Yutaka Sone Interview

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	Yutaka Sone - "Happy Birthday" interview makoto murata

	from "Birthday Party" : Yutaka Sone

	With Yutaka Sone, one never knows what he will do in his next exhibition -he is an unpredictable artist. In this sculpture project, he exhibited his video work, "Birthday Party". The curator, Kasper König, had been interested in Sone since 1994, but it seems that the definitive show which brought Sone to his focus was the "Nutopi" exhibition held in Sweden, which was executed as the "Aperto 95" for the Biennale di Venezia two years ago. Considering that four out of the six artists from this exhibition, including Sone, were invited to Münster, it indicates how important an exhibition "Nutopi" was. Last September, Sone visited Münster and decided his plan, and he stayed in the city for a month and a half from May of this year. Over a period of time, everyday, he held his own birthday party at about one hundred places, such as his acquaintances' homes, outdoors, and on the street, and he created a video work out of them, displaying it in the underground passageway in front of the station.



	from "Birthday Party" : Yutaka Sone
	-- You decided on the "Birthday Party" when you made the proposal last September?
	Sone: I intuitively decided in about thirty minutes immediately after arriving at Münster. However, I was told to "wait". They said, "We are expecting a site-specific piece. You can stay as long as you like until your idea is set. We will pay all the hotel bills, so please look around the city and take your time to decide." When I said, "No, I already decided so can I make the proposal now?" "No, wait, and decide after you look around the city." "Then, I will announce the title. It's the 'Birthday Party'." (Laugh). After that, I pretended to look around for about thirty minutes, and searched for the place to install my work. Münster was heavily destroyed during the Second World War, and it's like Huis Ten Bosch in that after the war, they rebuilt the city with the old facade just as it was before. I thought that "Birthday Party" was a work suitable for such a city.
	-- They were expecting a work which was appropriate for Münster?
	Sone: Rather than that, they were looking for a "Münster special" (laugh). Being appropriate for the place could mean expanding the potential of the place, in other words, a work could fit because the work doesn't match the place, or by putting it there, it could change the character of the place.
	-- You have done "Birthday Party" in Tokyo before.
	Sone: Yes. In Tokyo, it was not in that form, but it was held only on one night, in one place. At that time, I did it as an experimental version, and I was going to show it in "Join Me!" at the Spiral in September, but since I decided not to participate, the work was left in limbo, and I had been wanting to do it somewhere. What I had in mind in the beginning was a video work in which all kinds of art have become a birthday cake. That could never be (laugh). However, maybe it will happen in four thousand years. I think that my work was perfect for Münster.
	-- When Shigeo Anzai (photographer) went, someone had pulled out the cord and he couldn't see the work. So, maybe instead of a video work, it would have been better to have held birthday parties all through the exhibition period?
	Sone: I don't think so. That video IS my work. That video is not a record of something. For example, by taking a night scene during the day, it is edited so that the place, time and emotion seem to delicately change. The great thing is not in the act of doing many birthday parties. However, by holding a birthday event, which everyone has once a year, continuously, if it is held on your real birthday, it becomes a true birthday party, and if it is held on a day which is not your birthday, a vast amount of time passes in a condition where noone can decide whether it's a performance or a lie within the video. That kind of world does not exist in reality, but because it's a "sculpture", such an incidence occurs. In the end, I wanted to create a time that doesn't exist anywhere. Using material that everyone knows.
	-- Why did you choose the underground passageway in front of the station?
	Sone: That place is somewhere people merely pass through. I placed a very private visual of my birthday party in a place with that kind of a nature. It's also a "travel" video. It resembles a birthday party very closely, but it's a video in which the scenery changes quickly. But they're all scenes from Münster.
	-- What was the reaction of the people who saw it?
	Sone: The people in Münster also asked, "Doing birthday parties continuously? Yes, that's wonderful. But is it art?" It's interesting. I think art talks about beautiful scenery that one never saw before. We don't know whether a "beautiful scenery we never saw before" is beautifulor not because we have never seen it, but that is the condition for art.For example, going to an exhibition expecting what to see and coming back recognizing the fact that one has seen it, is not the ideal for a show or for art. I don't consider that kind of communication as art. You must continue to operate your antenna and match it to the wavelength of the art in the exhibition site. When it matches perfectly, you feel something. That is an event which can be called art.
	-- Do you mean that art is found closer to daily life?
	Sone: Everyone is living. Junkies and the homeless too. They are more interesting than having a work on the white wall of a museum, and they have more potential. Creating a big fiction in a place distant from them has been stereotyped. Art which is "doing something rare" or "doing something nobody did before" is not the art that I have in mind. It isn't that. I value things that are close but distant, a moment which becomes distant because it's close, and I think it's very thrilling. I call that art, and that's what I do.
	-- In those terms too, among the artists in Münster, who do you remember well?
	Sone: For example, Fischli and Weiss. They tried to create something that was most site-specific. Super-site-specific (laugh). Theirs was stuck onto the ground. They created a plantation which noone ever saw before. Each one of the materials looks familiar, but they're too big for a kitchen garden, and too small for a professional plantation. The plants also constitute an impossible arrangement. That's why their work is thought by everyone as a garden, and it is nothing else but a garden, however, they realize a garden that noone saw before in a wonderful way. An impossible garden, like a heaven for gardens (laugh). I felt that to be infinitely close to daily life, and as a place most distant from daily life. That work was like a hammer blow to my head.

	from "Birthday Party" : Yutaka Sone


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