Artwork by Masaki Hirokawa
Causal Sets
葬列
About the Work
“Causal Sets” draws inspiration from Eastern mysticism and the theory of causal sets—a conceptual bridge between quantum mechanics and general relativity. The artwork explores the simultaneity of cause and effect, illustrating how events of the past, present, and future unfold in an instant, challenging the continuity of time. Each being is depicted as isolated within its own cell, yet interconnected through inevitable bonds of fate that shape our collective existence.
The piece conveys a profound message: every individual is unique and indispensable, contributing irrevocably to the vast changes in the world. Through the metaphor of a funeral procession stretching endlessly through a sea of stars, it invites reflection on the ephemeral nature of existence and the importance of cherishing each moment and connection in our transient world.
Essay — Yoko Ozawa
“I, too, like the other kappas, was asked—at least once by my father—whether I wished to be born into this country, and only then did I leave my mother’s womb.”
“And yet I happened, by some chance, to tumble into this country. Please—tell me the way by which I can leave it.”
“There is only one way out.”
“And that is?”
“The way is the way by which you came here.”
When I heard this answer, I do not know why, but the hair on my skin rose.
“Unfortunately, I cannot find that way.”
(Ryūnosuke Akutagawa, Kappa)
Within us there is a lack we ourselves have not noticed. It is something uncanny—something that will not cease until it has drawn us in. And yet we suffer precisely because we cannot cast it away.
We cannot help but pursue that unnoticed absence within us—what one might call “the terror of the heart.” Akutagawa, and we as well, tremble before this terror even as we discover in it a ground for being; perhaps no human has ever been wholly freed from “the terror of the heart.”
And the author of 「葬列」, too, lives while keeping faith with that terror—creating, and surviving, with it in view. Resisting the proposition that “pure thought has no exit other than death” (from a letter by Rivière to Artaud), we bind one day to the next, and continue.