{"id":111,"date":"2023-10-30T12:49:42","date_gmt":"2023-10-30T12:49:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/poetryandmagic\/?p=111"},"modified":"2023-10-30T12:49:42","modified_gmt":"2023-10-30T12:49:42","slug":"the-sacrilege-of-bridges-an-interview-with-junko-theresa-mikuriya","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/poetryandmagic\/2023\/10\/30\/the-sacrilege-of-bridges-an-interview-with-junko-theresa-mikuriya\/","title":{"rendered":"The Sacrilege of Bridges: an interview with Junko Theresa Mikuriya"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-109 aligncenter\" src=\"http:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/poetryandmagic\/files\/2023\/10\/Picture2.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"540\" height=\"540\" \/><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400\">The artist and academic <a href=\"https:\/\/www.jtmikuriya.com\/about\">Junko Theresa Mikuriya<\/a> has created a series of 15 photographs entitled <em>The Sacrilege of Bridges <\/em>especially for <em>Poetry &amp; Magic<\/em>. This series was made as part of a collaboration with Ben Thomas who provided texts which, like the photographs, emerged from walking around central London, particularly Southwark and Lambeth. Here Mikuriya answers questions arising from this project:<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400\"><strong>\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400\"><strong>What do the modern artist and the magus of antiquity have in common?\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400\">\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400\">Nothing. Unless the modern artist claims that their art work is an attempt to connect with the divine and reveal the <em>ineffable<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400\">\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400\"><strong>Magic seeks to reconcile the forces of nature with human desire. Does art do the same? Does art contribute to the enchantment of the universe?\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400\"><strong>\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400\">This definition of magic presupposes that human desire imposes itself upon nature. I would rather define magic as a force inherent within nature that humans can train themselves to be attuned to.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400\">\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400\">Bad art has the potential to disenchant the world, if the world notices. That&#8217;s all I know.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400\">\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400\">[The first two questions have been adapted from Andr\u00e9 Breton\u2019s survey of artists and intellectuals carried out for his book <em>L\u2019Art magique<\/em> (1957)]<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400\"><img loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-full wp-image-108 aligncenter\" src=\"http:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/poetryandmagic\/files\/2023\/10\/Picture1.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"557\" height=\"540\" \/><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400\"><strong>Can you say something about the camera you used for <em>The Sacrilege of Bridges<\/em> and how that resulted in the effects of double exposure and light leakage?\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400\">\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400\">The <em>Hung Mei<\/em> (Red Plum Flower) is a medium format camera made in Changzou, China dating from the 1970&#8217;s. With its imperfections and plastic lens, it invites chance and contingency to play major roles in my photographs. Having worked for many years as a professional photographer shooting album covers and fashion editorial work on analogue slide film (which is very unforgiving, in terms of any technical mistakes) I enjoy working with the Hung Mei, which brings elements of unpredictability and surprise into the making of the work.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400\"><strong>\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400\"><strong>You are a close reader of Andr\u00e9 Breton\u2019s <em>Nadja<\/em>. In what ways is your practice surrealist?\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400\">\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400\">I&#8217;m deeply influenced by Surrealist thinking, especially in its celebration of chance and its appreciation of the everyday. I try to cultivate a mode of engagement which I would characterise as a disposition towards the pulsation of the city in the way I work, searching for places that elicit a sense of unease and looking for cryptic signs in the urban environment.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-110\" src=\"http:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/poetryandmagic\/files\/2023\/10\/Picture3.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"1109\" height=\"1125\" \/><\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400\">\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400\">\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400\">\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&nbsp; The artist and academic Junko Theresa Mikuriya has created a series of 15 photographs entitled The Sacrilege of Bridges especially for Poetry &amp; Magic. &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/poetryandmagic\/2023\/10\/30\/the-sacrilege-of-bridges-an-interview-with-junko-theresa-mikuriya\/\">Read&nbsp;more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":73374,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[290899],"tags":[287337],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/poetryandmagic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/poetryandmagic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/poetryandmagic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/poetryandmagic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/73374"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/poetryandmagic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=111"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/poetryandmagic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":112,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/poetryandmagic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111\/revisions\/112"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/poetryandmagic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=111"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/poetryandmagic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=111"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/poetryandmagic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=111"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}