（続き）
There's an interesting exhibition going on.
My daughter told me about it and I went out in the sunshine just before the exhibition closed.
Kobe Art Village Centre, which had been closed for a while, was renamed Shinkaichi Art Hiroba.
The B1 gallery on the ground floor (I remember seeing the film Perfect Blue here once).
I opened the cardboard door and stepped into the mysterious space.
The underpass was a familiar place, built in 1968.
Of course, many things have happened since then, and many of the shops in the underground mall have been replaced.
The junior high school student wearing school cap is now on the verge of 70 years old...
There are words like virtual space and virtual reality, but what should I call this cardboard underpass?
It's a stunning recreation of the Metro Kobe underpass, but it's somehow false and the perspective is distorted.
With a gasp of amazement, I was reminded of Mamoru Oshii's film Urusei Yatsura 2: Beautiful Dreamer. A scene in which what many perceived as a solid real world turns out to be a cheap set prepared by Mujyaki or the Dream Evil.
This exhibition made me realise that the difference between the everyday and the extraordinary is indeed a very blurred one.
When I first set foot in this underpass more than 50 years ago, I thought it was a truly strange and unusual space. But as I got used to going there and it became a part of my daily life, I forgot about its extremely unusual atmosphere.
If the memories of everyday life are eventually lost, then reality must also be a dreamscape.
Perhaps because the tiled walkways had been replaced by fluffy cardboard in this exhibition, I became aware of the precariousness of my position.
Postscript.
The materials used to recreate the underpass are cardboard, but cannot be reused as they are painted. They will be disposed of as industrial waste for a fee. In order to reduce the cost, the day after the exhibition ended, there was a call for visitors to take the cardboard home with them, cutting it into strips as they liked. As it is a kind of installation work, it cannot be kept in this place forever. It is one idea to ask each visitor to take home something that is to be torn down and disposed of.
This reminded me of the pavilions at the World Expo, which were also scheduled for removal from the outset. And yet, a large amount of capital (and taxpayers' money) is spent, albeit for an experimental architectural design - a feeling that was somehow uncomfortable even as long ago as 1970, but is even more amplified now.
I saw the official character of 2025, so I was trapped in a poor, dreamless thought.
The music used for the slides was
Strawberry Candy | Free Background Music
Look Into Eternity
SoundCloud
