TalkTuesday 22 September 2015
6:00pm – 7:00pm
The Missing Post Office
Drinks reception: 7:00pm – 8:00pm
13/14 Cornwall Terrace, Outer Circle (entrance facing Regent's Park), London NW1 4QP
Organised by The Daiwa Anglo-Japanese Foundation
Is there someone to whom you wish you could tell your thoughts, even if you may never receive an answer? This talk introduced artist Saya Kubota’s Missing Post Office project, which receives and looks after letters that you want to write but don’t know where to send. The Missing Post Office originally opened at the 2013 Art Setouchi Triennale and is still in operation today on the small island of Awashima, where over 7,000 letters are under the care of the postmaster Mr Nakata.
The Missing Post Office invites you to post a letter, like a message in a bottle, which will float 0n the sea of time. A letter to and from anyone, anything, anywhere and at any time, which will one day be washed ashore.
The UK branch of the Missing Post Office will open for a limited time only as part of Kubota’s forthcoming solo exhibition at the Daiwa Foundation in January 2016. The collection of letters can be read by anyone during the exhibition period in London, and the letters will eventually arrive in Awashima afterwards. We can receive your letters from now until 22 February 2016.* For those who wish to contribute, please read the instructions and FAQs on missing-post-office.com/missing-post-office-uk, and send your messages on postcards to the address below:
The Missing Post Office UK c/o The Daiwa Anglo-Japanese Foundation
13/14 Cornwall Terrace (Outer Circle) London NW1 4QP
*Please note that: 1 Posted letters cannot be returned to the sender. 2 By addressing your letter to the Missing Post Office, you are agreeing to terms and conditions of participation, and transferring copyright to ‘Missing Post Office UK’ (copyright holder: Saya Kubota) 3 The name or address of the sender are not required. 4 The letters will not be read until the beginning of the exhibition on 19 January 2016
About the contributors
Saya Kubota
Saya Kubota was born in Ibaraki Prefecture in 1987, and is a current artist-in-residence at City & Guilds of London Art School and PhD candidate at Tokyo University of the Arts. Kubota’s practice revolves around memory and physical traces of the past, which although they have seemingly altered in form or even to have disappeared, are still sustained in the present time and space. She is the winner of 2014 Terada Art Award.
Eiko Honda
Eiko Honda is the curator of the Missing Post Office UK and Fellow of the Overseas Study Programme for Artists, Agency for Cultural Affairs, Government of Japan (2013 – 2016). Her curatorial practice concerns the production and narrative of visual cultures and interdisciplinary practices which rethink current mainstream cultural assumptions grounded in the everyday, in order to imagine more integrated thinking about art, humanities and science in the future.