Maze of Metamorphosis
This project took me much further than I thought at the beginning, and it was pure grace. Describing social issues in Japan through photography has proved difficult, more than anywhere else, due to seriousness and privacy typical of japanese people, and to the high standards that permeate every aspect of life. However, how much overabundance of meanings and connections, and how much I received in terms of personal growth!
Butoh is a non conceptual dance born during post atomic Japan, where the point is the metamorphosis that the performer can create. I came in contact with two butoh performers, and I ask them to become something for me: a space, a thing, a subject.
I approached Butoh in order to use it as a narrative device, overwhelmed me, and was deeply intertwined with the themes of the project. Walking that becomes dancing finds an echo in the series of amputated people. The revolt against culture and tradition is echoed in the hikikomori series. The meditation on death is echoed in the series of the shaman robot. The metamorphosis, the miracle I witnessed when the dancers became each time a subject, a space, a thing, which is the heart of this dance, is also the miracle of a prosthesis which does not only become a leg, but becomes an artistic expression and gives new meanings. Folly, the natural outcome of a dance that goes beyond reason, presented itself as a “barbaric yawp”, a silent cry waiting to be heard, both in the salaryman and hikikomori series. And in the series on sexuality, folly gives space to symbols that directly affect the unconscious. And last but not least, the project has allowed me to work with and for so many artists, opening up a rich expressive world and pointing out a new path to follow.
“You can dance like a flower, you can imitate it and it will become the flower of everyone,
banal and lacking interest; but if on the contrary, you put the beauty of that flower
and the emotion that it evokes into your dead body,
then the flower you will create will be unique and true”
Kazuo Ohno
