Rui Yamaguchi

“The struggle of living in a new place as an immigrant artist. The war between Gaza and Israel that took place within a month of my arrival here. Street dwellers being excluded from the city in preparation for the Paris Olympics. To see if I could link my own emotional turmoil with that of the world, I gave a performance in which I walked the 2 km straight line from my home to Place du Chatelet, balancing an umbrella on my fingertips as I went. The weather in Ishikawa Prefecture, where I was born, is so changeable that there is a saying, “Don’t forget your umbrella even if you forget your lunch box,” and the prefecture has the most precipitation in Japan. This performance is a game and a special skill that I have always performed on my way to school since I was a child. Umbrellas also have the effect and meaning as a protest in demonstrations. Fresh in my memory would be the 2014 Umbrella Revolution in Hong Kong. At that time, students resisted hypnotic bombs thrown by riot police by using umbrellas. A small camera was attached to the end of the umbrella to record video of his face and people in the vicinity as he advanced, swaying unsteadily. The scene where I loss my balance and drop the umbrella was edited into a slow-motion video. The camera was unable to proceed beyond Chatelet Square because the area was blocked off by riot police who were stopping the large crowd of people who had gathered to call for Palestinian solidarity.”

Enquiry

Enquiry