Abstract
Akira Takayama explores cities and public spaces by applying a frame of heterotopia, derived from Michel Foucault’s concept, which allows audiences to experience a different way of viewing the cityscape where they wander. Takayama interprets heterotopia as an other space which does exist in reality. His creations are based on his perception of reality gained through extensive research with local researchers and collaborators. Taking examples from four Heterotopia projects as well as other recent works, including his new Wagner project, he discusses with Natsuko Odate how to defamiliarize the audience’s perception and how to keep transforming the public space not as a centripetal place but rather a centrifugal space to adopt a diversity that exists in our society.
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Notes
- 1.
‘B’ stands not only for the name of Walter Benjamin (1892–1940) but also for Port Bou in Spain, the place where Benjamin took his life on the run from Nazi agents.
- 2.
In Tokyo Heterotopia (2013) participants receive a guidebook and mobile radio with which they visit a range of public spaces, such as restaurants and parks. At each destination they hear about the people who used to live at the place, forming a new story of the city, and of the country. These are encounters with spaces of Asian otherness (heterotopia) exploring ideas of travel and translation .
- 3.
Beitou Heterotopia (2016) is a transnational initiation as well as an extension based on the conceptual framework of Tokyo Heterotopia , taking on the philosophical outline of urban theatre. Takayama takes the complex historical trajectory inscribed upon the cultural landscape of Beitou as the terrain for his play. This project starts from a map made specifically for this piece, leading the audience to go on a motorbike tour of seven sites with significant historical connotations.
- 4.
Starting from ancient Greece up until now, the participants in Piraeus/Heterotopia (2017) trace the long and complicated history of the Port of Piraeus , which has been a stopover for many trips, and has sent out and welcomed in many travellers. The tour has two starting points—in Athens city-centre and at the Port of Piraeus—and participants can start from either one of them, making their way to the other. There are seven stops on the way that were designated based on research of the Port of Piraeus’ forgotten history, hidden facts, and the unheard voices of people. At each stop, you can listen to a story that may have happened there, written for this play by seven writers participating from seven countries, each one of them considered somehow a foreigner in their respective country. (See www.sgt.gr/eng/SPG1900.)
- 5.
Translated by Natsuko Odate.
- 6.
People living in Yokohama are going to translate and read aloud the lectures from McDonald's Radio University , while audience will be invited to listen to the ‘class’ on a ship.
The piece is a 65-minute-long mobile theatrical performance, which visits the distinctive urban landscape at the waterside of Yokohama, while listening to the sounds played on the ship.
- 7.
The Kotobuki-cho district in Yokohama its home to Japan’s third-largest community of day labourers.
- 8.
In Wagner Project : Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg (2017) the theatre space is transformed into a street; the audiences are free to participate in various activities such as graffiti, MC battles, live concerts, and so on, while DJs, rap musicians, or poets are giving lectures and organizing workshops.
- 9.
The short-lived movement of students and sympathizers, named for its ubiquitous symbol, the sunflower, was the first in Taiwan to occupy a legislative building in pursuit of political aims, in this case the renegotiation of a trade pact with China.
- 10.
Wagner Rallye was an art action by German director Christoph Schlingensief in which ten rally cars drove through several cities of the German industrial area of the Ruhr, the teams competing in each location to solve puzzles or problems. Wagner’s music served as a soundtrack.
- 11.
The McDonald’s Radio University (2017) was inspired by Potteries Thinkbelt (1966), the utopian plan of a decentralized and mobile university by British architect Cedric Price (see note 15). It offered a three-week series of live-lectures by ‘professors’ from Afghanistan, Syria, Pakistan, Ghana, Burkina Faso, Eritrea, and Iran in order to explore models for the dissemination of education and knowledge in the context of migration. The live-lectures took place at specific times and at seven different McDonald’s restaurants in Frankfurt and were accessible to the audience via radio.
- 12.
Compartment City: Vienna (2011) is the Viennese variant of an urban self-service installation originally developed in Tokyo: a Japanese video cabin container is placed at the entrance to the Karlsplatz underground, where you can rent to watch hundreds of DVDs with short interviews, where passersby, tourists, businessmen, and the homeless in Vienna and Tokyo have to answer the same thirty questions.
- 13.
Based on research into Yokohama's Asian communities, Yokohama Commune (2014) re-examines the nature of Japan and the Japanese language. The project which was commissioned by the Yokohama Triennale was focusing on Indochina refugees who arrived in Japan after being driven out of their homelands for a variety of reasons. They meet with local residents in order to participate together in a ‘Japanese classroom.’ The teaching materials are copies of the dystopian novel by the American writer Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451 (1953). Visitors have a bird’s eye view of the classroom and can listen to the lessons with the help of headphones.
- 14.
Drapetsona is a working-class suburb in the south-western part of the Athens-Piraeus agglomeration.
- 15.
Cedric Price (1934–2003) was a radical architect with relatively few realized projects. Through his teaching roles, writings, and published drawings have exerted an important influence on how an architect can think about architecture within a wider social field and how it should be ‘flexible’ in serving the needs of those who use it.
References
Benjamin, Walter. 2006. Berlin Childhood around 1900. Translated by Howard Eiland. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Foucault, Michel. 2001. Des espaces autres [1967]. In Dits et écrits, vol. IV, 1980–1988, ed. Daniel Defert and Francois Ewald, 752–762. Paris: Gallimard.
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Odate, N. (2018). ‘Heterotopian Transformations’: An Interview with Akira Takayama. In: Arfara, K., Mancewicz, A., Remshardt, R. (eds) Intermedial Performance and Politics in the Public Sphere. Avant-Gardes in Performance. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-75343-0_7
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