Aki Sasamoto is Feeling Stretched | Art21 "New York Close Up"

["New York Close Up"]

[SOUND OF METAL SNAPPING APART]

I used to wear these blue-tinted glasses.

People told me the reason why I'm intense

is because I wear those glasses.

[COFFEE MACHINE WHIRRING]

They suggested:
"Why don’t you change it to rose-colored glasses?"

Anyway, so I made these glasses
that make me

look at the world through aroma of coffee--

my favorite thing.

I thought maybe I would be romantic
if I do this, you know?

["Aki Sasamoto is Feeling Stretched"]

[The Kitchen, Chelsea, Manhattan]

I plan for a performance

thinking it's going to be a structured improvisation,

and structures or scores are given by the
installations I make.

I use performance to get deeper into my interest
in storytelling.

I never know where the project starts,

but maybe it started when I realized that
I want to put

a trampoline in a dumpster.

But I don't know if the dumpster came because
of the trampoline,

or just because all I wanted to do

was jump in and out of the dumpster.

I wanted to experience right here,

between underground and aboveground.

Whenever I try to say this piece is about

this or that,

that's when it start to feel like
I'm a liar.

I almost feel like
I'm performing to find out

answers for my own questions.

--To live a peaceful office life,

--you kind of need to observe

--your colleagues' elastic constant.

--People always love elastic constant,

--They become lazy, and flaky.

--These people give you unimaginative excuses

--and don’t come to your home to hang out

--once you move to an inconvenient neighborhood.

--Most incidents in life

--can be explained within

--the elastic limit.

Lately, I notice that I’m being super stretched and...

tired--

trying to do a day job

and trying to do art--

so I was interested in how much
one can push yourself.

That's why I went to thinking about elasticity

and testing that limit.

I'm interested in the deformation that happens.

[Rutgers University, New Brunswick, New Jersey]

[ARYA TEWATIA]
This is a mechanical testing machine.

Essentially it can pull, push--

[Arya Tewatia, School of Engineering]

rip things apart as need be--

to see the finite ends of what the material
can withstand

and how it breaks.

But the yield point is really when

you stop being able to recover from

any damage you've put onto the materials--
breaking it.

[SASAMOTO] It's happening…

[TEWATIA] Yeah, this one is breaking now.

[SOUND OF METAL SNAPPING APART]

[SASAMOTO] Wow.

--Every incident in life can be measured by

--magnitude of elastic constant.

--Some people have higher constant.

--These people tend to be lost in life.

--And the lower number represents boredom.

I always had a problem

whenever I'm studying or reading about science

or mathematics

that I wanted to experience it.

So what does it feel like to be a graph myself?

What does it feel like to put myself

in a place of steel being pulled?

[SOUND OF AIRPLANE OVERHEAD]

Every time I see a space big enough for me
to go inside,

I like to put myself there.

I think it's like,

my interest is feeling the skin,

I want to just know that I'm alive.

[LAUGHS]

This piece kind of told me, after I made it,

that I'm interested in being pulled.

How can I elongate the process of deformation
without breaking?

So that's kind of the question.

And then the hypothesis is that

you can stay in this area of plastic deformation

and call it beauty--

and hopefully never end it.

--How elastic are you?

--High constant?

--Risking yourself to be lost?

--Or low constant?

--Risking yourself to be bored?

--Do you want to get bored in your city?

--Do you want to get lost in distant literature?

--Or do you want to flex?

--Do you want to flex between
the different constant?

--Can you do that?

--Can you do that?

--How elastic can you be?