Photo by Nina Horisaki-Christens ©Takashi Horisaki

PERFORMANCE

Bonsai in the Age of AI Reproducibility: Meiji Modernization, SNS, Chat GPT and Beyond

11:00 am - 12:30 pm, Saturday, August 22, 2026
MURASAKI HALL, The Japan Foundation, Los Angeles
(5700 Wilshire Blvd, Ste 100, Los Angeles, CA 90036)

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Free, RSVP Required
This program will not be recorded

Today, we live in an age of instant access to information and history: through Instagram Reels, TikTok, or a few seconds of social media scrolling. It has been called one of the great revolutions in human history, though it may be better understood as one in a series of media, cultural, and technological turning points since the start of the twentieth century. Bonsai, too, has been swept up in these successive waves of cultural change: having passed through the modernization of the Meiji era and gone viral in the age of social media, it now stands at a new critical juncture in the age of AI.

Over the past decade, artist Takashi Horisaki's #InstaBonsai series—born from his reflections on Instagram and realized in ceramic and photographic forms—has explored the multiple, layered meanings of bonsai as they cross borders and eras. Horisaki will present a lecture performance titled "Bonsai in the Age of AI Reproducibility: Meiji Modernization, SNS, Chat GPT and Beyond," presented in conjunction with Kinetic Stillness: Sculptural Ceramics Exhibition, on view at the Japan Foundation, Los Angeles from Thursday, June 18 through Saturday, September 19, 2026.

Taking the form of a slide-talk, Horisaki’s performance will trace the history of bonsai from its new formal developments in the late Meiji era, through its transformation over the past fifteen years in the age of social media, and offer his perspective on how bonsai may continue to evolve amid the rapid advances of AI technology.

ARTIST (Lecturer)

Takashi HORISAKI

Takashi Horisaki draws inspiration from architecture, urban planning, and material culture to examine how our physical surroundings intersect with cultural imaginaries, creating a sense of where we belong in the world. Sometimes he uses latex, plastic, or other moldmaking processes to collaboratively collect indexical objects; at other times he uses ceramic and photographic processes to reproduce flat images in three dimensions and vice versa. In his “Social Dress” series, Horisaki has examined how the built environment intersects with social inequality and community-building, working with marginalized communities on creating new self-images through the accessible medium of liquid latex casting combined with community conversation, thus grappling with difficult and conflicting local histories. More recently, Horisaki’s ceramic and photographic “#Instabonsai” series has explored the circulation and transnational development of bonsai as a form through which the cultural politics and formal limits of “Japanese” and “Asian” identities and cultures are negotiated. Through such investigations, Horisaki creates sculptural installations that re-present our physical surroundings, altering the form, rigidity, or color of familiar objects. Combined with storytelling—as recorded in oral histories, photographs, social media, performative lectures, or augmented reality—Horisaki considers the role our material surroundings play in the social life of an ostensibly de-materializing age.

Related Exhibition

KINETIC STILLNESS: Sculptural Ceramics (on view through September 19)