Artist Interview アーティストインタビュー

強度あるリアリティを用いて
舞台を演出するアーティスト
飴屋法水
play
Norimizu Ameya, an artist who directs stages
with a strong degree of reality
Norimizu Ameya emerged in the 1970s as the leader of “Tokyo Grand Guignol,” a group that won a cult-like following. After that, from the 1980s into the late ’90s, he was active in different areas, such as contemporary art and running a pet shop, and then suddenly moved to a home in Tsukuba [outside of Tokyo] and withdrew from those scenes and remained for a while in quiet seclusion. Then he emerged again dramatically in the summer of 2005 to do an exhibition on the theme of “disappearance” in which he shut himself up in a box in a gallery for 24 days without coming out once, in a work called バ ング ント (as Va ng nts in which the blank spaces create “vanishing points” when filled in). He also answered the invitation from musician Yoshihide Otomo to perform live music and improvisation sessions frequently, and in 2007 he returned to the world of theater to direct Oriza Hirata’s play Tenkosei (Transfer Student). He has also drawn attention by directing a production of Sarah Kane’s 4.48 Psychosis for Festival/Tokyo in the autumn of 2009. We spoke with Ameya about his approach to creative activities that involves a unique lifestyle-as-art attitude in which he embodies a “full-body director” who uses his own body as a platform to connect all forms of artistic expression in a highly natural way.
(Interviewer: Art Kuramochi)