Within 4 Walls, Without an Audience

Related Fields / Resonance / Witnessing / Dissolving and Forming /

January 2026, Casa Blanca, Hayama, Japan.

A field note on resonance, witnessing, and the emergence of form.

Within 4 Walls, Without an Audience was a site-responsive installation and artistic inquiry developed at Casa Blanca, a former convent in Hayama, Japan.

Created in collaboration with sound artist Nick Luscombe and photographer Mick Park, the work explored resonance, perception, and the shifting thresholds between dissolving and forming.

•　•　•

Foxes

It began with two blue foxes.

One sharp. One dissolving.

I found myself drawn to the space between them.

But in the end, it was not form that stayed with me

— it was gaze.

A gaze that seemed to ask:

— How far have you already let go of your own boundary?

The question did not remain intellectual.

It entered the body.

As I traced the contours of the two foxes,

I tried to draw my own.

But nothing appeared.

Not even a contour.

The hand stopped. Breathed. Stopped again.

I could not draw myself at all.

Casa Blanca

The space was Casa Blanca — a former convent.

Not empty, but filled with layered time.

Stillness. Prayer. Wood. Air.

It felt like a place already listening.

“Within 4 walls, without an audience.”

I set this condition deliberately.

Partly to protect myself.

Partly to sanctify the room.

And because it was Nick and Mick —

two artists whose presence I trusted —

I could allow myself to become unguarded.

The installation was simple:

to draw a self-portrait

while listening to the sound.

To my own voice

Sound

Then sound arrived.

Nick Luscombe’s composition entered the room

like a living membrane.

The sound gathered on the four walls,

reflecting, swelling,

gathering around me

before I knew

how close it already was.

It was no longer something to “listen to.”

Casa Blanca was filled with sound —

sound that touched the body directly.

There was no longer any gap

between listening and responding.

Stillness.

Uncertainty.

Long hesitation.

At first,

I could not enter the sound at all.

But slowly,

I began to notice something else.

The room itself was breathing.

The old wooden walls,

the old window glass,

even the sky beyond the window —

everything was trembling

within the same field.

And finally,

I stepped into that resonance.

My own voice —

fragments from Heinrich’s dream —

returned from every direction.

It was no longer entirely “my” voice.

Voice, memory, language, self —

their borders began to loosen.

Eyes closed,

I drew with my whole body.

Not trying to see,

but shifting toward listening,

toward being.

The boundary of self softened,

yet did not disappear —

held just enough

to remain.

Witnessing

Then I was witnessed by Mick Park.

His gaze did not fix or define anything.

It did not try to shape the moment.

It simply remained with what was happening —

a quiet presence that kept the space open.

Sometimes he would come over

and show us a frame he had just captured,

with a small brightness in his eyes.

Something in that openness softened the atmosphere.

Being unguarded

no longer felt like exposure.

It became shareable.

Almost safe.

Mirrors

Inside the sound,

I entered something like a hall of mirrors.

But it was made of resonance.

Everything reflected everything else.

Nothing stayed still.

Voice reflected space.

Space reflected memory.

Memory reflected the body.

Things multiplied, shifted, dissolved.

For a moment,

it felt possible to lose every edge completely.

Blue / Red

At the end of the hour,

two paintings emerged.

Blue — not entirely blue, loosening into space.

Red — not entirely red, gathering around a pale center.

Both touched with white, both shifting.

I moved between them

like breathing.

Neither painting felt like projected emotion,

but more like traces.

I stood in front of the red painting,

thinking:

perhaps this was not a portrait of how I looked,

but of how I was.

I had thought

I needed a stronger contour.

But what was first needed

was dissolution.

A state

in which nothing

could hold its shape.

And only after that,

something like a center

began to emerge.

Not something fixed from outside,

but something

that could only form

from within.

Through being touched back

by something.

Through resonance.

And through being witnessed.

Something did begin to take form —

not a clearer contour,

but a quieter sense of presence.

Not in isolation,

but in the space between.

I am still inside that forming.

Looking back now, I wonder if I had been searching

for a contour, when what was quietly beginning to

appear was presence.

Self-Portrait (Red Field), Soft pastel on paper, Nori 2026

---

Field Acknowledgements

This work unfolded through the presence, trust, and resonance of many people and places Artistic Inquiry & Direction

Noriko Ninomiya

Sound Field & Composition

Nick Luscombe

Nick Luscombe — MSCTY

Witnessing & Visual Documentation

mick park

Venue

Casa Blanca / Former Higashifushimi-no-miya Villa, Hayama, Japan

Supported by ENJOYWORKS and good neighbors

With gratitude to all who held space for this becoming

Archive Fragments

・Installation Notes

・Sound Fragments

・Process Photograph ・Voice Score: Dissolving / Forming EN | JP

Texts inspired by Novalis & Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

・Short Film by ENJOYWORKS ©ENJOYWORKS

Some traces remain unpublished.