AHA! (Archive for Human Activities) is a group that attempts to gain an understanding of commonplace scenes from different perspectives by retracing the personal records of ordinary people.

For the groupʼs first activity in Aichi Prefecture, where the auto industry has a major presence, AHA! launched an interview project that rethinks the relationship that people living in modern society have with automobiles, posing the question of what is carried by the ʻmediaʼ that automobiles represent. To explore this question, the group focused on an official system that encourages elderly people to voluntarily surrender their driver's licenses, a topic that has been attracting interest recently, and sent out a broad call for participation by people facing the prospect of giving up their licenses and by their families. The group then wrote down these peopleʼs ʻdriving historiesʼ in collaboration with four supporting members recruited from the general public.

This exhibit presents some 900,000 kilometers worth of driving records made by Mr. T, an 80-year-old interviewee who shared records made driving throughout Japan by car since getting a driverʼs license. It also presents related details, as well as the trails of the project members who traced Mr. Tʼs travels.

One could interpret the retracing of Mr. Tʼs travels as being the same as tracing the past events of Japan itself. Interviews with the participants, including T, are ongoing during Aichi Triennale 2022, and the results are to be published in a reporting session close to the end of the exhibition.

Selected Works & Awards

Launched in Osaka in 2005, AHA’s major projects include: I’m calling you., Musashino City Kichijoji Art Museum (2017; Tokyo, Japan), a book of commemorative photos of Hanako, Japan’s longest-living Asian elephant, and the exhibition I remember: Diaries of growing for 10 years at the Sendai 3/11 Memorial Community Centre (2021; Miyagi, Japan), based upon a child-rearing diary by a survivor of the earthquake and tsunami of March 2011.

Exhibition

• Installation view at Aichi Triennale 2022
• Drive Recorder, 2022
• Photo: ToLoLo studio