Naruheso Newspaper Project

なるへそ新聞プロジェクト

Reconstruct a City with Our Personal Memories

Ko Yamada

"Naruheso Newspaper Project" is a newspaper workshop project which is designed to make participants experience and feel what and how urban area consist of  through

the process of newspaper production.

A layout of newspapers are often chaotic and similar to an urban layout. Cartoons might be next to an article about economical crisis which could be on the top of an automobile ad on a newspaper. It is similar to that a sausage shop could be next to a fitness gym on the top of a car dealer in a city.

No.0 issue of NARUHESO NEWSPAPER is designed to describe the whole idea and the concept of the project and have a look of old newspapers. We consider the layout of the No.0 issue as the layout of old town. Participants would collect stories from people's recollections in the town and redesign the look of the newspaper to create a new look of the city with the articles of the memories. They have to deal with existing articles one by one as you have to deal with private houses and shops and official buildings one by one when you physically change the design of a city. As you have to tear down buildings to have empty lots for new buildings, you have to physically cut out an article one by one and make the next issue with the empty lot before you start writing a new article for the issue after next.

 

You do not usually regard such temporary space as important elements of town. However, they are indispensable for a city to be reborn. To write new articles, the participants will act and work as newspaper reporters of our workshop company. They are going to interview variety of people about personally important memories at and around their old houses and work places which might not exist anymore.

 

We can imagine and build the future of the city by applying the salvaged memories of the people from the past.