What's your name? And why? What does it mean? How do you experience having the name you have? Does it define you? Do you have a nickname?
Michikazu Matsune’s ongoing project Between my name and me is based on the simple idea of asking people to share small episodes about their own given names. Full of unspectacularly spectacular anecdotes, these personal stories evolve into a collective portrait of diverse individuals. The project is currently in progress with an aim to result in an installation, book and performance, that features name-stories of 100 people from various cities in the world.
We call for and welcomes all people regardless of background, age and gender identity to contribute one’s own name-story to the video and audio archive of the project!
HOW:
The participants are invited to an individual interview-session with Michikazu Matsune. Your name-story will be recorded in video and audio. A session takes about 20 – 30 min. No special preparation is necessary.
WHEN:
Please register and arrange your own time-slot. Your session can be booked for a time between May 18 – 20, 1.30pm – 6pm and May 21, 10.30am – 6pm The sessions will take place in Stadsschouwburg Utrecht.
REGISTER:
Send an e-mail to kassa@springutrecht.nl with your date/time preference.
ABOUT THE ARTIST:
Michikazu Matsune is a performance-maker who develops works in his signature style that incorporates documentarist and conceptualist practices. He utilizes diverse approaches which range from stage-performances, interventions in public spaces, to creating text-paintings. His personal method, characterized both playful and critical at the same time, examines the tension around our cultural ascriptions and social identifications. Matsune is originally from the seaside town of Kobe and has been based in Vienna since the 1990s.
The topic of “name” has been essential to some of Matsune’s works, such as Mitsouko & Mitsuko based on stories of two Japanese women with almost the same name, and Dance, if you want to enter my country! featuring a bizarre yet true story of a dancer who was forced to dance as part of a passport control in an airport because of suspicions caused by his Muslim first name. In All Together (which will be presented at this year’s SPRING Performing Arts Festival), three performers talk through a list of names of people who cannot come and see this actual performance.
