{"id":3175,"date":"2019-03-26T20:03:54","date_gmt":"2019-03-26T11:03:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/realtokyo.co.jp\/_sys2024\/en\/?p=3175"},"modified":"2019-03-26T20:03:54","modified_gmt":"2019-03-26T11:03:54","slug":"aokid-chikyujiyu","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/realtokyo.co.jp\/en\/performance\/aokid-chikyujiyu\/","title":{"rendered":"Aokid “Earth,freedom!”
ST Spot Yokohama, 2019.3.7-11<\/small>"},"content":{"rendered":"

Easily crossing the boundaries of performing arts and visual art, Aokid operates in all kinds of settings from black to white boxes to streets. As far as I remember, it was his performance at TOKYO ELECTROCK STAIRS in 2011 where I first saw him, and every time I caught him after that, he perplexed me with the immeasurable depth of what is behind his refreshing smile and the character kind of role he seems to play. The smooth transition between two- and three-dimensional formats in this work, however, pretty much cleared things up for me.<\/p>\n

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Photo by ShinichiroIshihara<\/p>\n

The large, A1-sized flyer advertising this piece contains little more than the handwritten title and a drawing of the earth \u2013 an image that plays a central role also in the performance itself. In a semi-dark setting, Aokid cut the \u201cearth\u201d out from a large sheet of drawing paper, spun it around and let it fly through the air, and eventually crumpled it into a ball that floated in space. Such kind of transition from something two-dimensional into a three-dimensional object happened at several points during the performance. The piece mixed live performance with video footage of past performances, and like the projection of \u201cAokid on video\u201d dancing in an outdoor setting in Germany onto the artist\u2019s own hand, his two-dimensional creations are very much alive, not unlike the way origami paper instantly transforms into a three-dimensional object. Here he juxtaposed the rotating earth cut out from paper with his own breakdance performance spinning on the floor, moving freely between the two-dimensional and the three-dimensional as if transferring the motion of the \u201cearth\u201d onto his own movements.<\/p>\n

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Photo by ShinichiroIshihara<\/p>\n

It would certainly be rash to simply attribute this style it to the sensibility of a digital native who is well familiar with virtual experiences via flat surfaces. Much rather than that, the act of \u201cgathering people in real spaces\u201d and the meaning of theaters as venues in an age when dance watched on video is increasingly becoming a mainstream format, Aokid\u2019s art looks highly subjective to me. He changed lighting and music to split up and sequence his performance in discontinuous time frames, while one aspect that penetrated all of the colorful scenes that popped out one after another was an exquisite sense of rhythm. While watching up close the moments in which movements of varying speed crystallized in instant poses, and listening to the sounds that came from various places across the small venue, at some point the breath of the viewer synchronized with Aokid\u2019s own “breath.\u201d This physical resonance is certainly the appealing point that a live performance in general is all about.<\/p>\n

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Photo by ShinichiroIshihara<\/p>\n

Toward the end of the piece, during \u201cthree minutes of free time\u201d the spectators were encouraged to leave their seats and move to an adjacent area that until then was part of the stage, from where they watched Aokid dance around the audience seats and the bags left there. While letting the audience still be audience, he created a time-space where spatial and psychological differences disappeared, to allow everyone to make the same real-life experience of \u201cbodies sharing the same here and now.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Photo by ShinichiroIshihara<\/p>\n

Shuntaro Tanikawa wrote in Two billion light-years of loneliness that \u201cuniversal gravitation is the power of solitudes pulling each other,\u201d and the continuo in the seemingly euphoric hymn to the earth that is \u201dEarth Freedom!\u201d is perhaps a \u201csolitary\u201d one. The smile that remained on the artist\u2019s face as he continued his lone battle with the ground wrapped it all up in a beautifully romantic mood.<\/p>\n

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Photo by ShinichiroIshihara<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Easily crossing the boundaries of performing arts and visual art, Aokid operates in all kinds of settings from […]","protected":false},"author":39,"featured_media":3178,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/realtokyo.co.jp\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3175"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/realtokyo.co.jp\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/realtokyo.co.jp\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/realtokyo.co.jp\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/39"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/realtokyo.co.jp\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3175"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/realtokyo.co.jp\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3175\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3200,"href":"https:\/\/realtokyo.co.jp\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3175\/revisions\/3200"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/realtokyo.co.jp\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3178"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/realtokyo.co.jp\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3175"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/realtokyo.co.jp\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3175"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/realtokyo.co.jp\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3175"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}