SHIGEO ARIKAWA

This is a Dutch children’s counting song like Eeny, meeny, miny, moe. There are similar counting songs in Japan as well. What is unique about these songs is that they are used to choose and decide something. The children point to each note of the lyrics in turn and decide which one they are pointing to at the last note. At first glance, this seems like a fair way to decide, but as long as the word count remains the same, the answer is determined by which one is pointed to first, without having to sing.

In this work, the sisters wearing black clothes point at each other while singing “Iene, Miene, Mutte” in the field, making fingers into the shape of guns. By metaphorically showing the irrationality of violence itself, this work aims to evoke to us that it is not an event somewhere far away, but a danger that lurks in our immediate surroundings. With guns pointed at each other and at themselves, the song ends with “but you can’t be the boss cause you’re much too small.”