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

For the span of the exhibition “A Celebration of Victorian Jewellery [sic]: Love, Leisure and Ceremony” running until the February 22, that is what the museum is: a walk-in jewelry box or, more broadly, a treasure box that functions in a way similar to an architectural-scale time capsule. While, as the exhibition’s title implies, there is a strong thematic focus on the varieties of antique nineteenth century European jewelry, this show is more than a historic accessories exhibition to be enjoyed by women.

It holds an insightful variety of familiar and unfamiliar relics, offering fuller scope of the material world of the Victorian Age beyond its diverse jewelry. Included, alongside jewelry pieces in Berlin Iron-Work and Holbeinesque style, are design etchings of furniture such as a Victorian dressing commode and gentleman’s shaving table, as well as several works by the German artist and court portraitist Franz Xavier Winterhalter, who painted the Queen, Prince Albert and their large family over a hundred times (many of which are part of the Royal Collection). On display one will also find effeminate parasols (cream-colored with ivory stems), a Victorian “model room” with a table set and ready with chinaware and silverware for tea, and antique wedding gowns of such understated sublimity that had the effect, in my case, of momentarily wanting to revive old school chivalry from its Victorian coffin.

It has been some one hundred and ten years since the death of the Queen. During this span the era of colonialism marched straight into its dusk. Developments in science, technology and industry have allowed near-unimaginable breakthroughs, such as the mapping of the human genome that, like a re-run of the first wave of Darwinism, has come into a collision course with ethics. However, despite the hyperactivity of the lapse, we still feel in many ways the reverberations of the Victorian Age today.

The exhibition’s organizers acknowledge this, and they mention in their introductory message that the Japanese people’s admiration of and desire to mimic the English and the polite society for which they are known have their roots in Victorian culture. It turns out that the internationally exported tradition of “afternoon tea,” — which in its pure form is to come inexorably together with good company, the leisurely passing of time and gracious conversation (and perhaps delicately portioned sweets) — cherished in Japan, was perfected during this era. The message goes on to say that the Queen had a tremendous impact on the lifestyle of women through developments in European jewelry, fashion and wedding ceremony that she promoted during her reign.

The exhibition is a must see for any Anglophile with one-tenth of Rupert Brooke’s patriotism, or any person nostalgic for the days when Great Britain and Her empire was the alpha superpower. On a personal note, being confronted with the majestic spirit of Victorian aesthetics was an assault on the emotions in an amicable sense. As I walked towards the exit after some one hundred minutes of careful viewing, the temperature-controlled air in the museum, at least to me, smelt like it were tinged with the effortless art of English diplomacy, the subtlety waltz to which only the English truly know how to dance, and all the scents of all the pages of Victorian novels that ever made us crave for English good sense.

When Yukihiro Taguchi (aka Yuki) started out exhibiting installation work, he found himself compelled to alter and evolve the arrangements continually for the duration of his shows. He then realised that his photographic documentation of the changes had a particular interest of their own, and that led to his current practice of performative installation.

Elaborate rearrangements of things are documented by thousands of pictures taken on stop-motion, thereby forming endless reconfigurations of space and time. For his recent exhibition “Uber – Performative Sketches” at his Tokyo gallery Mujin-to Productions, Yuki conducted one of his ‘performative sketches’ from the other side of the world. Every nook and cranny of the tiny room (tiny even by Tokyo standards) was covered with his idiosyncratic drawings, including new ones which were sent to the gallery by fax daily from the artist’s base in Berlin. The process was documented by a camera set on automatic in the room, and the images taken will form a video work at a later date.

Other recent projects have applied a similar concept to outdoor public spaces (which Yuki says is much easier to do in Berlin, where the regulation of city space is infinitely more lax than it is in Japan). His acclaimed “Moment” series, for example, saw him take the wooden boards from a gallery floor and place them in endlessly evolving configurations all over the city -– with the third and most recent volume in the series completed in Rio de Janeiro.

While the artist is never seen in the works, his presence is always evident. It is physically demanding stuff, requiring weeks or sometimes months of consistent manual labour and patience. But the results are fascinating, always forcing us to reconsider our relationships to our surroundings.

Yuki recalls that when he returned the floorboards to the gallery floor after taking them away on various adventures for four weeks, the residents of the building and anyone who had visited the installation during the project felt that the boards seemed strangely unnatural back in their original context, as if being removed from their location and function had fundamentally altered them. He took this as confirmation that new relationships with our daily landscapes and material surrounds can and should be explored.

For more information on Yukihiro Taguchi, visit his website.

This article originally appeared on the blog “Big In Japan”.

As many of his Japan-side contemporaries focus on works that engage with the phenomenological world using transient materials (Rei Naito, Aiko Miyanaga) Suzuki chooses to combine solid natural materials with his observations of street culture. His initial training in the technique of wood carving (as practiced by Hiragushi Denchu), was challenged by further study at Goldsmith’s where Suzuki had to hone his artistic vision.

Challenge is no bad thing, and, armed with a newly acquired conceptual dexterity, Suzuki transformed his work from a craft to an art. He has been featured in various U.K. publications including The Guardian newspaper and Timeout magazine, and in 2005 beat artists such as Mark Wallinger and Stephen Cox to win a competition to create a nativity scene for St-Martin-in-the-Fields Trafalgar Square space. The final design was a distinctly multi-racial set of shepherds and other Christmas regulars dressed in outfits by Jessica Ogden and was a critical and public success.

This show, his first solo show in Japan, fuses East/West skills and perceptions and relocates his reference points. No longer the outsider gazing in on a strange tribe, Suzuki represents them within a gallery known for its previous incarnation as a sento or Japanese bathouse.

The four exquisitely detailed figures give insight not only into the fashions of London’s creative set but into a generation aware of the fleeting nature of hype, grappling to balance tradition and throwaway trends. Created through taking photos of his subject in 360 degrees and painstakingly carving them, they are anything but throwaway. Often using his friends as models, the four featured figures (Joseph, Nena, Sam and Shaka) are new works created for this show.

These are portraits and their attention to detail (check out the John Lennon t-shirt, converse boots and lace-up brogues) gives them a realism which their size renders disturbing. At an average of 50cm viewers will tower over them, needing to bend down to look closely to catch the nonchalant gaze and the painted embroidery.Their ability to alter our perceptions of size and lifelike-ness has something in common with the sculptures of Ron Muek, but, unlike Muek, Suzuki’s is still working within the confines of tradition with a long history. It is precisely the contrast of technique within craft with an almost anthropological fascination with contemporary groups which makes the works so interesting. A small fish in a big pond Suzuki’s blending of these elements prove that this show will certainly be the continuation of an upward trajectory.

There is now more time to catch some great shows. “No Man’s Land” at the former French Embassy has been extended to February 18 and the inaugural exhibition at Megumi Ogita’s new premises, a show by Nicole Buffe, will now be continuing until February 13. (Also, though Megumi Ogita has moved to another nearby location, they are retaining their old, loveably tiny space as a showcase room.)

Art Fairs

Late January was always the weekend to experience the “Art@Agnes” hotel art fair, sadly now defunct. However, Mori has come to the rescue (or at least, some organizers have chosen Mori to stage a rescue) with “G-Tokyo 2010″, a stylishly curated, medium-sized art fair in Roppongi. See our photo report from the press preview.

Mancy’s Tokyo is also holding their own international art fair in Asabujuban, featuring the likes of hpgrp GALLERY and Nichido Fine Arts. Could art fairs be going chic?

A memorable past art fair was 101Tokyo2008, held at the former Rensei Chugakkou. Now that space is set to become 3331 Arts Chiyoda, a new centre for art. There is a showcase and tour happening today (January 30). See their homepage for details.

Rather than the vast maze-like sprawl common to many other art fairs, “G-tokyo 2010″ is structured in three modest tiers, making for an art fair experience that is thankfully not a marathon. Instead of volume, the organizers have concentrated on presentation and curation. Each of the galleries is allotted a huge booth, sometimes larger than the actual gallery’s real exhibition space. Wide, wooden corridors allow visitors to stand back and take in the works. Very chic. Very Mori.

On October 12, 1960, Shochiku withdrew Night and Fog in Japan, after a mere four days in theaters. Oshima decried the “massacre” of his film as nothing less than political repression, but it was just as clearly a self-imposed break with the studio, one that led him to renounce the New Wave moniker and embark on independent production. His critique of the uniformity of “the Japanese film” is as much a rejection of the aesthetic values and craft of the studio system, for rather than refining and polishing his film style like a traditional artisan, Oshima forever begins anew, taking each project as the occasion to reinvent his cinematic language through experimentation and self-negation. In place of studio-produced program pictures, he sought to open a space for “individual films”, recasting the director-supervisor [kantoku] as an autonomous artist-creator [sakka].

The themes of crime and criminality recur in Oshima’s films, often as reminders of human dignity. In Japanese Summer: Double Suicide, the deserter Otoko becomes obsessed with the idea that somebody will “do him the favor” of killing him, while the countercultural drifters of Diary of a Shinjuku Thief must steal in order to achieve sexual gratification. Ostensible “true crime” stories such as Boy and Death by Hanging (both based upon real incidents) quickly depart from any familiar logic of crime and punishment. The unscrupulous parents in Boy direct their young son to fake injury by passing cars, as a ruse to extort “conscience money” from motorists. Death by Hanging goes beyond mere objection to capital punishment, dialectically obliterating the concepts of guilt and national identity. How, Oshima asks, can the state have a monopoly on killing, or on our identity? When the execution of “R” fails and he revives with no memory, the prison officers reenact his crimes in a bid to recover his identity and, by extension, his guilt. Yet to retrieve his culpability through the medium of imagination, R’s crimes become increasingly imaginary. We descend into a hideous farce, with R concluding: “a nation cannot make me ‘R’.” Inexorably, the bureaucratic logic of sanctioned death comes to resemble imperial aggression against another nation. Found responsible for murder of another, R is to be executed by the state, but if responsible for murder of R, must not the state in turn be executed by another?

With the production of Pleasures of the Flesh, Oshima became more involved in films concerning sexuality and censorship. These may be aligned roughly with the first wave of pink films by Tetsuji Takechi and Koji Wakamatsu, but more overtly concerned with constraints on freedom of expression. Insofar as pornography is less about “showing something” than making an audience think they will be shown something, Oshima speculates that it may have been invented as a way to avoid thinking directly about sex. Its control and suppression by the state corresponds to the invention of new methods that challenge the limits of sexual expression. In this sense, Oshima’s approach to the genre is more meta-pornographic.

In his defense of Realm of the Senses, Oshima argues that since obscenity cannot be defined, it is a legal category for something that has no concrete existence. It is what cannot be expressed or shown. Accordingly, if society wishes to resolve the “problem” of obscenity, it should simply allow everything to be shown. Only then could obscenity be rendered meaningless. Yet, Oshima is equally critical of the images of a false sexual abundance created by the mass media, a pernicious logic of “my sex” that resembles the anti-political “my home-ism” [maihomushugi] of the immediate postwar. “Without sexual freedom,” the Shinjuku thief opines, “humans will never be free.” But this idea is interrogated in turn: does this freedom entail the end of intimacy? And what does it mean to place it on the market? Isn’t the repression of sexual freedom through censorship just as problematic as “sexual GNPism”?

In 1969, Oshima looked back on Cruel Story of Youth and Night and Fog in Japan as tales of the anger and frustration of youth, the failed struggle against the U.S.-Japan Security treaty of 1960, and asked where adolescence begins and ends. Does it begin with innocence and hope, to end with heartbreak and frustration? For Oshima himself, it seems to have been the reverse: “my adolescence began with defeat”. Yet if he entered adolescence on that fateful afternoon in August 1945, he could equally say, twenty-four years later, “I think I am still in adolescence”. By the late 1960s, Oshima saw the end of adolescence neither in defeat nor frustration — having made peace with them long ago — but in the intellectual idleness of those who no longer read books, no longer discuss films, those who had surrendered their spiritual independence, ceased their rebellion, to passively absorb the “adult” discourse of the mass media. Cruel Story of Youth shows the perversion of youthful anger into defeat, but it also revealed a space of rebellious possibility, the image of a new adolescence for cinema.

From the exhausting long takes of Night and Fog in Japan, to the frenetic montage of Violence at Noon, Oshima’s film style is unusually demanding. Through his rough-hewn visual compositions and playful, theatrical distancing, ideas tend to trump plastic values and verisimilitude. The audience must extend all of its mental powers, and through this effort new relationships are formed. Evoking a distrust of “ambiguous Japan, where the instant anything is made it seems to be completely buried in reality,” Oshima sought a film style and practice that could negate reality. Thus, his infamous vows to banish the color green and shots of characters sitting on tatami. In this fashion, the camera becomes a device to convert landscape into fantasy, a means to deploy the fantastic as a weapon that negates the reality of postwar Japan. Oshima’s works stand as a testament to this effort, to a practice of endless self-negation. His films reflect a vision of cinema less as a monument to the artistic narration of what is known, than as an exploration of the unknown.

The Oshima retrospective is being held at the National Film Center until January 29.

And yet these two men not only were friends since the 1950s but shared a common attitude towards the hows and whys of photographic creation. Both of them were big fans of the Leica compact camera that, because of its small size and versatility, became an extension of the human eye, thus enabling a greater creative freedom and helping photography to develop into a truly unique and original art. They also had a preference for the 50 mm lens, whose range was the closest to the human eye. Both artists embraced photo reportage as their main genre, endlessly roaming the streets in search of subjects, always trying to reveal the wonders of everyday life, including its more trivial aspects.

One thing the two had in common was an unwillingness to trim their images once a photo was made. The click of the shutter was the beginning and the end of their creative work. They allowed themselves (and even the magazines and publishers they worked for) no ‘post-production’ work so to speak. Considering their modus operandi and their love for the poetry of the fleeting moment, it is amazing how their ’snap shots’ were able to capture perfect compositions in a fraction of a second. In the age of Photoshop and endless photo retouching, this is an art that many have forgotten.

Similarities notwithstanding, the 150-plus pictures gathered for this exhibition also highlight the differences between Cartier-Bresson and Kimura. The most important -– and one that reminds us of a general difference between Eastern and Western sensibility –- is the way the artists approach their subjects and compose their photos.

Cartier-Bresson clearly is the more talented of the two, and such works as ‘Madrid, Spain’ (1933) and ‘Istanbul, Turkey’ (1964) are masterpieces of photographic composition, placing all the elements in the right place, in complete harmony with each other. For this reason, they also appear to be more static and remind us of the Western approach to landscape gardening.

Kimura’s photos, on the contrary, are more dynamic in their seeming formal imperfection. More than mere pictures, such works as ‘Morikawa-cho, Hongo’ (1953) and the 1954 portrait of Kafu Nagai look like frames from a movie. Their asymmetry and lack of balance, much like the seemingly chaotic arrangement of Japanese gardens, point to an Eastern approach to the world in which the artists simply let the things around them be, in the constant flow of life.

One of these projects includes ‘Tokyo Reflection’, a public installation about spaces of transit and re-awakening the people passing through them.

What is ‘Tokyo Reflections’?

‘Tokyo Reflections’, in its essence, is a functional installation that combines art and street furniture. It conceives reflection, communication, contemplation and stimulation to the mind as essential aspects of its functionality.

In Tokyo, people spend countless hours traveling on public transit, passing through and waiting in spaces. Within these mundane empty spaces, nothing seems to activate the mind from an undefined, in-between state, a state of almost non-existence.

I guess every salaryman can agree with this…

‘Tokyo Reflections’ interrupts the time of unawareness by its unexpected appearance and materiality in a place where you would not expect to encounter ‘things like this’ – where would you? You might ask yourself, “What is this?”, and this is the moment where the mind becomes active – back to life again. While waiting for the train, you will find yourself sitting quite comfortably in these ‘things’, seeing your own reflection in context from a different perspective. These ‘things’ are staring at you and you are staring at these ‘things’.

…and what are these “things”?
As part of the installation, Tokyo Reflections is introduced to the public on ‘museum-like’ signs explaining:

“The story goes that before the Tokyo subway system was used as a tunnel system; the underground spaces were inhabited by almost forgotten alien species. This ancient species was divided into two groups: the inter-actor and the observers. ‘Tokyo Reflections’ is a temporary interactive installation in Tokyo Station, Japan and other stations across the network, where the public is able to experience typical behaviors of this nearly forgotten species. One can participate as an inter-actor in an open communicative way, encouraging gatherings in small groups. On the other hand, one can take the place of the observer which simply stands around the inter-actors, documenting rather than participating, viewing everything from the underside of their eyes. It is believed that these species failed to reproduce when their genetic codes are mixed with the human species as their observing genes are too dominant. The theory still awaits scientific proof.”

What was your inspiration for this?

In Japanese literature, art and movies, the search for meaning and reason of existence is omnipresent. Particularly in pop and youth culture, such as anime, manga, TV-series and music, self-reflection and the definition of “I” often play the key roles. Normality, common rules and daily routine often play the counterpart, the enemy of self-awareness.

Taking this thought to its limits, fictionally, Tokyo experienced more destructions, alien invasions and apocalyptic scenarios than any other city in the world. The sudden change of circumstances, often life- and existence-threatening, where individuals are forced to redefine the notion of existence, confronting the mind in the state of unawareness through an encounter of unexpected nature.

Additionally, in contrary to other cities around the world, public spaces in Tokyo are not depended upon individuals’ performing as protagonists, just as Donald Richie describes in “A view on the city” – the individuals are active observers. By taking part in ‘Tokyo Reflections’, by being present, by occupying these ‘things’, possibly reflecting, communicating or simply observing, individuals become a part of the reflections.

No matter how active or inactive your role is, you become a part of the entire scenario and this scenario is what makes you aware of your role: “Who you are” and “Where you are”.

Tell us something about your ‘role’ – who are you and where do you work?

Cheungvogl is a partnership between Chinese-Canadian architect Judy Cheung and German architect Christoph Vogl. The practice was founded in Hong Kong in 2008/2009, currently working on varies scale projects in Europe, North America and Japan.

We see architecture as more than building an end product. Therefore our practice is not bounded within a defined rigid office structure. It is a living structure that adapts to a continual evolving state. Our approach to architecture, understood as the structure of anything, is maybe best described using the parable of the singing bird in an open cage…

Now we all want to know: When is ‘Tokyo Reflections’ going to happen?

Tokyo Reflections is planned to take its origin in Tokyo Station, the place where we first discovered the existence of the alien gene, affecting human communication and sense of awareness. From there on, the installation is meant to find its way through the underground system to other, more remote located platforms. On its way of exploration and discovery –- sometimes as a group, sometimes as separated individuals –- the journey will take the alien travelers over ground, for example in front of Shinjuku Station, Shibuya crossing and Shinjuku Gardens.

In the end, the stay of our alien (so familiar) reflections depends on the willingness, sponsorship and hospitality of the hosts.

Visit to the cheungvogl website for more information and images of the project.

More photos of the opening can be found on the magical, ARTROOM blog.