remembering/modifying/developing
(2007 - 2008)
remembering/modifying/developing is a musical belief-making system. It consists of three parts; a series of repeated and changing performances that are live and broadcasted as video afterwards; a sculptural installation that shifts its appearance every time I perform; and lastly, the sounds produced in each performance added to the sound from the previous time, creating denser and denser musical belief. I re-inhabit the physical and psychological patterns of this performance over and over again.
Statement on remembering/modifying/developing
Everyday activities i am committed to have stains here and there, silently roaring secret codes of personality. i am interested in procedures, gestures, and habits in daily life, which are so constant that minute differences in their execution expose the condition of people’s mental state or environment.
Memory:
i was put in a mental hospital once. i was eighteen, studying at a prestigious international school in Wales. Physical violence and faint memory of the past were the reasons for this operation. There was no way out since i could not contact with my parents in Japan at the time. i ended up spending weeks in the hospital ward until i was allowed out.
My experience in the hospital was intense and striking. It left me vivid memories of all the habits other patients had; The lady next to me woke up at 3 a.m. to scream her fear of evil; The one behind her spent most of the time looking out of her window and sobbed when she watered her geranium; Just outside was the only public phone, which the drug-addict man punched till it broke both his hand and the body of this phone; The old man in the wheelchair circled his pointing fingers around each other all the time; Every time he saw me, he proposed a marriage to me, to which I responded, “i am gay.”
He was a man of Astronomy. His fingers rotated around each other, with their movement as constant as planets in their orbits. So i secretly named him Planetary Man. One day i discovered the floor pattern of Planetary Man. A regular triangle emerged by drawing lines between the places he went: his ward, the bathroom, and the dining room. He orbited among these three places everyday with his constant satellite fingers. And the center of the triangle was my ward; no wonder why he gravitated towards me.
Being in a public hospital in deep Wales meant having tea several times a day. Nurses gathered us at the dining room, and systematically provided each patient with a cup of thick brown tea and a couple of biscuits. The biscuits they had were either buttery ginger biscuits (cookies as called here) or plain chocolate ones that did not taste like cocoa at all.
It was in the third week of my stay at the hospital when consistency of habits was challenged. On this day, on the whim of whatever-whoever, there were cream-sand biscuits at the second teatime. For this unheard of event, everybody got out of their chairs and rushed to the unpopular staff with teacups, and reached out their arms for the first serving. While there was a crowd around the serving table, a couple in wheelchairs were left behind at the edge of the room. At the moment of separated population, Planetary Man’s fingers, which were so constant in my life there, broke out of their orbit. His arms for the first time extended fully, his fingers broke out of the state of gravitational equilibrium, and his calling for “cream-sand biscuits!” pierced the room.
Boredom and fascination come hand in hand in our daily activities. i constantly believe in and doubt how the world around me functions. i thought, i think. i think i thought that his fingers orbited around each other like satellites. Yesterday they did. Or not.
Modify:
The performance/installation work, “remembering, modifying, developing” is a musical belief-making system over the period of time. i have created several movement motifs out of personal logic, which may equate or repel common knowledge of meanings behind actions. The sculptures with different degrees of alterations occupy the installation space, also teetering on the edge of their symbolism. When the performer is not there, the objects breathe with possibility of movements and interactions among them. The performer feeds energy into the objects everyday, adding the boring and fascinating history between a person and her environment.
The sound of this piece shadows “cream-sand biscuits.” The performance is recorded through moodily focused cameras hung from the ceiling. The cameras capture movements and stillness of the objects and the body, simultaneously recording the sound made in the space. Another performer, the archivist of the sound history, plays the sound of yesterday’s performance back into the performance space, together with her/his new commentary on the live broadcast of the camera input. S/he may grab strangers once in a while to interview them, or with whom to make responding sounds. The sound of the objects, performer, archivist, and random witnesses accumulate over three weeks, and replays a density of experience around personally symbolic objects and actions.
Developing:
i am interested in continuous life of art production.
Artwork is a byproduct of life.
i am interested in being in the middle of art making.
In the thick of imaginative art, boredom and fascination come hand in hand.
In the thick of imaginative life, i breathe, relentlessly feeding energy into the system of this world.
i have to be in motion, to wait for rapture.
My gaze at the world is loving but filled with fear.
i try to hide my focus, but at the corner of my eyes, i show too much intention to observe.
i hide. i want to hide. i want to run away.
Everyday activities i am committed to have stains here and there, silently roaring secret codes of personality. i am interested in procedures, gestures, and habits in daily life. They are constant. Minute differences in their execution expose the condition of people’s mental state or environment.
「動き」の既存の意味と投影された感情、又は変換された「もの」と象徴の境界線を行き来して、それらのズレを発見したい。そう思って、毎日繰り返すパフォーマンスを通して、人の癖や習慣を吟味する場所として、このインスタレーションを作成した。即興の要素が強く、幾つもの彫刻とパフォーマンス作品が共存するなか、展示室や観客に応じてそれらの配置や順序も変えられていく。
天井から吊るされたモビールに組み込まれたビデオカメラが気ままに動いて、物と身体を映像と音として捉える。もう一人のパフォーマー「記録者」が前日の
収録音を再生し、当日の音に周りの人へのインタビューや自分の意見を重ねてい
く。こうして、物、パフォーマー、記録者、傍観者等の音が蓄積していき「も
の」と「動き」の厚みが再生される。この作品は音楽的信念形成装置である。
[Photo: Mineo Sakata]
----
- Appearance -
Equations of r/m/d history:
January 2007
CRAM (theater production)
the Chocolate Factory Theater, Long Island City, NY
(3 performances in evening length production at theater)
+ Camera Mobiles + layering the sound + concept of Archiving =
May 2007
MFA Thesis Exhibition (group exhibition)
Christie's, Rockerfeller Plaza, NYC
(Installation on view for two weeks and a performance everyday during the exhibition weeks)
+ hanging TV monitors + utilizing the old sound - Archivist =
March 2008
Performative Identity (group exhibition)
Kathleen Kullen Fine Arts, NYC
(Gallery installation on view and a performance at the opening)
+ adopting a travel + more elements + musical inputs + remaking all the parts + Archivist + dispersed Japanese words =
September - November 2008
Yokohama Triennale 2008: Time Cravass
NYK BankArt, Yokohama, Japan
(Installation on view for 3 months and 7 performances during the opening week)
- every objects - body + edited documentation with footage from camera mobiles =
July 3, 2010
Whenever Wherever Festival
Asahi Art Square, Tokyo, Japan
(Video loop on a monitor)
remembering/modifying/developing is a musical belief-making system. It consists of three parts; a series of repeated and changing performances that are live and broadcasted as video afterwards; a sculptural installation that shifts its appearance every time I perform; and lastly, the sounds produced in each performance added to the sound from the previous time, creating denser and denser musical belief. I re-inhabit the physical and psychological patterns of this performance over and over again.
Statement on remembering/modifying/developing
Everyday activities i am committed to have stains here and there, silently roaring secret codes of personality. i am interested in procedures, gestures, and habits in daily life, which are so constant that minute differences in their execution expose the condition of people’s mental state or environment.
Memory:
i was put in a mental hospital once. i was eighteen, studying at a prestigious international school in Wales. Physical violence and faint memory of the past were the reasons for this operation. There was no way out since i could not contact with my parents in Japan at the time. i ended up spending weeks in the hospital ward until i was allowed out.
My experience in the hospital was intense and striking. It left me vivid memories of all the habits other patients had; The lady next to me woke up at 3 a.m. to scream her fear of evil; The one behind her spent most of the time looking out of her window and sobbed when she watered her geranium; Just outside was the only public phone, which the drug-addict man punched till it broke both his hand and the body of this phone; The old man in the wheelchair circled his pointing fingers around each other all the time; Every time he saw me, he proposed a marriage to me, to which I responded, “i am gay.”
He was a man of Astronomy. His fingers rotated around each other, with their movement as constant as planets in their orbits. So i secretly named him Planetary Man. One day i discovered the floor pattern of Planetary Man. A regular triangle emerged by drawing lines between the places he went: his ward, the bathroom, and the dining room. He orbited among these three places everyday with his constant satellite fingers. And the center of the triangle was my ward; no wonder why he gravitated towards me.
Being in a public hospital in deep Wales meant having tea several times a day. Nurses gathered us at the dining room, and systematically provided each patient with a cup of thick brown tea and a couple of biscuits. The biscuits they had were either buttery ginger biscuits (cookies as called here) or plain chocolate ones that did not taste like cocoa at all.
It was in the third week of my stay at the hospital when consistency of habits was challenged. On this day, on the whim of whatever-whoever, there were cream-sand biscuits at the second teatime. For this unheard of event, everybody got out of their chairs and rushed to the unpopular staff with teacups, and reached out their arms for the first serving. While there was a crowd around the serving table, a couple in wheelchairs were left behind at the edge of the room. At the moment of separated population, Planetary Man’s fingers, which were so constant in my life there, broke out of their orbit. His arms for the first time extended fully, his fingers broke out of the state of gravitational equilibrium, and his calling for “cream-sand biscuits!” pierced the room.
Boredom and fascination come hand in hand in our daily activities. i constantly believe in and doubt how the world around me functions. i thought, i think. i think i thought that his fingers orbited around each other like satellites. Yesterday they did. Or not.
Modify:
The performance/installation work, “remembering, modifying, developing” is a musical belief-making system over the period of time. i have created several movement motifs out of personal logic, which may equate or repel common knowledge of meanings behind actions. The sculptures with different degrees of alterations occupy the installation space, also teetering on the edge of their symbolism. When the performer is not there, the objects breathe with possibility of movements and interactions among them. The performer feeds energy into the objects everyday, adding the boring and fascinating history between a person and her environment.
The sound of this piece shadows “cream-sand biscuits.” The performance is recorded through moodily focused cameras hung from the ceiling. The cameras capture movements and stillness of the objects and the body, simultaneously recording the sound made in the space. Another performer, the archivist of the sound history, plays the sound of yesterday’s performance back into the performance space, together with her/his new commentary on the live broadcast of the camera input. S/he may grab strangers once in a while to interview them, or with whom to make responding sounds. The sound of the objects, performer, archivist, and random witnesses accumulate over three weeks, and replays a density of experience around personally symbolic objects and actions.
Developing:
i am interested in continuous life of art production.
Artwork is a byproduct of life.
i am interested in being in the middle of art making.
In the thick of imaginative art, boredom and fascination come hand in hand.
In the thick of imaginative life, i breathe, relentlessly feeding energy into the system of this world.
i have to be in motion, to wait for rapture.
My gaze at the world is loving but filled with fear.
i try to hide my focus, but at the corner of my eyes, i show too much intention to observe.
i hide. i want to hide. i want to run away.
Everyday activities i am committed to have stains here and there, silently roaring secret codes of personality. i am interested in procedures, gestures, and habits in daily life. They are constant. Minute differences in their execution expose the condition of people’s mental state or environment.
「動き」の既存の意味と投影された感情、又は変換された「もの」と象徴の境界線を行き来して、それらのズレを発見したい。そう思って、毎日繰り返すパフォーマンスを通して、人の癖や習慣を吟味する場所として、このインスタレーションを作成した。即興の要素が強く、幾つもの彫刻とパフォーマンス作品が共存するなか、展示室や観客に応じてそれらの配置や順序も変えられていく。
天井から吊るされたモビールに組み込まれたビデオカメラが気ままに動いて、物と身体を映像と音として捉える。もう一人のパフォーマー「記録者」が前日の
収録音を再生し、当日の音に周りの人へのインタビューや自分の意見を重ねてい
く。こうして、物、パフォーマー、記録者、傍観者等の音が蓄積していき「も
の」と「動き」の厚みが再生される。この作品は音楽的信念形成装置である。
[Photo: Mineo Sakata]
----
- Appearance -
Equations of r/m/d history:
January 2007
CRAM (theater production)
the Chocolate Factory Theater, Long Island City, NY
(3 performances in evening length production at theater)
+ Camera Mobiles + layering the sound + concept of Archiving =
May 2007
MFA Thesis Exhibition (group exhibition)
Christie's, Rockerfeller Plaza, NYC
(Installation on view for two weeks and a performance everyday during the exhibition weeks)
+ hanging TV monitors + utilizing the old sound - Archivist =
March 2008
Performative Identity (group exhibition)
Kathleen Kullen Fine Arts, NYC
(Gallery installation on view and a performance at the opening)
+ adopting a travel + more elements + musical inputs + remaking all the parts + Archivist + dispersed Japanese words =
September - November 2008
Yokohama Triennale 2008: Time Cravass
NYK BankArt, Yokohama, Japan
(Installation on view for 3 months and 7 performances during the opening week)
- every objects - body + edited documentation with footage from camera mobiles =
July 3, 2010
Whenever Wherever Festival
Asahi Art Square, Tokyo, Japan
(Video loop on a monitor)