26 Nov.2016

要ネィティブチェックCoexistence with the Dead —A working hypothesis on Ko Murobushi’s notion of the “outside”—

Yuma Ochi

    In the dance Dead 1, initially, three dancers with their bodies painted in silver emerge standing on their heads. They try repeatedly to stand upright, but cannot. These bodies are inutile within the general economic regime. Or, in Enthusiastic dance on the grave, the young dancers are not able to stop their convulsions. This renders them exhausted and makes the  body turn inutile. A rupture from the obvious representational code and intensity of dance seems to sift into another phase, that is, donation without seeking profit and use. Murobushi’s work approaches the potlatch of the body and reveals its potential to penetrate the simulacrum surrounding it, just as Kuniichi Uno identified the potlatch of the body in Nijinsky and Grotfski.[2] 

   It is clear that “donation” or the act of giving is important for Murobushi as is evident from his books and his notes in his archive. His archive contains books of Marcel Mausse and Georges Bataille, who elaborate on the notion of donation. From this perspective, we begin to realize why Nijinsky’s ideas formed the motif of Murobushi’s dance right from the  beginning to the end of his career. Nijinsky wrote during his phase of madness, “I want to destroy a stock exchange. I am life,” which was a sign of his revolt against the general economic exchanging

regime. Murobushi’s notion of the “outside” also corresponds with Nijinsky’s radical desire.

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Profile

Yuma Ochi

Born in 1981. A guest researcher at The Tsubouchi Memorial Theatre Museum. A researcher at the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, and currently a visiting researcher at The University of Paris VIII.

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