soft evidence
“At a certain point, you say to the woods, to the sea, to the mountains, the world, Now I am ready. Now I will stop and be wholly attentive. You empty yourself and wait, listening. After a time you hear it: there is nothing there. There is nothing but those things only, those created objects, discrete, growing or holding, or swaying, being rained on or raining, held, flooding or ebbing, standing, or spread. You feel the world's word as a tension, a hum, a single chorused note everywhere the same. This is it: this hum is the silence. Nature does utter a peep - just this one. The birds and insects, the meadows and swamps and rivers and stones and mountains and clouds: they all do it; they all don't do it. There is a vibrancy to the silence, a suppression, as if someone were gagging the world. But you wait, you give your life's length to listening, and nothing happens. The ice rolls up, the ice rolls back, and still that single note obtains. The tension, or lack of it, is intolerable. The silence is not actually suppression: instead, it is all there is.”
― Annie Dillard, Teaching a Stone to Talk: Expeditions and Encounters
― Annie Dillard, Teaching a Stone to Talk: Expeditions and Encounters
February 2-5, 2026
waseda eco art studio
waseda eco art studio
Stitching Tomorrow (2025)
Xiaojing WANG (Yaya)ni
caption
Xiaojing WANG (Yaya)ni
caption
Meika MIZUNO
From Body to Bodies
CHAN Yiqian
caption
CHAN Yiqian
caption
layer
folded
murmuring
unresolved
shodo echo (2024-2025)
Zhai Qiutong
sound and double-channel video installation, 07:30’
Recording of the sounds of wind and sea on a sail circumventing Shōdoshima is re-recorded over thirty times inside Gōtōkutsu Cave, where Benzaiten, goddess of water and sound, is enshrined. Each re-recording becomes a translation. Standing on the edge of the sea, the cave responds in its own language of echo and decay. The ocean’s clarity dissolves into resonance, revealing the porous boundary between land and sea, human and landscape.
Zhai Qiutong
sound and double-channel video installation, 07:30’
Recording of the sounds of wind and sea on a sail circumventing Shōdoshima is re-recorded over thirty times inside Gōtōkutsu Cave, where Benzaiten, goddess of water and sound, is enshrined. Each re-recording becomes a translation. Standing on the edge of the sea, the cave responds in its own language of echo and decay. The ocean’s clarity dissolves into resonance, revealing the porous boundary between land and sea, human and landscape.
title
Ning ZHOU
08:38
From where I am from, people regard food as heaven.
Ning ZHOU
08:38
From where I am from, people regard food as heaven.
Takumi ITAGAKI
Ikuto SHIOSAKA
Kanae HATANO
Himeko OTAKE
16:47, I ran for ferry, bought my ticket and got on the deck just before the gate’s about to close. There was a Chinese couple sitting in front of me, a young girl in yellow, pressing her face against the window on the right. When the ferry started moving, everyone let out a sigh of awe and relief—there is still beauty, there is still ocean in all of us.
As we crossed 20 km between Takamatsu and Ikeda, I till my head and soak in feeling of the world's vastness horizontally. Shapes move from peripheral to the front then back. A hill grows large quickly then the details of its chiseled stone wall lose focus just as fast. Yet the sea appears endless—a constant shift in the sense of distance.
I learned that in sailing, one finds a destination to set the angle of travel, and that goal constantly changes as one moves along. Vision shifts, in wind, with waves, softly.
Zhai QiutongAs we crossed 20 km between Takamatsu and Ikeda, I till my head and soak in feeling of the world's vastness horizontally. Shapes move from peripheral to the front then back. A hill grows large quickly then the details of its chiseled stone wall lose focus just as fast. Yet the sea appears endless—a constant shift in the sense of distance.
I learned that in sailing, one finds a destination to set the angle of travel, and that goal constantly changes as one moves along. Vision shifts, in wind, with waves, softly.
May, 2026