"@toshiaki_takase"

Provisional English translation from the Japanese; to be revised by the artist.

Introduction

“@toshiaki_takase” is a set of works that opens the real X account the artist Toshi (Toshiaki Takase) has used since 2012 to other people, in a state where the only thing they can do is take away. Visitors at the venue, and viewers on the Web, can delete a post from that account, undo a like, undo a repost, unfollow an account, and remove a bookmark. No one can add anything. The artist goes on posting throughout the run.

The work begins from the timeline after generative AI. The posts a person has piled up over a long time used to be the material by which others judged who that person was. Once generated writing can no longer be told apart from a person’s own, the pile loses that function. The name and the account are still there, and yet the means of confirming “what this person has been thinking” is gone. The artist takes this to be a third death — distinct from the death of the body and from being forgotten, a death of trust, in which accumulation no longer vouches for the person — and offers up his own account as something that has already met that death.

Deletion is chosen as the act that makes this loss visible. Each time one post of someone’s goes, the account becomes a little less readable. The hand that does it belongs to a visitor, or to someone on the other side of the Web, and it may be a person or a machine. The artist has not settled the ending. Whether the account empties out, whether posting outruns deleting, who deletes and who carries something away — to look first and think afterwards is the stance of this work.

But the account is alive, and so is the artist. It is he who opens the rite, he who seals it, and he who goes on living and posting after it is sealed. The rite does not end with one occasion. Each time it opens, one new vessel comes into being, and the sealed vessels remain as they are.

About the collection

The series “@toshiaki_takase” is made of three works. All three take the same account and handle the same traces of what has gone, but they differ in who is present, what can be done, and where the trace goes.

Someone who comes to the venue can cut relations with others (likes, follows) and even personal holdings (bookmarks), but the trace of what they delete always goes into the artist’s vessel. Someone who could not come can only delete posts, but can choose whether that trace is placed into the vessel or held in their own hand and let go. Likes, follows and bookmarks cannot be touched from the web because X’s API does not offer those operations, and the work takes this constraint into its structure as it is.

The vessels are held inside a single contract on Ethereum, “Columbarium”, and one comes into being for each rite. The first one is 2026, at the exhibition at NEORT++. The certificate that accompanies a vessel (an ERC-721) passes to a buyer 49 days after it is sealed, or moves to an address no one holds the key to. The contract has one procedure that makes it impossible for the artist ever to open a vessel again, and until it is called, the possibility of another occasion stays open.

The works, one by one

“@toshiaki_takase: Room”

On the external monitor at the venue, x.com is shown, logged in to the artist’s real X account. It is not a clone. Visitors operate it with a wired mouse only; the keyboard and trackpad are physically sealed under a clear acrylic cover.

The screen is x.com itself, but a browser extension narrows what can be pressed down to the five subtractive actions. What cannot be pressed — posting, replying, liking, reposting, following, search, home — sinks into grey, and only what can be pressed — the “…” on his own posts, an already-liked heart, an already-reposted arrow, “Following”, the mark on an already-bookmarked item — is slightly brighter. When a visitor presses one, it really goes from the real account.

On the MacBook’s built-in screen there is a second screen, borrowing the look of X’s notifications, where only the things that have decreased pass by. “Removed the like on so-and-so’s post.” “Deleted a post.” Not one notification is an addition.

For each thing that goes at the venue, a 32-byte trace (described below) is made, and a key prepared by the artist places it into the contract’s vessel. Visitors never see a wallet or a key.

Run: about two weeks, open 14:00–19:00.

“@toshiaki_takase: Web”

The web version is a clone of the same account, copied with the look of x.com left as it is. The three-column layout, the profile header, the structure and counts of the entries, and the left navigation (notifications, history, profile) are reproduced from measurements taken of the real x.com. What is shown is the most recent 3,200 entries the X API returns, and the like counts, repost counts and view counts are live figures. If the artist posts, it appears; if someone deletes, it goes. The window of 3,200 slides further into the past with each deletion, and older layers come into view.

There is one thing a viewer can do: choose “Delete with wallet” from a post’s “…”. Without a connected wallet, nothing can be deleted. After confirmation, the server deletes that post through the X API and returns a single signature attesting that it has indeed gone. Holding that, the viewer chooses whether to place the trace into the vessel or to let it go without placing it.

• Place it into the vessel: call the contract and put the trace into the vessel with the signature attached. The gas is the viewer’s to pay.
• Let it go: the contract is not involved. The trace and the signature are carried in a single transaction addressed to the viewer themselves. The trace enters nothing, and remains only in the history of the one who sent it. It is on no one’s ledger, but because the signature is carried with it, anyone can confirm afterwards that it is indeed the trace of something that has gone.

If the signature is refused after the deletion, the thing itself is gone and the trace is neither placed into a vessel nor let go. It stays with no one to take it, and there is no path back to try again.

The lists of likes, follows and bookmarks are shown only for viewing, marked “at the venue only”. The notifications screen shows what has gone at the venue, what has been placed into the vessel from the web, and what has been let go, but the addresses of those who let go are not shown. The name is one each person inscribes in their own transaction.

“@toshiaki_takase: Urn”

It consists of the contract “Columbarium” on Ethereum mainnet, the vessels inside it, and the certificates that accompany them.

A trace is a 32-byte value, one for each thing that has gone. It is computed one way from the kind of act, the ID of the object, the time, and the form the thing had just before it went (a hash of the text and of any attachments), and the text cannot be recovered from it. What a vessel holds is this line of formless grains, and the counts by kind. Whose hand placed something into it does not remain in the vessel. Only in the ledger (the events) does the distinction remain: the key at the venue, or the signature from the web.

A vessel comes into being for each rite, and only the artist can open one. One vessel is open at a time. When the artist seals it at the end of the run, nothing more can go into that vessel. For 49 days after it is sealed, anyone may put a price on the vessel’s certificate. Once the 49 days have passed, anyone may call for settlement: if there is a bid at or above the reserve, the certificate passes to the winning bidder, and if not, the certificate moves to the address no one holds the key to, 0x…dEaD. A certificate that has passed into a winning bidder’s hands may also, one day, be sent to that same address by the holder’s own hand.

A certificate is an ERC-721 token, and the number of the vessel is its tokenId. Its text is a public-document-like page generated entirely on chain, recording the occasion, the venue, that the person is living, the holder, the contract, the day it was opened, the day it was sealed, the date of the 49th day, the state, the number placed into it and the breakdown, and the name of the one who opened it. It cannot be transferred between the sealing and the 49th day.

The contract has a last, single procedure. The artist, or an executor the artist has designated, may call it once when no vessel is open, and after that no vessel ever opens again. The certificate’s statement about “living” is rewritten at that moment. Unless it is called, another occasion is always possible.

What is let go on the web does not pass through the contract. The contract does not know how many there are.

On the nature of the record

A record on X, once it goes, cannot be got back. A record on the chain inscribes only that something has gone, and does not go. What a vessel holds is a one-way hash of “what went, when, by which kind of act”; the text cannot be recovered from it, but anyone holding the original at hand can recompute and compare. In an age when more and more can be generated, a vessel holds only what cannot be generated — the fact that at a certain time a certain thing was here, and was taken away by a human hand.