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EIJI SUMI
Vacant Lot



"Vacant Lot is 3rd series which Sumi discusses about Urban landscape, after Densen Plus α, 2012( Electric wire), and Under Construction, 2013. The work was exhibited as a part of Hotel Asia Project to examine how do the images of cities shape and change.  The answer might seem unobvious and hazed in some degree what exactly occurring in the cities and what was the impact of the changes. Although the images of the photographs depict certainty of this urban change and produce the evidence of this physical change, according to Ben Campkin, pictures of the city are hardly just decorative or documentary: they also have profound impacts on the ground and as a result of making things visible, we make them public and subject to debate. [1]

Eiji Sumi’s series of photographs “Vacant lot” aims to capture this glimpse of the urban landscape where nature, people, life, art, and culture that existed but destined to disappear and to become the memory of the past into the new landscape of the city.

“Vacant lot” is the space left untouched or as is without having specific purposes, building, park, street, or parking.
In the urban landscape, “Vacant lots” exist as transitional spaces of the time axis between the past and the future and boundary between settled and unsettled. And the modern city in Asia inevitably faces waves of these rapid changes with the urban development.

In the city of Bangkok where the gap between the rich and the poor is eminent, many vacant lots also function as smart commercial spaces, where people do recycling business, or where street food stalls appear and people gather there as soon as the land becomes vacant. In the buildings and land that were to be demolished as reclaimed land, trees suddenly grew all over the place with the sudden freedom. Along with this, graffiti art appeared all around the buildings and walls as if flowers were in bloom. The landscape there sounds like the poignant voice of the youth of today, rebelling against the wave of development and branded landscape of the city.

In the 1980s, the London Docklands community photo-mural campaign voiced loud opposition to powerful government-backed developers, using a combination of satire and scale to make visible a community in the process of gentrification and displacement also street art and graffiti are increasingly given official sanction as spaces of expression. [1]

Vacant lots are destined to disappear sooner or later. In this space, which is unique to each of the different cities, we can catch a glimpse of the real landscape of people living in the present. Sumi’s photographs “Vacant Lot” are evidence of the shadows of how cities are branded and the industry of urban image-making to conform to the particular shape of the landscape of the city.

In this branded landscape of the city, people who were there eventually, become a thing of the past, erased from the landscape of the modern city, and forgotten into the new landscape of the city.

[1] Campkin, Ben, Mariana Mogilevich, and Rebecca Ross. “How Images Shape Our Cities.” The Guardian. Guardian News and Media, December 1, 2014. https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2014/dec/01/picturing-place-how-images-shape-our-cities-snow-cholera-corbusier-graffiti.



空き地

空地又は空き地(あきち)とは、農地や宅地などの利用目的がなく放置された状態にある土地であるとともに、法律用語としては「くうち」と読み、建築物の存在しない広場・公園・道路・駐車場などを指す。
昭和の時代に育った僕達の時代の子供達、にとって空き地とは遊び場であり冒険の場でもあった。草の茂った空き地があれば、その草を刈って野球をし、鉄筋などの廃材が放置された空き地があれば、そこに基地を作り、漫画を持ち込み、隠れ家を作った。そこにはたしかに僕達の時代の僕達の風景があった。現在、加速度で発展するバンコクという都市では多くの古いビルが取り壊され、竹の子のように新しいコンドミニアムが乱立していく。高級市街ができあがり、昔ながらの地元の街が消えていく。裸足で走り回る子供達の姿はガードマンが敬礼する姿に代わり、昔ながらのマーケットや大木の下で昼寝をする人々の姿は、大型ショッピングモールとお洒落なカフェでコーヒーを飲む人々の姿に代わっていく。
空き地は都市の急激な変化の過渡期の過程において、過去と未来の時間軸上の間の空間であり、開拓地と未開拓地の境界の空間として存在している。貧富の差が未だ激しいバンコクにおいて、市内の未開拓地である空き地は貧困層が身を寄せることができる土地でもあり、生活のにおいのする空き地であったりもする。多くの空き地はまた、したたかな商業空間としても機能し、空いている土地でリサイクルの商売をおこなったり、空き地になった途端にそこに露店が出現し、そこに集う人々が出てきたりする。開拓地として取り壊しが決まった建物と土地では、突然の自由を得て、木々が一斉に生え茂る。それと共に建物と壁まわりにグラフィッティが一斉に、儚く咲く花のように現れ、町中いたるところでグラフィティアート、ストレリートアートが見ることができる。そこにある風景は、開発の波に反抗する現代の若者達の痛烈な声のようにも聞こえる。いずれ消えゆく運命にある空き地。都市特有のその空間には今の時代を生きる人々のありのままの風景を垣間見ることができる。そして、そこにあっ
た生活、アート、人々の面影は、いずれ過去のものとなり、近代都市の風景から消し去られ、そこに生きた人々もまた新しい風景の中へと消えていくのであろう。