„youseitachi no muchinroudo“
On the importance of taking things for granted
September, 7th 2012 in a small town in Switzerland, home of the Kappeler Brücke, the oldest
wooden bridge in Europe, home of Mt. Pilatus and of lake Lucerne. September, the 7th in thecentre of Lucerne, inside the KKL landmark building designed by Jean Nouvel. It’s 7.30 pm,people are gathering in the foyer on the ground floor, waiting to enter the Hall of Lucerne toattend a symphonic concert of the festival orchestra, conducted by Pierre Boulez. September,the 7th in right this foyer, 7.38 pm, all of a sudden a huge, golden object - shiny and shimmery– appears in the sky, right beneath the ceiling of the massive
lobby. It’s carried out of the Kunstmuseum, located on the fifth
floor of the building by a group of people. With the help of ropes
they start to lower it down to the ground floor. A mixture ofJapanese, German, Swiss-German, English and French isfloating through the air. For a moment the object seems to get
out of control and fall down. But in a combined and concerted
effort Akuma No Shirushi, the students of the Architectural
departement of the university and the audience attending arestabilizing the huge sculpture and carry it out the front doors
towards the sunset over the lake.

Akumanoshirushi "Carry-In-Project #10"

As Shintoist traditions of procession and worship, traditional construction technologies and autopian approach of an equal society, where everyone has to carry her part, intermingle in
Akuma No Shirushi’s work, history and yet to come utopias are arbitrarily linked worldwide in
our contemporary society. In consequence Singaporean born filmmaker and theoretist Ho Tzu
Nyen questions the concept of contemporaneity by calling it „Ancient Futurism“, emphasizing
this direct connection between tradition and futurism, the short cut between yesterday and theday after tomorrow.
„Carry-In-Project #10“ or literaly said „Carry-Out-Project“ was part of the 2012/2013 season
opening of Südpol „As long as we keep remembering the future“. I met Noriyuki Kiguchi,
director and head of Akuma No Shirushi, for the first time in November 2010, during aprogrammers visit to Japan, organised by the Japan Foundation, when our group of four washeading for „Festival on the farm“ in Nasu, organised by Tokyo based cultural producers andpromoters precoq. Imagine: Four german and swiss programmers are standing a bit displacedin front of a high school builing somewhere two hours drive up north from Tokyo. Suddenly one
cannot take his eyes of a huge pink-plush object, that is moved through the staircase inside. Is
it really moving or is it just imagination? Is this part of the festival’s programme or somestudents project manufactured in art class? Is this guy with the megaphone the head of thegroup and what does he say? How do theyorganize this massive movement?
Followed later on by questions like: Do I get
you right, that you are a collective, but you are
the head of this project but your goal is to be
the leadsinger of a Hard Rock Band? Didn’t
you just say you are working at a construction
site?

Two years later we are having a beer together on the rooftop terrace of KKL, super happy
about the final golden and shiny moment of a six weeks and three city tour of the Carry-InProject through Switzerland. Zurich’s Theaterspektakel, the recently founded Theaterfestival
Basel and Südpol Luzern presented three different versions of the moving sculpture, all moreor less in collaboration with the local architectural departements of the universities, all withdifferent obstacles, all with the same wonderfuls effect for the audience in the end, we had
when we experienced it in Nasu. A powerful project in public space, organised, seen andcarried by more than 1000 people.
But how did all this fall into place? How does it work, that hours and hours of meetings,
complete misunderstandings, differences not only in a cultural, but also in an organizationaland structural sense, end up in a moment of pure beauty? The answer seems simple: hardwork! And all my admiration goes to Noriyuki Kiguchi and his team! But there is one morereason: Hard Work! Again? Yes! But a different kind of work: „youseitachi no muchinroudo“This expression was stolen from Niwagekidan Penino’s „Your room, nobody knows“, directedby Tanino Kuro, another project presented in the framework of this year’s opening. A surreal,extravagant and extraordinary piece dealing with the necessity of art, its role in times of crisis
and its relation to nature and reality as such. In a hyperrealistic living room, where each andevery object is of phallic shape, a sheep, a swine and two brothers are trying to deal with thepreparations for a birthday party, while at the same time they are busy reflecting about politicaland career ambitions or mathematical problems as well as again and again on the permanentstate of sexual desire. The show culminates in a tableu vivant, quoting a classical familyscenery with mother, father and two children gatherd in a christmas-picture-like-pose toperform a tragicomical version of Johann Pachelbels well-know classic „Canon in D“ onrecorders. A heart-opening scene of pure poetry except for the fact, that the father is a swine,
the mother is a pig and the two brothers seem to be a bit too close to each other. Not to forget
to mention a little detail: the recorders are of course phallus shaped.
Everything here even the most contructed and formal expression is driven by unexplainable
desires but at the same moment seems to be done out of pure necessity: Movements, text,
lightning, etc. We get a blow in the face,
confronted with the gnosis, that art is one of ourbottom-line concerns and as normal andimportant as eating, defeceating or housing but
at the same time it’s the first luxury, the firsttaste of a spiritual state of a being, that appears
more visible in such things as emotions,feelings or something you might call a soul.
Niwagekidan Penino "The Room, Nobody Knows"
photo:Shinsuke Sugino

The term „Youseitachi“ translates to „Fabel-Wesen“ in german. It’s first part „Fabel“ historicallymeans story, but is nowadays only used in two very specific ways: Either in a narrowed sense,
meaning „fairy tale“ or in a technical sense for „a dramatic plot“. The second word „Wesen
describes a „being“ as such, as much as this being’s specific or unique qualities andcharacteristics. As a paradox example this term makes it possible to say: the wind has no„Wesen“ and its „Wesen“ is to blow. Following this distinction, who are these „Youseitachi“?
Who are these characters, these theatrical undeads, who populate Kuro Tanino´s „Room,
nobody knows“? The answer seems simple again: The personas.
Speaking about the artistic field today, especially about performing arts, one get´s theimpression we are in a permanent state of excessive demands, that lead not only tooversaturation and hastening, but even worse to a permanent atmosphere of complaining.
Everybody is complaining all the time: actors about precarious work situations, directors aboutchanging conditions, producers about shrinking budgets, audiences about a loss of quality or
high ticket prices, just to name a few. But there is only one essential group, who did not join
this cacophony and maybe one of the most important of the whole artistic field: The personas.

If Prometheus would have gone on strike, how could Ridley Scott have shot his recent‚documentary’, if Romeo and Juliet would sleep long in the morning rather then continuing theirstupid fight with their parents, what pictures would mankind have of romantic love? If Ödipuswould not have been curious about the real
identity of his parents and instead staid in thecozyness of his adoptive father’s house, whomwould Sigmund Freud and generations ofpsychiatrists following him have had to blame as
the role modell for all children in puberty? It
seems to be time to valorize this often forgotten
and in recent times marginalized group ofcultural workers in a little text like this.

Kyohei Sakaguchi "mobile house"„Why do we have to pay rent to the landlord but not to earth“ asks Kyohei Sakaguchi,
conceptional architect in a lecture about his research on homeless people and their twisted, but
often very sustainable ways of housing and making a living. A question, he says, he asked
himself for the first time as a child and ever since. A question, that I think gets us to the point ofa „youseitachi no muchinroudo“ perspective on the artistic process: There is a lot of things wetake for granted when working in arts, but we should not forget to ask from time to time why
they are there? Isn´t there tons of lucky circumstances and plenty of scrap throughs, isn´t thereplenty of money spent by each tax-payer, isn´t there thousands of sources to steal from andnot to forget:There are innumerable people working and dealing with art, you never find on any credit list or
advertising poster. People busy on telephones, in front of computers or involved in aconversation at a table, working for foundations, in boards or as volunteers. People sending
their best friend to see the show they saw the night before or spreading the word between
colleaugues. People unified by one thought: Investing time, money and energy in arts isimportant. „Youseitachi“, not complaining about what they are doing, but deliberately willing to
do it for the necessity of it. This text is dedicated to them, because they are all essential
collaborators of the big minority of us cultural workers. And only the combined effort of all ofus– from characters to volunteers, from directors to audiences – and our combined emotions –from pure delight to massive complaint - brought together under the vision of a strong artistic
personality will make a project happen. A thought, that brings us back to an idea mentioned at
the beginning of this text: The short cut. The direct link between a and z, that leads to a
moment full of energy and to a lot of beautiful sparkles.
„As long as we keep remembering the future“ was the try to produce as many of these direct
moments and confrontations as possible and was at the same time the try to ad a human layer
to the concept of „Ancient Futurism“: The short-cut not only between times and places, but
between people. Stories and memories from different times, Artefacts and bodies from different
places and beings and languages from different backgrounds and cultures were confronted in
the most imminent way. Of course sometimes
some were on stage and others in the black pit,some were building in the workshops and somewere sitting in offices, some were carrying a huge
golden object and some were just watching, butthey all met at the same time and the same place
and we all met face to face.

Gotanndadan "Suteru Tabi"
KUNSTENFESTIVALDESARTS 2009
Photo:Miwa Monden

In November this year Shiro Maeda and his company are presenting their powerful, sad and at
the same time full of joie de vivre production „Suteru Tabi“ about a boy loosing his father, butfinding his true own way after this crisis at Südpol. It perfectly connects to the despicted
atmosphere created by the three artists and their companies mentioned before. They all speak
about things everybody can connect to and they do it in the most adequate and elaborated way.
None of them speas about the so called actual situation or a specific Japaneseness neither interms of content nor aesthetics. But everybody knows the longing for community and the innerconflict with ones identity and individuality. Carrying around 300 Kilos - shapped like a huge
golden thunderbolt - together with a group of people makes this conflict tangible. Everybody
has desires and sexuals needs he keeps in his „Room, nobody knows“ and has sometimes
thoughts to just drop out of society completely. And everybody knows the loss of a loved one.
It´s these universal topics, that open up a way for real togetherness in international
collaborations: For direct conversations during or after the show, in the supermarket next to thetheatre or in Akuma No Shirushis case in the workshops of the university. And it´s theseconversations, that make it possible to talk about cultural differences, about rumours in one´sown head after seeing pictures of exploding buildings somewhere far away or about a small
but important difference in Japanese and Swiss building law. And it´s last not least the artists
choosing these topics and willing to share their uniquely utopic perspective on them, who madeus all feel like „Youseitachi“ for a few days in September. Thank you all, very much!

Max-Philip Aschenbrenner
Born in Deggendorf, Germany in 1981.
Aschenbrenner has working experiences as an artistic
director (Luzern, SÜDPOL) and a dramaturg. He
studied media studies, interaction and process designs,
and thereafter earned a master’s degree in dramturgy.
He took the position of the dramaturg for HAU(Hebbel Theater, Berlin) in 2008, “Loan Shark”
directed by Chris Kondek at Rotterdamse Schouwburg,and “King Lear” directed by Barbara Weber at Wiener
Festwochen (Vienna Festival) and HAU. Aschenbrenner worked with Frie Leysen as theartistic collaborator for “Theater der Welt 2010” from 2009 to 2010, and as the artistic
coordinator for an art project supported by Deutsche Bank “A Globe for Frankfurt and theWorld”. He was invited to Japan by the Japan Foundation in November 2011. Aschenbrenner
visited Japan again in 2011 as the visiting fellow of the Saison Foundation. He is currently
directing SèDPOL Luzern and will be moving on to Vienna Festwochen from 2013 on.

http://www.saison.or.jp/english/r_morishita/index.html
http://air-j.info/resource/article/air04/
http://www.sudpol.ch/