FUMIKO TAKAHASHI
Tokyo, Japan
"FACE ON FACE"
30 minutes, 7/09/2001atatPall Mall Club

by Victor Petrov
Spontaneity, simplicity, and the beauty of emptiness are Oriental traditions, but Fumiko is apparently striving to move away from the day-to-day realities and traditional perceptions of Japan in the eyes of Westerners.

The faraway world of the West and Europe, with their utterly different outlooks and attempts to get to grips with everything and achieve the "final stage" of truth, are probably seen from the East as being a kind of concept, a logical construction in keeping with the latest "achievements" of humanity and civilisation. The eternal philosophising and mastication of long-forgotten truths discovered by European philosophers back in the Middle Ages, and the whole intellectual reflex of endless modernisation would seem to be more in keeping with this Oriental artist's soul, adrift on its quest in the flow of technology and urbanisation.

Perhaps the concept of the performance lies along the plane of cultural "superimposition", e.g. the way faces are superimposed and change during the performance. It seems to try to unite the impossible, for example fruit and flowers are cut up, then stuck back together again. Everything is captured in snapshots; the choice and the quest are as random as fortune-telling using flowers. By changing countries and decorations, the performer attempts to find her own creativity, but the road promises nothing. It is just a road.