The Seventh Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art

What was the origin of your performance practice? I studied lacquer work at Kyoto University of Arts. Lacquer work is a very long process, and there was a big lag between having the idea for a work and completing it. By the time I finished a work I was embarrassed to show it. The solution was live, real-time, performative work. My first piece was influenced by Marina Abramovic. It was a single idea — continue a single action for a long time and see how my physical body reacts. This was in 1989. Was there a lot of other work in that vein going on in Kyoto? I worked with some friends at university, and later collaborated with some people from [radical performance collective] Dumb Type, who I got to know in my first year of university. I officially became a member of the group for a specific work, S/N , which started in 1993, premiering at the Adelaide Festival. S/N had such a big theme, because the leader of the company, Teiji Furuhashi, had been diagnosed with AIDS. The subject was difficult to talk about at the time. Earlier, Dumb Type had thought it impossible to convey messages through art. Dumb means mute, unable to speak. That was the basic concept for the group. But to confront this issue — HIV — we could not be silent. So the group went through a dynamic change. Was this unusual for Japan at the time? Very, very unusual. I still keep that in mind. Basically, we don’t make art for art. We make art for people. The quality of the art is important, because quality enables our message to travel further. Every time I get invited by an organisation, I discuss many things with them. I look into what the issues are, what sort of changes people want to make. But even working internationally, I’m always concerned with Japan. Not out of love, more a sense of comfort and responsibility. Your APT7 work addresses the current situation in Japan, especially after 11 March 2011. Can you describe the situation, and how you are responding to it? It relates to March 2011. It’s too early to do this in Japan, but I feel I can do it in Australia. The problem was that before the earthquake, we didn’t have the complete picture. We weren’t aware of how tightly the government and the nuclear industry controlled the media. When I realised that the nuclear strategy was launched almost immediately after Hiroshima, that these two moments in atomic history were related, I began to research what happened between 1945 and 2011, how people reacted to nuclear power, and how the government controlled those reactions. There were many different cases of people challenging nuclear energy in court, for every nuclear plant that was developed, and in 98 per cent of the cases they lost. This is one of the final ways that people can mount complaints officially, but even this option is not open to them. Now even children can tell when the government is lying. There are regular demonstrations and they’re growing. June, July, August was a real peak. A lot of people gathered in Tokyo. I was able to participate, as I was staying in Mito. And I experienced something I hadn’t felt before. When I first joined an anti-nuclear demonstration in Kyoto, there were 5000 people there. But some gatherings have exceeded over 100 000 people. I was in Fukushima two days ago, at the edge of the 30km exclusion area. There are some areas people are allowed to enter during the daytime, but they cannot stay at night. The area is huge. People already know that they can never return. Their faces are very empty. They don’t know what to do. Every house has a Geiger counter. The physical situation is terrible, but there is also a chance to make things better. Now it’s a very important moment to change. If we lose this opportunity, then we don’t know when the next chance will come along. At the same time, people are getting bored with hearing about the nuclear problem. There are those who support nuclear power and those who are just tired of hearing about it. It’s a very complex issue, and there is a lot of misinformation. I don’t know the best way to change the situation. Demonstrations are one way, books are another. I want my work to be a kind of demonstration. Interviewed by Reuben Keehan, September 2012. TADASU TAKAMINE Japan b.1968 Kagoshima Esperanto 2010 Installation view, Kirishima Open Air Museum, 2010 / Image courtesy: The artist TADASU TAKAMINE An interview 205