Three Essays + Exchange: A Chapter Book by Chapter

Three Essays Aparna Sharma / Shimizu Shinjin / Shu Yang

EXCHANGE by Shirotama Hitsujiya

A CHAPTER BOOK 2010

Three Essays Aparna Sharma / Shimizu Shinjin / Shu Yang

EXCHANGE by Shirotama Hitsujiya

A CHAPTER BOOK 2010

Cover images (Clockwise from top): From S Plateau by Oriza Hirata, Seinendan Company, Tokyo (photo: T. Aoki); Tokyo Notes by Oriza Hirata, Chapter Arts Centre, Cardiff (photo: Kirsten McTernan); Exchange by Shirotama Hitsujiya, Yubiwa Hotel, Tokyo; The Shadow of the Flying Bird by Andrea Servera, Buenos Aires.

CONTENTS: FOREWORD 4 James Tyson

ESSAYS Body Politics: 6 Inscribing the Local, Questioning the Global Aparna Sharna Through the International 18 Collaborative Production: Dream Regime Shimizu Shinjin Free Performance — The 28 Development of “The Great Tang”, a live art project Shu Yang EXCHANGE 32 Shirotama Hitsujiya CHAPTER JAPAN SEASON 2008 70

2004 年, Chapter Arts Centre James Tyson 氏からの呼びかけに応え Dream Regime は開始された。以来、私たち劇団解体社はアジア・ヨーロッパ各地に滞在しながら諸外国のパフォーマーやアーティストたちと共同作業を行っている。そのテーマは現代の文化横断的芸術実践のあり方や身体表現の理念を、ディスカッションとワークショップもしくは上演を通して問い直し更新しようとする試みである。そのような企図ゆえに、ともかく参加者とは膨大な議論を重ねてきた。もとよりそれらすべてを再録することはおよそ不可能ではあるけれど、ここでは、この共同作業の現場で経験した出来事や人間/身体について思考すること自体が、否応なくグローバリゼーションがもたらす諸問題と接続していかざるを得ないような事柄について簡略に述べてみたい。覚書

Foreword

On 6 December 2006 I arrived at Aomori train station. I had been warned to wear thick boots as the winter snow had just begun to fall a few days before. Slightly worried that I just had a thin pair of leather-soled shoes, my fears were eased when stepping out of the station I saw a woman in a pair of stiletto heels. People will make their own realities, and live their own dreams, whatever the weather. So after a phone call to my friend and facilitator for this visit to Japan, I found a bus that took me through the town and up onto a hill that dropped me off near a school to walk down the pathway to the entrance of Aomori Contemporary Arts Centre, a building designed by Tadao Ando that reflected somehow and could enhance the aspect

on the landscape on which it was situated, which at this time of year was grey, white, blue changing skies, clear air and thick snow. I waited in a study room with catalogues and art books, with large glass panes that looked inward onto the central yard of the arts centre, and maybe the other direction into forest that I presume, led down the hill. Anyway, the light had begun to dim (it was maybe only 12noon or 1pm), but soon it felt like midafternoon, winter, fading light. I had come to visit arts centres, this time to make some journey across the country to see if there might be links that could exist between Chapter Arts Centre in Cardiff and perhaps somewhere where two views could meet

each other. Stepping off that train at Aomori station I felt glad I had traveled this far, so far from Wales (although even that I could not understand), but certainly so far from Tokyo, the big city that otherwise saw and held all.

As I met acquaintances and new contacts of course perhaps I saw most of all a curiosity to meet and welcome me. So as much as I gazed within Japan, I saw a gaze looking out, and with that a vision caught up with a global politics, a curiosity, a political affinity or an anxious commitment to maintain an empathy and communication with those places that existed somehow as margins, a gesture to maintain a connection at a global level, to open possibilities of human contact that also acted to refute the overwhelming of any one determining culture. Whether the latest documentary film of Makoto Sato, which showed the everyday lives of Jewish and Arabic cultures living in Palestine and Israel followed through a journey tracing the life of Edward Said, or the performances of

chelfitsch which caught the otherwise irreconcilable inward looking N-generation caught up within the global events and economies that would effect their lives. And of course Gekidan Kaitaisha. I hope these essays and the script of Shirotama Hitsujiya’s Exchange give some evidence of a contemporary avant-garde in Japan that is not defined by a national politics but rather a willful dialogue with other cultures, global questions and concerns, whereby a document of performance art in Beijing is as integral to gaining a sense of how to survive in this age and its future as is the recollection of a childhood memory from a farm in Argentina or the attempt to understand “What is femininity?” living or growing up in Japan.

The season of works presented at Chapter in 2008 came about through the support of the AngloJapanese Daiwa Foundation (Professor Marie Conte-Helm with Jeremy Barraud and Susan Meehan) and following that the Japan Foundation (Junko Takekawa) and finally the Japan UK-150 team in London. Also the Saison Foundation (Mr Fukutomi) in Japan assisted with meeting and kindness, a willingness to engage in dialogue and to appreciate a shared language towards building the exchange that I hope is continued in this book. James Tyson Theatre Programmer Chapter Arts Centre, Cardiff Wales, UK

APARNA SHARMA

BODY POLITICS: Inscribing the Local, Questioning the Global 4

Images: 1+4. The Shadow of the Flying Bird by Andrea Servera 2. Aomori Project by Sioned Huws (photo: Sioned Huws) 3. Aomori Project by Sioned Huws (photo: Massimiliano Simbula & Kim Chang-Kyum) 5+8. Candies â&#x20AC;&#x201D; Girlish Hardcore by Shirotama Hitsujiya, Yubiwa Hotel (photo: Kunihiko Hatase) 6+7. White Shadow by Madvhi & Aparna Sharma

APARNA SHARMA

BODY POLITICS: Inscribing the Local, Questioning the Global It is widely accepted that contemporary globalisation has been a partial encounter. Executed through the exclusionary and aggressive mechanisms of late capitalism, contemporary globalisation has attempted to appropriate local cultures. Its address to the “local” is often grounded in reductionism and formulates as no more than an apologetic tokenism befitting market circulation. Summarily then, one could argue that globalisation is erosive towards local cultures. Without necessarily disputing this claim, it is worth observing that in the realm of cultural politics erosive global homogenization has consistently been contested. Within the contemporary arts there is a persistent motivation to include and represent artists and cultural

practitioners from outside the dominant hegemonic order. Indeed, this is a useful move but often high art institutions absorbed in disciplinary boundaries and histories, display an absence of critical faculty to contextualise and critique cultural production of the “under-represented” in historical terms with reference to the local contexts in which they are first produced. This is necessarily a lack of ethnographic rigour that would stimulate wider critical dialogue.

the sweeping pervasiveness of globalisation, but more crucially, responds to and critiques the internal dynamics including but not limited to the hegemonies of the local contexts within which they are produced. In this way, these art projects formulate as a critical intervention constituting an alternative to large-scale and mainstream arts and cultural production.

Common to these four practitioners is a critical contemplation on the body. The body is approached as a socio-historical complex that In this essay, I want to discuss interacts with landscape that is four artistic collaborations with understood as both an ecological which I have been associated in varying capacities at the Chapter category as well as a cultural and historical one. In distinct Arts Centre, Cardiff. These manners, the artists discussed collaborations reflect a small here question the body’s yet forceful territory of cultural practice that definitely questions circulation within the particular

market mechanisms of their immediate locations. Andrea Servera (Argentina), Madhvi Dalal (Indo-British), Sioned Huws and Reina Kimura (Welsh-Japanese collaboration) and Yubiwa Hotel (Japan) are all performance artists who are trained in varied idioms but whose practice is not limited to a set of skills or techniques. Theirs is a wider historical project examining the location of the woman subject in their specific cultural contexts and through that they seek to provoke reflection upon the woman subject universally. In their work they are committed to interrogating and exploring the experiences of the female body in response to socio-historical landscape. The evocation of the local landscape/context is one, not in a liberal or ahistorical gesture to celebrate cultural difference or nationalism; and two, it is not underpinned by the simplifying intent in order of mass communication for a foreign audience. In varying measures they deploy improvisation so that performance surfaces as a breathing dynamic that openly invites the audience to participate and derive meaning/s from the works. The following essay examines each of these collaborations to exposit the critical thought underpinning them. In doing this the discussion exposits the diversity of practices, working methods and histories of the artists.

Andrea Servera Andrea Servera is a choreographer from Buenos Aires. She has maintained a relationship with young artists from Cardiff, returning to Chapter with collaborative workshops and performances since 2004 when she made her first visit to the UK and Chapter with her dance Planicie Banderita. Through successive projects, I have seen Andrea’s politics develop — increasing in its complexity and resistance to dominant cultures, and actualised through an aesthetic that has gained in restraint and has become more poetic and compelling. Andrea is conversant with many contemporary dance styles like hip-hop and contra-improvisation. Her dance company has travelled extensively and carried a commitment to speaking from the position of the “global south” where Argentina feels located. I first collaborated with Andrea in 2005 on a three-week workshop that had gathered young artists from across Wales. As a filmmaker, I was interested in Andrea’s workshop to explore alternatives for documenting body movement and performance. While the workshop was principally movement-based, I was struck by her company’s ability to engage with artists such as myself who were not trained performers. Andrea does not speak English and I do not know Spanish. While there has always been

a translator between us, our conversations somehow exceed verbal translation. When I had interviewed Andrea for another publication a few years back, she had said to me, “I work straight from where I am which is far away from the global north — the developed and economically advanced contexts of North America and Europe. As an Argentinean and a citizen of the global south I am interested in exploring creative possibilities that arise from and respond to the conditions of the third world.” The dynamic between the physical and the sociohistoricised body is the space from where Andrea enunciates choreography. For her dance is a medium of expression for commenting upon the human condition. She sees the dancer’s body as a socio-historical tool for articulating experiences and encounters that exceed the logic of mainstream market circulation. Central to Andrea’s method is providing artists the space to express their individuality — particularly outside the conventions of their media and training. Without always being explicit, there is a woman subject that crystallises and comes into being through Andrea’s performances. In our first collaboration as part of Chapter Arts Centre’s Latinoamerica residency project in 2005, we had sought to open the woman subject as traversing variegated and, on occasions contradictory moods and emotions ranging

from playful seduction, to aggression and a quiet, intimate space from where the woman speaks in dialogue with history. The performance projected the feminine experience as involving multiplicity thus countering the stereotypical appropriations of the female body. In 2008, Andrea brought to Chapter La Sombra de un Pájaro en Vuelo (The Shadow of the Flying Bird) — a multimedia performance, providing a poetic and thoroughgoing critique of globalisation. The Shadow of the Flying Bird is an intense meditation on the space of a country farm. Contemporary globalisation renders the country farm as a place where nothing happens. Much social concentration, economic and cultural production tends to be centered in metropolitan cities and landscapes. Nationalist imaginations and popular cultures tend to project countrysides as idyllic, pastoral landscapes. Andrea was seeking to evoke the experience of traversing a country farm and in the process she questioned each of the pervasive imaginations surrounding it. For Andrea, this performance was in some measure biographical as her family was born and lived in the country. She said, “I wanted to prevent the countryside and rural landscape from being romanticised and fetishised, as it tends to be when projected in touristic terms. I wanted to evoke how the lived experience of the countryside has been effected

and in fact undermined by globalisation that concentrates in big and metropolitan cities.” The Shadow of the Flying Bird is inspired by photographer Grete Stern’s surrealistic photography. In the performance, the country farm was depicted through a minimally designed documentary video projected on the back wall of the performance space. The performance threaded sequences of movements and had no narrative or dialogue. During the piece, dancers developed movements in response to the images and sounds of the projected video. They plotted rhythms in the sounds of the country farm including animals, wind, and other natural sounds and with those rhythms they developed minimal movements that were intensely repeated. The process of repetition surfaced as the performance’s aesthetic. It was both demanding and engaging for the viewer. Sustained attention to repetition wherein each move is at once the same as the previous and disparate from it, pushed viewing into an engaging space where the viewer deciphers and brings to viewing his/her own experience based on memory and/or sensations evoked in response to the work. The Shadow of the Flying Bird does not concretise or objectify its take on the subject of the country farm or globalisation generally. There is no rhetoric. The performance inaugurates

an aesthetic that provokes questioning and reflection. This is outside the realm of objectified criticism. The performance aesthetic — minimal and repetitive — rides against mass culture’s liberal attitude allowing for anything to pass, and provides the viewer a defined space for critical contemplation devoid of objectified meaning that risks being purged as easily as it tends to be consumed. Further, Andrea’s use of video technology serves to critique the mass-media infested global mass culture. The Shadow of the Flying Bird is poetic and austere. It is littered with gripping moments when the dancers trick-fully interact with video images. One dancer performed a repetitive movement attempting to reach the top of a bottle whose image had been projected on the wall. On another instance, one performer rode a still bike, but the projection of a moving image in the background created a thrilling effect of movement. This trickery is quite reminiscent of the novel tricks of early cinema. This form of spectacle is distinct and contrary to the arrest of rapid editing, scale, colour or flesh — spectacular modalities of moving image media as mobilised in global mass culture. There is a playfulness that may at first appear childlike, but in fact gestures to a more subtle and nuanced understanding of moving image media. While global mass culture has appropriated video technology for purposes

performance examining the body of the contemporary woman in urban Tokyo. The performance intertwined history, memory, popular culture and pastiche. It deployed a hybrid language that mixes popular and folk culture on the one hand, and meditative introspection with a freely associating psyche on the other. Since its foundation Yubiwa Hotel in 1994, Shirotama Hitsujiya’s company, Yubiwa Hotel has been I hoped to get rid of any a recognised force in Tokyo’s meanings, prejudice or value attached to the body of a woman. alternative theatre scene. Originally a conglomerate of But thinking about and working women artists, Yubiwa Hotel is with the woman’s body leads to a space for serious reflection a kind of contradiction. In my upon women in contemporary attempt to break prejudices, I society. While Candies Girlish had to first confront and work Hardcore, articulates concerns with them. that may have arisen in the — Shirotama Hitsujiya immediate Japanese context, these concerns are universal Contemporary visual cultures in and shared by women across the varied societies, be they in the world. Themes of returning to cosmopolitan landscapes or childhood, meditation and prayer, semi-rural/feudal landscapes, familial relations, women’s are infested with images of the female as a figure devoid of voice single-hood either as spinsters or widows, are numerous aspects and subjectivity. Phallocentric of the female social experience representations objectify the that Candies Girlish Hardcore female body, projecting her as evokes. a site of incompleteness and hysteria. In such representations Candies Girlish Hardcore the female lacks the facility of self-expression. She is projected acknowledges the testimonials of history and social conditioning on superficial grounds, with a that leave their imprint on the concentration on the exterior body. The piece is composed of attributes of the female body intense sequences of abstract at the expense of her complex movements, interspersed with interiority. personal observations of one’s immediate landscape. Hitsujiya Shirotama Hitsujiya is a Tokyostates that Candies Girlish based performance artist Hardcore was motivated by who had brought to Chapter reflection upon Japan’s steadily Arts Centre in 2006, Candies expanding old age population, Girlish Hardcore - a 90-minute ranging from voyeurism to surveillance — all grounded with faith in the indexical property of the image, Andrea takes us back to early cinema and opens for us the possibility to approach the image freely, without being determined by its indexical totalitarianism.

and a concern for what kind of women “should we be in fifty years?” — a concern she shares with her performers. The performance references how forces of urbanisation and modernization, Japan’s status after the Second World War and the contemporary world scenario in which terror comes to play globally have all contributed to people’s steady alienation from nature. ‘I have only read about the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in school textbooks. But I was in New York on September 11th. I share in that experience and through that the bombings of the Second World War’; she reflects. In response to this sense of alienation, all performers in Candies Girlish Hardcore display an urge to connect with each other outside socially conventionalised norms. Their relationships with each other are elemental and ecological. Shirotama is deeply interested in interculturalism and holds that Asian identities are historically constituted in the interstices arising from cross-cultural interaction. In Candies Girlish Hardcore, interculturalism got evoked on account of the distinct performance backgrounds of the five women performers ranging from butoh to striptease. The performance is both a reflection upon existing circumstance, and a utopian, shared imagination where women connect before any definitions or social conditions divide or distance them. The formal, abstract, and

minimal vocabulary of the piece facilitates this.

organic evolution of the piece.

The sequences involving the Candies Girlish Hardocre too, like female nude were the most Andrea Servera’s choreographies, profound instances of the performance. As the artists deploys the aesthetics of repetition. Repetition was central stripped they revealed tattooed to the process of developing the bodies. The absence of sexual innuendo and the tattooes performance. Hitsujiya states; themselves offered a dimension “I wanted to make the body of meaning that was more in of the performer bored with movement. And then I wanted to terms of an assertive voice than exhibitionist or lurid observe what is the difference provocation. The directness and between a bored body and a lack of embellishment in the bored mind.” Both dialogue and process of stripping contained body movements are performed the performers’ bodies from through sustained repetition being perceived in lascivious that brings to the performance nakedness. Striptease got multiple layers of meaning. The reappropriated. Away from the piece is non-narrative and it mechanisms of evoking sensual does not gather causal actions desire in the onlooker, we were and reactions. Repetitive invited into a conversation movements and actions between the performer’s body, demand a concentration and an her touch towards herself and intense interior presence of the performers — both with reference through that her relationship with her interior. to the actual performance and the sense of being they are attempting to forge with relation Contained and subjective, nudity in Candies Girlish Hardcore to the subject of woman. The communicates an urge for a piece inaugurates a space for a voice that is intimate and in woman through which she can being so amounts to a critique of access her subjectivity outside mass culture. Feminist critics of the conventionally designated varied discursive, methodological subject positions to which she gets confined socio-historically. and philosophical persuasions have argued in unison that This is not the outcome of one at the heart of phallocentric auteur’s vision, rather it is the fruition of a dialogic engagement representations that dominate mass cultures is the absence of among the performers and the female imaginary/ symbolic. director. This also provides In Candies Girlish Hardcore, the audience a distinct mode each performer reveals a subtly of engagement. The audience distinct inhabitation of her body. is not passively receiving and absorbing meanings given by the The tattoos on the performers’ performance, but is more actively bodies surface as a means of voice. They were variegated; an observer, drawn into the

some included Sanskrit and Buddhist symbology. New York based Iranian artist Shirin Neshat’s famous photographic series, Women of Allah (199397) comes to mind here. In this series we see armaments and calligraphy inscribed on the body of the Islamic, veiled woman. These become a poetic gesture to shatter silence implied by the chador. Candies Girlish Hardcore opened a space for women to touch and engage with their own bodies outside any social, cultural or historically determined conventions. This form of touch is not ornamental, intellectual or reactionary; and it did not point to a determined relation of the woman to her body. It gestured to a beginning in a woman’s relationship with herself — not limited by any social or cultural constraint. White Shadow In April 2006, I visited Vrindavan. Vrindavan is a village in central India where the Hindu god, Krishna was born. Legend has it that Krishna had 25,000 wives, aka gopis. For centuries now, Vrindavan has been home to Hindu widows abandoned by their families and the Hindu social order whose economic logic cannot assimilate the body of a widow… Hinduism has come to hold that since Krishna had 25,000 wives, the Vrindavan widows are spiritually married to Krishna. In the name of Krishna, this skewed logic actually masks a life steeped

in abandonment, poverty, malnutrition, mental disorder and often, sexual exploitation at the hands of the self-proclaimed, ideologically corrupt vanguards of the Hindu religion…

Madhvi is a Bharatanatayam dancer. She was born in East Africa and moved to Britain to study and work. I am a filmmaker and theorist. I had come to Britain from India to study cinema. While we both tended to be lumped as ‘South Asian’, our time together In White Shadow, I perform a was dotted with conversations complex dialogue between about the disparities — the tightly internalised sociohistorical, economic, social and religious code imposed on the widow’s body and her attempts at cultural, between Madhvi’s idea self-expression. The questioning and experience of India and mine. What was common to us of religious and social tradition was that we were both critiquing underpinning the piece spills into the formal vocabulary of the how our chosen media had been appropriated within the broad performance. I am classically South Asian context spanning trained as a Bharatnatyam the Indian subcontinent and the dancer. In White Shadow I Indian diaspora too. interrogate the tightly codified form and conventionalised When we developed White meanings of the Bharatnatyam Shadow, Madhvi was deeply idiom. — Madhvi and Aparna Sharma questioning her commitment (extract from artist’s statement, to Bharatnatayam. Gujarati by origin, Madhvi has since a very 2008) young age received a tight disciplinary training that exposed While composing this artist’s statement, Madhvi and I decided her to Tamilian Hindu practices and the region’s wider culture. to project our-selves as one Besides the dance, she learned author of this performance. the language, food, customs, We were motivated to do this religious, ritual and cultural because through the process of practices of Tamil Nadu. While composing this work, she and I over the years Madhvi perfected had developed a shared space between us where we overcame her dance, her cultural exposures instilled in her a discontent the limitations of our identities, distinct social histories, cultural towards performing traditional narratives of the Bharatanatayam backgrounds and to a large corpus. Trained in the Pandanalur extent even the disparities of style, Madhvi has experimented the media with which we work. with contemporary and ballet We started to feel that our own practices with the intent to bodies — as women linked to open and explore the body the Indian subcontinent were spatially and kinetically. Madhvi’s somehow implicated in the questioning of Bharatanatayam very system White Shadow was was embedded in her body. Its questioning.

first and most profound symptom to my eyes was when Madhvi cut her long hair a year before we embarked on White Shadow. For her this action was bold and in some senses sacrilegious within the context of classical dance. My documentary work spans subjects, narratives and histories that have due to the exclusionary logic of ruling class, pan-Indian nationhood been overlooked in mainstream media. My doctoral research film Crossings in a Beautiful Time, which focused on the Gujarati community of Cardiff, Wales was an ethnographic-experimental work to explore the cultural and conflictual heterogeneity within this community that would ordinarily be overlooked in the liberal and patronising gestures of mainstream media institutions towards subjectivities outside the dominant, hegemonic order. While I had been examining the distinctiveness and hybridity of the Gujarati community in Wales, I had been drawn to plot comparisons between the experiences of this community and those of members with similar subjectivities back in India. It was in this pursuit I had traced my way to Vrindavan and encountered a sea of abandoned Hindu widows there whose social and health status contrasted markedly with widows of the Gujarati community in Cardiff who I had interviewed in my film. Madhvi had seen my film and we had agreed to work further with the subject of the Hindu widow.

We agreed that my documentary footage from Vrindavan would be a co-performer, a provocateur in White Shadow. Madhvi would interact with its images and choreograph movements that utilised Bharatanatyam mudras (hand gestures) but recontextualised them — resuscitating them from the classical narrative context in order to evoke a contemporaneous social subject. The final performance included six sequences spanning a woman’s reaction against the norms of Hindu widowhood. Each sequence was provoked by an enlarged image of the Vrindavan widows projected on the back wall of the performance space. I sat on the stage occupying the traditional space of the musical orchestra. I was controlling the projection of the documentary images on stage. This reflexive gesture was vital to our performance so that we could shatter the smoothness and verisimilitude that has come to be identified with both classical performance and moving image media. There were two aspects of the Bharatnatayam idiom that Madhvi most interrogated in White Shadow. She reduced her reliance on facial gestures of bhava (emotion), and she used Bharatanatayam mudras (hand gestures) in a sparse manner combining them with a more free and contemporary movement style. Over the course of developing this piece, we had

moved away from a narrative. We had felt any form of narrative was prosaic and limiting. Through the process of developing the piece, both performers, Madhvi and the documentary footage had been brought to a striking minimalism that lent them both sufficient grip and strength that their immediate or apparent connection felt over-determined and unfit for any exposition. Madhvi had been initially concerned how the audience would engage with the performance when there was no element of translation within it. However, as we worked together we came to hold the performance as a process through which relations were forged between the performers and the audience. This was a crucial move for Madhvi’s understanding and relationship with Bharatanatayam, pushing it away from the framework where the dance was an ornamental form presented to a culturally distinct audience and thereby meriting cultural translation. Instead, she was now performing her personhood through the dance and without meaning to undermine the finesse of the form, she was moving towards individuating it rather than adhering to a defined corpus. At the end of this process, we feel that we unlocked for ourselves a space where we brought our own bodies, media and the questionings linked to them in a shared space where they were in array with the unresolved and distressing condition of the

Vrindavan widows. This project by no means assumes or seeks closure.

Aomori Project: In a market-driven global order, culture is always at risk of objectification and ossification. Language, dress, food — the most explicit indices of any culture, can and do most easily slip into commodity circulation. An individual’s experience of culture is always of a fine and subtle order. Often contingent, one’s relationship to a culture or cultures is never rigid, fixed or determined by the grand narratives of history. It is a living relationship — fluid and unbound. It is as much temporal as it is spatial and at the most elementary level, one’s sense of belonging to a culture extends from one’s relationship with and negotiation of the landscape/s one inhabits. A creative exploration of this relationship between the individual and the environment was the subject of the collaborative choreographic project between choreographer Sioned Huws from North Wales, UK and dancer Reina Kimura, from Aomori, Japan. They both met while Huws was attending a residency at the Aomori Contemporary Arts Centre in early 2008. Aomori is a small town in North Japan renowned for its heavy snowfall, the highest across Japan. The experience of snow is intimately enmeshed with everyday life in

Aomori. When Sioned arrived to Aomori in January 2008, she felt swept and absorbed by the snow that she recounts as effecting life to its minutest level. While Sioned was conscious of the popular perception of snow being “beautiful or quietening” in Aomori she experienced how snow can be physically demanding too. She recollects, “… snow had no sympathy. People in Aomori have to work very hard to even perform the most simple tasks in the snow.”

lying on the floor were the most suitable in-road into the experience of snow.

Between themselves they identified and developed a few key movements. These were performed as sequences wherein each movement built up in rhythm and tempo through repetition. The viewer is propelled into an imaginary landscape whose textures are suggested through the negotiation of the dance space by the dancer’s body and the evocative gestures of the hands and feet in this To think about developing process. Performing horizontally choreography, Sioned started instilled a specific emotional by conducting workshops with charge into dance and altered the local community of Aomori. In these workshops she explored the dancer’s relationship with her body — aspects that both people’s relationships to snow. dancers had not experienced During one of the workshops, while dancing vertically. The Sioned met Reina Kimura. horizontal movements embed Reina is interested in dance and make the body coextensive as a hobby. She cannot speak of the performance surface. This English fluently. But Sioned and is very elemental and unique. she struck a rapport and they Both dancers felt they became communicated very well at the more conscious of the earth and level of their bodies. During that felt more connected with it as time the incessant snowstorms were making Sioned feel spatially if it were not merely a surface disoriented. “In the first few days but an agent that sustains and shapes embodied experience. I had no sense of where I was. “Performing horizontally we Snow slows our heart rate and experienced the body as a creates a sense of wanting to landscape. The landscape we be horizontal all the while. But were within in Japan was in many at the same time if you don’t ways reinforcing horizontality — work hard to resist the desire to layers upon layers of mountains, be smothered by snow you will snow and our own desire to lie die”; she says. Motivated by the down…”, says Sioned. While the horizontality that snow renders, dance itself is rigorous, it renders Sioned and Reina decided to a tender sensation for the viewer. experiment with horizontal One accesses a femininity that movements of the body, is intense and fervent, but that performed by lying on the floor. at the same time evokes a sense They both felt that movements

of softness. Sioned’s comment gestures towards this: “We are all deeply connected to the earth. It gives a lot of energy. What we give to it, it will give back to you. We have to respect and connect with the earth, so that we can receive from her and share what we receive.” After the project in Aomori concluded, Sioned invited Reina to Wales. In Wales Reina occupied the position of a foreigner. Sioned and Reina wanted to work with the material they had developed in Aomori but were certain it needed revisitation — to accommodate Reina’s experiences of the Welsh landscape. In Cardiff Reina performed solo. Each sequence of horizontal movement was punctuated with Reina walking, casually around the stage. In these walks she shared, in broken English her experiences and suggested the movements she would perform in the next sequence. The performance commenced with Reina’s innocuous yet keen observations. “All houses in Britain look the same. I could not tell which was mine.” Reina’s hand-work was delicate and contrasted with the tempo of her entire body in movement. There was a disparity in the sense of weight between the hands and the remaining body. As the movements were repeated and gained in intensity it became clearer that Reina’s eyes were key for navigating through space. The base of the spine and the

navel served as the fulcrums through which each movement of the body emanated and extended outwards. Reina’s comments through the performance, mapped the cultural disparities instituted between the audience and herself as a foreign performer. This interplay of elemental and intense movement with experiences registering cultural disparity created a montage effect — an effect in the order of the juxtaposition between the seemingly innocuous verbal observations and the contrasting intense and sustained movement material. This juxtaposition serves in projecting cultural experiences as relative rather than innate or essential in any ahistorical sense. Further, this facilitated in positing the experience of culture and difference as embodied and exceeding linguistic or verbal articulation.

the contemporary arts, for while in the western and northern hemispheres there is a dedicated move towards representing postcolonial cultures and practitioners from outside the dominant white, male hegemonic order, it remains largely uncommon to encounter works that do not liberally celebrate but critique the local contexts in which they are produced. A critical practice that interrogates local hierarchies and through that gestures towards the complicity of those hierarchies with the dominating global forces in conversation with culturally disparate audiences, represents a dialectical move to address the inadequacies of the colonial and ‘global’ encounters, and contain the inadequacies and misrepresentation of other cultural contexts.

Two, and extending from the first, all practitioners display a dialogic aesthetic constantly Conclusion emerging through interrogation, wherein technique is not a In gathering these four reified category and neither artists, Chapter Arts Centre is communication of intended has facilitated a discourse meaning of primacy. Instead that critiques commonplace all four collaborations are appropriations of the female opening an aesthetic space body and experience, and it where the audience enters inaugurates spaces where and engages with the work — women begin to converse with compelled to derive meaning themselves as subjects of history. There are certain aspects and understanding — a process that is by its nature demanding of the cultural production and reflective. To translate the discussed above that I will critical thought underpinning recollect here to suggest the the works into the form and contours of this discourse. One, vocabulary of the performances all artists are working from a is not creative endeavour alone. space that is critical of their This represents a resistance local contexts. This is vital in

to dominant mass culture’s tendency to simplify and make digestible social and cultural meanings including political resistance. In an increasingly media-infested global culture, political resistance itself has emerged as a commodity suitable for market circulation. The four artists discussed above, provide a mode of political resistance that resists appropriation. Repetition steadily building up in intensity and pace is a vital aesthetic in this. It allows for moving away from the logic of coherent and common-sensical meaning that progressively unfolds through the work. The aesthetics of repetition mobilises its own exclusionary process through which it reaches to audiences that are willing in engagement to enter a space of contemplative quietude rather than communicative meaning and entertainment. Lastly, all four performers are committed to questioning the appropriation of the female body by dominant ideology. Whether focusing on the widows of Vrindavan or the urban women from Tokyo — these four collaborations inaugurate for us a space from which we can begin to approach a female subjectivity not purely in reaction against, but decidedly outside dominant patriarchal and phallocentric regimes. There is an ambition underpinning this space. It seeks to be universal, without undermining the local cultural context from which it arises. It is a space of interiority at sharp

contrast to representations that project the female body as a site of lack or hysteria all masked by accentuated physical attributes. From the costume and make-up to the very mode of performance we encounter in these four collaborations a woman subject attempting utterance — not with an entity outside herself, but with-in. The mode of utterance varies through the four performances. Tattoos, the nude, documentary image and movement — all are deployed by the woman subject to reach herself through a touch whose meaning is not predetermined by any social or cultural order. If inaugurating a space of woman’s subjectivity is the historical project before us, then touch — the impulse most at odds with vision, which has been hugely appropriated by image reliant mass culture — cannot but be the initiating point because that space where a woman accesses her own subjectivity is as yet so nascent, and so unformed.

Aparna Sharma is a filmmaker and theorist. Her work sits at what often gets perceived as the uneasy juncture between experimental and ethnographic practice. For her the dialogue between the two approaches is a living experience that provides a provocative and enriching space from which to develop work. Her documentary spans narratives and experiences that escape mainstream national and media imaginations. She has been particularly inspired by the discourse underpinning modernist montage practices and through her work she brings montage thought into conversation with postcoloniality. She has taught at Film Studies, Choreography and Fashion programmes in different universities of Britain. She recently moved to Los Angeles where she is working at the Department of World Arts and Cultures, UCLA.

SHIMIZU SHINJIN

THROUGH THE INTERNATIONAL COLLABORATIVE PRODUCTION: Dream Regime 3

Images: 1+ 6. Dream Regime, Cardiff, 2004 2. Dream Regime, Tokyo (photo: Katsu Miyauchi) 2006 3. Dream Regime, Gdansk (photo: Katarzy) 2008 4. Dream Regime, Amman, 2005 5. Dream Regime, Broellin (photo: Katsu Miyauchi) 2004 7. Dream Regime, Tokyo, 2006

SHIMIZU SHINJIN

THROUGH THE INTERNATIONAL COLLABORATIVE PRODUCTION: Dream Regime

Introduction Dream Regime was founded in 2004 as a response to (a request of) James Tyson from Chapter Arts Centre. Since then, we, Gekidan Kaitaisha, have traveled our way through and stayed at many places in Asia and Europe, collaborating with artists and performers from all over the world. Our theme is to encourage reflecting upon and renewing contemporary intercultural arts practices and the idea of bodily expression through discussion, workshops, and theatrical performance. It is with these aims in mind that we have extensively discussed these matters with a whole host of participants. Obviously, it is not possible to reiterate all those conversations here. Instead, I will draw attention to the overarching themes that the workshops, theatrical performances, and

considerations of the human/ body itself all inevitably refer back to. These themes are intertwined with problems related to globalization (a nationstate capitalism). Hence it would have to be admitted that after the end of History, men would construct their edifices and works of art as birds build their nests and spiders spin their webs, would perform musical concerts after the fashion of frogs and cicadas, would play like young animals, and would indulge in love like adult beasts.(…) “The definitive annihilation of Man properly socalled” also means the definitive disappearance of human Discourse (Logos) in the strict sense. Animals of the species Homo sapiens would react by conditioned reflexes to vocal

signals or sign “language,” and thus their so-called “discourses” would be like what is supposed to be the “language” of bees. — Alexandre Kojève, Introduction to the Reading of Hegel (trans. James H. Nichols, Jr.), Cornell University Press, 1980, pp.159-162. Why does it seem to us even today that the idea of Man after the end of History that Kojève once described still retains certain validity as the idea of “human=animal”? Very likely because the arts under the system of globalization function (or aim to function) as cultural devices that erase and ease the suffering and miseries that globalization, through its contradictions, mercilessly imposes on people. That is, the arts are appropriated by

the system of globalization in order to act as something like sewage treatment facilities. My artistic activities are, of course, no exceptions. Insofar as we position ourselves in the artistic realm and think from within that realm, we, and the phantasm generated by the gaze of the pleasure-seeking spectators, direct our stages as spiders spin their webs, dance in reaction to vocal signals or sign “language” through conditioned reflexes, and critique with the “language” of bees. Anyone who seeks to transgress “the limits” must find a way out of this system to go “outside”. S/he has to be expelled from the crowds with their familiar gazes.

1 Working with performers from many different countries helps me to define what “theater of shin-tai (body)” is. Shin-tai (bodies) are not realities, but “phantoms”. This means that “shin-tai (body)” as “phantom” cannot be defined by itself alone, but rather exists between two people. Once “shin-tai (body)-phantom” is actualized before our senses, it can have a controlling function to deter the emergence of violence. Also, “phantoms”, through theatrical performance, call attention to the fact that shintai (bodies) are culturally and historically constructed. For example, a Spanish performer who usually speaks in English at workshops and discussions will visibly gain strength in his

shin-tai (body) when he utters his lines in Spanish, his mother tongue. This is one instance of how a language - firmly rooted in a particular socio-historical context - affects the shin-tai (body). Similarly, the performer”s demeanor changes depending on who his interlocutor is: what would happen if he were to stand face-to-face with a Mexican actor? According to what I have learned from my experience, historical background and relations give definitive “changes” to both mode of utterance and physical behavior. This “change” can be seen in a conversation between an Indonesian actor - who blames the Netherlands for the suffering of Indonesians during the colonial era - and an East Timor activist, who in turn denounces the massacres carried out by the Indonesian army. Likewise, this “change” is visible in the gesture of a Palestinian dancer, who told me about her nation’s cultural richness, when she speaks to her Filipina maid. In short, “phantoms” suppress and impart a limit to the subject’s narcissism and guide shin-tai (bodies) to become subjects desiring for “reflective thought”.

2 In the milieu of Japanese contemporary theater in the 1960s and the 70s, shin-tai (body) referred to in Section 1 was described as niku-tai (flesh) and was closely associated with the image of “revolt” against the prison situation of modern

Europe.1 Niku-tai (flesh) was thought to subvert the modern order, reversing the traditional hierarchy that prized intellect over sensitivity. The image of revolution was synonymous with the revolt of niku-tai (flesh) and once the rebellion of the niku-tai (flesh) was defeated, the concept of shin-tai (bodies) emerged or were invented. Shintai (bodies) provided a way of breaking down the dichotomy. That is to say, it was in shintai (bodies) that the various permutations of this opposition, between something “becoming” and something “constructing”, could be reconciled. In shintai (bodies), the “intellect” was united with physical “sensation”, which yielded the notion of “perception”. Shin-tai (bodies), narrated in the image of a place of both union and conflict between the “Apollonian” and the “Dionysian” which repeated this dichotomy between “becoming” and “constructing”, were being much discussed for both their potential and their compatibility with the new media technology developing at that time.

1 Japanese theater practitioners have no single term to express what people mean by a word “body”. They use three terms that are semantically and morphologically distinct. Niku-tai, which could be otherwise expressed as “flesh”, “body of presence”, or “body of becoming”. Shin-tai is a “body” that is culturally and historically conditioned. Jin-tai is similar to a biopolitical body such as an object of mere medical treatment or “bodies” in concentration camps.

After 9/11, I realized that shin-tai (bodies) or niku-tai (flesh) cannot be captured by the Apollo/ Dionysus binary any more. Rather they have to be approached by the bios/zoe binary. Shin-tai (bodies) here become something called Jin-tai (live human)-zoe which I have tried to problematize in Dream Regime.2 Jin-tai (live human)-zoe is void of agency and incapable of any kind of resistance. It seems to have lost all human gestures, as if it is an existence - I call such an existence fortification of shintai (body) - that can neither perceive nor respond to outside stimulus from the physical world. The problem then is: how can we apply zoe to theatre? We human beings have given precedence to bios to such an extent that we have completely eliminated zoe. How can we reclaim zoe? I believe that the answer to this question may be contained in zoe itself. If this is the case, we must ask ourselves what we, as human beings, can learn from zoe. It may sound abrupt, but it is my belief that I am living—or am even being forced to live—in a space called “time from inside-depth”.

We are in a state of a complete lack of consciousness and of mindlessness. It seems to me that there are more people in this paralyzing situation than ever before, and theatre has become one of the illustrations of this situation. This paralysis has been accompanied by a gradual vanishing of public space. This connection makes sense when one considers that in today’s world, public places are closely managed through highly developed surveillance systems similar to that of concentration camps. Without a free public space, individuals have little choice but to escape into their own private temporal world. Once this “process of the birth of concentration camp in our age” encroaches on the individual’s private space, this tendency proceeds more and more rapidly. This situation becomes devastating for theatre not only because the very concept of public will disappear, but even worse, “time from inside-depth” is inherently unrepresentable. The Jin-tai (live human) as zoe is no longer a “human being”; it is not even a “human=animal”. With Jin-tai (live human) incapable of feeling and reacting to the external world, theatre 2 Giorgio Agamben wrote in his Homo Sacer that the is impossible. How can theatre ancient Greeks had no single term to possibly represent something express what we mean by the word unrepresentable? “life”. They used two terms that are distinct: zoe, which expressed a simple fact of living common to all living beings (animals, men, or gods). And bios, which indicated the form or ways of living proper to an individ- As we have seen, under ual or a group. (translated by Daniel sophisticated structures of Heller Roazen) These terms are used surveillance of public space, in my essay.

Jin-tai (live human) becomes zoe. There are also places where “human-animal” without resistance is found as Jintai (live human). One of these places is a prison. It is for this reason that we invited Silvia from Brazil as a guest for Dream Regime, Tokyo 2007. She is an actress who “teaches” theatre to prisoners. Because of her firsthand experience in jail, Silvia is able to use her shintai (body) to express or testify the misery and suffering of the prison inmates in an especially revealing fashion. Her work exposes the manner in which the modern nation has absolutely abandoned its duty with respect to helping prisoners reintegrate themselves into public society. Seen as Jin-tai (live human) for experiment, prisoners in prison are abandoned by society itself and left there to the abuse they must endure. Silvia though, paradoxically, describes it: It may sound strange, but I can feel more safe in the prison than any other place. I know everybody there very well and I also know what they can do. Outside the prison, I don’t know who is who. I don’t know what happens and when it happens. I miss the prison. I met people who can be flowers in a crevice in the rock. As I understand, her words, spoken calmly, hail the end of the modern nation. On the other hand, globalization repeats the “wars of the century”. As the term “sacred wars” symbolically

suggests, globalization has begun to live in “the world of myth”. Globalization, which is by nature without purpose, disguises itself with a phony purpose. And when globalization spreads to Ningen-shin-tai (shintai (bodies) of human beings), they become “war bodies” or “bodies of indiscriminate murder”. Juridical law holds no sway with these bodies. They will speak in “the court without judgment”; “the victims were chosen by me”; “I order you to execute me.” Their “purpose” is to transcend both the nation state and the law in order to be something “godlike”. They exercise the power of life and death openly, even to the extent that laws are made to execute them. They do not “see” their murder, but “believe”. We must ask ourselves whether we who are living in the “time from inside-depth” are, at bottom, in the same situation. This is the reason why at Dream Regime Tokyo, we, in collaboration, came up with these words in order to respond to these situations we are living in: Do not give; do not offer; do not gaze. Reflect, the World, on the Surface of these Eyeballs.

Shimizu Shinjin is the Artistic Director of Gekidan Kaitaisha (Theatre of Deconstruction), based in Tokyo. His work examines a "Theatre of the Body" that explores the relationship between the "body" and "violence/power” in theatre. He directed the Gekidan Kaitaisha performance series The Drifting View (from 1986), Tokyo Ghetto (from 1995 and 1997) and Bye-Bye (from 1999) that were presented internationally. He has also explored thinking about the "Body situation in bio-politics" through the continued work of the Dream Regime project since 2004.

国際共同制作『 Dream Regimeー夢の体制』を通して

はじめに 2004年、Chapter Arts Centreの James Tyson氏からの呼びかけに応え『Dream Regime』は開始された。以来、私たち劇団解体社はアジア・ヨーロッパ各地に滞在しながら諸外国のパフォーマーやアーティストたちと共同作業を行っている。そのテーマは現代の文化横断的芸術実践のあり方や身体表現の理念を、ディスカッションとワークショップもしくは上演を通して問い直し更新しようとする試みである。そのような企図ゆえに、ともかく参加者とは膨大な議論を重ねてきた。もとよりそれらすべてを再録することはおよそ不可能ではあるけれど、ここでは、この共同作業の現場で経験した出来事や人間/身体について思考すること自体が、否応なくグローバリゼーションがもたらす諸問題と接続していかざるを得ないような事柄について簡略に述べてみたい。覚書歴史の完了以降人間は、鳥たちが巣を作り、クモたちが巣を織りあげるのと同じ意味で建築をおこない芸術を造るようになるだろうし、蛙や蝉たちが鳴くのと同じ意味で音楽会を開き、幼い獣たちが戯れるのと同じ意味で戯れ、交尾可能なまでに成長した成獣が交尾を求めるのと同じ意味で愛を交わすことになろう。 [・・・] いわゆる人間性の決定的な消滅はまた、従来の意味での人間的言説の決定的な消滅を意味する、ということである。ホモ・サピエンス種の動物となる人間は以降、音響サイン、あるいは身振りサインに条件反射的に反応し行動することになり、彼らの「ロゴス」はいわゆる「蜜蜂の言語」に似たものとなるはずである。ーアレクサンドル・コジェーヴ『歴史の完了についての二つのノート』ーかつてコジェーヴの描き出した< 歴史の完了以降>の「人間」が、

今日「身体=動物」としていまだに一定の説得力を持っているかのように思えるのは何故か。それはおそらくグローバリゼーションの体制下における諸芸術が、この体制自身が生み出す諸矛盾を通して人びとにふるう容赦のない悲惨を慰め、かつ跡形もなく消し去るような文化装置として機能(させようと)しているからにほかならない。いわばシステムの「浄化装置」として編成され体制内部に配置されているのだ。むろん私とて例外ではない。ここに居場所を求めるかぎり、思考がその内に留まるかぎり、私は、享楽家たちの眼差しによって生み出されたファンタスムとともに、クモたちが巣を織りあげるごとく舞台を演出し、音響サイン、あるいは身振りサインに条件反射的にダンスをし、それらを蜜蜂の言語で批評するほかはない。けれども、少なからず「越境」を欲するものは、この装置の開口部を探し出し「外」へと出なければならない。慣れ親しんだ眼差しの群れから追放されなければならない。 1 諸外国のパフォーマーとの共同作業は私に「身体の演劇」をより鮮明に定義させる。それは「身体」は、実体ではなく「幻影」（(visions)）であるということだ。そしてこの「幻影=身体」は、あなたと、私のあいだにつねに在って、絶えず暴力の発動を抑止する制御機能をもった存在である。さらに「幻影」は、身体が、歴史的、文化的に造られたものであることを上演において露呈させる。たとえば、上演において使用する母国語の問題を例にとれば、普段は英語を使うスペイン出身のパフォーマーがスペイン語で台詞を発語すれば、彼の身体は、当然のように、生き生きとした強さを持ち始めるだろう。だが、彼がメキシコのパフォーマーと向き合ったときにはどうだろうか、私の知る限り、その歴史的関係は、彼の発話形態と身体(の振る舞い)に決定的な「変化」をもたらすのである。それは、オランダの植民地支配を告発しているインドネシアの俳優と、そのインドネシア軍の虐

殺を非難する東ティモールの活動家との対話のさなかにも、あるいはまた、自国の文化の豊かさを教えてくれたパレスチナのダンサーが、自分の家で家政婦として雇っているフィリピンの女性に接するときの彼女の身振りのうちにもそのような「変化」はもたらされる。すなわち「幻影」は、ナルシシズムを抑制しこれに制限を与え、身体を「反省的思考」を欲望させる主体へと導くのである。 2 ところで、60~70年代日本の現代演劇においては、「身体」は「肉体」と呼ばれ「反乱」のイメージと共に語られていた。「肉体」が近代のヒエラルキーを転倒すると。つまり知性と感性というものがあったときに、その階層をひっくり返す、転倒していくのだと。革命のイメージと肉体の反乱はまさに同義語だった。そしてその闘争が敗北したときに「身体」が登場したのではないか。「身体」つまりこれは〈生成的なもの〉と〈構築的なもの〉が、いわばこれまで対立していたものが「和解」していくような、たとえば〈知性〉と〈感覚〉が一体化して〈知覚〉が発明される。いわば〈アポロン的なもの〉と〈ディオニュソス的なもの〉が互いに対立したり一体になったりしながら生成と構築を繰り返すーそのようなイメージのなかで「身体」の可能性が当時進展しつつあったメディア・テクノロジーとの共存とともに語られていたのだ。今ー9.11以降ー私がDream Regime において問題化している「人体」は、いわば「ゾーエー」のことであり、いまや「身体」は、「アポロン/ディオニュソス」という概念で捉えうるものではなく、「ビオス/ゾーエー」という対で語られなければならないのではないかと思っている。この「人体=ゾーエー」というのはそもそも徹底して無抵抗で、いわば人間の身振りを忘却したような、ほとんど応接の不可能性的なようなものを身にまとった存在ー私は「身体の要塞化」と呼んでいるのだがーこのような存在とどのように演劇が関われるのかー「ゾーエー」は我々「

人間」が、すなわちビオスの側が排除してきたのであれば、いかにそれを再び迎え入れることができるのか、そして、その方途を知っているのは「ゾーエー」自身なのではないか。であるならば我々「人間」は「ゾーエー」からなにを学ばなければならないのか。いささか唐突だが、私は、「内奥の時間」を生かされているのではないか。なにものかに意識が全面的に奪われている、そうした「放心の時間帯」に生息しているような感覚。実際このような麻痺状態に置かれた人びとは私の周囲にもたしかに増えているし、劇現場とて例外ではない。果たしてそれは公共空間が消滅していく過程と軌を一にしているように思われる。なるほどいまやそれらの場所は最高度の監視システムと管理が徹底されていて、あたかも収容所のようでさえある。公共の空間が消えていくとき人はごく私的な時間を生きるほかはない。今後、空間の「収容所化」が公的な場所から私的な領域まで覆われていくならば、こうした事態は加速度的に進展していくだろう。このことは演劇にとってきわめて危機的である。劇場から公共の概念が消え失せていくこともそうだが、より本質的なのは、「内奥の時間」は表象不能だからだ。それは「人間」でないばかりか「身体=動物」でもない。いっさいの交渉と応接の不能性のなか、演劇など不可能ではないか。いったい演劇は表象し得ぬ事柄をどのように表象するのか。 3 さて一方で、冒頭でふれていた「身体=動物」が「人体」とでも呼ぶべき無抵抗な存在として見いだされる場所があるだろう。そのひとつが監獄である。『Dream Regime, Tokyo 2007』のためにブラジルからゲストに招いたSilviaは、実際にブラジルの監獄で囚人たちに演劇を「教えている」女優だが、それゆえにいっそう彼女の身体を通して証言される囚人たちの悲惨は深刻である。ここにいたっては近代国家の果たすべき義務と責任が、すなわち囚人たちを矯正して社会へ復帰せしめるという使

命が完全に放棄されている。実験室の「人体」として見いだされた囚人たちー彼らは「虐待」の対象としてたんに放置されているにすぎないのだ。 Silviaはいう。「変に聞こえるかもしれませんが、私は監獄にいるときがいちばん安心できます。私は一人一人をよく知っていて、彼らになにができるかも知っているからです。監獄の外では誰が誰なのかさっぱり分からない。いつなにが起きるかも分からない。私は監獄を懐かしく思います。岩の間で花になることのできるような人々にそこで出会いました。」。彼女が淡々と語ってくれたこの言葉は、監獄の父たる近代国家の臨終を告げるものだ。私はそう理解する。 4 他方、「戦争の世紀」を反復するグローバル体制は、たとえば「聖戦」などという言葉に象徴されるように、「神話的世界」を生き始めているかのようだ。その本性からして「無目的」なはずのグローバリゼーションが「目的」を偽装し始める。そうした局面が「人間身体」に転移してくる事態一現実においてそれは最前線に立たされた「戦争身体」、あるいは「無差別殺人」として出現している。彼らは「裁きなき法廷」でこう語るだろう。「殺された者は私に選ばれたのだ」と。「私を死刑にしろ」と。彼らは生殺与奪権を公然と行使し、さらに死刑をも行使させることによって、国家と法を超越した「神」となることがその行為の「目的」である。おそらく彼らは殺戮の現場でなにも見ていない。「見ている」のではなく「信じている」のだ。そして「内奥の時間」を生かされている私もまた彼らと通底しているのでは

ないか。それゆえ以下の言葉はこのような状況への応答として『Dream Regime, Tokyo』にて共同で書かれたのである。「与えるな・捧げるな・眼差すな・映させよ・世界を・この眼球の表面に」。

清水信臣(しみず・しんじん) 演出家・劇団解体社主宰。「身体の演劇」を標榜し、演劇における「身体」と、権力/暴力をめぐる問題系に取り組み続ける。主な仕事に、野外劇「遊行の景色」(‘86~)、「Tokyo Ghetto」 (‘95~’97)、「バイバイ」 (‘99~)など、解体社の一連のシリーズ作品を演出し世界各地を巡演する。また’04年から「生政治的身体」の状況を考察するため国際共同製作「Dream Regimeー夢の体制」を企画。海外のパフォーマー/アーティストたちとの共同作業を継続的に行っている。

SHU YANG FREE PERFORMANCE The Development of “The Great Tang”, a Live Art Project

Images: 1. The Great Tang performance, directed by Wang Tao, Memory Space, Beijing, 2006 2. Rehearsal of The Great Tang, 798 Art Space, Beijing, 2006 3. Rehearsal of The Great Tang, 798 Art Space, Beijing, 2006 4. “Clean Mouth” by Tran Luong (Vietnam), The Great Tang 2, Tian An Men, Beijing, 2007 5. “Gun” by Ma Yanling, The Great Tang 2, Tian An Men Square, Beijing, 2007 6. “The First Supper”, Belgian Embassy, Beijing, 2006

5 6

SHU YANG

FREE PERFORMANCE The Development of “The Great Tang”, a Live Art Project

Since the year 2000, I have been taking part in experimental theatre performances organised by the independent theatre group Beijing Paper Tiger Studio, and have also been involved in curating a number of largescale performance art events, including the Open Art Festival, the DaDao Live Art Festival, and several events for the Dashanzi International Art Festival. As a result, I have developed a keen interest in performances that take place in non-theatre environments. If a play (or any other kind of live performance) is to be performed in one of Beijing”s theatres, it is normally required to undergo three stages of censorship, with every aspect of the production from script to final performance being carefully inspected. In the

past, theatres were responsible for censoring their own productions, but nowadays the task is carried out by the cultural administration department for the district of Beijing in which the theatre is located. In addition to the artistic compromises that are generally necessary to obtain official approval, another practical problem with this system is that, should approval be granted, it will only apply to that particular district. So, for example, if a production has already been cleared by the censors in Chaoyang District, and later wishes to move across town to a theatre in Xicheng District, it must be examined once again by the Xicheng censors. Because of this inflexible system, and also because of a predominance of

mainstream, script-based drama, the officially-sanctioned performances that make it to the stages of Beijing”s theatres are largely devoid of original ideas. In fact, theatre appears to be one of the most stagnant, least innovative branches of the contemporary arts in China. By developing site-specific performances outside of the traditional theatre venues, we avoid the strict censorship system, while at the same time opening up new possibilities for performance though the expansion of expressive and practical spaces. This concept of “theatre beyond the theatre” is something I have discussed with Beijing Paper Tiger Studio”s director, Tian Gebing, and together we have carried out some initial explorations of this approach.

In 2003, artist and cultural entrepreneur Xu Yong asked me to visit a recently opened café bar located on the central island of Houhai Lake in Beijing, which he was managing at the time. He suggested we could organise a performance event on the island in September of that year, to coincide with the Beijing Biennale. I devised a multiple choice-style script framework for a comic theatre piece themed around Tang Dynasty history. The proposed title was “The Great Tang”, and I invited Tian Gebing to direct it. Back then I wrote in my proposal: “The performance will mix history and legends of the Tang Dynasty with the stuff of contemporary life, with an emphasis on the entertaining and unusual. The entire production will be written, designed and performed by the participants themselves. A projection screen will be installed in the performance space, and the final performance will combine video projections with live action. After the event, we will make a documentary video of the performance.”

2004, after the first Dashanzi International Art Festival was held in Beijing”s 798 Art District, that I began to consider organising a performance of “The Great Tang” for the following year”s festival, as part of the “Trans-border Language” performance art event.

From December 2005 to the end of March 2006, Tian Gebing and I held a series of 15 workshops during which “The Great Tang” gradually took shape. Depending on availability, the workshops were held either at the Regal Court branch of Beijing Venus Kindergarten or at the 798 Space in Dashanzi Art District. Aside from Tian Gebing and myself, the other regular participants were Dou Bu, a member of Beijing Paper Tiger Studio, Song Chen, a student at the Beijing Dance Academy who was helping me curate the event, dancer Wang Tao, artist Ma Yanling, photographer Yuan Hongbin, film maker Li Haoquan, graphic designer Shi Mingzhong, singer Fenni, IT specialist Guo Wei, artist Jia Yuming, photographer Wanxiang, curator Xu Li, and documentary maker Li Peifeng. After the proposal was sent Altogether, the workshops were out, a group of artists began attended by over 60 people from to develop the idea into a performance, and even produced various different professions. During the workshopping stage, a short film to go with it. In participants were encouraged addition, I received more than to put forward any ideas they ten different plot outlines from came up with, so that the group would-be participants. This could try them out and work theatrical “game piece”, based on the collaborative participation on them together. Finally, on May 1, 2006, we gave the first of contemporary artists, was public performance of “The ultimately never realised due to Great Tang” at Huang Ming-Che a lack of support. It wasn”t until

Studio in Dashanzi Art District. Later, on May 29, we performed a completely different version at 798 Space, also using exterior spaces within the art district. Several of the core participants, none of whom were theatre professionals, found their enthusiasm fired by the experience of creating their own “free performance” in a nontheatre environment, and went on to form a group called Free Performance Studio. On October 11, 2006, Free Performance Studio realised a new live art work titled “The First Supper” as part of an exhibition curated by Jia Yuming at the Belgian Embassy in Beijing. It was our original intention for “The Great Tang” to be performed in different public spaces around Beijing, and on October 8, 2007, we furthered this aim with “The Great Tang 2”. This performance, presented as part of the 5th DaDao Live Art Festival, used two of the most public of all Beijing”s spaces: the busy shopping street of Wangfujing and the “politically sensitive” but always crowded Tiananmen Square. Though nominally a group work, “The Great Tang 2” was really more of a collection of individual live art performances by the participating artists, as opposed to an integrated theatre piece. “The Great Tang” also had a subtitle, “Golden Age Mania”, chosen because the Chinese regard the Tang as one of the strongest and most prosperous

dynasties in Chinese history. It was, unlike some later periods, a time when great cultural and economic benefits were reaped from China”s contacts with the world beyond its borders. At the height of the Tang, the famed Silk Road was the main route linking East Asia to the Western world. The imperial bloodlines of Tang dynasty rulers were a mixture of Han Chinese and the nomadic Xianbei and Göktürk peoples, and there were many government ministers from China”s ethnic minorities, even some from foreign countries. Japan sent many ambassadors to the Tang court, to learn from China”s then comparatively advanced culture. The streets of the capital Chang”an (presentday Xi”an) were full of travelling merchants from Central Asia and Europe, and whirling dancers performing the popular Central Asian huxuan dance. During the Tang, the revered monk Xuanzang journeyed west to India in his quest for Buddhist scriptures; another monk, Jianzhen, went east to spread Buddhism in Japan, and Princess Wencheng left China to be married to the King of Tibet. The Tang Dynasty was without doubt the most active period of foreign relations in China”s past.

was marked by strictly-enforced nightly curfews, while ruthless and bloody power struggles were common in the palace. The history books are full of praise for Emperor Taizong (born Li Shimin), but this “enlightened emperor” schemed his way to the throne by murdering two of his own brothers. Then there was Wu Zetian, who entered the palace as a concubine and went on to become the only Empress in Chinese history. She is believed to have suffocated her own infant daughter and successfully blamed her rival Empress Wang for the crime, thus gaining favour and influence with the Emperor. Beneath the popular idea of the Tang Dynasty as a glorious era of great prosperity, appallingly cruel realities lie concealed.

Now that China is striving to become a great power of the modern age, we have seen three decades of rapid economic development, with national power growing stronger by the day. However, during 60 years of Communist Party rule, China has also undergone brutal political struggles. Countless numbers of people, from heads of state down to ordinary folk, have died violent deaths or experienced endless political and personal persecution. “The Great Tang” is essentially a spatiotemporal Most Chinese people take pride interlacing of Tang Dynasty in their country”s achievements during the Tang Dynasty, without China with contemporary China, dwelling on the fact that the size, contrasting past and present “golden ages” in a way that is influence and cultural riches of part chronicle, part carnival – an the empire under the Tang were absurd, game-like composite of largely a result of its military history and actuality. strength. Daily life for citizens

A true golden age would be an era in which individuals are able to express themselves freely in public. All those who participated in the workshops and public performances of “The Great Tang” project experienced the pleasure of free performance. By breaking free of the established system by which theatre performances are regulated, we lost any “legitimate” status we might have had, as well as the possibility of funding from commercial sources. However, what we gained from the experience was much more important: freedom, the thrill of trying something new, the camaraderie of working together and sharing our creative risks. For me, this was the most unforgettable part of “The Great Tang”. 2009/7/17, Beijing

Shu Yang is an artist, art critic and independent curator living in Beijing. He received his Bachelor degree in Art in 1993 and his Master degree in Arts in 1996 from the Oil-painting Department of Xiâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;an Academy of Fine Arts. He became an independent curator in Beijing in 1999. In 2000 he joined the Beijing Paper Tiger Theater Studio and initiated the Open Art Festival. In 2003, he initiated the DaDao Live Art Festival and since 2007 has been the producer of the Free Performance Group.

EXCHANGE by Shirotama Hitsujiya

1. Rebirth {movie} {piano} {mic}

ささやき声で in a whispering voice (あなたはもしかしたらむこうがわにいったのですか？） (Have you perhaps already crossed over to the other side?) (そういうことなのわたしはむこうがわにゆくわ） (That’s right. I am crossing over to the other side) あなたはもしかしたらむこうがわにいったのですか？ (Have you perhaps already crossed over to the other side?) そういうことなのわたしはむこうがわにゆくわ (That’s right. I am crossing over to the other side) うんやっと。 Yes, at last 上へ？下へ？右へ？左へ？ Up? Down? To the right? To the left? 急ぐ必要もないけど There’s no need to rush ごめんなさい I’m sorry どうしたの What happened?

おやすみ Good night だれもいなくなった完全に No one was there. Completely こんなにたくさんいるよ There are so many おやすみ Good night わたしの It’s mine. わたしの It’s mine. わたしの It’s mine.

{voiceover} {subtitle} {voice} {mic} {sound} {piano} {movie} {movie} 楽譜から走る獣へ {costume}

from musical notation to the running animals

{prop} {light}

ピアノの横に黒いマイク箱（ほかのものもいれるかも） * There’s a black mic box to the side of the piano (perhaps others inside as well) ※マイクスタンド処理 * Fix the mic stand 再生

2. Conversation of Beasts ST あなたのそれとてもすてきでまぶしいです

Your that is very lovely and astonishing

VO え？今なんと言いましたか？

Hm? What did you just say?

ST あなたのそれとてもすてきでまぶしいと言ったのです

Your that is very lovely and astonishing

VO よい意味ですか？

Is that a good thing?

ST はいとてもよい意味です

Yes, it’s a very good thing

VO そうですか

Is that so

ST そうですあなたのそれとてもすてきでまぶしいです

Yes it is. Your that is very lovely and astonishing

VO 今なんと言いましたか？

What did you just say?

ST あなたのそれ

Your that VO それ？ That?

ST あなたはとてもすてきでまぶしいです

You are very lovely and astonishing

VO わたしはまぶしいとおもいます

I think it’s astonishing

ST あなたはまぶしいです {movie}

You are astonishing EGON&PAN01 30sec

VO さっきなんと言いましたか？

What did you say a while ago?

ST あなたのそれはとてもすてきでまぶしいと言ったので

す Your that is very lovely and astonishing, is what I said

VO 今なんと言いましたか？

What did you just say?

ST あなたのそれがとてもすてきでまぶしいと言ったので

す Your that is very lovely and astonishing, is what I said

VO それ？

That?

ST あなたはとてもすてきでまぶしいです

You are very lovely and astonishing

VO わたしはまぶしいとおもいます

I think it’s astonishing

ST あなたはまぶしいです

You are astonishing

獣たちの会話

VO わたしはまぶしいとおもいます

I think it’s astonishing

ST あなたはまぶしいです

You are astonishing

VO わたしはまぶしいとおもいます

I think it’s astonishing

ST あなたはまぶしいです

You are astonishing

VO よい意味ですか？

Is that a good thing?

ST はいとてもよい意味です

Yes, it’s a very good thing

VO そうですか

Is that so

ST そうですあなたのそれとてもすてきでまぶしいです

Yes it is. Your that is very lovely and astonishing

VO 今なんと言いましたか？

What did you just say?

ST あなたのそれ

Your that

VO それ？

That?

ST あなたはとてもすてきでまぶしいです

You are very lovely and astonishing

VO わたしはまぶしいとおもいます

I think it’s astonishing

ST あなたはまぶしいです

You are astonishing

(voiceover) (subtitle) (voice) (mic) (sound) (piano) (movie) (costume) Horse pants 馬ズボン (prop) Hula Hoop

フラフープ

(light)

獣たちの会話

鳥の交換

3. The Exchange of Birds リンゴをむいている Shirotama Shirotama is peeling an apple (voice) takao

あ、帽子を忘れてしまったのでちょっととりにいって戻っきます Oh I’ve forgotten my hat so I’m going to fetch it and come back あ、おはようおはようん〜〜どうもどうも Oh Good morning Good morning hmmm Thanks thanks えぇちょっとそこまでごきげんよううぅ〜〜ん（のび） Huh- Just over there Take care Ahh- (stretching) おさきにどうぞいいえ、けっこうです Please, after you No Thank you いえいえなかなかそんな Come come Please please No way では、ぼくはこれで Well then, I’ll be going now (イメージメモ：10歳くらいの男の子が黒い大きな帽子をかぶって池の畔にたっている。その子が水に飛び込む。人々が水死した彼を引き上げる。黒い帽子を相変わらずかぶっている） (Note on image: a boy around 10 years old is standing by a pond wearing a large black hat. He then jumps into the water. People drag the drowned boy out of the water. He is

still wearing the black hat). myung 鳥の羽でピアノを撫でる Myung is stroking the piano with a bird’s feather (voiceover) (sound)

朝はたっぷりと眠り続けた後、まぶしい陽射しにやわらかく時を告げられるなか、もう一度、二度も三度もアノ子と交わり、至福に包まれて微笑み合い、心地よいのびをして過ごします。 In the morning after a good night’s sleep As the sunlight gently announces the time I make love with her once, twice, even three times Wrapped in contentment we pass the time Smiling at each other, and stretching ourselves out. 昼はリンゴの皮をむき、だれかれ分け隔てることなく食べさせ食べさせ、出会うものみなに食べさせ食べさせ過ごします。 At noon we peel the skin off of apples We feed and feed everyone we meet regardless, We feed and feed, and pass the time. 夜は地下の国へ訪問します。長老に、双子の内の片方の、命乞いをして過ごすのです。 At night, we visit a country underground We beg the Elder for mercy for one of the twins. (sound) リンゴを食べかじる音

Biting into an apple

(subtitle) (3人うしろむきのとき

人が３人いて、秘密を守るためには、そのうち２人はこの世には居られないんです。

鳥の交換

(subtitle) (when the three are facing upstage) There are three people.

In order to protect the secret, two among you cannot remain in this world.

(voiceover) (subtitle) (voice) (mic) (sound)

リンゴを食べかじる音 Biting into an apple 鳥の羽、撫でてスタート Starts with the bird’s feather stroke

(piano) 鳥の羽で撫でられる

is stroked by a bird’s feather

(movie) ことば

text

(costume) シルクハット鳥マント馬ズボン（shiro）

silk hat, bird cape, horse pants (shiro)

(prop) りんごナイフひなやかん

apple, knife, chick, kettle

(light)

知るために行くのです

4. I’m going in order to find out (voiceover) myung

飛行機がとびあがるのをはじめてみたとき、怖くって体をちぢめた。 The first time I saw an airplane taking off, I was so afraid I shrank away でも反面、なんとも言えず快感なんだって、あなたが言っていた。 You could say that was a speechless ecstasy, you had said. 何かを見たとき、わたしの内部でたえず働く両極。北極と南極。積極と消極。＋極と-極。 When I see something, in the inner part of me there is a constantly working polarity. North Pole and South Pole. Active and passive. Positive and negative. それはつまり、始まりの始まりのまた始まりの源へ帰りたいという願望と、よのなかの終わりの向こう側に飛び込みたいという願望が同時にあるからなのかもしれないなぁと、あなたは言ってた。 In other words, the desire to return to the source of the beginning of the beginning of the beginning, may perhaps co-exist simultaneously with the desire to fling oneself into the other side of the end of the world, you had said. わたしはあなたがいうその二つの願望を同時に叶えてあげたいと思った。わたしがそこに行ってみて、戻ってきてから、そこでなにがあったかあなたに話してあげたい知るために行くのです

と思った。 I thought, I wish I could fulfill both of those desires you were talking about at the same time. I thought, I want to go there and see, and when I return, I want to tell you everything that happened.

どこにあるのだろう。はじまりとおわりがいっしょにあるところ。考えながらわたしは旅支度をはじめています。 I wonder where it is. The place where beginning and end exist together. As I ponder, I am preparing for my journey. みっつめの靴下を鞄に入れたとき、まるで自分の故郷にかえるかのようだとおもいました。 As I was packing my third pair of socks, I thought it seemed as if I were going back to my home. なのにそれがどこだかわからなくなりました。わたしたちは同じあの部屋でうまれましたよ。 But ironically, I don’t know where that is anymore. We were born in that room, the same room. それを故郷と呼ぶのだろうか？我が家と呼ぶのだろうか？ Would I call that a home? Would I call that my house? お昼寝をした部屋？赤い屋根のおうち？ひとつの風景？ひとつの国？ The room in which I napped? The house with the red roof? A certain landscape? A certain country? (subtitle)

わたしが足跡をのこした場所つまりわたしが裏切った故郷思い出記念碑？

木の上の鳥の巣？逃げ隠れた先のシェルター？ The place where I left my footprints, in other words, the home that I betrayed Memory Memorial? The bird’s nest on the tree top? (subtitle) The shelter where I fled to and hid? + (voice)

故郷はこの世のものかどうかもわからなくなりました I don’t even know whether home belongs to this world or not. (subtitle)

わからないけどでかけます知るために行くのですさぁ、あなたがわたしのかわりに考える番です約束ですあらあらかしこ I don’t know but I’m going out I’m going in order to find out Now, it’s your turn to think instead of me This is a promise (voiceover) Sincerely (subtitle) (voice) (mic) (sound) (piano) (movie) (costume) (prop) (light)

知るために行くのです

明日のいじわる女

5. The Mean Woman of Tomorrow (voiceover) shirotama

親愛なる友へ To my dear friend いまどこをあるいているのかな？ I wonder where you are walking now うそつきの弟が、故郷とはその人が満足した土地すべてだって言ってたよ My lying little brother was saying that home was whatever land that person felt satisfied on. いまわたしは、窓にほっぺたをおしつけてずっと考えています I wonder where you are walking now いまどこをあるいているのかな？いまなにをみているのかな？ I wonder where you are walking. I wonder what you are seeing. きょうもわたしは弟にまたいじわるな顔してるって言われました。 I was told by my little brother again today, that I have a mean face わたしはけんかのつもりで答えましたとも。 Of course I fought back いじわるな顔でなにがわるいって？わたしはいじわるに誇りをもっているの。今日のいじわるな女の子は、明日のいじわる女なのよ。って。

What’s wrong with a mean face? I am proud of mean people. A mean girl today will be a mean girl tomorrow, I said. そうしたら弟は意外にもこんなこと言ったんです。そうだね。おねいさんは変わりっこない。これまでもこれからもだよ。だからくれぐれも、本当の自分はいじわるなんかじゃなくて、いつだってやさしい子に変われるんだなんて思わない事だよ。と。そう聞いて、わたしはなんだかからだがかるくなりました。ありがとう。そのとおりね。わたし変わろうなんて二度と思わないわ。ってはじめて弟にお礼を言いました。弟は、うん。じゃぁ。またあした。っていうので、わたしも、またあした。ちゃお！と言いました。 Then my little brother said something rather unusual. You’re right. You will never change, sister. Up til now, and from here on out. That is why you must take care never to imagine that you could just change whenever you want from being a mean girl to a kind girl, he said. When I heard that, I felt my body become heavy. Thank you. It is exactly as you say. (subtitle) I will never even think that I can change, again. I thanked my little brother for the first time. My little brother said, Yeah. All right. See you tomorrow. So I responded, see you tomorrow, too. Ciao! I said. それっきり弟は帰ってこないの。きっとあなたを追いかけていったんです。わたしはおねいさんだから弟のことはとてもよくわかります。 Since then my little brother has not come home. He’s probably run after you. I am his older sister so, I understand my brother very well. (piano)

(voiceover) 明日のいじわる女

弟はわたしとのけんかのときはいつも兄弟は仲良くやっていけるはずだよって、わたしにけとばされながら言ってました。大人だって兄弟が仲良くやっていけるように仲良くやっていけるんだって。それに、兄弟と大人がたくさんいるのが国というものだとしたら、国同士だって兄弟や大人が仲良くやっていけるように仲良くやっていけるんだって。弟は、そういってからちょっとだまって。ここへきて類似性が成り立たなくなるんだ。といいながらわたしを投げ飛ばすんです。

(piano)

Whenever my little brother and I fought, he would say, siblings are supposed to be able to get along, even as I was kicking him. Even adults should be able to get along with their siblings, can get along with their siblings, he said. And besides, if a country is made up of a lot of adults and their siblings, then even countries with adults and siblings should be able to get along with each other, can get along with each other, he said. My little brother fell silent for a while after that. You’re subverting our community, he says while he sends me flying.

(voiceover)

ねえ、いまどこをあるいているの？なにをみているの？ Hey, right now where are you walking? What are you seeing? (piano) (voiceover)

あらあらかしこ Sincerely Or ついしんあなたが無事であることをお知らせください P.S. Please let me know that you are all right.

(movie)

crawldance01 (voiceover) (subtitle) (voice) (mic) (sound) (piano) (movie)

crawldance01

(prop) (light)

明日のいじわる女

ばいばい

6. Bye Bye Good bye friend, あの日の透き通るような寒さを憶えてる？凍る湖に閉じこめたぼくらの冒険ごっこ Good bye friend, The cold was piercing that day Do you remember? In the frozen lake we trapped Our Play adventures Bye bye bye friend, ぼくには見えるよ君の頬に光る雪も涙もすべてが今君の目の前にある Good luck friend Bye bye bye friend, I can see it Glistening on your cheek the snow and tears Everything is now before your eyes Good luck friend, Good bye friend 夜が明けるまで囁いたからだ空にとばそう太陽があなたを暖めてくれますように Good bye friend Until the dawn breaks we whispered our bodies Lets fly into the sky So the sun can warm you up

Bye bye bye friend ぼくには見えるよ君の頬に光る雪も涙もすべてが今あなたの目の前にある Good luck friend I can see it Glistening on your cheek the snow and tears Everything is now before your eyes Good luck friend 夜が明けるまで囁いたからだ空にとばそう太陽があなたを暖めてくれますように Until the dawn breaks we whispered our bodies Lets fly into the sky So the sun can warm you up Good luck friend M,SはTのリボンビスチェを脱がしつつ去る。Ｔひとりのこる。 M, S, remove T’s ribbon bustier and exit. T remains alone.

(voiceover) (subtitle) (voice) (mic) (sound) (piano) (movie) あり (costume) リボンビスチェシルクハット

ribbon bustier, silk hat

(prop) (light)

ばいばい

大混乱

7. Great Confusion (subtitle) グッド・ラック！

Good Luck!

(voiceover) 生まれた日から混乱ばかりだ。

季節がやってくる方角もわからなければ、季節がたちゆく方角もわからない。要するに右も左もわからない。大混乱。出かけるにはよいだろう。賛成だろ？ねえさん。 It’s been chaos since the day I was born Not only would I never know from which direction the seasons would come, but I wouldn’t know which way they would go. In other words, I can’t tell right from left. It’s a great confusion. It’s probably good for going out. Don’t you agree? Big sister. そう、ぼくはあの人を追いかけるためにでかけたんだ。 Right, I went off in order to chase after that person. 海沿いの国道を歩いていった。どこまでいっても黒々とした背の低いブドウ畑の列の上に、灰色の空が広がって。いっとき空が凍りつき、強い雨がふりだした。雷も鳴り始めた。海沿いの道は雨宿りするところもなく、でも道はえんえんに続き、ぼくはずぶぬれのままぶったおれた。 I followed the national highway along the ocean. However far I went, above the low field of blackened grape vines in rows, there would be a cavernous grey sky. One time the sky froze over, and it started pouring. It was thundering too.

There was no shelter from the rain on the highway along the ocean, and the road seemed to go on forever, I was completely drenched when I passed out. しびれるような寒さで目を開けると、僕は共同墓地に葬られようとしていた。身元不明の旅人が旅の途中でのたれ死んだということらしい。 When I opened my eyes to a numbing coldness, I was being buried in a common grave. Apparently the story was that an unidentified traveler had died in the gutter along his journey. 僕に土をかぶせるスコップをつかんで、おはようといってみた I clasped the shovel that was covering me with dirt and said good morning to see what would happen. あ、帽子を忘れてしまったのでちょっととりにいって戻ってきます Oh, I’ve forgotten my hat so I’m going to fetch it and come back あ、おはようおはようん〜どうもどうも Oh Good morning Good morning hmm Thanks thanks えぇ、ちょっとそこまでごきげんよううぅ〜〜ん（のび） Huh- Just over there Take care Ahh- (stretching) おさきにどうぞいいえけっこうです Please, after you No Thank you いえいえなかなかそんな Come come Please please No way では、ぼくはこれで Well then I’ll be going now となりの墓も行き倒れだそうだ。葡萄酒をかけあう祭りに巻き込まれて、ずぶ濡れにされ大混乱

て、窒息して凍えて死んだ。ふとこの墓にあなたがいるのではないかとおもった。本当はいてほしくなんかないけど。そこにいるんだね？ The man in the next grave had also dropped dead on the street, supposedly He had been swept up into a festival at which everyone was spraying each other with wine. He got drenched, suffocated and froze to death. For a moment it occurred to me that you might be in this grave. Though I didn’t want you to be, really. You’re there, aren’t you? 僕は、ひりひりするような寒さの中、たちすくんでいた。もう一歩もうごけなかったし。すわることもできなかった。 I was pinned to the ground, in the painful cold. I couldn’t take another step. I couldn’t even sit down. (subtitle)

(voice)

僕は君に問いたい僕は君に問いたい I want to ask you I want to ask you

こんな貧しい思い出が、筆をとって書きとめるに値するだろうか。 (voiceover) Is there any value in writing down such a pitiful memory? (subtitle) (voice) (mic) (sound) (piano) (movie) (costume) (prop) (light)

不可解な儀式

8. A Mysterious Funeral (voiceover)

その健やかなるときも、 In times of health 病めるときも、 In times of sickness 喜びのときも、 In times of joy 悲しみのときも、 In times of sadness あ Oh はやくたべなさい。パンがしけっちゃうでしょ？ Hurry up and eat. The bread will get stale. 富めるときも、 In times of prosperity 貧しいときも、 In times of poverty これを愛し、 Love this これを敬い、 Respect this これを慰め、 Comfort this

不可解な儀式

これを助け、 Help this は Huh, いそぎなさい。パンがしけると風邪をひいちゃうのよ Hurry, if the bread grows stale, it will catch cold. (voice) (誰がですか？）

Who will catch cold?

(voiceover) パンがよ。その命ある限り、

The bread, as long as there is life 真心を尽くすことを That you will be faithful to each other 誓いますか？ Do you swear it? 誓いますか？ Do you swear it? 誓いますか？ Do you swear it?

shirotama おっぱいがころころいたいよ

My boobs feel tender

おっぱいがころころいたいよ My boobs feel tender

(voiceover) (subtitle) (voice) (mic) (sound) (piano) (movie) (costume) 儀式衣装馬ズボン鳥マント (prop) ぱん bread (light)

不可解な儀式

獣たちのおどり

9. Dance of the Beasts (voice) shiro あなたのおどり、とてもすてきでまぶしいです

Your dance is very lovely and astonishing

takao え？今なんと言いましたか？

Hm? What did you just say?

shiro あなたのおどり、とてもすてきでまぶしいと言ったので

す Your dance is very lovely and astonishing

takao よい意味ですか？

Is that a good thing?

shiro はい。とてもよい意味です

Yes, it’s a very good thing

takao そうですか

Is that so

shiro そうです。あなたのおどり、とてもすてきでまぶしいで

す Yes it is. Your dance is very lovely and astonishing

takao 今なんと言いましたか？

What did you just say?

shiro あなたのおどり

Your dance

takao おどり？

Dance?

shiro あなたのおどり、とてもすてきでまぶしいです

Your dance is very lovely and astonishing

takao わたしはまぶしいとおもいます

I think it’s astonishing

shiro あなたはまぶしいです

You are astonishing

myung さっきなんと言いましたか？

What did you say a while ago?

shiro あなたのおどりはとてもすてきでまぶしいと言ったのです

Your dance is very lovely and astonishing, is what I said

myung 今なんと言いましたか？

What did you just say?

shiro あなたのおどりがとてもすてきでまぶしいと言ったのです

Your dance is very lovely and astonishing, is what I said

myung おどり？

Dance?

shiro はい。あなたのおどりはとてもすてきでまぶしいです

Yes. Your dance is very lovely and astonishing

myung わたしはまぶしいとおもいます

I think it’s astonishing

shiro あなたはまぶしいです

You are astonishing

myung わたしはまぶしいとおもいます

I think it’s astonishing

獣たちのおどり

shiro あなたはまぶしいです

You are astonishing

myung わたしはまぶしいとおもいます

I think it’s astonishing

shiro あなたはまぶしいです

You are astonishing

myung よい意味ですか？

Is that a good thing?

shiro はい。とてもよい意味です

Yes, it’s a very good thing

myung そうですか

Is that so

shiro そうです。あなたのおどり、とてもすてきでまぶしいで

す Yes it is. Your dance is very lovely and astonishing

(voiceover) 3 voice mixing B 今なんと言いましたか？

What did you just say?

A あなたのおどり

Your dance

B おどり？

Dance

A あなたはとてもすてきでまぶしいです

You are very lovely and astonishing

B わたしはまぶしいとおもいます

I think it’s astonishing

A あなたはまぶしいです

You are astonishing

(voiceover) (subtitle) (voice) (mic) (sound) (piano) (movie) (costume) (prop) (light)

獣たちのおどり

再々々々々生

10. Re-rere-re-rebirth (mic 1) takao (English, Spanish) & (mic 2) shirotama (Japanaese)

ささやき声でほぼ同時に whispering simultaneously

(subtitle) 「おねいさん、僕は死ぬのだろうか？」

“Sister, am I going to die?”

僕は自分でもおかしく感じるほど、ゆっくりした小さな声でたずねました。 I asked in a voice so slow and small that even I felt it was funny. 「わたしはあなたが死なないと思います。死なないように願っています。」 “I think that you are not going to die. I an praying that you do not die.” おねいさんはしばらく黙りこう言いました。 After a silence my sister said: 「もしあなたが死んでも、わたしがもう一度生んであげるから、大丈夫」 “Even if you die, I will give birth to you again, so don’t worry.”

「・・・・けれども、その子供は、今死んでゆく僕とは違う子供でしょ？」 “….But then, that baby will be different from me who is dying now, won’t it?” 「いいえ同じですよ。あなたとあたらしいあなたはおなじですよ。あなたがわたしから生まれて、今までに見たり聞いたりしたこと、読んだこと、それを全部新しいあなたに話してあげます。いまのあなたの知っている言葉を、新しいあなたも話すことになるのだから、ふたりの子供はすっかり同じですよ」 “No, they’re the same. You and the new you are the same. You are going to be born of me, and I will tell you everything you’ve seen and heard, and read up until now, Every word that you know now, the new you will also know, so the two children will be completely the same.” 僕は、おねいさんの言っている意味がわかりませんでした。 I didn’t understand what my sister was trying to say. でも僕がわからないのは、もうすぐ死ぬからなのかなと思いました。 But I thought I didn’t understand because I was dying soon. それでもだんだん静かな心になってゆき、眠ることができました。 Nevertheless I felt calm and fell asleep. ようやく熱も下がり元気になった頃、僕はいつのまにかぼんやりして、ひとり考えていることがありました。 When the fever was gone and I felt better, I would sometimes wonder. いまここにいる自分は、あの熱を出して苦しんでいた僕が死んだ後、おねいさんにもう一度生んでもらった、新しい子供じゃないだろうか？ Perhaps this Me who is here now is the new child my sister gave birth to after that Me who had suffered the fever died?

再々々々々生

あの死んだ僕が見たり聞いたりしたこと、それを全部話してもらって、以前からの記憶のように感じているのじゃないか？ Perhaps this Me has learned everything that Me who died had seen and heard and felt like these are his own memories? そして僕は、その死んだ僕が使っていた言葉を受け継いで、このように考えたり話したりしているのじゃないだろうか？ Perhaps I am now thinking and speaking the words I inherited from the Me who died? ねぇ、ここにいるみんなも、きっと、大人になる途中で死んだ僕のような子の、見たり聞いたりしたこと、読んだこと、感じたこと、それを全部受け継いで、その人達の替わりに生きているのじゃないだろうか？ Hey, maybe everyone here died on their way to adulthood like me, having learned and inherited everything those dead children saw and heard, read and felt? T,本を蹴り、たまごをうけとり、ひなをとりだし、またたまごに返し、再々々生をくりかえす M,たまごをわたし、ピアノにたおれ、鳥マントをぬぎ、よろよろと後ろへ歩み、Sに抱えられる S,朗読が終わって先に一度退出。LEDブラウスを身につけ、本の蹴りを間近にみて悲鳴（再々々生のはじまり）をあげる T, kicks the book, receives an egg, takes out a chick, returns it to the egg and repeats this re-re-replay M, offers the egg, falls atop the piano takes off the bird cape, stumbles toward the back, and is embraced by S S, exits first once the recitation is finished. Puts on the LED blouse, witnesses the kicking of the book close-by and screams (beginning of the re-re-replay)

(voiceover) (subtitle) (voice) (mic) 2本 (sound) 扇風機のモーター音低く響く音、もう高くない虫の声り

りりりりりり。鳥の会話ちるるるる、ちーちー集まった音達の中にピアノの音が落ちてくる Sound of the low echoing of the motor of an electric fan. Not too energetic chirping of insects cricricricricricricri, the conversation of bird twittertwittertwitter In the midst of this sound mixture comes the sound of piano.

(piano) (movie) 蹴られた本 Book being kicked (costume) 鳥マント鳥スカート鳥パンツブラウス LEDブラ

ウス bird cape, bird skirt, bird pants, blouse, LED blouse

(prop) 本たまごひな (light)

おわる

再々々々々生

TAKAO LINES

再々々々々生「おねいさん、僕は死ぬのだろうか？」 Sister, am I going to die? 僕は自分でもおかしく感じるほど、ゆっくりした小さな声でたずねました。 I asked in a voice so slow and small that I felt it was even funny. 「わたしはあなたが死なないと思います。死なないように願っています。」 Creo que tu no vas a morir. Deseo que no mueras. おねいさんはしばらく黙りこう言いました。 After a silence, my sister said: 「もしあなたが死んでも、わたしがもう一度生んであげるから、大丈夫」 Si tu mueres no te preocupes porque yo te dare nacimiento otra vez. 「・・・・けれども、その子供は、今死んでゆく僕とは違う子供でしょ？」 But then, that baby will be different from me who is dying now, won’t it? 「いいえ同じですよ。あなたとあたらしいあなたはおなじですよ。 No, no es diferente. El Nuevo tu sera tu mismo. あなたがわたしから生まれて、今までに見たり聞いたりしたこと、読んだこと、それを全部新しいあなたに話してあげます。 Cuando tu naces de mi, yo te contare a ti nuevo todo lo que has visto, oido y leido hasta ahora. いまのあなたの知っている言葉を、新しいあなたも話す

ことになるのだから、ふたりの子供はすっかり同じですよ」 El Nuevo tu hablara las mismas palabras que tu sabes. Los dos son todo iguales. 僕は、おねいさんの言っている意味がわかりませんでした。 I didn’t understand what she was trying to say. でも僕がわからないのは、もうすぐ死ぬからなのかなと思いました。 But I thought I didn’t understand it because I was dying soon. それでもだんだん静かな心になってゆき、眠ることができました。 Neverthless, I felt calm and fell asleep. ようやく熱も下がり元気になった頃、僕はいつのまにかぼんやりして、ひとり考えていることがありました。 When the fever was gone and I felt better, I would sometimes ponder in a thought. いまここにいる自分は、あの熱を出して苦しんでいた僕が死んだ後、おねいさんにもう一度生んでもらった、新しい子供じゃないだろうか？ Isn’t it that this Me who is here now may be the new child my sister gave birth to after that Me who was suffering the fever died? あの死んだ僕が見たり聞いたりしたこと、それを全部話してもらって、以前からの記憶のように感じているのじゃないか？ Isn’t it that this Me has learned everything that Me who died had seen and heard and feels like it’s his own memory?

再々々々々生

そして僕は、その死んだ僕が使っていた言葉を受け継いで、このように考えたり話したりしているのじゃないだろうか？ Isn’t it that I am now thinking and speaking the words I inherited from the Me who died? ねぇ、ここにいるみんなも、きっと、大人になる途中で死んだ僕のような子の、見たり聞いたりしたこと、読んだこと、感じたこと、それを全部受け継いで、その人達の替わりに生きているのじゃないだろうか？ Look, maybe all these children, aren’t they the same? Aren’t they living the lives of those kids who died on their way to their adulthood, having learned and inherited everything those dead kids had seen, heard, read and felt?

EXCHANGE について文明と友情と幸福を問うものがたり自らの意志で向こう側にいってしまった友（姉）遺された人々への再生への願い文明の持つ常に繰り返される問いかけは、過去の人々から現代の私たちへ訴えかけてくる友情の証。そして、EXCHANGEとは、いまだ盲目のこの証を、有形の証に変えてゆくことだ。友情とは、たとえ殺人を起こしたというのであっても、あぁすればよかったこうしなかったのは間違いだとか説教をはじめる輩ではなく、黙って、アリバイ工作をやってくれる人。でもなにもこれは友人に限らず両親伴侶兄弟恋人でもおなじことだが。幸福とは、不可解なものだ。放浪を続け孤独に行き倒れて死んでいってしまい共同墓地に葬られた人間。ただむなしく死んだだけのようにおもえる。がな

ぜかこの人間と幸福のイメージが堅く結びついてはなれない。放浪のときどきに、かたくなであったり、陽気であったり、無自覚であったり、はすっぱで愛らしく嘘つきで人嫌いで、幸福には全く無関心だったに違いないこの人間の沈黙孤独自由を幸福とよんでみたい。

has committed a murder, it is not the people who begin lecturing about how you should have done this, or that it was a mistake that you didn’t do that, but someone who will remain quiet and construct an alibi. Friendship is not limited to friends, but also exists among parents, partners, siblings, lovers. Happiness is inscrutable. Note on Exchange People who lived as drifters A story that investigates who died alone and were civilization, friendship and buried in common graves. happiness. One can only imagine that A friend who has crossed to they died a meaningless the other side of her own will death. However the idea (Sister) of this kind of person The wish of regeneration and happiness seem to given to the people who are be deeply tied together left. and cannot be separated. The questions that are Sometimes the drifter seems repeated without end for the desperate, at times jovial, sake of civilization, are proof at times unself-conscious, of friendship left for us now flippant and adorable and by people in the past. a liar and a misanthropic, And to EXCHANGE is the and without a doubt has transformation of this blind absolutely no interest in proof into something that is happiness, this persons tangible. silent solitude and freedom Friendship is, even if one call that happiness.

再々々々々生

Chapter: JAPAN SEASON 2008:

(Image: T. Aoki)

FROM S PLATEAU by Oriza Hirata

PRODUCED & PERFORMED BY Seinendan Company CAST Kenichi Akiyama, Minako Tsuji, Mizuho Nojima, Ryuta Furuya, Minako Inoue, Reiko Tahara, Tadashi Otake, Kanji Furutachi, Niho Tsukimura, Mizuho Tamura, Niina Hashida, Mashayuki Yamamoto, Hideki Nagai, Kotaro Shiga, Madoka Murai, Shu Matsui DIRECTED BY Oriza Hirata TRANSLATION John D. Tamura STAGE MANAGER Yuko Kumagi ASSISTANT STAGE MANAGER Aiko Harima Kensuke Suzuki SET DESIGNER Itaru Sugiyama

LIGHT DESIGNER Tamotsu Iwaki LIGHT ASSISTANT Chizuru Ariga SET PHOTOGRAPHER Nagare Tanaka SUBTITLE OPERATOR Aya Nishimoto INTERPRETER Masayo Harada PRODUCTION Sachiko Sawai-Nishio Yoko Nishiyama UK premiere at Chapter Arts Centre (29 February 2008).

(Image: Kirsten McTernan)

TOKYO NOTES

EXCHANGE

A Chapter STIWDIO / On the Edge production

CAST Yun Myung Fee Takao Kawaguchi Shirotama Hitsujiya

by Oriza Hirata

CAST Alex Alderton, Duncan Bett, Carys Eleri, Sharon Morgan, John Rowley, Nathan Sussex, Bethan Thomas, James Tyson, Rebecca Woodford-Smith, Anushiye Yarnell DIRECTED BY James Tyson First performed at Chapter Arts Centre, Cardiff (8 February 2008) as part of “On the Edge”. Touring performances at Japan Foundation, London; Dylan Thomas Centre, Swansea; Parc & Dare Theatre, Treorchy

Written & directed by Shirotama Hitsujiya VISUAL SUPERVISOR Shinichi Matsukawa

SOUND DIRECTOR & COMPOSER Kazumasa Hashimoto,

ADDITIONAL VISUAL MATERIALS Richard Foreman & Sophie Haviland (The Bridge Project) Japan Meteorological Agency

STAGE ART DIRECTOR Akiko Sakata

EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR Michimoto Satoh

COSTUME DESIGN Mayumi Iijima Eijo Takada (Zoestyles),

CO-PRODUCED by Kyoto Performing Arts Centre at the Kyoto University of Art & Design

LIGHTING DIRECTOR Kei Ito SOUND OPERATOR Tomohiro Kaburagi TECHNICAL MANAGER Shoichi Motohara

UK premiere at Chapter Arts Centre (3 April 2008)

(Image: Massmiliano Simbula & Kim Chang-Kyum)

AOMORI PROJECT

FIVE DAYS IN MARCH

PERFORMED BY Reina Kimura

A chelftisch production

Choreographed by Sioned Huws

SCULPTURE INSTALLATION Alan Gouldbourne Produced with the support of Chapter Arts Centre, The Great Britain Sasakawa Foundation, The Arts Council of Wales, Aomori Contemporary Arts Centre, Greenwich Dance Agency First performed at Chapter Arts Centre, Cardiff (17 July 2008 following residency presentation at Aomori Contemporary Arts Centre in February 2008)

Written & directed by Toshiki Okada

CAST Taichi Yamagata, Luchino Yamazaki, Hiromasa Shimonishi, Matsueda Kohei, Tomomitsu Adachi, Riki Takeda, Izumi Aoyagi TECHNICAL DIRECTOR So Ozaki LIGHTING DIRECTOR Tomomi Ohira SOUND DIRECTOR Norimasa Ushikawa PRODUCER Akane Nakamura Produced with the support of the Saison Foundation, City of Tokyo with special thanks to Yokohama Steep Slope Studio. UK Premiere at Chapter Arts Centre (19 August 2008)

(Image: Katsu Miyauchi)

(Image: Cathy Boyce)

(Image: Charlotte Taylor)

DREAM REGIME

£1 Running Sushi

Paul Granjon & Kanta Horio

PERFORMED BY Hiruko Hino Kenjiro Kumamoto Miyuki Nakajima

Supported by Japan–UK 150

Presented at Chapter Arts Centre as part of Experimentica 08 festival (17 October 2008)

Presented at Chapter Arts Centre as part of Experimentica 08 festival (18-19 October 2008)

Gekidan Kaitaisha

WITH GUEST ARTISTS Megan Flynn Rebecca Woodford-Smith Matt Beere Anushiye Yarnell DIRECTED BY Shinjin Shimizu LIGHTING Naoki Kawai & Shigeno Ambiro Presented with the support of the Japan Foundation and Japan–UK 150 Presentation of collaborative residency at Chapter Arts Centre (1 October 2008)

Anti-cool

CHAPTER THEATRE DEPARTMENT: THEATRE PROGRAMMER James Tyson THEATRE PROJECTS COORDINATOR Cathy Boyce THEATRE TECHNICAL MANAGER Dan Young Gratefully acknowledging the support of Teiko Hinuma, Hiromi Maruoka, Inza Lim, Takeshi Hata, Yukako Sakuraba and all the contributing artists and writers Aparna Sharma, Shimizu Shinjin, Shu Yang and Shirotama Hitsujiya in enabling both the season and this publication. Chapter Japan season 2008 was supported by:

All texts ÂŠ the authors. Chapter 2010

“Exchange exists as a creature called performing arts. The night before performance, it will sprout wings and fly away to who knows where. It may traverse across the world like the eye of a tornado, but for our part, performing on earth, we will always be able to find the centre of the whirlwind. We spin a spire towards each other with Exchange and move forward with full force, in the attempt to unveil a moment of exchange. Afterwards, there might be a downpour, like the curtain falling on stage.” — Shirotama Hitsujiya

A CHAPTER BOOK 2009