TIME TIME is a new installation work based on the theater piece TIME. In TIME, Sakamoto delved deeper into asynchronism, borrowing the structure of “Mugen Noh,” a type of Noh whose story takes place in a dream, to pursue the question, “What is time?” Creating a dreamscape inspired by Natsume Soseki’s Ten Nights of Dreams, the Noh play Kantan, and Zhuang Zhou’s The Butterfly Dream, the theater piece brought different kinds of time into intersection—a moment and an eternity, a fleeting sleep and 100 years of time lived in a dream—and attempted to reexamine the concept and very existence of time. It also symbolically evoked a human being exhausting himself in a futile attempt to create a path, striving against nature’s overwhelming power. The theater piece and this installation were conceived as manifestations of something that cannot exist in reality.
TIME TIME uses “water” as its stage, water being a substance of importance to Sakamoto, which he employed in various forms in his works. The installation combines new footage of Mayumi Miyata (filmed by Takatani for this work) playing a Japanese reed instrument, the sho, and video of Min Tanaka’s appearance in TIME to express on three screens the three key elements portrayed in the theater piece—“Creating a Path”, Ten Nights of Dreams, and Kantan. Sakamoto’s music flows freely in and out of the three screens, and a dream world transcending time and space, with no beginning or end, quietly unfolds.