Takao Kawaguchi Selection: Un Certain Regard
Yuki Kobayashi—Ice Cream Torch / Ceremony
Ice Cream Torch / Ceremony (15min)
BUTOH Sunakku—Aftershow（45min）
About Yuki Kobayashi
Yuki Kobayashi began working as an artist when he moved to England in 2010. In 2014, he began the first Japanese person to study performance at the Royal College of Art in London, and has since presented his works at numerous exhibitions and art festivals around Europe, Asia and Japan.
He uses a variety of mediums in his works, including painting, installation, photography and video. But at the heart of his pieces is always his body, which he uses to question stereotypes about gender and race. One of his key series is Life of Athletics, which makes use of photography and performance, and is based on the themes of sports and gender. As a teen, Kobayashi aspired to be a professional tennis player. His convincing works reflect the uneasiness he felt in the world of sports, as well as layers of experience in facing and expressing his own body, gender and race while living many years abroad.
About Ice Cream Torch / Ceremony
Ice Cream Torch / Ceremony was commissioned by Takao Kawaguchi, the artistic director, as he empathised with Kobayashi’s work. It is the latest in Kobayashi’s Life of Athletics series, and was presented as a trilogy of photographs in Vienna and Berlin based arts magazine SPIKE Art Magazine (Issue 67, 2021) prior to this. As a performance, this is its world premiere.
Kobayashi’s previous Life of Athletics performances have involved moving and dressing as a sports person, but in this work, he wears a wedding dress instead.
Standing on stairs of the Former Hakubutsukan Dobutsuen Station that connect the ground level with the underground, Kobayashi performs two pieces. The sound of a trumpet playing the theme song from the 1981 film Chariots of Fire reverberates alternately with the stylish imagery, creating a disturbing atmosphere. It is a video work that records the thoughts and actions of an artist delving in the sexual discriminations and commercialisations that are suffocating society today.
Artist
Yuki Kobayashi
Visual artist and performance artist, born in Tokyo, 1990. Studied abroad in Hawaii before moving to England in 2010. After graduating from Central Saint Martins, he completed a masters in performance at the Royal College of Art in 2016. Using his body to question gender, disability and racial stereotypes, he contests the inconsistent social codes of freedom and equality, and creates performances that explore the meaning of human existence. He has performed at numerous Japanese and international art exhibitions, theatres and festivals.
Host
Takao Kawaguchi
Joined the performance group Dumb Type in 1996. Began a solo career in 2000, exploring the boundaries of performance across theatre, dance, video and art. In 2008 he began a solo performance series called a perfect life, which was presented at the 5th Yebisu International Festival for Art and Alternative Visions in 2013. In recent years, he has been working on performances that are related to Butoh, including The Sick Dancer (with Tomomi Tanabe, 2012) and About Kazuo Ohno (2013). The latter was nominated for an NYC Bessie Award, and was shown at Théâtre de la Ville in Paris in 2018.
http://www.kawaguchitakao.com/
Credits
Artist
Yuki Kobayashi
Music
Yoichiro Kita
Film Production
NPO LAND FES
Stage Management
Takashi Kawachi
Lighting Design
Noriyuki Mori (balance,inc.DESIGN)
Photography
Tatsuhiko Nakagawa
Yulia Skogoreva
Organisers
Tokyo Metropolitan Government
Arts Council Tokyo (Tokyo Metropolitan Foundation for History and Culture)
Planning and Production
NPO Dance Archive Network