#InstaBonsai Banpaku Remix#InstaBonsai Banpaku Remix, 2020~2022 #InstaBonsai Banpaku Remix Video #InstaBonsai Banpaku Remix is a sculptural and photograph installation that continues Horisaki’s ongoing #InstaBonsai series. Set within a domestic setting while referencing the histories of industrial exposition displays (banpaku in Japanese), the exhibition considers cultural politics in the age of social media through a cut-and-paste approach to history. Thus Horisaki has playfully placed a contemporary re-interpretation of a late nineteenth-century Worlds Fair display within a domestic living space. Touching on themes of materiality, ornament, and orientalism through the lens of reproductive technology, Horisaki considers how the “site” of social media reception—represented here by the home—shifts the materiality, impact, and meaning of cultural circulation. In November 2021, Horisaki added another layer of feedback to the exhibition through Zoom access to the site. Utilizing the digital manipulation capabilities of remote conferencing software, audiences accessed a live, digitally altered experience of the exhibition from home, work, or even inside the installation. At select points during the run of this virtual digital exhibition, Horisaki presented a two hour performative lecture. #InstaBonsai was initially inspired by the variety of forms “bonsai” took under the hashtag “bonsai” on Instagram. #InstaBonsai began as a series of ceramic cactus planters and sculptures, photographs, and social media posts. It developed further when Horisaki realized bonsai forms were codified in the late Edo period, just in time to be featured in the Japanese pavilions of 19th century Worlds Fairs alongside export ceramics, metalwork, cloisonné, and other decorative arts. In other words, bonsai’s development and conventionalized forms are intimately tied to cultural politics and colonial trade. Especially in the context of the ongoing COVID crisis that has reshaped society’s relationship with social media, #InstaBonsai asks, how do the pressures of social media in late-stage capitalism reshape our ideas of traditions and cultural appropriation/adaptation? And how does the physicality of different tactile and electronic media further inflect the meaning and movement of emerging cultural products? | Installation view of #InstaBonsai Banpaku Remix, 2021. Photo by Yoko Haraoka © Takashi Horisaki | Detail from #InstaBonsai Banpaku Remix, 2021. Photo by Yoko Haraoka © Takashi Horisaki | Detail of #InstaBonsai Banpaku Remix A, 2021. Photo by Yoko Haraoka © Takashi Horisaki | Photo from #InstaBonsai Banpaku Remix, 2021, digital collage. © Takashi Horisaki | Installation view of photos from #InstaBonsai Banpaku Remix, 2021. Photo by Yoko Haraoka © Takashi Horisaki | #InstaBonsai Banpaku Remix, 2021, virtual lecture performance still. © Takashi Horisaki(remote_lecture_screenshot1)_web | #InstaBonsai Banpaku Remix, 2021, virtual lecture performance still. © Takashi Horisaki(remote_lecture_screenshot2)_web | #InstaBonsai Banpaku Remix, 2021, virtual lecture performance still. © Takashi Horisaki(remote_lecture_screenshot3)_web | #InstaBonsai Banpaku Remix Video, 2022, still from preview video. © Takashi Horisaki(video_still)_web |