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No words are necessary.
Once people see what I'm doing here in my yard,
they'll know exactly who I am.
Sometimes when I wake up and have my morning coffee,
I realize that I have this yard right here.
It's like how in the summer you'd want to go swimming if the sea was nearby.
I started performing from 1969.
Up until the mid-70s, there were quite a few happenings occurring in the streets.
Back then I would go stand in the middle of roads like this in Shinjuku or Ginza,
and start convulsing upright. That would be my performance.
Sounds bizarre, right?
Hey! What's this!?
What the hell!?
- Of all the places... - What brings you here!?
I'm working!
We were students together.
He drew a lot of paintings that wouldn't sell.
You were also a model.
- A nude model. - Yeah, that's right!
For art students.
He'd say that the female nude models had it easy,
but they'd have guys doing all these impossible poses!
One day, I was at a haiku gathering,
and there was a man named Kiyoshi Kaneda there.
He said that one time, Takuzo went to the beach, dug a hole, and stuck his head in it.
He barely had enough air to survive.
In the end it was too dangerous, so Kiyoshi had to dig him out.
He saved this guy's life.
Nowadays, the police are so sensitive they'd even take you away for sleeping in the park.
- We live in a terrible world today. - Indeed we do.
See you, Ooi-san!
When I do performances,
I'll usually make some stir-fried udon or soba.
Or maybe some jigae. Just as a way of welcoming everyone.
I hang myself here, at home, on a daily basis.
I do it here and there before 5pm.
But I prefer not to do it when I have a performance coming up.
I take it easy on days when I'm doing a show.
I've been hanging myself here in my yard like this for 15 or 16 years now.
I was really scared the first time, because it was like nothing I'd ever done before.
My head was full of all sorts of questions like "Why am I doing this?"
So I was just hanging there in a panic.
This is a residential area.
It's hard to find your way here at 8pm at night.
Hanging myself allows me to distance myself from the boredom of daily life.
You hardly ever see apples fall from trees, right?
I drop like this because of the weight of the body falling once the noose is removed.
It's gravity.
That concludes the show.
Please come inside.
I've prepared a simple evening meal.
Today is like a great gift for me.
Hanging makes the rest of my day very light.
Even though we're sharing the space of the garden together,
it feels like there's a huge distance between you and us, the audience.
It was bit creepy, but comforting at the same time.
It was very interesting. Sort of like a contemporary play.
There's the sky and all this space.
Sometimes I find these things really moving. I feel as though I'm being enveloped.
Those are the moments when I realize why I was born.
What I do is simply my reaction to being born.
Or perhaps it's being done to me.