Globetrotting German artist Nica Junker can satisfy your voyeuristic cravings with her latest project “Silent Neighbours”. Simply, she placed a photo booth in the cosmopolitan environment of the coffee shop in locations in Japan, China and Europe. Anybody can take a snapshot of themselves and fill out an E-Postcard answering five questions regarding their daily routine. The questions are:

1. What did you think in the shower today?

2. What did you have for breakfast?

3. Where are you going right now?

4. How did you make someone happy today?

5. What are your plans for tonight?

Whilst this can satisfy your nosey instincts about what people get up to, it also addresses the more serious conditions of our modern society: isolation, lack of direct communication. In an increasingly mobile and communication-enabled world, we have simultaneously become more isolated. Developments in personal technology mean that, despite being on a train in central Tokyo, or in the red light district of Amsterdam, we can remain in our own personal bubble, thus being deafened to the world surrounding us.

“Silent Neighbours” uses technology to open our ears to the everyday experiences of the global community in a localised sense, the people all around us. We can realise that although there are differences in detail, everybody is “normal”. An obvious statement you may think, but something that is surprisingly fascinating, when you realise that nearly everybody sings in the shower, or wakes up and thinks “Noooooo work” — and that most people, regardless of the location, want to get home, put the TV on, and have something quick for dinner. It makes the normal fascinating and what is silenced audible.

The friction between overriding similarity and differences in detail creates a fascinating space. If you pop along to the Tokyo location, in Café Combine, Nakameguro, you will learn about how a happy couple achieved said bliss (…she bought him a iced coffee, he bought her a car). And the girl who had “noodles and chocolate heated in chocolate” for breakfast, and who plans to go home and have dog for dinner. Or you can learn about the girl who thinks about changing her city, XiangXiang, in the shower….and that a surprising amount of people have left the house without washing!

“Silent Neighbours” is running at Cafe Combine, Nakameguro, until March 14.

To learn more about the project and see past E-Postcards from around the world, visit the official website.

One such event is on March 13 for the upcoming Renoir exhibition, “The Impressionists were pop culture?!”, which will ask one hundred Akiba types which picture they think is the most moe, and will feature interviews across the area, and announcements on the best Akiba maid café in the country!

Okay, Tony — over to you!

I WANT TO VISIT…

“Tamara de Lempicka et son époque” at Bunkamura (March 6 to May 9)
As a man, the erotic female painter Tamara de Lempicka’s paintings and way of life seem so cool! And as a soushoku danshi [romantically non-aggressive guys], I think you can gain a lot from going!

“Frank Brangwyn Exhibition” at National Museum of Western Art, Tokyo (February 23 to May 30)
It makes for interesting exhibitions when artists not famous in Japan like Latour or Hammershoi get picked up. Frank Brangwyn is also intriguingly unknown so I have high expectations for this show.

“Alfons Mucha: 150 Years Since His Birth” at Mitaka City Gallery of Art (May 22 to July 4) (provisional)
I just love museums. This painter laid the foundations for Nijimoe and so I recommend it for fans.

Yasumasa Morimura”Requiem” at Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography (March 11 to May 9)
Morimura’s stuff tires me out a bit. This new, giant exhibition takes up the second and third floors of the museum and I want to go to test how long I can enter into Morimura’s world for!

I WENT TO…

Tabaimo “Danmen” at Yokohama Museum of Art (December 11 to March 3)
The interior of the museum was #$!?#$% (cut for spoilers!) especially for Tabaimo’s show. As soon as I went in I was gobsmacked.

“Awareness of Life” at University Museum, The University of Tokyo (December 19 to March 28)
Because the organizers have created a space that plumbs the depths of despair. How sadistic can you get!

I LIKE GOING TO…

Faret Tachikawa
A set of 110 public art works in front of Tachikawa Station. And it’s free!

Bar Shisu (Asakusa)
A bar inside Amuse Museum. It opens after the museum shuts so it feels like a secret den. The night view is great!

I AM READING…

Kotensha Shinyaku Koten Buko (new translations of classics)
I have bought and read this every month since they started being published. Even if I’m not interested you have to read it. It’s a duty.

Radiwo Wada “Yome ni konai ka?”
When I’m tired or in a rut, or when I want to enjoy something happy. Whenever you read this manga it’s guaranteed to make you laugh.
[Writer's homepage]

I AM BUYING…

Rayu
A great harmony of spice! Put it on rice or tofu.

Meat Towel
When you’re searching for material for blogs, I collect museum goods. Recently I found this replica meat towel! I want to put it round my neck. But wearing it outside might be a bit much…

I AM SURFING…

NHK Kansho Manual Bi no Tsubo
Even if I can’t catch the actual programme, this website has all the content for you! A useful little art archive.

I AM NOTICING…

THE ART PARTY
(formerly known as “Art Lovers GOKON”)
Well, since I was the compere and organizer of this event I of course have to include it! I hope these events become the norm!

MY HOT TIPS ARE…

Meo Saito
I first encountered this artist at last year’s “Artist File”. It was love at first sight.
[Artist homepage]

Nobuhiro Shimura
Last year I saw Shimurana’s video installation at an event in Koganechou and was so impressed! As we change from analogue to digital broadcast, video installations are going to keep on developing.
[Artist homepage]

MY LAST COMMENT IS…

Life is about three times more exciting for people interested in art. Don’t worry about not being able to take in all in — it’s enough just to have fun with what I know.

Tony

Made his debut at Yoshimoto after graduating university. Since 2007 he has alongside his comedy career performed talk events at art museums. In 2008 he did his first “Art Teller” event to make art interesting for viewers, and currently regularly does visitor guidance at museums, art fairs, and art tours.
[Blog]

We accumulate experiences and objects to fulfill a subconscious mandate constructing an appropriate “I as I”, making “me” feel like “me”. Our championed “power of choice” finds expression via an ever-increasing amount of minutia available for our contemplation and evaluation. Contemporary urban life is an exercise (struggle) to constantly recognize and register all those possible consumer/lifestyle/political “choices” – to the point where internally we are more concerned how we navigate these choices, rather asking why we must make so many? We build a specific social self-image via an ever more detailed databasing of minitia that is bound to eventually outpace us.

In a society where the practice of accumulation and reorganization is itself a skill (read: mobility), it is quite fitting that an expression would be found in contemporary art: Ornamentalism.

At MOT’s spacious first floor gallery, “Neo-ornamentalism” is a collection of new works by young Japanese artists that attempts to grasp the potential of ornamentation/decoration with provocative techniques and concepts. The ‘ornament’ is defined as that which adds beauty and decoration as opposed to merely function; it could even be said that the Ornamental is an outward decorative display with no specific function. This exhibition finds works with an incredible distillation of material use – artists often employing a minimum spectrum of materials to achieve a rich multiplicity of forms.

Junichi Mori’s unbelievably delicate wooden lattices, the “Flare” and “Minawa” series, invite the viewer to get closer and mount a macro lens to investigate the mystery of how they are made. Looking an aged orange color, these works appear as a bio-mesh of nodes and rings like a fruiting alien plant from an H.G. Giger planet, though more organic than mechanical. Along with the intricacy of the works there is a creeping feel of the grotesque – as in a shriveled eye or bird’s feather, like the beauty of a catacomb: Mori’s work is the most visceral of the group.

Katsuyo Aoki’s work may appear familiar; her white porcelain skulls have shown at a number of art fairs recently. Devoting a whole room, we see white walls where the magenta painted fantasy scenes of, ‘Trolldom’ and ‘MANIERA I, II’, draw in the viewer while the glistening porcelain pieces act as a frame. On the minute level, what differs in Aoki’s work in comparison to classical rococo motifs is the use of bio-elements: small sensitive-looking bumps and openings line the contours, giving the works an erotic or marine characteristic.

Be careful stepping around Motoi Yamamoto’s ‘Labyrinth (Meikyû)’, an installation of precise interlocking line-patterns made from poured salt, which covers the floor of a 10×17m room. The pattern resembles a printed-circuit board and a topographical view of a coastline where rivers feed into the sea. This work’s combinations of cartographic and electronic motifs push the viewer to navigate two colliding directions of abstraction: enlargement of the micro vs. simplification of the macro, for in this work, as in others at the show like (Hiroshi Mizuta hallucinatory oil paintings and Kentaro Yokouchi’s dyed silk landscapes), the concrete is ungraspable amongst the multitude visual layers in the work.

Gazing at Mizuta’s 6m-long oil painting ‘Apartment (Manshon)’ it takes a few moments to pull the specific content out of the repetitive luminescent patterns, layered on a bruised sienna background. We see something most urban residents are familiar with: the drone of an apartment block’s façade. Mizuta’s other paintings – ‘Sidewalk (hôdo)’ and ‘Road (dorô)’ – are equally magical in asking you to pull the pattern out of the mist.

Similar effects of layered abstraction are present in a number of the 2D works: Nao Matsumoto’s ‘Midnight Constellation’ and Yokouchi’s “Book – AO NAE” series, in addition to Mizuta. Front, mid and rear planes are of depth are mixed in a non-unified way. Like looking out the window of the train at night we see three planes simultaneously; the glass itself, the interior scene reflected and the exterior scenery.

Also playing with this visual synchronism is Tomoko Shioyasu’s masterful ‘Cutting Insights’. In a black high-ceiling room a 6m long piece of hanging paper is lit from two angles, projecting infinitely fine cutouts of a dragon and cock motif, luminously cast onto the back wall. Because of the lamps’ depth-of-focus, both the anterior and posterior layers are sharply visible.

Ornamentalism is often associated with architecture: baroque and rococo styles adorned with cherubs and fleur-de-lis, or even further back in history to the meticulous geometric patterns on ancient tombs and pottery. Today we don’t really question why minimal or functional design is a priori better than the messy, elaborate or the repetitive. But this tendency comes from a rejection of Ornamentalism with the move toward industrialized society beginning in the late nineteenth century. In this sense a return to an art based on ornamental practice is a recuperation of artistic values entirely appropriate to a postmodern age of overproduction, abstraction, and mass culture. “Neo-ornamentalism” lucidly engages with the contemporary overstimulation of the visual, providing useful discourse for the present era.

Many of you may know that Takashi Murakami recently started tweeting. Amongst his plethora of daily messages came a surprising one this week: he found another Nara Yoshitomo fake on the Sotheby’s website. The offending work has apparently now been taken down but when we looked it was going for up to forty thousand yen.

Sad News

The signs of the recession continue: Art Jam Contemporary, the female artist-focussed gallery on the second floor of the NADiff building in Ebisu, is closing. This is on top of the re-structuring of the third floor’s Magical, artroom at the beginning of the year into an as yet uncertain “new style alternative space”. Art Jam will hold a closing party on March 14, at the end of their current show.

It’s a gloomy, rainy weekend…but there are still some great events happening in defiance of the weather.

Ever wanted to take a bath and look at art at the same time? Now you can. No, SCAI The Bathhouse hasn’t reinstalled its original facilities but an art fair at a sento in Edogawabashi lets visitors have a soak as part of the art-viewing experience.

“Art Tengoku 2010” (or “Art Paradise 2010″) runs until Februry 28 (Sunday) and features Take Ninagawa, Yuka Susahara Gallery, Nanzuka Underground and many more. The event’s subtitle is “enter the tiger”, a rather alarming concept for a bathhouse, especially for one with art works on display. Open from 15:00 to 22:00, entry costs 1000 JPY for a one-day pass, including a sento ticket.

Venturing outside may not be top of your agenda in the drizzle, but this weekend also sees a public art project taking place in Ebisu public spaces and gallery buildings such as NADiff. “Ebisu Art Walk 2010: Bench to Bench” (or “Ebiben”) seeks to turn unseen things and spaces into art spots. Taking the eponymous bench as its motif, visitors will find seats around the area that will apparently spark communication.

Promoted as a kind of rival to the “Roppongi Art Night in March, let’s hope the weather doesn’t dampen the affair. The event runs today and tomorow (February 27 to 28) and there is also even an accompanying augmented reality iPhone app.

Extensions

The Hara Museum of Art’s popular Yang Fudong show, “The General’s Daughter“, has extended until May 23.

It may not come as a surprise to you that we here at TAB are big geeks, and more specifically Mac geeks. We’d all been using TAB’s PC site from our iPhone for over a year, and though the site is navigable, it’s far from perfect for the smaller screen. We realized there was a big opportunity to improve the experience by making the information easier to read, and taking advantage of what the iPhone does best: bridget the gap between where you are and what you’re interested in.

What’s inside

The Nearby tab helps you locate events around you anywhere you may be in Tokyo, helping you attend more events as part of your everyday routine.

The Most Popular tab gives you a quick sense of the most notable events of the moment, calculated from user feedback on TAB’s PC site. This gives you an easy starting point, without having to sift through the hundreds of events when deciding what event to visit this afternoon.

The Browse tab lets you explore your own tastes by diving into the full database to search for more specific events, listed by media or area. We also have “smart” listings for opening parties, events closing soon or events that are great for kids.
Interested in illustration? View all the illustration exhibitions in Tokyo sorted by what’s popular, what’s near you, or what’s open.

The Info tab gives you quick access to TAB’s PC site, Twitter and Facebook pages. There’s also a feedback link, so if you have any suggestions for new features, cool events we should be listing, etc., please use this link!

How did this app happen?

Some of you might be wondering how a small NPO in Tokyo, currently holding a fundraising on its website to cover some of its running costs, could find the time and resources to develop an iPhone app?

With a lot of help. Last year we were contacted by developer Chuck Soper and designer Suzanne Ginsburg, both from San Fransisco, who develop for the iPhone and share our love of art. After working out a simple revenue-sharing work arrangement, we joined forces, pouring hundreds of hours outside our regular work schedules to make these apps for Tokyo Art Beat & New York Art Beat possible.

Pricing

Once the project got some real momentum behind it, we realized that in order for the project to be sustainable, we needed to cover at least some of the development costs. We felt that a paid app was the easiest way we could deliver TAB’s rich content in a convenient form for iPhone users.

From what we have read in the more than 400 Twitter comments, most of you were very happy to help support our work and purchased the app. Thanks to you, we quickly rose to become the 2nd most popular paid app in Japan on February 15!

Where does the revenue go?

Well, 30% goes to Apple, and the rest is split evenly among the California dev team and TAB/NYAB. The revenue that we receive will be evenly shared between TAB (through Gadago NPO) and NYAB (through ArtBeat Inc.) to pay for event data entry, editing and translation; as well as future development of the ArtBeat technology platform.

So while we aren’t exactly sitting on a pile of diamonds, sipping champagne, we are hoping that revenue from the apps will give us a little fuel to make the sites and apps better, and help us start chipping away at the long backlog of cool features and ideas.

Over the next weeks and months, you may notice the price of the app go up or down. While our goal is to keep the app as affordable as possible, we also want to keep the app viable to maintain, and visible in the App Store. Please bear with us as we learn the trade, and find the best balance for the community.

So what’s next?

We don’t know yet, but thanks to you, we’ve got some great ideas already. Many people who’ve purchased the app have sent us kind feedback, and we’re taking note.

Though we can’t promise any one feature at the moment, we’re going to do our best to find a balance that’s easy to develop and meets the needs of the most people.

A lot of you have mentioned that you’d like a way to bookmark your favorite events or to sync the apps with your MyTAB account. We’d love that feature too and are looking into it! We’ve also got ideas on a few pretty unique features that will make the app even more fun to use in Tokyo and NYC.

In any case, we’ll need to carefully look at revenue generated by the apps versus the time required to develop the apps further, including work required on our platform to support any new feature. But rest assured, we are very motivated to make these apps more awesome with each release!

In the meantime, do enjoy the current app. I am sure you will be blown away by how many art events are going on around you on a daily basis.

Thank you again for your support!!

As I pushed past the heavy black curtains and entered, there was a brief moment of confusion as my eyes adjusted to the sudden darkness and searched for any flicker of light, which came in the form of a thin strip of glow-in-the-dark tape which ran across the walls of the room. Once accustomed to the room, I began to circle the four walls, tracing the tape with my eyes. It’s curious to note how standing at the different position in the room alters your perception of the lines, and the shape of the lines, ever so slightly. Crouch down and immediately you feel the walls start to close in on you. Altering the space-time continuum in this space is part-and-parcel of the experience.

“sightseeing room” resonates with Shimomura’s previous work (“image of line”, “floating sight”) in the way that she plays with different spaces, this time dividing each “space” with the defining line that cuts through the observer’s sense of spatial depth and reality. In representing space itself, Shimomura controls and confuses our visual perception, allowing us to slowly realize how much we can or cannot capture by merely ‘seeing’ something or someone.

There is nothing groundbreaking in Shimomura’s piece; but that does not stop her from manipulating the seemingly given of putting “light” and “dark” together in “sightseeing room”. Instead, the almost disconcerting simplicity of a dark room and softly glowing tape seems to explore the limits of living in an increasingly visual world. The sheer customizability of her piece, being able to fit into nearly any enclosed area, also presents a new way of creating ‘portable art’: art that not only transcends space but is not restricted by any space it inhabits.

Yet this case of mistaken identity was a blessing in disguise and perhaps very much akin to Shimomura’s aesthetic vision. Stumbling upon “sightseeing room” was reminiscent of the act of sight-seeing in a foreign country; its freshness serves as a palatable introduction to contemporary art for even the art-weary visitor. Against a backdrop of other art forms which scream loud colors and newfangled technological inclusions, “sightseeing room” is comforting in its contrast.

“sightseeing room” inhabits the small space until the end of this week.

Nevertheless, there is a benefit to this diaspora — you get to travel to different areas of the city (especially as many of the areas are the less affluent ones) and each district takes on its own character, especially on opening nights where multiple galleries hold parties.

Kiyosumi Shirakawa

No one interested in art in Tokyo can fail to miss this area and its one main building. The industrial hulk seems to creak and leak paint as you step inside. The lift is a giant service operation with an archaic, obscurantist process (it only goes to certain floors, the doors do not close automatically). Entering this building is not an experience, it is a commitment.

Inside you will find Tomio Koyama, Kido Press, Shugoarts, Taka Ishii and hiromiyoshii — who mostly co-ordinate opening night receptions together.

Kagurazaka

In a obscure road behind a printworks near a shrine in Kagurazaka is an industrial building not dissimilar to the Kiyosumi Shirokawa one.

Inside there is Mori Yu (see this TABlog photo report from when it opened), and joined in 2009 by Ohshima Fine Arts. However, despite what the sign outside says, Yuka Sasahara recently moved out (to Iwamotocho), as did the Takahashi Collection (to Hibiya).

Shirokane

The plush Shirokane building features the second Takahashi Collection space (not open much these days) and Yamamoto Gendai, Kodama, and now Nanzuka Underground. TOKIO Out of Place and The Last Gallery are also nearby.

Ginza

Ginza might be home to a lot of department stores and brand outlets leagues out of the budget of a TAB blogger, but Tokyo’s first western-style district also has some very reliable galleries. Two spaces not to be under-rated here are the commercial showrooms, Shiseido and Maison Hermes. Time and again they have demonstrated their ability to curate stunning shows of contemporary Japanese artists.

Arataniurano, Megumi Ogita (recently moved from its postage stamp-sized old location) and Gallery Koyanagi are the main players here, amongst a sea of rental galleries.

Ebisu

…is dominated by one mighty building, NADiff. Inside there is the eponymous bookstore and its basement gallery, plus magical, ARTROOM, G/P Gallery and Art Jam Contemporary. (For more, see Ashley Rawlings’s excellent photo report on the opening of the NADiff building.) (*UPDATE: Since the New Year, Art Jam Contemporary has closed down, and magical, ARTROOM is also no longer fully operating, it seems.)

On the outer regions is Mizuma, and Aoyama/Meguro and Min Min, all of which are walkable from Nakameguro Station.

Bakurocho

The big development of 2009 was the emergence of Bakurocho as the new art town in Tokyo, part of an overall rejuvenation of east Tokyo (witness the new Asakusa Tourist Centre being built and the Sky Tree).

Alpham, a non-profit gallery sponsored by Musashino Art University, is in the same building as Foil and Taro Nasu. Along with a smattering of nice cafes and eateries, they join Radi-um and CASHI, among others, as galleries walkable from each other and Bakurocho station.

Slightly further afield is Zenshi, which moved to a backstreet near Iwamotocho, and is sharing its space with Yuka Sasahara (originally in Kagurazaka) from February.

TABlog published a photo report wander around the new Bakurocho art district last summer.

Others

There are too many others. But we should at least mention Hatsudai and Shinjuku, for Kenji Taki and Wako Works of Art. Plus Take Ninagawa and Gallery Side 2 in the Higashi-Azabu area, on the outskirts of Mori and NACT-dominated Roppongi, almost qualifying for another gallery area.

Sadly, SCAI The Bathhouse is rather on its own in Yanaka, as is Misako & Rosen in Otsuka, and Ota Fine Arts in Kachidoki.

Taking the Tokyu Tokoyo line out to Yukari Art Contemporary or Therme Gallery is also often worthwhile.

Future

With Mizuma opening a new space in the unlikely place of Ichigaya (and set to abandon its old home in Nakameguro when the lease is up in a couple of years), could this quiet central town become a haven for galleries? Well, the Instituto Cervantes is already there, and Iidabashi and Kagurazaka are just a stone’s throw away.

Although Nanzuka Underground has moved out to Shirokane it has retained its original Shibuya home. Zen Foto, a fantastic, small gallery specializing in the vibrant world of Chinese photography, rents the room next door. Nanzuka is set to return at some point and re-open its old gallery as an auxilary space, making an unremarkable building in a Shibuya backstreet something rather dynamic and exciting.

For much, much more on Tokyo’s gallery background and topography, read Art Space Tokyo.

We interviewed Okada while chelfitsch was in rehearsals for a new piece, Who Knows We Are Not Injured Like the Others?, scheduled to premiere at Yokohama’s ST Spot in mid-February.

Can you talk about the relationship between text and movement in your work?

In conventional theater, the relationship between movement and speech seems to be connected directly. But in my opinion, in our everyday life, when we talk about something or when we move, we deal with them as not connected. Before I founded my methodology about the relationship between movement and speech, I felt something was wrong when I watched conventional theater. But I was not sure why. While I was working in the studio with my colleagues, the actors, we were understanding, little by little, this mechanism.

Movement and speech have a relationship, but it is not a direct one. In my opinion they are connected through “image”. “Image” is the word we use in our studio, so I am not sure if its appropriate or not. “Image” means something that precedes speech and movement. I think “image” is the common mother of speech and movement. In conventional theater, speech seems to be the mother of movement, but I don’t think this is so. They are both children of “image”, their relationship is a brotherhood, not a mother-child relationship. When I had this idea, it clarified many things for me. So since then, we have been developing a methodology which is based on this idea.

But when you make your pieces, you write text first.

Yes, that’s true.

And then with the actors, you create movement and how to speak the text. Here, the father of the text seems to be you. So the image which precedes text is your image or impulse, but the image that precedes movement belongs to the actors, is that right?

But I have no image when I write a text. The only thing I have when I write a text is to try and inspire the actor’s movement. I don’t know what will inspire them, I don’t have a concrete expectation, but I expect something interesting can be generated by the actors. And in the past two years, my text has no rigid composition. I write just the speech, just fragments with no plan. I don’t decide anything before rehearsal: who speaks this text? In what order is it spoken? All those things are decided through rehearsal. In our latest work, which we are rehearsing now, I don’t intend to set only one structure for the performance. I want to show the piece but I don’t want to lose the variety of interesting possibilities. So, in twenty performances, we will use many different possibilities of structure (of course using only one per night). By doing this I want to keep a range of possibility.

If you change the form of the piece every night, the message seems to be that the performance itself is not solid, and can allow many points of view. That leaves me with the question of what is your point of view? If the form of the performance changes, what is the thing that remains the same? Whatever remains constant, I think, represents your point of view.

The important thing for us is: what should we give to the audience? What kind of representation can we give the audience? That idea is always the same. If we can do that, any form is OK. In our rehearsal there is a lot of trial and error, so we are learning a lot. Some things seem to work better than others.

By representation you mean using text and movement to indicate a character or event?

Yes.

So the basis of representation in your works is the disconnection between text and movement?

Yes, that’s right. But in our new piece, which we are rehearsing now, the speaking actor is not the representing actor. For example one actor is standing there and another actor is speaking. The audience sees the standing actor and listens to the speaking actor, and in the audience’s mind, the representation is completed.

Our new piece is dated August 30, 2009. That day was the election, and as a result, the dominant party in Japan changed. It was a big event for us. But I am not sure what it means and I don’t know where we are headed. So I want to describe my confusion, in this piece, through the story of one couple. The couple belongs to the middle class. In my childhood, everyone believed that we are all in the middle class. I think it’s not true, but that illusion worked really well. But now, this illusion has vanished. So we Japanese are confused. We are not familiar with the existence of class, the idea of class. But from now, “class” will be obvious. I too am confused. Now I think it would be great to describe this kind of confusion through this piece.

Your text is hyper-realistic, or hyper-colloquial: winding, full of starts and stops that make it almost impossible to understand what people are saying in any given moment. Why do you use that kind of language?

When I first started writing I was interested in naturalism. So I wrote in that way because I thought that is how people speak. You can’t understand what they are saying most of the time. Now I want to quit that kind of writing. I am not so interested in naturalism these days, in representing something in a realistic way. In the 1990s in Japanese theater, some artists who used naturalism became dominant, like Oriza Hirata. That’s how I became interested in it.

But now, I have come to believe that realism is concealing the fact that what is done on the stage is not real. The actor is not the character. The action on stage is not the event itself. Now, I am interested in representation without this kind of concealing. So, as you said, I was writing in this kind of hyper-colloquial Japanese. But this may have contributed to the act of concealing.

So, now, my writing is not like that at all, it’s very simple, just like instructions. These days, I think that the text is an instruction to the audience. The text is like a pill; I make the audience drink this pill, and in the audience’s mind, the text and the body are combined, and therefore representation is completed. I am very interested in this essential quality of theater.

Is there anything in Japanese culture, contemporary or traditional, that your work connects to?

Now I am interested in Japanese calligraphy. For me calligraphy is a juxtaposition of meaning and materiality. A great calligraphic artist should not think about the meaning of the letter when he or she is drawing it. When I think about theater, conventional acting seems to conceal materiality, in favor of representation. But it is not necessary I think. One thing that interests me is achieving representation without concealing materiality. To present a performance is a juxtaposition of representation and materiality. That is the way to make a strong performance.

This interview originally appeared in translation in the Finnish magazine Esitys, published on February 15, and is re-printed here with their kind permission.

Who Knows We Are Not Injured Like the Others? by chelfitsch runs February 14 to March 10. For more details, see chelfitsch.net