transit

Transitioning to the Symposium 2020.3-2021.6

« Dehors », non-savoir, passage des frontières,
ce qui n’a pas de nom…
Vivre
leur transformation,
leur mutation qui s’anime en mourant
Le savoir louche, anomal et difforme à proprement parler
est un espoir de désespoir, une frêle lumière.

Ko Murobushi

“Outside”, not in knowledge, transiting of borderlines,
this is what has no name...
To live
their transformation
their mutation which comes alive in dying
Knowledge that is underhand, deviating and deformed,
to speak about it exactly
is a hope in hopelessness, a light that is fragile.

Ko Murobushi
01

The pleasures of the Gulag

Hidenaga Otori

In the twenty-first century, in the midst of the new Coronavirus, the project Nijinski at Midnight - planned and prepared since last year - has been temporarily suspended, and now, on Sunday, May 24, 2020, at 10:25 a.m., I’m addressing myself to all of those who are participating in this project. The following is my message as a participant as we go forward. I had a hunch that Ko Murobushi's Nijinski à minuit project might be an attempt of the becoming in the process of a certain void, and th

02

In the diaries of Ko Murobushi

Stephen Barber

In the diaries of Ko Murobushi, we witness an infinite excavation of the matters of the human body, of the ‘outside’ that always holds imperatives of transit which render names inoperable, and also of the gesture of judgement that forever needs to be interrogated and disintegrated. It seems that it’s in the zonal place that transmutation can be attempted, oscillating between living and dying. Ko Murobushi is thinking in this diary fragment of Dostoevsky’s judgements and punishments, but perhaps

03

From the Cracked Body to the Wild Flower

Christine Greiner

I found in the diaries of Ko Murobushi, a short text written in 1998, that refers to Hijikata Tatsumi. It talks about “the cracked body” … “the dancing body opened to the concept of having no identity”. In the last years, I have been thinking about this “cracked body” and the possibility of opening up to a non-identity. What does it mean? In 1983, Murobushi used the term “accidental events” to talk about his butoh experience. Maybe, in a certain way, these “accidental events” can be relate

04

Excerpt from Tatsumi Hijikata ’98

Ko Murobushi

To reduced radically. I have danced as if to put myself to the limit of “poorness.” I have danced with pulling in trac the lines of "outside," and I have danced with radically putting the lines of traveling, wandering, and exile on my body. I copulate a breath with another breath, and then violently draw multiple breaths. I choke on it. I stifle myself and to be white silence that is not dance. (In my breath, there is always other breath. In my thinking, there is always other thinking, and i

05

Indeterminate Murobushi

Jonathan Caudillo

The challenge of approaching Murobushi's work is that it is deeply elusive. This means that, even after his death, his dance and the words with which he gives an account of it, should never be taken as concepts that have a definitive meaning. We have to think about his work from itself and in its terms, even if it has a dialogue with other philosophical and artistic elements. Indeed, it is easy to see that Murobushi establishes his own debate with artists and philosophers who were important to t

06

1028 minuits

Frédéric Pouillaude

Nijinsky thought he was God And he wanted to kill God Ko Murobushi From March 12th 1889 to April 8th 1950, Vaslav Nijinsky crossed through 21941 midnights. From the first wailings till the last breath, they rhythmed the continuity of time and toppled it from one date to another. Applying the same arithmetic, one can say that, from June 14th 1947 to June 18th 2015, Ko Murobushi crossed through 24476 midnights, which means: 2535 midnights more than Nijinsky. What can be learned in 2535 midn

07

May 4th, 1998 – Paris – Diary

Ko Murobushi

At Francis’ place (most likely a dark and moody single room), I am taking a shower when “running away from meaning--all meaning” comes to mind. What is the single, only meaning of “sens”-- something that is already underfoot as an impossibility but can never be reached? The question is meaning--the origin of all meaning and its derivation. So we come to the question of why the taboos of incest and parricide are absolute meanings. What we know about origin. The word that was the beginning i

09

Nijinsky’s survival and fierce inoperativity

Yuma Ochi

When he realized that the concept of “I” was collapsing, Shuji Terayama realized that Tatsumi Hijikata and Tadeusz Cantor only regarded the human body as “just a bag full of blood.” Around the same time, Michel Foucault announced the end of modern humans, and humankind first saw an image of the Earth in outer space taken from Apollo 8. If it had been overstated that anthropocentrism was over, then it was a time when it began to be seen with suspicion. It was also the time when Ko Murobushi not

10

The Return and Repetition of the Body of Zoē or the Corpse
That Is Never the Same Again

Shinichi Takeshige

Giorgio Agamben, in Homo Sacer, focuses on the difference between the two words for life in ancient Greece: zoē and bios. Zoē refers to the fact of being alive―bare and indistinguishable from other animals. Although Agamben does not use the term so openly, it would not be wrong to say that it refers to the life of a laborer as a slave. Bios, on the other hand, means cultural life―the life of a polis citizen with political awareness. Ancient Greek democracy actually relied on the hierarchy betwee

11

Midnight of Dostoevsky to Nijinsky at midnight – prologue

Hidenaga Otori

I've started to prepare a presentation that I'd like to give at a symposium this summer, so I thought I'd talk about that today. If all goes well, I'll be working on this project under the title “Midnight of Dostoevsky to Nijinsky at midnight.” Stephen Barber, in a transit text posted on the Internet, writes that Ko Murobushi mentions Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment in a fragment of his diary. Perhaps he was thinking, at the same time, of the passage Pour en finir avec le jugement de Dieu