The (dis)location of time and space: Trans-cultural collaborations in Tokyo

Abstract

ABSTRACTThis collaborative article explores the (dis)location of time and space as experienced by the authors while collaborating with Japanese theatre company Gekidan Kaitaisha (Theatre of Deconstruction), and through the authors' own project: ‘Site Memory Mapping Project: Tokyo Marathon Walk’ (2012). Through discussing these projects in detail, the authors attempt to reflect the complexity of multiple perspectives within cross-cultural collaborations and to frame such collaborations as acts that allow transformation of the self. Drawing upon Henri Bergson's notion of duration, time is discussed in terms of its non-linear temporality, and as it is experienced spatially within the performer body and in Kaitaisha signature practices. The article locates the authors as operating in, and dislocated by, time and space, in a geographical, spatial, cultural, philosophical and performative sense. They argue that through the performative practices, and the cultural and temporal/spatial located experiences they discuss, the self transforms/forms in the temporal/spatial specificity of the action.