The Japanese spatio-temporal concept of ma suggests a gap, opening, delay or silence. It can be understood as a demarcated in-betweenness in space or time. A room, being the space formed inside walls, is ma. A pause in music, as the gap delineated between audible notes, is also ma. The ideogram for ma (間) comprises the character for ‘gate’ or ‘door’ (門) enveloping the character of ‘sun’ (日) – in this sense it refers to the interval between things, from which light can shine through. Whether the gate is formed by objects in space or sounds in music or actions in the Noh theatre, its opening is the interval that allows the experience of ma, whereby the intangibility of light reveals itself from the nothingness framed between two tangible points.

In 1979 Arata Isozaki curated an exhibition at Cooper-Hewitt Museum in New York called MA: Space-Time in Japan. Earlier that decade, the New-York-based Japanese video artist Takahiko Iimura had created several abstract films exploring ma (namely his Models series of 1972, and MA (Intervals) of 1975-77). The two would later collaborate on MA: Space/Time in the Garden of Ryoan-Ji (1989), a meditative video work that transfers the carefully choreographed experience of time and space at the ryōan-ji temple’s 15th century dry garden, into cinematic space-time.

The sixteen-minute film is framed at the beginning and end by fixed shots of the garden – these being the tangible brackets (the gate) within which the interval of ma will be given form. The rest is comprised entirely of slow tracking and zooming shots of the immovable stones and the negative spaces created where they aren’t. As the camera’s eye slowly and steadily scans the breadth of the rectangular garden, and penetrates its depth, we are made aware of how temporal progression relies on space and spatial progression relies on time. The mechanically standardised temporality (computer-controlled tracking and zooming) means that solid objects aren’t privileged over the space that contains them or the space that is created by them. According to Isozaki’s reading of ma in pre-modern Japan, “space was perceived as identical with the events or phenomena occurring in it; that is space was recognised only in relation to time-flow” (MA: Space-Time in Japan, exhibition catalogue).

Photographs I recently took at ryōan-ji in Kyoto:

A cave-like structure that appears both open and closed, rough and smooth, heavy and floating, the onishimaki + hyakudayuki space currently open at The Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo changes its form dramatically as you navigate through and around it.

At just 26 and 27 years old, this up-and-coming duo have been getting a lot of attention for their proposals of architectural spaces that trigger real physical sensations. Situated in the Museum’s Media Court space (which is open to the public free of change), this recent commission responds to the angular grey concrete austerity of its surrounds while seeming to have landed there from another dimension entirely.

Continuing until January next year, the display marks the fourth in The Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo’s MOT × Bloomberg Public ‘Space’ Projects, an initiative aimed at supporting young artists and expanding public access to art.

Photos by Amelia Groom.

Exhibit A is a moss and indigo artwork at the Shibuya Tokyo Wonder Site café that has been gradually evolving for the last eight months. The artist Takashi Kuribayashi worked with his collective Coceworks and the indigo dyeing art duo Litmus to set it up, and its ongoing transformation is documented via video footage and photographs inside the café, as well as in the blogosphere. The project is part of the Tokyo Wonder Site environmental project series, and several events and workshops are scheduled to coincide.

But now for a compulsory montage glance over Kuribayashi’s more general awesomeness. Besides moss and ferns his other running motifs are seals and penguins, which he often uses in latex form for his instillations where audiences are invited to peer through walls or ceilings into fragments of alternative aquatic worlds. With his childlike sense of wonder and silliness he achieves a supreme quality of tranquillity in his work, which is always refreshingly free of cynicism.

‘Even buildings one had taken for substantial had a trick of disappearing overnight. One morning, we woke to find the house next door reduced to nothing but a heap of sticks and a pile of newspapers neatly tied with string, left out for the garbage collector.’

So wrote Angela Carter in A Souvenir From Japan. She was fascinated with the ephemerally of things in Tokyo, which she described as a city of ‘constantly changing appearances, all marvellous but none tangible.’

This phenomenon that so fascinated the British author might be accounted for by the fact that the Japanese conceive space in a more flexible way. The uniquely Japanese spacial concept of ‘ma’ emphasises the void space between things in both art and life. Based on the idea of experiential space as opposed to three-dimensional space, the word ‘ma’ suggests interval and it considers space in relation to time.

Since the Middle Ages, tatami straw mats (measuring 1.8×0.9m) have been used in Japan to cover the floor of a room, thereby denoting the size and dimensions of the space; and along with the interior divisions of the home, such as paper screens, they can be moved at will so the space and light can constantly adapt.

A similar flexibility is found in the public domain too – the street in Japan is a temporary space defined by activity, where makeshift shops and restaurants are built along the sidewalk so they transform from day to day, and can disappear completely overnight.

Mirroring these ideas in their design theory and cutting edge architecture, Yoshiharu Tsukamoto and Momoyo Kaijima of Alelier Bow-wow seek to explore the social use and function of space within urban environments.

Their buildings are often devoid of internal dividers so rooms are separated only by staggered levels and staircases, remaining connected and visible to each other. Space exists as a continuum; as you navigate your way around the rooms change in gradual and flexible ways, without strong dividers between them.

Referring to their work as ‘da-me’ (‘no good’) architecture, Atelier Bow-wow focus on disregarded city spaces and coined the phrase ‘pet architecture’ for the miniature ad hoc buildings that are squeezed into leftover and forgotten gaps of space in the densely developed areas of Tokyo (catalogued by them in their book Pet Architecture).

While they weren’t initially familiar with the French philosopher Henri Lefebvre’s theories of the social production of space, they say they have since been introduced to his ideas and feel a strong affinity to them.

For their Recycling Tokyo project they proposed the concept of recycling be applied to spaces and cities in the same way it is applied to products. They looked at Tokyo as being comprised of various pieces – such as car parks, buildings and alleyways – and suggested imaginative re-uses of them (like turning buildings into sundials or cutting footbridges in half to make observation points). Encouraging multi-purpose architecture and space, they seek to reveal new possibilities for the city; ones that would usually be overlooked.

Watch Yoshiharu Tsukamoto talking about Atelier Bow-wow’s innovative use of space for their custom built ‘micro house’ here and see some other examples of their work below.