, refers to extractive activities such as data mining, profiling via personal information collection, and cryptoanalysis. Notably, there is a feedback loop between the two forms of extraction: extraction in the narrower sense supports expanded extraction, while extraction in the broader sense demands and intensifies literal extraction, as exemplified by the relationship between rare earths and electronics.
Logistics
The logistics revolution began in the United States in the 1960s. Prior to that, the primary focus of physical distribution was on minimizing the amount of time goods spent in circulation (from shipping to delivery). The strategic framework of logistics fundamentally differs in that it controls the value of goods during—and even before—circulation through actively managing the supply chain (the transnational network of business transactions involved in fulfilling orders). Naturally, its rise was propelled by the globalization of distribution, as the risks of demand uncertainty are amplified on the global scale. Longer lead times (from order placement to delivery) result in greater uncertainty, while shorter lead times and higher demand forecast accuracy lead to lower inventory carrying costs (storage and handling costs). This is why shortening circulation time was traditionally the primary focus. However, doing so alone proved insufficient for addressing the complexities of global-scale distribution. Logistics enables the execution of much more intricate operations, such as coordinating make-to-stock (demand forecast-driven) production and make-to-order (actual demand-driven) production by monitoring demand trends and fine-tuning production processes to dynamically adjust output—all while the relay race of goods continues to unfold around the globe. Tactics for enhancing logistical efficiency within supply chains include optimizing packaging and transport (as exemplified by standardized container shipping), concurrent and parallel processing (breaking down operations into multiple processes that can be run at the same time to reduce lead times), and delayed differentiation (postponing the finalization of product variations until late in the production process to maintain flexibility in response to demand). These tactics break up manufacturing processes into various timelines and speeds, and they are responsible for the global proliferation of obscure, fragmented labor tasks that can leave one guessing at what the final end product is supposed to look like. Meanwhile, in the world of container ships—the icons of logistics—the cutting-edge practice is “slow steaming” (the intentional operation of ships at low speeds to reduce fuel consumption). It is here that we can see how the unrelenting pursuit of logistical efficiency on a global scale generates a mix of “fastness” and “slowness”, revealing the elastic nature of space-time.
Particularness and Stewardship
Fossil fuel energy links the ancient past to the present. Nuclear energy consigns its spent waste to the distant future. Renewable energy gives full sway to the now. Energy production generates distinct temporal sequences unique to the structures of its various modes and runs extractive operations that oscillate between the past, present, and future. Logistics, intertwined with the dynamics of complex and invisible profit-making forces, stretches, compresses, and at times, fragments and muddles, the fabric of space-time. The impacts caused by such temporal particularities are what catalyze the production of the distinctly contemporary landscapes that fundamentally differ from those shaped by modern urban-centric development. Is there any possibility that I—that we—can intervene in or resist this reconfiguration of space taking place at the scale not of cities or nations, but of the globe?
One way to take a stand against the formidable network of logistics and extractivism could be to make strategic use of “ownership”, which anthropologist Marilyn Strathern identifies as the most effective tool for “cutting” networks [2]. This idea can be easily understood by considering the mechanics of patenting. When assigning ownership to a particular invention, a strict separation must be drawn between the newly introduced technology, knowledge, and operations and the preexisting technology, knowledge, and operations on which it is built. This, of course, is because ownership can only be granted for the alterations appended to the givens. Conferring ownership thus entails severing part of what is inherently a network of intertwined elements—a hybrid. Crucially, the mechanics also work in reverse: actively establishing ownership can be a way to tactically alter the attribution of a hybrid. The subject of ownership does not necessarily have to be an individual; its scope can be controlled to encompass a family, a community, or even all of humanity.
When applied to land, establishing ownership becomes a problem of how one applies artificial alterations to the given conditions—that is, the existing site environment. Hints for how this could be done may in fact be found within the incredibly mundane suburban landscapes around us. Look at the ways people are creating particularities within the endlessly homogeneous environments. Those legends retold with uncertain conviction, those rocks treated with inexplicable affection, those routines performed out of meaningless habit, those tires tentatively piled out in the open, those drainage channels painted yellow on just one side—could it be that all the little discrete and inherently random manifestations of “particularness” that people imprint in the landscape, combined with the way they assume “stewardship” over such things, are the answer? Whether they are conscious of it or not, the gazes and gestures of habit, care, and play are providing people who have no choice but to call the sprawling suburbs their home with anchors for fostering a genuine connection to the land. They represent the first steps toward altering the ownership of their domains of habitation.
1 Sandro Mezzadra and Brett Neilson, The Politics of Operations: Excavating Contemporary Capitalism (Durham: Duke University Press, 2019).
2 Marilyn Strathern, “Cutting the Network”, The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 2, no. 3 (September 1996): 517-535.
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First presented: MACHINE LOVE: Video Game, AI and Contemporary Art (Mori Art Museum, 2025)
(English translation: Gen Machida／マチダゲン)
