Will Tokyo, as host city to the Summer Olympics, perform the same history twice? This is the question that I started with nearly three months ago. But, like every starting place, it has to be left behind — it’s only then that we can find our way back.

Tokyo will be the site of three events, or rather, it is the site of the non-event of 1940, the games of 1964 and the event which is yet to come, in 2020. Three narratives, but also one history.

I chose to localize my research to the Nihonbashi Bridge. Why? Well, it is historically the geographical center of Japan. It is also a point of temporal and spatial rupture; where two bridges improbably occupy the same space — the Nihonbashi bridge traversing the Edo period canal and the 1964 era concrete expressway traversing the Nihonbashi Bridge. It’s here too that the accelerated flow of people and the drowsy ebb of the canal overlap. I allowed the languid pull of the canal to direct my research, and in time, it brought me to the site of the Olympic Village for the 2020 games, an artificial island – a reterritorialized zone for property speculation.

I have thought about what I bring into this temporary studio and what might leave. It is a transitional space; a bridge that connects the time before my arrival with my eventual departure. And it is here that I think I’ve found it, a fixed point, a center, that I can call the present.