Peformance in Japan.

My participation in the summer performance festival of NIPPAF was very much by chance. Seiji's question: "Why don't you do performance?" triggered everything. Ah yes, why? Up until then, I remained an outsider, observing and experiencing performance with the intuition of a spectator. All of the performances that I have seen in Vietnam were unprompted and mostly felt like an arrangement within the scope of advanced censorship. I did, sometimes, have the urge to carry out ideas that would be best done by performance. However, I only thought of playing solo in front of the movie camera; then developed and presented it in the form of a video art, a much easier option for the conditions I was facing in Vietnam. Seiji's suggestion was therefore an opportunity for me to be on an easy path to performance. I came to the festival with much anticipation of new things and cumbersome preparations (a completely inappropriate characteristic for a program that was wide-ranging and constantly on the move like this one). The first time expressing myself in a relatively new form of art, and in a very different artistic environment compared to Vietnam, required me to change most of what I already had planned in my mind. Even though my initially determined mentality was to experiment and learn rather than to perform as a truly professional artist, there were unexpected changes to my plan when the program started. Instead of only participating in 4 performances as assigned by the organization board, I ended up getting involved in all the free performances on the streets and at the site of exclusive seminar for artists (for which, several minutes ago, in the Nagano forest, I refused to sign-up due to lacking ideas for my performance). My thematic idea for this festival was the human's hidden angle of love in this era (and in particular, the environment in which I was living). I contemplated intensely about the choice of expression method for the limited conditions of the studio, which – prior to real life encounter – appeared boundless to me. There were unpredictable choices and changes, even sudden new ideas, which were all consequences of first-time stress and the abashed race against prescribed time. However, the final result was most important: I overcame the challenges and succeeded in manifesting my emotions throughout the program. The inspiration came from the urge to express my feelings about the love-thirst souls of the people around me who were trying to suppress themselves. I had seen into the self-imprisoned pain within the lonely cover of those running away from love and compassion. The conflict between emotion and reason are like layers of waves accumulating and breaking onto each other, sweeping people away from each other. Sensitive souls hide behind the safe masks of indifference, which divide human by transparent doors of prejudice (which does not seem to exist anymore in our ever changing societies). What was originally their basic instinct – desire for love – then became the hidden angle in each human. I therefore wanted to raise a voice for the solitary lives, the beautiful souls who had to always run away from themselves. Those thoughts could not be communicated in any form better than performance. The biggest encouragement to me includes Kana's tears on the first performance night; the anonymous comment on the Nagano performance that "Among all the performances, I was most fascinated with the performer who was putting melted candle wax on all over her face. Her message behind the work was not delivered by language but with her whole body and spirit and the performance stimulated our imagination a lot.... "; and the profound comments from the two spectators who stayed for dinner after the last performance in Kumagaya. Perhaps I have not managed to have all the urges within me expressed through the first performance. However, the 2006 summer festival had helped me with a confident start in this form of art. I have to say I was genuinely surprised about the enthusiastic contribution of the Japanese students, an important factor in the great success of NIPPAF summer performance festival. Also, through the trip, I had the fundamental realization that even in a country like Japan – where the development of performance was particularly strong – it had still not yet accepted and supported by the general public. NIPPAF and the young Japanese people, nevertheless, had the passion to pursue, proceed and develop a form of art that had never received much affection in life. My deepest word of thanks to NIPPAF and the young friends who were, and performed alongside, with me during the 2006 summer festival. My gratitude to Mr. Seiji's family who reserved esteem and kind treatment for me. I hope, within my scope of effort, to one day reunite with you all in Vietnam for a large-scale and accepted performance. Always following your footsteps and wishing to share.

NGUYEN KIM HOANG ( Himiko. Nguyen )


Alcove of love...
...I have dreams of a love that is innocent and pure. I desire to always hold a warm face. I want to touch, to feel, to skim my hands across that face. But this world, with its rigid rules do not allow me to show it and my love would not be accepted. I often consciously sleep walk. I'm standing in the dark, holding a rough tree, I run my hands over it, as if I were touching the one I love. I sit, I look at the face that reflects off the mirror, my hand touches the features of the face. No one can stop such acts of love… that alcove is entirely mine!
... I desire to reach my hand up to discover. I desire the feeling of reaching up to touch. What an amazing sensation it brings to my hands. I desire to caress a suductive face, a shoulder, a hand and a bare back with my hands…reaching forward… My hands were born to touch. That is why they are wild, it is because of that feeling of need. Even if it is only touching, but it can bring about an amazing sensation. Nothing else is even needed!
... A person once asked me, "What are the colors of lonliness?"
Loneliness has black! When it is pushed outside of me because of the love from someone.
Loneliness has red, when it triumphantly… steals me away from love.
Loneliness has white, when it and I fall into the centre of a noisy crowd in an unfamiliar place. In this place it and I no longer play the game of chase, hatred, shredding each other apart.
... I used to believe that I bear a flame. I used to believe that the fervent flame can melt all gaps between human being. I burned, burned wholeheartedly. My tear drops falled, falled into barrenly. I desired the flame will melt preconceived mountain- ice...But, but the melting waterflow stamped out it and casted me in my lonely...

愛のアルコーブ．．．
私は無邪気で純粋な愛を夢見ている。愛する人の顔をこの手に抱いて温もりを感じたい。私の両手をその顔に這わせていろいろな事を感じたい。しかし私の住むこの厳格を重んじる世界ではそんな私の愛の表現は許されるはずもなく私の愛は決して受け入れてもらえない。
私はしばしば夢遊する。私は気づくと暗闇の中に立ってゴツゴツとした木を抱いている。まるで愛する人を抱くように私はその木に両手を這わせる。私は座って鏡に映る顔を見つめる。そして私の両手はその顔の細部をなぞっていく。誰にもこの私の愛の行為は止める事はできない。これは私だけのアルコーブなのだ。
私は両手を延ばして何かを発見してつかみとりたい。私はこの両手が何かに触れる感覚が欲しい。この“感覚”が私の両手にもたらす事のなんとセンセーショナルなことか！その魅惑的な顔を、肩を、その手を、裸の背中をこの両手で愛撫したい．．．前に手を延ばす．．．私の両手は「触る」ために生まれてきた。だからこの両手は自由奔放であり、必要とされたいのだ。ただ触れるだけ、触れるだけ．．．それがもたらすセンセーションは形容しがたい。他には何もいらない。
ある人が私に質問した。
「孤独って何色？」
「孤独」は黒！愛する人から拒否された時に私の中から押し出される色。
「孤独」は赤！「孤独」が勝って愛する人から私を引き離す時の「孤独」にとっての勝利の色。
「孤独」は白！　私と「孤独」が共に見知らぬ喧噪の中に放り込まれてお互いに競争、憎み合い、傷つけ合いのゲームをやめた時の色。
かつて私は自分は炎に耐える事が出来ると信じていた。人間同士の間に生まれる溝をその強烈な炎は溶かしてくれると信じていた。だから私は全身全霊で燃やして燃やして燃やしたのだ。涙がこぼれる、こぼれる。私はその炎が我々の間にある大きな先入観という氷山を溶かしてくれると願っていた。しかし、逆にその融けた水流で私はあっけなく孤独の世界に押し流されてしまったのだ．．．