Rie Nakajima & David Toop - Is Spring A Sculpture? (2025)

A Note from David Toop
These are two conversations we had by emails when we all had to stay inside quietly five years ago. 

We have always enjoyed chatting on art, music, food and shared what we observed in life since we met but this period of lockdown, we couldn’t see each other so somehow we found a way to continue this habit.

Also, this extreme situation persuaded us to be ’thoughtful’ and ‘creative’ not in a normal or natural way. Though the way we try to be thoughtful and creative is always with humour and laughter.

This part is so important in what we share through art and music. Like sculpture, like music. Some thoughts in spring.

Emerging in spring we made a studio recording. Many things had floated away in the time of lockdowns and isolation. Other things became fixed in unfamilar ways. It's a long time since Lucy Lippard wrote about the dematerialisation of the art object but it seems that the word 'sculpture' still has connotations of a solid thing, with weight and mass.

Early on in our conversations, maybe 12 years ago, we thought about this word and its weight. What if sculpture was just a duration, an empty cup held in the hand until it disappears, leaves that fell from a tree in autumn, a collection of sounds that one person heard but the other person ignored, a closed suitcase full of objects and then later on the suitcase has been opened and the objects have been stuck to a window, or a season and its transitions, its colours and scents, its feeling of vigour and renewal. The thoughts were sculptures, you could say, but you couldn't touch them.