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Aki Sasamoto
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Remembering, modifying, developing
by Aki Sasamoto
Everyday activities i am committed to have stains here and there, silently roaring secret codes of personality. i am interested in procedures, gestures, and habits in daily life, which are so constant that minute differences in their execution expose the condition of people’s mental state or environment.
Memory:
My experience in the mental hospital left me vivid memories of the habits other patients had; The lady next to me woke up at 3 a.m. to scream her fear of evil; The one behind her spent most of the time looking out of her window and sobbed when she watered her geranium; Just outside was the only public phone, which the drug-addict man punched till it broke both his hand and the body of this phone; The old man in the wheelchair circled his pointing fingers around each other all the time; Every time he saw me, he proposed a marriage to me, to which I responded, “i am gay.”
He was a man of Astronomy. His fingers rotated around each other, with their movement as constant as planets in their orbits. So i secretly named him Planetary Man. One day i discovered the floor pattern of Planetary Man. A regular triangle emerged by drawing lines between the places he went: his ward, the bathroom, and the dining room. He orbited among these three places everyday with his constant satellite fingers. And the center of the triangle was my ward; no wonder why he gravitated towards me.
Being in a public hospital in deep Wales meant having tea several times a day. Nurses gathered us at the dining room, and systematically provided each patient with a cup of thick brown tea and a couple of biscuits. The biscuits they had were either buttery ginger biscuits (cookies as called here) or plain chocolate ones that did not taste like cocoa at all.
It was in the third week of my stay at the hospital when consistency of habits was challenged. On this day, on the whim of whatever-whoever, there were cream-sand biscuits at the second teatime. For this unheard of event, everybody got out of their chairs and rushed to the unpopular staff with teacups, and reached out their arms for the first serving. While there was a crowd around the serving table, a couple in wheelchairs were left behind at the edge of the room. At the moment of separated population, Planetary Man’s fingers, which were so constant in my life there, broke out of their orbit. His arms for the first time extended fully, his fingers broke out of the state of gravitational equilibrium, and his calling for “cream-sand biscuits!” pierced the room.
Boredom and fascination come hand in hand in our daily activities. i constantly believe in and doubt how the world around me functions. i thought, i think. i think i thought that his fingers orbited around each other like satellites. Yesterday they did. Or not.
Modify:
The performance/installation work, “remembering, modifying, developing” is a musical belief-making system over the period of May 9th -27th, 2007. i have created several movement motifs out of personal logic and intuition, which may equate or repel common knowledge of meanings behind actions. The sculptures with different degrees of alterations occupy the installation space, also teetering on the edge of their symbolism. When the performer is not there, the objects breathe with possibility of movements and interactions among them. The performer feeds energy into the objects everyday, adding the boring and fascinating history between a person and her environment.
The sound of this piece shadows “cream-sand biscuits.” The performance is recorded through moodily focused cameras hung from the ceiling. The cameras capture movements and stillness of the objects and the body, simultaneously recording the sound made in the space. Another performer, the archivist of the sound history, plays the sound of yesterday’s performance back into the performance space, together with her/his new commentary on the live broadcast of the camera input. S/he may grab strangers once in a while to interview them, or with whom to make responding sounds. The sound of the objects, performer, archivist, and random witnesses accumulate over three weeks, and replays a density of experience around personally symbolic objects and actions.
Developing:
i am interested in continuous life of art production.
Artwork is a byproduct of life.
i am interested in being in the middle of art making.
In the thick of imaginative art, boredom and fascination come hand in hand.
In the thick of imaginative life, i breathe, relentlessly feeding energy into the system of this world.
i have to be in motion, to wait for rapture.
My gaze at the world is loving but filled with fear.
i try to hide my focus, but at the corner of my eyes, i show too much intention to observe.
Everyday activities i am committed to have stains here and there, silently roaring secret codes of personality. i am interested in procedures, gestures, and habits in daily life. They are constant. Minute differences in their execution expose the condition of people’s mental state or environment.
by Aki Sasamoto
Everyday activities i am committed to have stains here and there, silently roaring secret codes of personality. i am interested in procedures, gestures, and habits in daily life, which are so constant that minute differences in their execution expose the condition of people’s mental state or environment.
Memory:
My experience in the mental hospital left me vivid memories of the habits other patients had; The lady next to me woke up at 3 a.m. to scream her fear of evil; The one behind her spent most of the time looking out of her window and sobbed when she watered her geranium; Just outside was the only public phone, which the drug-addict man punched till it broke both his hand and the body of this phone; The old man in the wheelchair circled his pointing fingers around each other all the time; Every time he saw me, he proposed a marriage to me, to which I responded, “i am gay.”
He was a man of Astronomy. His fingers rotated around each other, with their movement as constant as planets in their orbits. So i secretly named him Planetary Man. One day i discovered the floor pattern of Planetary Man. A regular triangle emerged by drawing lines between the places he went: his ward, the bathroom, and the dining room. He orbited among these three places everyday with his constant satellite fingers. And the center of the triangle was my ward; no wonder why he gravitated towards me.
Being in a public hospital in deep Wales meant having tea several times a day. Nurses gathered us at the dining room, and systematically provided each patient with a cup of thick brown tea and a couple of biscuits. The biscuits they had were either buttery ginger biscuits (cookies as called here) or plain chocolate ones that did not taste like cocoa at all.
It was in the third week of my stay at the hospital when consistency of habits was challenged. On this day, on the whim of whatever-whoever, there were cream-sand biscuits at the second teatime. For this unheard of event, everybody got out of their chairs and rushed to the unpopular staff with teacups, and reached out their arms for the first serving. While there was a crowd around the serving table, a couple in wheelchairs were left behind at the edge of the room. At the moment of separated population, Planetary Man’s fingers, which were so constant in my life there, broke out of their orbit. His arms for the first time extended fully, his fingers broke out of the state of gravitational equilibrium, and his calling for “cream-sand biscuits!” pierced the room.
Boredom and fascination come hand in hand in our daily activities. i constantly believe in and doubt how the world around me functions. i thought, i think. i think i thought that his fingers orbited around each other like satellites. Yesterday they did. Or not.
Modify:
The performance/installation work, “remembering, modifying, developing” is a musical belief-making system over the period of May 9th -27th, 2007. i have created several movement motifs out of personal logic and intuition, which may equate or repel common knowledge of meanings behind actions. The sculptures with different degrees of alterations occupy the installation space, also teetering on the edge of their symbolism. When the performer is not there, the objects breathe with possibility of movements and interactions among them. The performer feeds energy into the objects everyday, adding the boring and fascinating history between a person and her environment.
The sound of this piece shadows “cream-sand biscuits.” The performance is recorded through moodily focused cameras hung from the ceiling. The cameras capture movements and stillness of the objects and the body, simultaneously recording the sound made in the space. Another performer, the archivist of the sound history, plays the sound of yesterday’s performance back into the performance space, together with her/his new commentary on the live broadcast of the camera input. S/he may grab strangers once in a while to interview them, or with whom to make responding sounds. The sound of the objects, performer, archivist, and random witnesses accumulate over three weeks, and replays a density of experience around personally symbolic objects and actions.
Developing:
i am interested in continuous life of art production.
Artwork is a byproduct of life.
i am interested in being in the middle of art making.
In the thick of imaginative art, boredom and fascination come hand in hand.
In the thick of imaginative life, i breathe, relentlessly feeding energy into the system of this world.
i have to be in motion, to wait for rapture.
My gaze at the world is loving but filled with fear.
i try to hide my focus, but at the corner of my eyes, i show too much intention to observe.
Everyday activities i am committed to have stains here and there, silently roaring secret codes of personality. i am interested in procedures, gestures, and habits in daily life. They are constant. Minute differences in their execution expose the condition of people’s mental state or environment.