As in urban life and tourism, a body may move between two points such as the present and the past or future, or reality and imagination. Defining such a body as a “vacational body,” I conducted a one-month research residency at the Kinosaki International Arts Center. Through workshops with local residents, personal landscapes of loss emerged, alongside the temporal strata embedded in Takeno’s geological heritage and the traces of wartime air raids in my rapidly redeveloping hometown of Fukuoka. The project became a journey to acquire a body capable of reconnecting all these distances and translating them into the present moment.
“Vacance,” originally performed at the Toyooka Theater Festival Fringe 2024, returns to Toyooka one year later as a film screening. Captured through the lens of filmmaker Shuhei Hatano, who has turned his camera toward the prayer traditions of Takeno, this work will be screened as a new cinematic piece.
In parallel with the screening, I will also conduct research toward my upcoming project “Hidden Land.” This work begins with the emotions of awe and reverence toward others and explores processes of response and transformation that arise when encountering scales beyond the body—for instance, the overwhelming presence of a great mountain. In tracing the long-distance cycling route once taken by my brother, I aim to embody that journey myself by acquiring the physical capacity to ride a road bike. The act of repeatedly confronting vast scales through trial and failure becomes, in this context, a contemporary form of gyō—a path of practice. This project seeks encounters with new scales—Hidden Land—through the very motion of the body.