The premise of this open-air sculpture exhibition and symposium, held on the site of a defunct foundry in southern Japan, was to take “a new look at iron as a material for artistic expression.” The site—the old Yahata Ironworks of Shin-Nippon Steel—was a particularly appropriate one for an event celebrating and promoting the renewal of iron, for the city of Kitakyushu has been hard hit by the severe decline in iron and steel production here over the last decade. (A popular media cliché for the current economic depression is “iron cold.”) Today, the abandoned iron foundry and steel mill and its