Hans-Thies Lehmann
Akira Takayama, Port B, Walter Benjamin (and the Theater)
I am particularly pleased about this chance to once again return toFrankfurt: to the Mousonturm, which I associate with wonderful
memories of collaborating especially with Christine Peters and which is
now again directed by a friend, Matthias Pees. And it is here that Akira
Takayama is implementing a project that I am no less looking forward tothan everyone else here too. After all, it also embodies a bit of theatre
utopia by so successfully bringing together very different artists. I havefollowed Akira Takayama and his work for more than a decade, and havenever concealed my admiration for this type of “theatre“. We wereintroduced to one another during my very first visit to Japan, then met up
every once in a while either there or occasionally also in Berlin or inVienna.
And although I do not feel at all comfortable with being announced as the“pontiff of postdramatic theory” in the programme (I have no missionary
intentions or stocks in postdramatic theatre) – Akira‘s theatre certainly
does have little to do with traditional dramatic theatre. The first that I
heard about his work was what he told me about a project of hisfeaturing poems by the young Bertolt Brecht. A colleague and friend had
introduced us to one another and the last thing that I would haveexpected was a young Japanese director standing in his flat telling me
about his obsession for these texts. Moreover, Akira then explained tome that the structure of the performance was designed in such a waythat the audience could comment on what they had experienced after thefirst part and that these comments would be integrated into the second
part. So right from the beginning, opening up the theatre bothconceptually and as a space has been a central motif of his work.
I have not been able to experience many of his pieces for myself – theones that I did were “Sunshine 62” and the “Referendum Project” inTokyo, where I was actively involved in one of the events, then“Compartment City” in Vienna, where I had the chance to introduce Akira
to the similarly radical theatremaker Josef Szeiler. At the HAU in Berlin, Isaw the redesigned video installation of his interviews with Japanesepupils – this version is also on view in Darmstadt and I heartily
recommend that you go to see it. Other pieces of his I only know fromvideo documentations, e.g. an impressive reading performance of Heiner
Müller‘s “Horatian” in which the Japanese audience was not only
confronted with the Japanese text both in sound and writing, but alsowith Müller‘s extremely condensed German text.

Many forms of contemporary theatre ceased to be clearly distinguishable
from a political act, an interactive installation, from some kind if
documentary activity, from video art. Yet, I am of the opinion that Akira
remains fundamentally dedicated to theatre: as the only art form thatexists plain and simple as an activity that is shared by creators andspectators and which therefore always and inevitably appeals to a social,human, and cultural responsibility. And as an art form that has, like noother, the potential to allow the dialectic of community and individual to
be truly experienced and to not only remain an intellectual motif.
What can be said about the specific character of this theatrical oeuvre?
Perhaps it makes most sense to begin with the name that Akira
Takayama chose for his theatre group or rather for the network in which
he works: Port B. The ominous B not only stands for the name Walter
Benjamin, but rather more precisely for Port Bou in Spain, whereBenjamin took his life on the run from the Nazi henchmen. The nameindicates the same awareness for catastrophe that Benjamin envisioned
in his famous angel of history and which already nourished Akira‘sthinking and art long before Fukushima. The angel of history inBenjamin‘s “Theses on the Philosophy of History” is driven backwards
from the beginning of time by the storm of what we call “progress” into afuture that he cannot see. Instead he gazes back upon history as itpresents itself to him in form of a continually growing, immeasurable
succession of catastrophes and scenes of devastation. He is unable to
do anything other than behold them with fear and sorrow and in this he isakin to art. Undoubtedly, he would prefer to pause, call out “stop”, heal.
But the storm of time, of progress relentlessly drives him always further
into the future.
This is an apt description of Akira Takayama‘s theatre. His topic is thecatastrophe of human society, that which drives the majority of bodies on
this planet into hunger, anguish, sickness, torment, forced migration anddeath. Into the catastrophe of war: the war of competition, of technology,of political powerstructures.
In its association with suicide, the name Port Bou simultaneously
reminds us of another tragic dimension of the theatre, a true constantthroughout time. Exorbitant persecution to the limits of tolerability caused
Benjamin to overstep another boundary so as to protect his inner selffrom annihilation.
Since 2002, this theatre has thus been created under the name and label
Port B. Naturally, it is not easy working in a country such as Japan - acountry that has practically no funding for theatre and in which theatrecriticism is not a profession, because it is impossible to make a livingfrom it. More often than not, this role of the critic is assumed byacademics, who do so out of enthusiasm. Nevertheless, we can say that
Port B have reached a certain level of international fame. It is importantthat we also lose a few words here about the significance of theFestival/Tokyo and its director Chiaki Soma, who has managed over theyears to predominantly present pieces that transcend the limitations ofconventional art. Romeo Castelluci was there in 2011, for example, andRené Pollesch, as well as a series of Japanese artists, who, after thecatastrophe in Tohoku, also questioned radically their work in terms of
their own personal responsibility. In this, Akira was also once again oneof the most rigorous. He declared that the only form of theatre now
possible is one that is not actually theatre anymore. Theatre today must and his words deeply inscribed themselves into my memory - “hideitself”. Perhaps this best describes the artistic practice demanded today
by artists, who seek to remain faithful to their sense of responsibility andto their art. Theatre must hide – that does not mean that it must
disappear. Instead, it means that it must take on forms and occupy
spaces in which it is not immediately expected and perhaps not
immediately recognised. It takes place where the limitations of what weconceive of as theatre are reached and crossed. Art cannot be art, when
it is only art.
An example of what that can look like is “Compartment City”. As visitor, I
step into a vehicle, for instance, into which a row of small compartments
has been installed. In my compartment, I can watch DVDs containing
interviews with young people. Each interview is no more than 10
minutes long. Before entering the compartment, I selected my choice ofDVDs by simply by following my predilections, the impressions made on
me by the faces and then taking them with me in a small shoppingbasket like in a store. The situation is enticingly private and cozy and yetsimultaneously precarious. I notice how I take in the information and at
the same time watch the gestures: the facial expressions, the pauses
and hesitations in the answers - “Is there something that you are proudof?“. And I gradually notice how the individuals, who I know almost
nothing about, blend into a group. Only to then again appear as
unrelated as solitary individuals. I notice other people entering, hearthem in the compartments beside me. A desire to speak with them wellsup, but I do not follow through. I am free to choose. After listening to sixor seven interviews – putting on the headphones, inserting the DVD,taking it out, putting a new one in – I stand up, leave the compartment
and choose a second “round” of human speech and human faces.
Basically, the system is simple: the same 26 questions are asked over
and over again, so that after a while one begins to look forward to whatthe young people will answer to this or that question and how they will
say it - “Do you believe there will be another war?”
Of course, it would be simple for a trained intellectual to look down upon
the sometimes shockingly naive, sometimes harrowingly clichéd
opinions, to notice the parroting and conformist views in much of what isbeing said. But it is precisely this which holds up a mirror to our own
helplessness, that which has basically - after all and in spite of so much
experience and knowledge - not gotten any further concerning the major
issues of our day and age. And the youthfulness of the interviewees
lends a strange innocence to this moment of them having their say, thesound of voices usually left unheard. Theatre deals with guilt,responsibility and reality. According to Heiner Müller, the duty of art is tomake reality impossible. However, in doing so art can simultaneously
and paradoxically create a space of innocence, whose provocative
power can be greater than all judgements and verdicts.
It is a game, it is play and play it will remain. I am free to make mychoices, free to pay attention to what I will and yet I sense, even in mymemory, that something peculiar grows out of it, something which can be
described as akin to Marx‘s “consciousness of species”:
Gattungsbewusstsein. The German artist Thomas Ruff once produced aseries of oversize portraits, faces against a neutral background, pictures
resembling huge passport photographs. They impressed me greatly,because they – as I believe: fully in keeping with Walter Benjamin’s work
– contain a melancholy reflection of the lives lived by the human species,
the melancholy of mortality engraved in their faces. Simultaneously, myattention, my gaze, the awareness of co-existing with others is awakened
by their absolute normality and ordinariness. Perhaps this is also a formof art that hides itself, that informs us about the human nature hidden in
normality, hidden in the passport photograph.
Some of Akira Takayama‘s pieces are more directly political in theirapproach than others, but ultimately his work always embodies more ofan anthropological rather than directly political voice of criticism. I would
like to speak here also briefly about Sunshine 62, a political-historicalguided city tour or rather: exploration that I was part of in Tokyo. Helene
Varopoulou, who also participated, wrote a text about this experiencefrom which I cite here:“The tour performance SUNSHINE 62 by theatre group Port B in April
2008 in the Ikebukoro district of Tokyo, was an urban project thatrevolved around Sunshine 60 - at that time the highest building in Tokyo.
This skyscraper had been erected at the very site of a former prison forwar criminals of the Second World War. In order to save the institution of
the Japanese imperial system after Japan‘s total defeat, the prosecution
and execution of those responsible among the Japanese political andmilitary elite (…) was simultaneously functionalised into an act ofexpiation, which deeply ingrained itself into the collective memory ofJapanese post-war society.
Takayama Akira confronted us with a wanderer’s gaze onto theconstantly shifting cityscape. The audience walked around the Ikebukuro
district for hours in small groups, whereby each spectator had a small
task to fulfil (reading the map for example or keeping an eye on theprescribed time for each leg of the journey). Based on instructions, theaudience engaged in a topographical, historical and political act ofmapping in a shared search along a succession of individual stations.
Each of the visited locations contained traces of different time periods
and realities. (…) Parallel to this journey, participants were presented
with a series of different views of the Sunshine 60 skyscraper, momentsthat encouraged seeing the building from unexpected perspectives as amonument of literally overbuilt and concealed history (through a tiny
window, behind a cemetery, sideways from a balcony, etc.). These
different perspectives were also irresistibly reminiscent of the famous
100 Views of Mr. Fuji along the Tokaido Road by the Japanese master
Hokusai. (…) At the end of the tour, the participants were asked toexpress their own position, their relationship to issues in the war crimes
trial. In a theatrical, technological and virtual space, each person shouldor could speak aloud in a kind of personal verdict, whether they thoughtthat the convicted were guilty or not.“ (Helene Varopoulou, Theater undLandschaft, in: THEATER IN JAPAN, ed. by Hirata Eiichoro and HansThies Lehmann, Theater der Zeit Berlin 2009, p. 159-169, here p.
163/164)
I still distinctly remember the strange unease that overcame me in thatsituation at the end of the tour, speaking the world “guilty” aloud into a
microphone. There it was, my own voice, one that I should not forgeteven when only being an observer. The unease did not come fromhaving any notable doubts concerning the guilt of these persons, butrather from realising at that moment in a rare clearmindedness, thatjustice alone is not all, but that the step from observing to judging neverloses its monstrosity. And in this sense, theatre, unlike real political life, isnot about judgements, no matter how well substantiated they may be,
but always also about unsettling the act of judgement itself. About voicesthat must become foreign to us in order for us to hear them better. The
voices of the ghosts of history and the ghosts “from the future as well”(Brecht) and likewise, for example here in Frankfurt Evakuieren, ghostly

voices from our own present and our own surroundings, which are only
supposedly familiar but may be in reality entirely unknown to us.