With the collaboration of the Fundación Once and the Fundación Japón, the Casa Encendida de Madrid (Ronda de Valencia, 2) presents on 13 and 14 September in its courtyard the exhibition Hiku, in which Eric Minh Cuong and Anne-MarieSophie Turion, explore the Japanese phenomenon of hikikomori, people who have been separated from society in a chosen seclusion and whose only contact with the outside world is through television, the Internet and online video games.
The piece opens up space for a meeting that would otherwise have been impossible. On stage, or more precisely in telepresence, Shizuka, Mastuda and Yagi, three hikikomori in the process of resocialization, talk, interact with the audience, move pieces of the set and display banners. Each one of them pilots their robot from their bedroom, thousands of miles away, while Yuika, their performer and acting partner, accompanies them on stage in the flesh.
Interspersed with the theatrical actions, the cinematic sequences open a window to their intimacy, here revisited or even fantasized, navigating between the memories of their years of retirement and current sensations. Inspired by the hikikomori-demo, an event through which these prisoners affirm their right to social resignation, the authors of the piece do not make a damning assessment of this sensitive disappearance, of this flight from reality, if not the attempt to capture it as a dissident obliteration, a means of resisting contemporary mandates. Purchase tickets on the website of La Casa Encendida.
