Shiro Masuyama - 10 YEARS PROJECT

The 10 Years Project by Shiro Masuyama

As part of the 3rd Photo-Triennale in Hamburg in 2005, Shiro Masuyama started a long-term project. He asked interested people from Japan, Canada, Australia, Portugal, Germany and other countries to fill out questionnaires that asked for personal data, a passport photo, general life attitudes and wishes, political-cultural assessments and philosophical life mottos. Among other things, people were asked about their profession, personal satisfaction, favourite food, their best/worst experiences or their own vision of the future. More than 100 interested people filled out the questionnaires at that time, with the intention to fill them out again ten years later (according to Shiro Masuyama's plan). A comparison of the two and its evaluation were to document changes and constants in the lives of the individuals and thus paint the picture of their own lifetime and personal path in life.

The original ten-year "10 Years Project" has now become an 11- or 12-year project. In 2016, the participants from 2005 filled out the same forms again. With new passport photos and with new or old answers. With the exhibition in May 2017, personal time units will be shown in the form of the first and second questionnaires.

Time units that could also provide answers to the artist's first questions:

How will a person change within ten years?

How will you change in the next ten years?

And finally:

Can a life destiny be made visible through a simple questionnaire or a passport photo?

Artist Talk 21.05.2017 at 15:00