"Mobile Literature" is a series of works that seeks to fuse literary expression with bicycle-based movement and projection technology.
Using a bicycle modified into a projection device, the artist cycles through different cities while projecting texts written for each location directly onto the ground of that place.
As the projected letters respond to the unevenness of the road surface, the speed of the bicycle, streetlights, and the shadows of buildings, the text trembles and distorts in real time.
Through this interaction with the urban environment and bodily motion, the narrative itself is dynamically transformed by space and movement.
This series has been produced and presented both in Japan and internationally.
Since the first work was created in Ōgaki City, Gifu Prefecture—the site associated with the conclusion of Matsuo Bashō’s *The Narrow Road to the Deep North*—the project drew inspiration from Bashō’s spirit of travel, aiming to unfold across cities around the world.
This attempt to "write novels onto the city by bicycle" can also be situated within the context of media art.
In *The Legible City* (1989), an interactive work by Jeffrey Shaw, viewers pedal a stationary exercise bicycle inside an exhibition space to navigate a virtual city whose buildings are constructed from text, reading the city as they ride through it.
While this legendary work invited audiences to traverse and read a virtual city on a screen, *Mobile Literature* is unique in that it uses the actual urban environment itself as a canvas, projecting narrative text directly onto real streets while cycling through them.
In this exhibition—Shota Shimura’s first solo show in Japan—the artist presents a new work set along the Tamagawa River on the Kawasaki South Side, where he was born and raised, juxtaposed with "the other side" of the river, across which lies Haneda Airport, a place he continued to gaze upon from his home during an extended period of personal training and introspection.
The works in this exhibition are grounded in the despair of being unable to go anywhere and the sense of loss experienced during the COVID-19 pandemic, when the artist began working in media art.
Drawing on scenes from along the Tamagawa River, the artificial islands of Kawasaki and Haneda, and the landscapes near his childhood home, Shimura revisited his memories and records from that time through the methodology of *Mobile Literature*, which he developed after enrolling at the Institute of Advanced Media Arts and Sciences (IAMAS), rewriting these materials into expressions of renewed passion for the life that lies ahead.
In this sense, the exhibition can be understood as a "self-anthem"—a lyrical connection between the artist’s original landscapes and the places he has long admired.
I want to create more works.
I want to go to many more places.
I want to learn things I still don’t know, and meet people I have yet to encounter.
That the bright possibilities of the future and the time of the past find their connection through contemporary media such as bicycles and text.
Curated by: Masaru Tainaka
Art Direction: Akira Segawa
Technical Support: square4
Key Visual Photography: Daigo Sakane
Documentation Photography: Masaru Tainaka
Production Support: Institute of Advanced Media Arts and Sciences (IAMAS) Visions in Motion Project, Ryo Nishisaka
Acknowledgements: Masayuki Akamatsu, Ryusuke Narieda, Seryeon Kim, Mitsutomo Yamada, Hideyuki Ohashi, Nako Kominami, Daigo Sakane
Supported by the Agency for Cultural Affairs, Government of Japan — Project to Support Emerging Media Arts Creators.
2026 Video Installation, Performance