Review of “Rubber Tit” by the Maroon (U Chicago students’ paper
http://maroon.uchicago.edu/online_edition/voices/2007/04/06/rubber-tit-a-hands-on-experience
April 6, 2007
Masa’s thoughts on the performance
It’s up in her own blog (in Japanese)
Nori’s audience (also on Chalk)
As Makiko writes in her reponse, I’d like to say “good job” to Nori, not only for his talk yesterday but also to have decided to visit Chicago and “revisit” his own experiences–citing Makiko. Through his presence in our class and yesterday’s session, what struck me most was something that might be called “faith” that I think he has in what he does, or maybe in himself. He may not be very conscious about it, but that “faith” seems to have kept him going. Most astonishing is that he has directly faced the criticism, and tries to (re)create a dialogue with it. I can’t imagine how much pain it inflicted on him, but he has anyway taken the “sword” pointed toward him. With that “strength” (I put in quotation because it might sound ironic or irrelevant to him) and his first visit to the US, I am looking forward to seeing what he will bring up next. At the same time, what he wanted to convey most is probably that we stay not spectators, but think and do something.
What was most interesting to me in the presentation was the audience’s presence and reaction to Nori’s talk. The sheer number of people showing up first surprised me. I thought that the number represented how “famous” he is—ironically or not–all over the world. Yet, as I talked to people sitting next to me, I realized that not many were necessarily very familiar with Nori’s experiences both in Iraq and Japan. They were not a “specialist” of Nori but they had heard something about him. A medical student asked me whether he is very famous because he saw on the news that he was heavily criticized by the Japanese public. I thought that it is interesting to see what people learn from the (Internet) news and actually come to see or listen to him. It is the same source that brought a very harsh time to Nori in Japan, but seems likely that it helps him gain some oversea “supporters,” whether he likes it or not.
I wonder:How many of the audience came to know him because of the Internet? Had there been no Internet, did that audience come to yesterday’s talk? As Nori mentioned in the Q/A session, the Internet is a double-edged sword. It will be interesting to see how Nori will continuously make use of the Internet–he may be one of the most “Internet savvy” person in the century.
Question
Does a “right” interpretation exist for the performance? I usually do not try to “interpret” art rationally because I am afraid that the interpretation would break the subtle senses that the artist tries to convey…and also because I know that artists usually do not “give” their audience an answer to the meaning of some specific things on stage or on their displays.
Yet, just one question I had was about the wooden “box” Tari used to get in and out. I thought it represents the social or her psychological “cage,” and the colorful strings that she was putting symbolizes the way that she takes/accepts the rigid, monotonous, social “cage”–in a way, an active re-interpretation of society in order to overcome it.
But after the show, I heard Tari saying that the box is a “closet” (or something…sorry I forgot the exact word) in which she used to hide from society. I was rather struck by that because I thought the box was used to represent a cold and inflexible society, as opposed to the “closet” that is her warm, comfortable place to “hide”–like a mother’s womb. Her explanation and mine, in a way, are a total contrast, which itself is interesting. Is my interpretation already too “rational” missing some subtle “feeling”?
