Ephemeral Gardens

Video Essay

2025

Ephemeral Gardens is a video essay which analyses processes of maintenance and control within artificial green areas.

By focusing on Japanese gardens and urban environments as case studies, the work explores tensions and negotiated balances between practices of preservation of spontaneous wild vegetation and the production of green areas as confined regulated spaces.

The project–resulting from a Fellowship program at ICA Kyoto–began with first hand experience, field research and observations in several gardens in Kyoto, as well as reflections and investigations on the relationship between urban development and plant life.

In the video footage of meticulous cleaning activities in two gardens located in Northern Kyoto, Seiken-ji temple garden and Kagata’s family residence garden, alternate with images of abandoned urban green areas around the Sakyo-ku district.

Through the alternation of text, images and gestures, the video seeks to capture how these environments share a condition of ephemerality, continuously shaped by subtle and invisible actions of care and labor. Throughout the duration of my Fellowship, I volunteered in the gardens of several Temples, to learn about the practices of maintenance that give the illusion of a spontaneous manifestation of nature.