Hans-Thies Lehmann

“Akira Takayama, Port B, Walter Benjamin
(and the Theater)”

I am particularly pleased about this chance to once again return to Frankfurt: to the Mousonturm, which I associate with wonderful memories of collaborating especially with Christine Peters and which is now again directed by a friend, Matthias Pees. And it is here that Akira Takayama is implementing a project that I am no less looking forward to than everyone else here too. After all, it also embodies a bit of theatre utopia by so successfully bringing together very different artists. I have
followed Akira Takayama and his work for more than a decade, and have never concealed my admiration for this type of “theatre“. We were introduced to one another during my very first visit to Japan, then met up every once in a while either there or occasionally also in Berlin or in Vienna.


And although I do not feel at all comfortable with being announced as the “pontiff of postdramatic theory” in the programme (I have no missionary intentions or stocks in postdramatic theatre) – Akira‘s theatre certainly does have little to do with traditional dramatic theatre. The first that I heard about his work was what he told me about a project of his featuring poems by the young Bertolt Brecht. A colleague and friend had introduced us to one another and the last thing that I would have expected was a young Japanese director standing in his flat telling me about his obsession for these texts. Moreover, Akira then explained to me that the structure of the performance was designed in such a way that the audience could comment on what they had experienced after the first part and that these comments would be integrated into the second part. So right from the beginning, opening up the theatre both conceptually and as a space has been a central motif of his work.


I have not been able to experience many of his pieces for myself – the ones that I did were “Sunshine 62” and the “Referendum Project” in Tokyo, where I was actively involved in one of the events, then “Compartment City” in Vienna, where I had the chance to introduce Akira to the similarly radical theatremaker Josef Szeiler. At the HAU in Berlin, I saw the redesigned video installation of his interviews with Japanese pupils – this version is also on view in Darmstadt and I heartily recommend that you go to see it. Other pieces of his I only know from video documentations, e.g. an impressive reading performance of Heiner Müller‘s “Horatian” in which the Japanese audience was not only confronted with the Japanese text both in sound and writing, but also with Müller‘s extremely condensed German text.

Many forms of contemporary theatre ceased to be clearly distinguishable from a political act, an interactive installation, from some kind if documentary activity, from video art. Yet, I am of the opinion that Akira remains fundamentally dedicated to theatre: as the only art form that exists plain and simple as an activity that is shared by creators and spectators and which therefore always and inevitably appeals to a social, human, and cultural responsibility. And as an art form that has, like no other, the potential to allow the dialectic of community and individual to
be truly experienced and to not only remain an intellectual motif.


What can be said about the specific character of this theatrical oeuvre? Perhaps it makes most sense to begin with the name that Akira Takayama chose for his theatre group or rather for the network in which he works: Port B. The ominous B not only stands for the name Walter Benjamin, but rather more precisely for Port Bou in Spain, where Benjamin took his life on the run from the Nazi henchmen. The name indicates the same awareness for catastrophe that Benjamin envisioned in his famous angel of history and which already nourished Akira‘s thinking and art long before Fukushima. The angel of history in Benjamin‘s “Theses on the Philosophy of History” is driven backwards from the beginning of time by the storm of what we call “progress” into a future that he cannot see. Instead he gazes back upon history as it presents itself to him in form of a continually growing, immeasurable succession of catastrophes and scenes of devastation. He is unable to
do anything other than behold them with fear and sorrow and in this he is akin to art. Undoubtedly, he would prefer to pause, call out “stop”, heal. But the storm of time, of progress relentlessly drives him always further into the future.


This is an apt description of Akira Takayama‘s theatre. His topic is the catastrophe of human society, that which drives the majority of bodies on this planet into hunger, anguish, sickness, torment, forced migration and death. Into the catastrophe of war: the war of competition, of technology, of political powerstructures.


In its association with suicide, the name Port Bou simultaneously reminds us of another tragic dimension of the theatre, a true constant throughout time. Exorbitant persecution to the limits of tolerability caused Benjamin to overstep another boundary so as to protect his inner self from annihilation.


Since 2002, this theatre has thus been created under the name and label Port B. Naturally, it is not easy working in a country such as Japan - a country that has practically no funding for theatre and in which theatre

criticism is not a profession, because it is impossible to make a living from it. More often than not, this role of the critic is assumed by academics, who do so out of enthusiasm. Nevertheless, we can say that Port B have reached a certain level of international fame. It is important that we also lose a few words here about the significance of the Festival/Tokyo and its director Chiaki Soma, who has managed over the years to predominantly present pieces that transcend the limitations of conventional art. Romeo Castelluci was there in 2011, for example, and René Pollesch, as well as a series of Japanese artists, who, after the catastrophe in Tohoku, also questioned radically their work in terms of their own personal responsibility. In this, Akira was also once again one of the most rigorous. He declared that the only form of theatre now possible is one that is not actually theatre anymore. Theatre today must -and his words deeply inscribed themselves into my memory - “hide itself”. Perhaps this best describes the artistic practice demanded today by artists, who seek to remain faithful to their sense of responsibility and to their art. Theatre must hide – that does not mean that it must disappear. Instead, it means that it must take on forms and occupy spaces in which it is not immediately expected and perhaps not immediately recognised. It takes place where the limitations of what we conceive of as theatre are reached and crossed. Art cannot be art, when it is only art.


An example of what that can look like is “Compartment City”. As visitor, I step into a vehicle, for instance, into which a row of small compartments has been installed. In my compartment, I can watch DVDs containing interviews with young people. Each interview is no more than 10 minutes long. Before entering the compartment, I selected my choice of DVDs by simply by following my predilections, the impressions made on me by the faces and then taking them with me in a small shopping basket like in a store. The situation is enticingly private and cozy and yet simultaneously precarious. I notice how I take in the information and at the same time watch the gestures: the facial expressions, the pauses and hesitations in the answers - “Is there something that you are proud of?“. And I gradually notice how the individuals, who I know almost nothing about, blend into a group. Only to then again appear as unrelated as solitary individuals. I notice other people entering, hear them in the compartments beside me. A desire to speak with them wells up, but I do not follow through. I am free to choose. After listening to six or seven interviews – putting on the headphones, inserting the DVD, taking it out, putting a new one in – I stand up, leave the compartment and choose a second “round” of human speech and human faces. Basically, the system is simple: the same 26 questions are asked over and over again, so that after a while one begins to look forward to what the young people will answer to this or that question and how they will say it - “Do you believe there will be another war?”


Of course, it would be simple for a trained intellectual to look down upon the sometimes shockingly naive, sometimes harrowingly clichéd opinions, to notice the parroting and conformist views in much of what is being said. But it is precisely this which holds up a mirror to our own helplessness, that which has basically - after all and in spite of so much experience and knowledge - not gotten any further concerning the major issues of our day and age. And the youthfulness of the interviewees lends a strange innocence to this moment of them having their say, the sound of voices usually left unheard. Theatre deals with guilt, responsibility and reality. According to Heiner Müller, the duty of art is to make reality impossible. However, in doing so art can simultaneously and paradoxically create a space of innocence, whose provocative power can be greater than all judgements and verdicts.


It is a game, it is play and play it will remain. I am free to make my choices, free to pay attention to what I will and yet I sense, even in my memory, that something peculiar grows out of it, something which can be described as akin to Marx‘s “consciousness of species”: Gattungsbewusstsein. The German artist Thomas Ruff once produced a series of oversize portraits, faces against a neutral background, pictures resembling huge passport photographs. They impressed me greatly, because they – as I believe: fully in keeping with Walter Benjamin’s work– contain a melancholy reflection of the lives lived by the human species, the melancholy of mortality engraved in their faces. Simultaneously, my attention, my gaze, the awareness of co-existing with others is awakened by their absolute normality and ordinariness. Perhaps this is also a form of art that hides itself, that informs us about the human nature hidden in normality, hidden in the passport photograph.


Some of Akira Takayama‘s pieces are more directly political in their approach than others, but ultimately his work always embodies more of an anthropological rather than directly political voice of criticism. I would like to speak here also briefly about Sunshine 62, a political-historical guided city tour or rather: exploration that I was part of in Tokyo. Helene Varopoulou, who also participated, wrote a text about this experience from which I cite here:


“The tour performance SUNSHINE 62 by theatre group Port B in April 2008 in the Ikebukoro district of Tokyo, was an urban project that revolved around Sunshine 60 - at that time the highest building in Tokyo.
This skyscraper had been erected at the very site of a former prison forwar criminals of the Second World War. In order to save the institution of the Japanese imperial system after Japan‘s total defeat, the prosecution and execution of those responsible among the Japanese political and military elite (…) was simultaneously functionalised into an act of expiation, which deeply ingrained itself into the collective memory of Japanese post-war society.


Takayama Akira confronted us with a wanderer’s gaze onto the constantly shifting cityscape. The audience walked around the Ikebukuro district for hours in small groups, whereby each spectator had a small task to fulfil (reading the map for example or keeping an eye on the prescribed time for each leg of the journey). Based on instructions, the audience engaged in a topographical, historical and political act of mapping in a shared search along a succession of individual stations. Each of the visited locations contained traces of different time periods and realities. (…) Parallel to this journey, participants were presented with a series of different views of the Sunshine 60 skyscraper, moments that encouraged seeing the building from unexpected perspectives as a monument of literally overbuilt and concealed history (through a tiny window, behind a cemetery, sideways from a balcony, etc.). These different perspectives were also irresistibly reminiscent of the famous
100 Views of Mr. Fuji along the Tokaido Road by the Japanese master Hokusai. (…) At the end of the tour, the participants were asked to express their own position, their relationship to issues in the war crimes trial. In a theatrical, technological and virtual space, each person should or could speak aloud in a kind of personal verdict, whether they thought that the convicted were guilty or not.“ (Helene Varopoulou, Theater und Landschaft, in: THEATER IN JAPAN, ed. by Hirata Eiichoro and Hans- Thies Lehmann, Theater der Zeit Berlin 2009, p. 159-169, here p.163/164)


I still distinctly remember the strange unease that overcame me in that situation at the end of the tour, speaking the world “guilty” aloud into a microphone. There it was, my own voice, one that I should not forget even when only being an observer. The unease did not come from having any notable doubts concerning the guilt of these persons, but rather from realising at that moment in a rare clearmindedness, that justice alone is not all, but that the step from observing to judging never loses its monstrosity. And in this sense, theatre, unlike real political life, is not about judgements, no matter how well substantiated they may be, but always also about unsettling the act of judgement itself. About voices that must become foreign to us in order for us to hear them better. The voices of the ghosts of history and the ghosts “from the future as well” (Brecht) and likewise, for example here in Frankfurt Evakuieren, ghostly

voices from our own present and our own surroundings, which are only supposedly familiar but may be in reality entirely unknown to us.

『横浜コミューン』
“Yokohama Commune”

2014

音声、字幕（横浜美術館）
2014年8月1日（金） - 11月3日（月・祝）
ライブ・インスタレーション（nitehi works）
2014年10月30日（木） - 11月3日 （月・祝）

移動し、変化していくものとして、
日本／語を問い直す

ヨコハマトリエンナーレ2014参加作品。横浜のアジア・コミュニティのリサーチから「日本／語」を問い直す。
　横浜美術館に展示されたのは、さまざまな理由で故郷を追われ、家族とともに、あるいは家族と離れ離れになって日本に辿り着いた人たちの声。いわゆるインドシナ難民の日本語である。言葉と共同体は、移動と定住のあいだでつねに揺れ動き、どこまでも「旅」を続ける。この作品もまた美術館にとどまりつづけることなく、会期末には黄金町に移動し、ライブ・インスタレーションへと姿を変えた。
　黄金町の会場では日本語教室を模したライブ・インスタレーションが行われた。一方にインドシナ難民、他方に寿町の住人たち、壮絶な移動と漂流の人生を生きぬいてきた彼らがそこで出会う。実際には一対一のペアになり、日本語の交換授業をする。彼らにおいて先生／生徒という関係は明白なものではなく、どちらが先生でどちらが生徒かも決められていない。教材はヨコハマトリエンナーレのテーマでもあったレイ・ブラッドベリの『華氏４５１度』、その断片を読み合い（「音読の練習」）、音読したテクストに関連した質問に答えるかたちでお喋りをする（「会話の練習」）。彼らは互いの記憶を「日本語」で辿っていった。２階には観客席が設えられており、観客は「授業」の様子を上から覗き込むように眺める。ラジオの周波数をチューニングすると、机ごとの会話をラジオで盗み聞きすることができた。
　このライブ・インスタレーションは、「日本語教室」であると同時に、『華氏４５１度』の「上演」であった。また、移動し変化するものとしての「日本語」を媒介とした、“聞きづらい言葉を話すもの”同士が集う、かりそめの、漂流する「コミューン／共同体」であった。

Re-inquiring into migrating,
changing Japan and the Japanese language

This installation was exhibited at the Yokohama Triennale 2014. Created out of research into Asian communities in Yokohama, it explores themes of the nature of Japan and the Japanese language.
The installation at the Yokohama Museum of Art featured the voices of people who, for a variety of reasons, had fled their homelands and come to Japan, either alone or with their families. The voices spoke in Japanese, but it was the Japanese of refugees from Indochina. The work explores how language and communities are always shifting between migration and settlement, always on a journey to somewhere. At the end of the Triennale, the work itself then migrated from the Yokohama Museum of Art to Koganecho, where it transformed into a live installation.
The venue in Koganecho in Yokohama was created in the form of a classroom for learning Japanese. It became a place for encounters between Indochina refugees and day labourers living in Kotobuki. The installation paired the “immigrants” and “residents” together in the manner of Japanese language exchanges. Who is the teacher and who is the student? The roles were interchangeable. The “textbooks” were excerpts from Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, the central motif for the Yokohama Triennale. The pairs read passages to each other in the style of a lesson drill. They then asked each other questions about the texts like a classroom conversation practice exercise. The participants arrived at their mutual memories using Japanese, though it may not be what we presume. On the second floor of the venue visitors could sit and watch the “lessons” through a glass window. Visitors were also given small transistor radios. Tuning these to certain frequencies allowed visitors to eavesdrop on the conversations happening at the classroom desks.
In this way, the live installation was both a kind of Japanese classroom experience but also simultaneously a performance of Fahrenheit 451. Through the medium of the Japanese language as something always migrating and changing, it brought together peers with alien voices: a transient, wandering commune and community.

『完全避難マニュアル 東京版』
“The Complete Manual of Evacuation” (Tokyo version)

2010

2010年10月30日（土）〜11月28日（日）
東京・山手線29駅周辺
構成・演出：高山 明

観客×都市。新たな出会いを生む
演劇的アーキテクチャ

　山手線29駅すべての周辺につくられた「避難所」で、東京という都市と参加者のあいだにさまざまな「出会い」が生まれる。プロジェクトのウェブサイトを訪れ、質問に答えると、山手線のいずれかの駅に近い訪問地が指定され、地図をダウンロードして訪問できる。そこは宗教施設、コレクティブハウス、シェアハウス、路上生活者の集まり、出会いカフェなど、さまざまなコミュニティだ。山手線を「東京の時計」に見立て、その周辺につくられた「東京の時間」からの避難所の数々。一時的に「避難民」となった参加者は、都市との関係を新たに築き直した。

http://hinan-manual.com

Theatrical architecture creating new urban encounters

This theatrical project set up “evacuation points” at locations around the 29 stations of the JR Yamanote Line, designed to create unique encounters between participants and the city of Tokyo. Participants first visited the project website, where they answered a series of questions. According to their answers, they were designated a certain location near a Yamanote Line station. The participant then downloaded a map to get there and went to visit the site. There they discovered various communities, from religious facilities to collective and shared housing, homeless people, and even so-called “encounter cafés” where men pay to meet women. The project reimagined the circular Yamanote Line as a “Tokyo clock”, curating locations around the city as places to evacuate from “Tokyo time”. The participants became temporary evacuees, constructing new relationships with the city as they explored unknown areas.
[http://hinan-manual.com]

『東京ヘテロトピア』
“Tokyo Heterotopia”

2013

2013年11月9日（土）～ 12月8日（日）
東京都内各所
構成・演出：高山 明
テクスト
監修：管 啓次郎
執筆：小野正嗣、温 又柔、木村友祐、管 啓次郎
リサーチ
一般社団法人Port観光リサーチセンター
監修：林 立騎

「異なる東京」に出会う、旅の演劇

ガイドブックとポータブルラジオを手に、参加者は「東京の中のアジア」13カ所を自由に旅する。地図に記された場所に辿り着き、ラジオを指定の周波数に合わせると、4人の詩人・小説家（管啓次郎、小野正嗣、温又柔、木村友祐）が書き下ろした「その場所であり得たかも知れない」物語が聞こえてくる。物語は「Port観光リサーチセンター」のリサーチをベースにしたものだ。物語の朗読は、多くの場合、日本語を母語としない語り手によってなされている。宗教施設、モニュメント、難民収容施設跡地、エスニックレストラン…。見慣れたはずの「トーキョー」を異国のように「旅」する中で、作品は無数の偶然を招き入れ、参加者は自分だけの「トーキョー」を再発見していった。


『東京ヘテロトピア』はスマートフォンのアプリとなり、2020年の東京オリンピックまで拡大を続ける。さらに国内外の各都市でも「ヘテロトピア」シリーズの展開が予定されている。

A theatrical journey of encounters with Another Tokyo

Participants received a guidebook and portable transistor radio, and then were free to visit, in whichever order they wished, 13 locations that revealed the Asia that exists inside Tokyo. After arriving at a site, they tuned their radio to the designated frequency to hear a story about the location, written by four poets and novelists. The narratives were created based on research by the Port Tourism Research Center. For the most part they were read by people whose native language was not Japanese.
The locations included religious facilities, monuments, the site of a former refugee center, and ethnic restaurants. The journey around Tokyo invited participants on a tour of alien cultures within the familiar city landscape.

“Tokyo Heterotopia” will become a smartphone app, continuing to expand ahead of the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. “Heterotopia” series projects are also planned for other cities in Japan and elsewhere.

『光のない – エピローグ？』
“Kein Licht – Epilog?”

2012

[weaker]2012年11月10日（土） ～ 11月24日（土）
東京・新橋駅周辺
構成・演出：高山 明
作：エルフリーデ・イェリネク
翻訳：林 立騎
写真：土屋紳一

福島 − 東京。
その距離を問い直すツアー・パフォーマンス

ノーベル賞作家エルフリーデ・イェリネクが福島の原発事故を扱った『光のないII』を、東京・新橋駅周辺でツアー・パフォーマンスとして上演。観客は12枚のポストカードとラジオを手に新橋駅前のニュー新橋ビルを出発する。ポストカードの表面には福島の避難区域で撮影された報道写真がプリントされ、裏面には次に訪問すべき場所までの地図とナビゲーションが書かれている。ナビゲーションに従って訪問地（空きオフィス、東京電力本社前の広場、空き地、空き部屋、廃墟、ビルの屋上・・）を訪ねると、報道写真のイメージが三次元で再現されている。場所ごとに指定された周波数にラジオをチューニングすると『光のないⅡ』の朗読が聞こえてくる。福島のいわき総合高校演劇部の女子生徒たちが淡々と朗読する、いかにも新橋に不似合いな声を聞きながら、参加者は「ツーリスト／フォトジャーナリスト」となってポストカードの福島と東京に仮設された福島を見比べることになる。奇妙にずれた12箇所の「福島／東京」を繰り返し訪ねることで、福島と東京の距離をかき乱し、その距離を捉え直すツアーであった。

新橋駅周辺地域は、東京電力本社をはじめ、日本の原子力政策史に重要な役割を果たしてきた。また、出発地点のニュー新橋ビルは、福島第一原子力発電所と同じ1971年に開業している。

『光のない — エピローグ？』は、2013年の「ウィーン芸術週間」でウィーン版が制作・上演された。ウィーン版では、建設後に国民投票で稼働が阻止された「世界一安全な原発」ツヴェンテンドルフ原発のツアーも開催された。

A tour performance exploring the distance
between Fukushima and Tokyo

This was a staging of the “epilogue” text to Kein Licht, Nobel laureate Elfriede Jelinek’s text that deals with the Fukushima accident, performed as a “tour” of the Shinbashi area in central Tokyo. Participants were given 12 postcards and a small radio at the New Shimbashi Building. On the front of the postcards were press photographs taken in the Fukushima evacuation zone, while on the back of the postcard were maps and directions guiding participants to a series of locations in the Shinbashi district.
Following the navigation, the participants encountered a series of spaces, including empty offices and rooms, a plaza in front of the Tokyo Electric Power Company headquarters, a vacant lot, a derelict site, and a rooftop. At each of the locations was a three-dimensional reconstruction of the press photograph on the respective postcard. At the sites the participants were also instructed to tune the radio to certain frequencies, where they could hear excerpts from Jelinek’s text. The voices were female school students from a drama club at a high school in Iwaki, Fukushima. Listening to these incongruous voices in the Shinbashi area, the participants were transformed into tourists and photojournalists, comparing the reality of Fukushima on the postcard with the makeshift “Fukushima” recreated in Tokyo. By visiting the strangely mismatched 12 Fukushima-in-Tokyo locations, the geographical distance between Fukushima and Tokyo was disarranged and investigated.
“Kein Licht – Epilog?” was re-created for the Wiener Festwochen in 2013, including a tour to the so-called “world’s safest nuclear power plant”, the decommissioned Zwentendorf Nuclear Power Plant which was prevented from starting by a referendum.

『REFERENDUM
– 国民投票プロジェクト』
“Referendum Project”

2011〜

2011年10月11日（火）～11月11日（金）
東京都内各所、横浜市、福島県内各所
構成・演出：高山 明

東日本大震災後の「わたしたちの声」を集める
移動型演劇プロジェクト

東日本大震災後の「わたしたちの声」を集める移動型演劇プロジェクト
東日本大震災と福島の原発事故を経て、「わたしたちの声」とはなにか、どうすればそれを聞くことができるのかという問いに、演劇的に応答した作品。「Referendum – 国民投票プロジェクト」と書かれた改造保冷車の荷台に映像インスタレーションの鑑賞ブースが設けられ、東京と福島の中学生へのインタビューが一人一枚のDVDになって並んでいる。質問はたとえば、今一番欲しいものは何ですか、総理大臣になったら何をしますか、これから東京／福島はどうなると思いますか、今一番わからない事は何ですか、あなたの夢は何ですか…。観客は自由に鑑賞し、最後に自分自身もブースで同じ質問に答え、投票する。投票用紙はプロジェクトのウェブサイトで公開され、中学生のインタビューと観客の投票が「わたしたちの声」としてアーカイブされていく。改造保冷車は東京都内、福島県を巡回し、声は移動しつづけた。
　一カ月の会期中には、トークイベントが繰り返され、戦後の夢を担ってきた知識人や文化人を招き、政治、歴史、声、意志決定について対話を繰り返した。（これらの対話は『はじまりの対話』（思潮社）にまとめられている。）
　政治への直接的な参加資格をもたない中学生の声を集め、賛成／反対に収まらない問いを投げ、意志決定に至らない対話を繰り返す。それを「国民投票」と名付けることで、政治が聞き取らない「わたしたちの声」を演劇プロジェクトという枠組みで集めた。
　『国民投票プロジェクト』は、続く2012年夏に東北の被災地を巡り、14年春には広島・長崎を訪れた。中学生のインタビュー映像と観客の投票用紙のアーカイブは膨らみ、その蓄積は2011年以後の「声」を記録し続けている。（プロジェクトは現在も継続中。）

インタビュー映像は水戸（水戸芸術館）、ウィーン（ウィーン芸術アカデミー）、ロッテルダム（ショウブルク劇場）、ベルリン（ヘッベル・アム・ウーファー劇場）、ムーゾントゥルム劇場（フランクフルト）などで展示された。
http://www.referendum-project.com
https://www.facebook.com/Referendum.project

A mobile theatre project archiving the voices of the Japanese

This project is a theatrical response to questions that arose from the Fukushima nuclear disaster and the Tohoku tsunami: What are our voices and how can we hear them? The project features a refrigerated truck converted into a video installation with viewing booths and “Referendum Project” written on the outside. Visitors can enter and select DVDs to watch. Junior high school students from Tokyo and Fukushima were interviewed with the same everyday questions: What do you want the most right now? What would you do if you were prime minister? What will Fukushima/Tokyo be like in the future? What do you understand the least right now? What is your dream?
The audience is free to watch whichever and how many DVDs they want. Afterwards, they too are asked the same questions; they write their answers on a “ballot paper” and place it in a quasi-ballot box. These “votes” are then published on the project website, together with the students’ interviews forming an archive of the voices of people in Japan.
The project collects the voices of students too young to participate directly in politics, and asks audiences to consider larger questions that are not simply a case of for or against. In this way, the work is a national referendum in the form of a theatre project.
In 2011, the truck and its voices first went on a tour around Tokyo and Fukushima. During the one-month “performance” talks were held at each stopping point, inviting guest speakers to discuss postwar Japanese politics, policy-making, and culture. These talks were later published.
In 2012, the Referendum Project toured the areas in Tohoku hit by the 3.11 disaster. In spring 2014, it visited Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The project is ongoing, continuing to add new junior high school student interviews and audience “votes” and build up a body of post-2011 voices.

The interviews featured in “Referendum Project” have been exhibited at Art Tower Mito, Wiener Festwochen, the Schouwburg Theater in Rotterdam, and Hebbel am Ufer in Berlin.
http://www.referendum-project.com
https://www.facebook.com/Referendum.project

『個室都市 東京』
“Compartment City – Tokyo”

2009

2009年11月15日（日）〜22日（日）
東京・池袋西口公園
構成・演出：高山 明

池袋西口公園が“上演”する東京の多様性

東京・池袋西口公園に24時間営業の個室ビデオ店が出現する。訪問者は料金を支払い、自由にDVDを鑑賞する。中身は同公園内で撮影されたインタビューだ。朝から深夜まで人の流れが絶えない池袋西口公園で、老若男女、国籍もさまざまな人たちに同じ質問がぶつけられる。たとえば、今一番欲しいものは何ですか、東京は住みよい街ですか、日本は豊かな国だと思いますか、あなたの夢を教えてください、あなたは一体誰ですか…。日常では聞こえてこない「声」がヘッドホンから入り込む。
　DVD鑑賞後に用意されているオプションツアーは「避難訓練」。渡された地図を手に池袋の地下を抜けると、雑居ビルの一室に「出会いカフェ」がつくられている。訪問者はマジックミラー越しに相手を選び、10分間の会話をしたのち、池袋西口公園を見はるかす小部屋で作品のエピローグを迎える。

2010年にはKYOTO EXPERIMENTで『個室都市 京都』が、11年には「ウィーン芸術週間」で『個室都市 ウィーン』が制作された。

Staging the diversity of Tokyo
in Ikebukuro Nishiguchi Park

A special prefab building with 24-hour video-viewing booths was installed in Ikebukuro Nishiguchi Park in north Tokyo. Visitors paid to enter and were then free to watch any DVDs they wanted. The videos featured interviews shot in Ikebukuro Nishiguchi Park. From morning until late at night, a never-ending flow of people passes through this public plaza. Who are these people? How can we hear their hidden voices? The interviewees varied in ages, genders and nationalities, but they were all asked the same questions: What do you want the most right now? Do you think Tokyo is a good place to live? Do you think Japan is rich? What is your dream? What are you?
After watching the videos, audiences were offered the chance to take part in an optional tour: an “evacuation drill”. They were given a map taking them through Ikebukuro’s underground passageways to a room in a building where there was an “encounter café”. Visitors could choose a conversation partner through one-way glass and then engage them in a ten-minute dialogue. A final epilogue took place at a small room overlooking the park.

In 2010, “Compartment City – Kyoto” was created for Kyoto Experiment. In 2011, “Compartment City – Vienna” was created for the Wiener Festwochen.

主な公演履歴（2006年11月以降）

2006年11月
ツアー・パフォーマンス『一方通行路 ～サルタヒコへの旅～』
（巣鴨地蔵通商店街）

2007年3月　
E.イェリネク作『雲。家。』
（にしすがも創造舎特設会場 / 東京国際芸術祭）

11月
はとバス・ツアー・パフォーマンス『東京／オリンピック』
構成・演出（東京全域）

2008年3月
ツアー・パフォーマンス『サンシャイン62』
（池袋周辺地域）

6月
インスタレーション『荒地』
（旧豊島区立中央図書館）

10月
インスタレーション『東西南北』
（旧ソウル駅 / 現代美術展「プラットフォーム」）
インスタレーション『団地大図鑑』
（取手井野団地 / 取手アートプロジェクト）

12月
ツアー・パフォーマンス『山口市営Ｐ』
（山口情報芸術センター）
フォーラム型演劇公演『ディクテ・フォーラム』
（横浜市内各所）

2009年3月
E.イェリネク作『雲。家。』
（フェスティバル／トーキョー09春）
『サンシャイン63』
（フェスティバル／トーキョー09春）

11月
『個室都市 東京』
（フェスティバル／トーキョー09秋）

2010年3月
『赤い靴クロニクル』
（横浜・黄金町）

10〜11月
『完全避難マニュアル 東京版』
（フェスティバル／トーキョー10）
11月
『個室都市 京都』
（京都国際舞台芸術祭）

2011年5〜6月
『個室都市 ウィーン』
（ ウィーン芸術週間）

10〜11月
『国民投票プロジェクト』
（フェスティバル／トーキョー11）

2012年8月
『国民投票プロジェクト』東北ツアー

10月〜12月
インスタレーション『国民投票プロジェクト』
（水戸芸術館「3.11とアーティスト｜進行形の記録」）

11月
E.イェリネク作『光のない – エピローグ？』
（フェスティバル／トーキョー12）

2013年5〜6月
インスタレーション『国民投票プロジェクト』
（ウィーン芸術アカデミー）
『光のないⅡ（福島−エピローグ？）』
（ゼセッション・ウィーン市街）
『ツベンテンドルフ原発ツアー』
（ツベンテンドルフ原発）（いずれもウィーン芸術週間）

9月
『「一般社団法人Port観光リサーチセンター」設立記念総会』
（十和田奥入瀬芸術祭）
インスタレーション『国民投票プロジェクト』
（ロッテルダムFestival de Keuze）

11〜12月
『東京ヘテロトピア』
（フェスティバル／トーキョー13）

2014年1〜3月
『磯崎新 都市ソラリス展』（ICC）参加

5月
インスタレーション『国民投票プロジェクト』
（ベルリンHebbel am Ufer劇場）

8月〜11月
『横浜コミューン』展示
（横浜トリエンナーレ）

9月〜10月
『完全避難マニュアル・フランクフルト版』
（Mousonturm劇場・フランクフルト周辺地域）

11月
『横浜コミューン』ライブ・インスタレーション
（横浜トリエンナーレ/nitehi Works）

Main Works 2006-2014（Concept and Direction）

2006
“One Way Street” tour performance (Sugamo Jizo Street and Koshin-zuka area, Tokyo)

2007
“Clouds. Home.” by Elfriede Jelinek (Nishi-Sugamo Arts Factory, Tokyo International Arts Festival)
“Tokyo/Olympics” bus tour (across Tokyo, Tokyo International Arts Festival)

2008
“Sunshine 62” tour performance (Ikebukuro area and Owlspot Theater, Tokyo)
“Wasteland” installation (Former Toshima City Central Library, Tokyo)
“North, South, East and West” installation (Old Seoul Station, Seoul, Korea, Platform Arts Festival)
“Apartment Complex Encyclopedia” installation (Ino Apartment Complex, Toride, Toride Arts Project)
“Yamaguchi City P” tour performance (Yamaguchi Center of Arts and Media, Yamaguchi)
“Dictee Forum” (various places, Yokohama)

2009
“Clouds. Home.” by Elfriede Jelinek (Festival/Tokyo 2009 Spring, Tokyo)
“Sunshine 63” tour performance (Festival/Tokyo 2009 Spring, Tokyo)
“Compartment City – Tokyo” (Festival/Tokyo 2009 Autumn, Tokyo)

2010
“Red Shoes Chronicle” tour performance (Koganecho, Yokohama)
“The Complete Manual of Evacuation – Tokyo” (Festival/Tokyo 2010, Tokyo)

2011
“Compartment City – Vienna” (Wiener Festwochen, Vienna)
“Referendum Project” (Festival/Tokyo 2011, Tokyo and Fukushima)

2012
“Referendum Project” Tohoku tour (Miyagi, Iwate)
“Referendum Project” installation (Art Tower Mito)
“Kein Licht II” (based on “Fukushima – Epilog?” by Elfriede Jelinek) tour performance (Festival/Tokyo 2012, Shinbashi area, Tokyo)

2013
“Referendum Project” – Installation (Academy of Arts Vienna)
“Fukushima Epilog?” tour performance (Secession, Vienna)
“Zwentendorf Nuclear Power Plant Tour” tour performance (Zwentendorf Nuclear Power Plant, Austria)
“Referendum Project” installation (Festival de Keuze, Rotterdam)
“Tokyo Heterotopia” (Festival/Tokyo 2013, Tokyo)
2014
“ISOZAKI Arata: SOLARIS” lectures, symposium (NTT Inter Communication Center, Tokyo)
“Referendum Project” tour of Hiroshima & Nagasaki (Hiroshima, Nagasaki)
“Referendum Project” installation (Berlin Hebbel am Ufer Theater)
“Yokohama Commune” installation (Yokohama Triennale, Yokohama Museum of Art)
“The Complete Manual of Evacuation – Frankfurt” (Kuenstlerhaus Mousonturm Frankfurt, Mainz State Theater, Darmstadt State Theater, Rhine-Main Region)
“The Place of Crossed Destinies – Akita” (Akita Arts Project, Akita)
“Yokohama Commune” live installation (Yokohama Triennale, nitehi works)

高山明／PortB

高山 明｜Akira Takayama （構成・演出）
1969年生まれ。2002年、Port B（ポルト・ビー）を結成。既存の演劇の枠組を超えた作品郡を発表。観客論を軸に据え、現実の都市や社会に「演劇／客席」を拡張していく手法により、演劇のアーキテクチャを更新し、社会のなかに新たなプラットフォーム＝「劇場なき劇場」を作ることを試みている。近年では、観光、建築、美術、文学、写真、といった異分野とのコラボレーションに活動の領域を拡げ、演劇的発想・思考によって様々なジャンルでの可能性の開拓に取り組んでいる。

1969 埼玉県浦和市生まれ
1991 – 93 早稲田大学第一文学部哲学科中退
1993 – 1998ドイツにて演劇研修
1998 – 2002東京にて劇作と演出活動
2002演劇ユニットPort Bを設立　現在に至る

Port B｜ポルト・ビー
2002年東京にて結成。高山明を中心にプロジェクトごとに形を変えて作られる創作ユニット。実際の都市を使ったインスタレーション、ツアー・パフォーマンス、社会実験的プロジェクト、言論イベント、観光ツアーなど、多岐にわたる活動を展開している。いずれの活動においても「演劇とは何か」という問いが根底にあり、演劇の可能性を拡張し、社会に接続する方法を追求している。
オフィシャルサイト　http://portb.net/

Akira Takayama / PortB

Akira Takayama
Born in 1969, he founded Port B in 2002. Takayama develops projects that take theatre outside its existing frameworks and connects collaboratively with other media. He works to update the “architecture of theatre” by expanding the conventions of theatre and the audience in society and the urban space. His audience-centered work is an attempt to create a theatre beyond the physical theatre space as a new social platform and function. In recent years he has been interacting with a wide range of fields, including tourism, urban planning, art, literature and photography, using theatrical ideas to cultivate new possibilities across a variety of media and genre.

1969Born in Urawa City (Saitama)
1991-93Studies philosophy at Waseda University
1993-98Practises theatre in Germany
1998-2002Directs and devises work at theatres in Tokyo
2002Founds Port B

Port B
A creative unit formed in Tokyo in 2002. Led by Akira Takayama, Port B's team of collaborators changes and adapts to each project. Its wide-ranging work includes installations, tours and performances utilizing urban spaces, as well as experimental social projects, discourse events, sightseeing tours, and more. At the heart of all its work is an inquiry into the nature of theatre. It searches for ways to expand the possibilities of theatre and explores new methods for connecting theatre to society.
Official Site　http://portb.net/