some ideas in process during my residency at Akiyoshidai International Arts Village, in Yamaguchi, Japan

January 10 - March 21, 2010

Stone´s time

Visiting Akiyoshidai Plateau, a mountain that has been a coral reef, and its caves, I had the opportunity to see the history of stone in its texture and realized its ability to change and move in a much slower pace than we humans are able to understand. This challenged my idea of what time is and how I have been treating it until now in my performance work.

I will be dealing with this subject for the next two months by bringing body´s and stone´s time together and working on their contrast and interaction.

Part of this project will be a video work in collaboration with sculpture artist Takehito Shiina.

no-make alley 

A place made of many places, small stories growing out of one, images and poems of the back space of daily life.

I

Suppin Douri

No make alley

 

Yesterday I was guided by Mrs. Yumiko Nakayama, through the path her grandmother and mother, together with other women of the town, used to be able to arrive to the market without using make up.

The no-make alley, in Japanesse Suppin Douri, is a pathway made of narrow streets, arriving to the city market. It’s name is only known by the women who used this pathway to avoid the use of make up to go shopping for food. Once in the market it seemed not to be a problem any more weather you wore make up or you didn’t.

From beginning to end the pathway takes around 25 minutes to be walked through. 30 percent of the houses forming it are uninhabited.

It’s said it existed already 400 years ago… in any case, the change of periods form its beginning till today, is shown in the diversity of architecture and landscape forming it. Houses as old as the oldest I have ever experienced, grounds made of all sorts of materials, areas now used as parking lots, rice and corn fields, a big avenue crossing, ups and downs.

The end of the pathway is closed by a bush, and that seemed to be the entrance to what used to be the market.

The truth is, the No-make alley has no destiny anymore: the end is blocked, so the way is to nothing, to a bit of space filled with dirt in between a house and a little but imposed bush.

So, if before the idea was to use it to avoid making up, today it can only be used for going nowhere, for walking without a destiny, walking forward without going somewhere, not doing.

This is an ode to “not doing”

In the honor to those women who dared “not making”.

 

II

I took a day to just be in the no make alley.

I asked a couple of old women if they knew it… they said they don’t

I continue appreciating the alley as the no make alley.

Since it is enough existence even if just for a tale.

 

I took many pictures of windows, of things tied together, of details.

 

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