Aichi Triennale 2019

Woodstock 2017 is a video made in 2017. It shows four Caucasian males performing "The Star-Spangled Banner," the national anthem of the USA, while being tied together with ropes. The scenery looks funny at first, but when watching the performers' desperate attempts without the slightest smile, and learning about how the artist witnessed the birth of the Trump administration during his stay in the US, the work suddenly takes on a rather serious notion.
Appearing in 2679, a companion new piece to Woodstock 2017, are three performers playing Japanese instruments while again being tied to each other with ropes. The performers have British-Japanese, New Zealandish-Japanese and Korean-Japanese roots respectively, which reminds the viewer of the fact that there are all kinds of people with different roots living in Japan.
The performances in a tied-up state hint at the situation of mutual monitoring by way of social media and other technologies, in a contemporary society in which self-regulation seems to be facilitated quite automatically. Both of these works are themed around musical performances as physical forms of expression and media that firmly connect communities through imagination, but they can at once be understood as symbolizing the mechanisms of control and oppression.