Xinrui Li

13th May 2021

It’s a little celebration of immaterial of things we can’t measure, the garden consists of a lot of immaterial qualities, light, temperature, sounds, things that’re hard to measure, but you can certainly be in it, and be a part of it.

It’s in dialogue with its surroundings.

Hijikata’s method makes dancers aware of their physical sensations and teaches them to materialise their bodies. Dancers can then ‘reconstruct’ their bodies as matter or even concepts in the world. Through repetition, dancers learn to manipulate their bodies physically and psychologically. As a result, butoh dancers can, in theory, transform themselves into everything from wet carpets to the sky, and even embody the universe.

Antonin Artaud: Theatre of Cruelty & Theatre and its Doubles

Artaud advocates a purely theatrical language in which symbols, movements and gestures have an ideographic value, embodying a poetry of space, capable of creating some kind of material image that is equivalent to the word image, expressed through numerous means, such as music, dance, modelling, mime, simulation, movement, tone, architecture, lighting and scenography.

‘Cruelty’ is the more terrible, inevitable cruelty that things may inflict on us. We are not free, and the heavens may collapse on our heads. The emphasis here is on the reality of things themselves.

Heinz Werner: Theory of Physiognomic Perception

The concept of physiognomic perception distinguishes perceptual experience from an emotional response. This distinction must be maintained in analyzing the film-music experience and its dynamics so perceptual properties of music and film can be identified as such instead of being attributed to the emotional responses of the film spectator. The concept of physiognomic perception provides an alternative to the view that music contributes to film perception by simply adding associations. 

Wabi-sabi 侘び 寂び

“The Japanese view of life embraced a simple aesthetic that grew stronger as inessentials were eliminated and trimmed away.” Tadao Ando

“Wabi-sabi is the beauty of things imperfect, impermanent, and incomplete, the antithesis of our classical Western notion of beauty as something perfect, enduring, and monumental.” Leonard Koen 

Wabi sabi is a beautiful way to describe what is natural and pure and to acknowledge the beauty of any substance or being in its most natural and raw form. 

It is essentially a concept or ideology that comes from the ‘Buddhist teaching’ of the three marks of existence that are namely “impermanence” (mujō), suffering (ku) and emptiness or absence of self-nature (kū)”.

Wabi refers to simplicity, humility, and living in tune with nature. It can be used to describe someone who is content with little and makes the most of whatever they have. 

Sabi refers to what happens with the passage of time. It’s about transience and the beauty and authenticity of age. To practice Sabi is to learn to accept the natural cycle of growth, death, and the imperfections that accompany that progression. Together the two terms create a feeling that finds harmony and serenity in the uncomplicated, unassuming, mysterious, and fleeting.