I used to believe there are real humans and not-real humans. I am slowly coming around to the assertion that there is no such thing as one right way to be alive, and that everyone, in their own way, converses with the divine. But in every respect, Kurokawa seems to be a real one––and what I mean by that is:
Obviously, he is interested. Just no bullshit, point-blank interested. You can tell by how he talks about Charles and Ray Eames (I liked their chairs but until recently, I didn’t know they made videos) and films and space music. I have really come to despise spaces that reek of “people who like art trying to one-up each other about how much they like art,” but maybe what I got from this article was a sense of belonging. The mediums and spaces that Kurokawa saw growing up, and felt he belonged in, and that explain why he did what he did, and why he was being interviewed that day.
Watching that Eames video, I was thinking isn’t that how we all have felt for forever? Isn’t that what my Christian forefathers meant when they said we are made in God’s image? Quantum explosion meets hydrogen bomb. This connection between macro and micro. You just have to cut things up and put seemingly-dissimilar-but-actually-similar-things together. A blown out shot of Chicago and the quivering white of a proton. And what is art but adjusting things into your perspective, and hence, our perspective––we just hadn’t realized it was our perspective too, yet. There were a lot of perspectives in this article that stuck out to me.
The first being Kurokawa’s insistence on simultaneous sound and video. I am really coming to dislike categorizations. I think because of Plato and Descartes and a whole lot of other old white guys, we automatically and unconsciously think of things in fixed, Platonic essences. We forget to see things as actually changing and blurring, constantly arranging and rearranging co-constitutions. Like the senses, for example. There are five senses, or so we say. But no––we see sound and hear what we see. That’s why it is so important for performance to be simultaneous. There are senses and realities that exist in between our divisions. Maybe Kurokawa likes bringing people into these liminal spaces, more “real” because they are liminal? Or maybe, grounding people in what we have forgotten. Art is supposed to do that, too. But I think Live Coding is really attached to this––reminding us to return to pure experience, without preconceived notions or categories, the way we have to do in our day to day. To just witness your body and all its interactions for what they are.
That’s why Kurokawa’s performances are “in constant flux, with entities exploding into fragments and dynamically reassembling…” The journalist writes “Nothing is solid in Kurokawa’s universe.” That’s because nothing is solid in our universe. But through live performance, Kurokawa helps us remember that. Or, I think that’s one part that goes into why he does what he does. At least, that’s the part that speaks to me.
I liked reading about how Kurokawa started doing what he was doing. He was just an interested, alive human who started playing around. Doing wacky projects with his friends. I think I often forget that life is just one big playground. Most of the photographers and videographers I admire, when you read their backstories, it’s like this. They were trying, but they weren’t really trying. They were, I guess, playing hard. The journalist said the artists around his time “cut their teeth in clubs and graduated to galleries.” F galleries. Keep it in the clubs, I say.
I also really liked Kurokawa’s observations about nature. I often feel really at odds with my world. I really hate the utilitarian nature of modernity. I just think it’s ugly. Sorry Mies van der Rohe, but I’ve always hated the obvious order of blocks and skinny skyscrapers. I, too, preferred the natural sprawl. How everything looks chaotic on the outside but is governed by a pristine, internal order. I think we have to totally bulldoze our modern notions of organization and cleanliness and Kurokawa is apart of that.
Through all of Kurokawa’s words, I do detect a real human. Or, just maybe what I recognize as real in myself. His indifference towards technological development. His choice of words: “he doesn’t show himself.” His draw towards nature. He says that nature changes gradually and I breathe a little, being reminded yet again that I am allowed to do the same, even if it doesn’t seem like it. I visited this exhibition by TaeZoo Park that was a bunch of glitching televisions but beneath the spectacle of it all, was a tribute to his lifelong love for Nam Jun Paik. I’ll never forget the first time I saw Riyoji Ikeda’s “Superposition.” Left me breathless. I’m still trying to figure out how I balance the real human spirit of things with it all. The journalist mentions that Kurokawa had a Ulysses butterfly in Yves Klein Blue. I saw that blue in a gallery. But what I thought about while looking at it was Maggie Nelson. She said it was too garishly blue for her. She preferred the sky.
Someday, I want to forget about showing myself. Kurokawa reminded me that all you need to stay a real human is to remain truly interested. To just play. Once I accept this, or as I accept this, hopefully it helps me with how I approach live coding, too.
