Makiya Kawasaki Performance Recital "Abandon the Nerd"

Performers, renounce your mastery. Audience, scrutinize the new possibilities of expression.

Message from Makiya Kawasaki
I have been creating performances and works in order to relativize the act of "performance" from multiple perspectives and to explore the possibilities of creative reading and freedom in performance. In creating performances and works, I have been particularly interested in "text score" works, such as the Fluxus event. Text scores, which are written primarily in words rather than in musical notation on a staff, are simple and direct, can be created by anyone, can be performed by anyone, are "open" to a variety of interpretations, and are receptive to creative expression. These characteristics of text scores-the impersonalization of the work, the blurring of the boundary between the ordinary and the extraordinary, and the abandonment of all "mastery"-may break the conventional norms of performance that tend to focus on and adhere to technique. It will free performers from the various elements that discipline them internally, and bring them one step closer to the realization of free creativity with the act of performance as the starting point.
In this performance, we will focus on works based on texts from the 1960s, when the Fluxus movement spread worldwide, to the present day, when the anti-artistic energy of those days is being lost - the 2020s, and consider the abandonment of proficiency in performance. By distancing itself from the uniqueness of the written text and moving toward the limits of performance interpretation, the project aims to be part of the process of opening up new horizons of expression.