["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?
--How elastic can you be?