TARKY TOSHIMA

JP / EN

Other Logic

2006 | Exhibition

Invitation flyer for the Other Logic exhibition (designed by TARKY Toshima)
Invitation flyer for the Other Logic exhibition (designed by TARKY Toshima)
Other Logic
Other Logic
Other Logic
Other Logic
Other Logic
Other Logic
Other Logic
Other Logic
Other Logic
Other Logic
Other Logic
Other Logic

I printed my own texts on OHP transparencies and A4 sheets, then installed a rail in front of the gallery's large windows and hung the sheets from it. I also sampled recordings of the texts being read aloud and played them through a speaker positioned behind the text installation.

A product of my younger years, this work revolves around laughter and language, the logical and the illogical, social valuations, cruelty, and humor. I don't think I could write in this mode, with these kinds of leaps, anymore. I do think there's something about the momentum of youth, or the way the brain's neural circuits are wired. But then again, why not just do what you can at each age?

I also exhibited a text I had written as a method for making the work, titled "A Method for Other Logic." In it, I thought I had at least classified and organized the logic of comedy, gags, and humor. But in the end, there must still be things that cannot be fully sorted out through such classifications, both in the process of making this work (or, one could say, of laughter in general) and in the resulting work itself.

Nevertheless, the final sentence of the following passage from "A Method for Other Logic" remains important to me even now. It is probably always switched on somewhere inside me, unconsciously, or rather, as something like a condition for making work.

"In logic, logical form is what matters; what you substitute into it does not matter. In Other Logic, however, what is substituted matters more than logical form. It therefore also drives logical form itself and is irreducible."

This work and “A Method for Other Logic” were also revisited at the Symposium Commemorating the Publication of “Takayuki Toshima Selected Works”, held in 2023, where Toshima talked about them again and other guests discussed them as well. The full symposium can be read as “Nonsense =≠ Logic and Form” (in Japanese), an event commemorating the publication of Takayuki Toshima Selected Works, with Takuma Ishikawa, Takeshi Ueda, Hiroko Tasaka, and TARKY Toshima.