ART New York-based Japanese artist Aki Sasamoto is researching different rituals associated with death for a performance in India next year, says SHAILAJA TRIPATHI
A performance piece, many would say, is meant for the public but Aki Sasamoto, a New York-based Japanese artist working in this genre, doesn't really agree. She needs the audience but doesn't want them. We will get a sense of this complex relationship in January next year when she brings to the city a performance-based installation that explores the concept of death in an exhibition titled “Journey to the West”. The exhibition is one of the three co-curated group shows that are part of Omnilogue, slated to be held in New Delhi whereas the other two will happen in Perth and Singapore. It is being organised by the Japan Foundation.
Sasamoto is currently in Delhi to research the rituals associated with death. She is meeting astrologers, doctors, visiting crematoriums like Nigambodh Ghat and interacting with people to collate material for her performance but she isn't sure how it will eventually turn out. “I wasn't surprised about it because I had read about it. But I did notice how matter-of-fact it is here. In Japan, it is elaborate and more socially governed,” says Sasamoto about death, whose decision to explore the subject was triggered by her constant thoughts about her late grandparents.
Sasamoto says she always gravitates towards clichéd subjects but in the process she personalises them by adding her own experiences and memories. A professional dancer, she uses movements apart from randomly found objects and at times sound and video in her pieces. Rapid movements with lot of talking mark her highly spontaneous performances like “Secrets of My Mother's Child”, performed in New York or “Strange Attractors” performed at the Whitney Museum of American Art Biennial in 2010 or “Remembering/modifying/developing” in 2007. While some could trace more direct link with a concept like in the case of her work “Strange Attractors” which was based on chaos theory, there are several others in her list which draw on personal incidents. “How I look for ideas and build on them is bit like fishing,” remarks the artist, who is also the co-founder of an artists collective, Culture Push. Sasamoto, on her recent trip, was also invited to do a presentation on her art practice at FICA reading room here.
Coming back to the question of how she deals with the viewers, Sasamoto points out that she is indeed aware of the presence of people watching it but there is no particular engagement. “There is a piece in which I point a knife at a viewer. I did so in the performance and my friends later told me that the viewer was nobody but my mother. So, I know there is somebody, I can see a shape but who is it, I don't know.” Her pieces can be viewed as participative — in “Strange Attractors” she distributed donuts to the audience — but that's not deliberate. She recalls how she chose a slot of six in the morning to present the same work at the Whitney Biennial knowing fully well there won't be many viewers around. “There came one and even he went away. So it was just the security guard at the venue, who ended up watching it. So, it's not really about people watching it but about me doing it.”
