Sep. 10, 1996

Sep. 24, 1996

Art Watch Index - Sep. 17, 1996

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<<Metamorphosis of Narcissus>> Kim Itoh + The Glorious Future July 6, 1996 19:00- July 7, 1996 17:00- Venue: Theatre X(Kai) for detail information: Kim Itoh + The Glorious Future Tel.03-3320-7217 Kim Itoh dancing <Is a living dead person, alive while being dead?> Photo: Noboutoshoi TAKAGI Salvador Dali http://pharmdec.wustl.edu/ juju/surr/images/ dali/dali.html A Docent's Tour of Salvador Dali Resources http://www.empower.net/ dali/dalimain.html

<<Metamorphosis of Narcissus>> - Kim Itoh + The Glorious Future Takaaki KUMAKURA The dance today Dancing - Ever since dancers like Tatsumi Hijikata and Kazuo Ohno created one of the most significant body expressions and philosophies in man's history of dance, the dance in the post industrial capitalism has not been able to achieve new changes and seems to be losing its momentum. However, one dancer originally coming from the world of dancing, is attempting a breakthrough. His name is Kim Itoh. Kim learned dancing under a professional dancer, Anzu Furukawa from 1987. Since 1990 he has become active in solo dance performances as well as collaborations with other artists both in Japan and in Europe. In 1995, he established "Kim Itoh + The Glorious Future". Kim experiments with dance performances which transcend the boundaries of different art genres such as modern dance or even theater. Kim Itoh's challenge Kim performed <<Metamorphosis of Narcissus>> (revised version) produced by " Raku no Kai", a community based art and cultural group, at Theater X (Kai ). The title of the performance was "Metamorphosis of Narcissus", taken from Salvador Dali's painting. The performance consisted of four parts, "Pain", "The Declaration of the Blossoming", "Water Stairs" and "The Bird that Christina Saw". It begins with a crouched pose of the dancer, which apparently was inspired by the pose of Narcissus in Dali's painting. A white "lump" with no specific shape suddenly produces two feather antennas. The subtle, organic writhing of the hands and fingers that start to slide out of this lump soon becomes united with a sharp, mechanical movement, beating a noisy rhythm. Suddenly, there is the "Blossoming". As if absorbing and introjecting (in the psychoanalytical meaning) the new "world" he became born into, the performer indiscriminately ingests the environment around him as if through his lips and his own body. Then comes the "Water Stairs". As if mesmerized by the jazz music, and as if invited by the musical "scale", the body walks and sways within the waver of the fluid. In the fourth part of the performance, "The Bird that Christine Saw" (the name was taken from an Andrew Wyeth painting with the same title), the stage atmosphere dramatically changes. The skinhead dancer wearing an eye-patch and a suit performs the "mad scientist". To the noise of an electric guitar, the mad scientist sticks peacock feathers onto the floor, caresses his body with them, performing a fetishistic ecstasy. Then, suddenly the music changes. The eye movement tracing the object transforms into a dance, and finally, the dancer is shown struggling against "something big" while also being tossed about by this power. The dancer quietly crouches, displays a defiant smile, and the performance has reached the finale. One starts to writhe from a "oneness" that lies crouched, then "blossoming" = born into the world, wavering and walking within a fluid environment, and finally becoming intoxicated by a fetishistic and esoteric intellectual pleasure = madness. However, something flying down from heaven arrives, and as one follows it, he becomes involved in the struggle with "something big". Is it too much to say that this performance implicitly expresses the post-war moratorium-like environment in which the Japanese people were placed, and the slight sign of their departure from that moratorium? The future of the dance Hijikata grew up in the muds of the rural district of the Tohoku region in Japan. He lives with the sharp understanding of the gap within the dance expression of the modern West, and has crystallized his understanding into the creation of his own body. For the survival of the "dance" in the future, dancers must meet the challenge of how their bodies should fight against the contemporary "post-modern" society which incorporates various "real" violences as it also becomes "hyper-realistic", creating a new expression from the struggle. Kim Itoh is facing the challenge now. [Takaaki KUMAKURA/ French Literature, Contemporary Art]

<<The Desire of Making the Invisible Visible>> Nina Fischer and Maroan el Sani August 11-22, 1996 P-House Tel. 03-5458-3359 Artist Introduction Nina and Maroan held the "Supernatural Mobile Track" project this past summer at "On Camp/Off Base" (August 10-19 at Tokyo Big Sight). Other projects include, "Be Supernatural" which encouraged communication by telepathy, "Cyberseance", the electronic seance, "Talk with Tomorrow" presented on the Internet in 1994, etc. exhibition room aura research photograph the room where the aura photograph was taken aura research photograph The Kirlian Aura Kamera http://www.compusmart. ab.ca/triune/kirlian.htm Nikola Tesla: inventor, engineer, scientist http://www.neuronet.pitt. edu/~bogdan/tesla/ P-House / cafe seminar http://www.big.or.jp/~solar/ cafe/root.html "GALLERY Three Urban Art Projects Encountering the city of hope" Art Information, Aug.6

Do You Believe in the Technology of "Believing"? <<The Desire of Making the Invisible Visible>> Nina Fischer and Maroan el Sani Yukiko SHIKATA The contrast between two photographs In this exhibition, color photographs are displayed in pairs. One of the pair is an ordinary picture of the interior or exterior of a house, including a shot of a person who appears to be the resident. The other half of the pair is an incomprehensible, indefinite shape of what seems to be a blot of light. An ordinary picture of the interior of a room, and an irregular pattern that is incomprehensible...in such a case, we often attempt to figure out how these two things relate to one another. In our daily lives, we are accustomed to assume that all things are securely linked by a certain connection, through a certain rule such as the law of causality. Hence, once we are faced with a situation, where existing concepts do not apply, we enter into a state where our mind is suspended. Because this is art, one assumes that it is probably appropriate to consider that these two photos are paired arbitrarily, under a condition that is totally estranged from such a rule. However, even if that were the case, (no matter how difficult it is to guess the analogy) there should be some relationship or counter-relationship.... Those visitors who step into the exhibition of the young artists from Berlin, Nina Fischer and Maroan el Sani, will experience such a planned dissonance. The link between the photographs The link between the photos presents itself through the small remarks (made by the person in the picture) placed next to the photos. We learn that both pictures were taken at the same place, from the same position. Also, the family in the picture, who used to live in the house, had to leave for one reason or another (missing, dead, etc.), but they (all the more) maintain the room even today as a precious place. Further, the indefinite imageries are photographs of the aura of the former resident who went away. Nina and Maroan call these photos, the Kirlian photographs. The Kirlian photography is a technology named after the Russian scientist who developed it in 1939 ( Nicola Tesla had already been experimenting it in the 1880's). The Kirlian photography is a technology in which the electronic magnetic waves of an organism are directly transferred onto the picture. Are the photos truly Kirlian photographs, and are they true auras? Whether we believe in them or not, is not important. What is important is that by contrasting a photograph that has been taken by a camera that captures the world we see, with another kind of photograph, allows us to consider the relativity of the world we believe in, and the potential of the existence of many variants become open to us. We discover that the world image and visual image (and space) in which we have no doubt about, in fact, heavily rely on artificial technology both historically and culturally (the visual image in the pre-modern days must have been totally different from the present). "The technology of believing" It can be seen that within the family, which is the familiar subjective <bo dy>, the people in the picture feel the aura as being the virtual substance of the non-existent family member, and that they are living depending on the traces and memories of the lost person. Niklas Luhman, who believes that the complexity of the world is lessened when various possibilities are taken away from the social system, says, "familiarity is the prerequisite of trust" (Taken from "Trust"). The works displayed here are the "technology of believing" that is set up in multiple ways, and they show how well the belief serves its function in the lives of the people and the society. Nina and Maroan subtly insert many delicate cracks into that system, making use of the Kirlian photography, that was excluded from the surface of modern science by a certain historical coincidence (or authority). [Yukiko SHIKATA/Art Critic]

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