A Performer, as Well as an Investigator

I joined a three-days workshop (and additional one day) by Hanae Utamura at Aomori Contemporary Art Centre (ACAC) in Oct 2019. The workshop was a part of her work in the artist-in-residence program "Lively In-between" in ACAC. Prior to my application, it has been notified that the workshop includes some exercises and shooting. The detail was unknown. I expected it would be unexperienced.

Hanae Utamura, born in Japan, has spent large fraction of time abroad since her entrance to university -  the UK, Europe and the US. The workshop was conducted in Japanese. At the workshop, she and the participants discussed some social issues such as difficulty in our life in contemporary society and traditional culture in Aomori. The discussion was open-ended; no conclusion was demanded.

During a spare time, she mentioned the difference in the recognition that artists have received between Europe and Japan. I noticed that someone might have to explain himself or herself very differently to others from different societies to receive a reasonable social recognition. She also mentioned the language used at the workshop greatly affected her mind. Society, language and personal mind may have a hierarchial relation and interact with each other, although such process is not easily imaginable for me. Now I hold her in awe for her years in various societies and her way of living as an artist.

What I think trivial in a society (i.e., common sense or joint recognition) may not be actually trivial. So far, I have spent whole my life in Japan: a nearly monoratial society. I used to unintentionally expect others to act following the common sense in Japanese culture. My thinking would be greatly affected by Japanese ethnicity - I suspected that I was insensible to person who has common senses different from Japanese ones. The discussion provided me an opportunity to reconsider how do I act as a social being in Japanese society and imagine a situation where my profession or belief is not recognized as I usually expect.

Hanae Utamura employes performance as a medium to convey her idea. She performed by herself in the past. When I watched the movie of her past works, I was moved by her energy and enthusiasm to create a piece. Recently she entrusts performance to somebody else. It seems that work made by such method involves more contingency and contains more complex information than self-made performance.

At the workshop, participants made a movement of their bodies following the words recited by her, which represent her image of memories from time immemorial. Her words contained instruction of exercises but differed from script - participants were requested to naturally respond to the words rather than try to perform strictly following the instruction. Participants uttered a groan and made various movements of their bodies to represent the animal evolution process from aquatic to terrestrial, which is reproduced by human embryo during its development. I had a question of autonomy in the exercise because I had to decide my behavior successively responding to her words. Even though, the process of modeling the organic evolution process as a performance was an interesting experience to me. She noticed us the limitation of communication by using words. Her recitation was converted into a performance by participants, mediated by cognition of her words which might vary among participants. Sometimes we participants faced difficulty in making a minimally ordered movement of our bodies - she added some simple rules of exercise to help us manage. It seemed that she wanted to create a performance that contains chaos rather than cosmos to represent evolution of life from its primordial form. She might have challenged to develop a novel procedure to influence a deep region of performer's heart and create a performance which reminds us of link to nature and immemorial time.

After the workshop, I had a question "To what extent was I autonomous during the performance following Hanae's recitation?" The question drove me to think what the experience was for me and write this text. Probably I was less autonomous than in my daily life, but I was not completely a puppet. The performance was generally done by four participants. If the number of participants had differed, I would have been in a different state in mind.