Liquid Ashes_Shadow Puppet Installation, 2009

Flickering Lightings, Sculpey puppet, Black-box structure, Objet

 

As a child I woke in the middle of the night to see dark goblin-like shadows, each holding something in their hands, bustling about the room. Ambiguous shapes, unclear whether form or shadow, were dancing in circles throughout the room. Then spring of 2007, I was able to meet these dark shapes again at Maki Watanabe’s butoh performance “Enfant Loup”. The enormous energy generated by delicate movements in the darkness altered space indefinitely, while the “state of becoming” of ambiguous shapes continued with no purpose or direction, as they had in my childhood dreams. Like the dreams of a sleepwalker, or like the procession of monks, the comic parade of globins within a child’s imagination left only the traces of a wandering dance. The yearning towards one’s lost childhood, or even Utopia, is humanity’s thirst for primeval nostalgia, as well as a spiritual yolk for the eternal recurrence of our minds. The ego that daydreams between the layers of time, hopes for rebirth as it launches upon a Reductionist journey to become a different form and different memory. (Artist’s note)