For a long time, the exciting and mystical Far Eastern Japanese culture has fascinated me. The catastrophes in March this year, the earthquake, the tsunami and the nuclear accident have moved me deeply. Therefore I would like to realize a project in Japan to express my regard and respect for the Japanese people.

It shall be a work about RICE, one of the most important staples in over half of mankind’s diet. RICE is so deeply rooted in the Japanese culture and has influenced it so greatly, that it is said
where no RICE thrives, thrive no Japanese.
RICE needs the shelter of the valleys and the humid warmth of the South, being unable to survive in the harshness of high altitudes or the cool North. The limited cultivation area have made it as valuable as silver. Each RICE cutting is cared for separately, each inch of ground cultivated with utmost care. The farmers bind harvested RICE into artistically bound sheaves, laying them out in patterns to dry… Only in recent times have cultivable areas been extended allowing Japan to today provide for all its RICE itself.

From the water filled terraces in the South to the snow covered fields in the North I aim to collect SOIL from all the important fields and RICE sorts. The produced EARTH images will visualize one part of the diversity of Japan’s culture.

The project will be completed with SOIL samples from the top of Fujijama, the spiritual place between sky and EARTH and with soil samples from Hiroshima and Nagasaki which represent a turning point in Japanese history and mark the beginning of the atomic age.