Resistance to the Society of the Spectacle: the “nikutai” in Murobushi Kō

Abstract

As Guy Debord has predicted, in this society of the spectacle, where “the real consumer becomes a consumer of illusions”, we are moved by the principle of commodity fetishism. In such a context commodity is a factually real illusion, and its general manifestation is the spectacle. The determination of the 1960s Japanese avant-garde to contrast and protest against the capitalistic mechanism through alternative performative acts is not central any more. Compared to those years, abusive use of power today is probably even more dangerous, since its exponential and pervasive diffusion leads to a condition in which power is omnipresent. As a result, the idea that the avant-garde can be a mechanism for resisting capitalism has been thoroughly questioned. Also the radical aims born in one of the most revolutionary body-theatre, butō, seem to have faded into a static proposition. As a banner of resistance to the society of the spectacle, trying to find out a context of radical nikutai (the immediacy of the material body in performance as advanced by the founder of butō Hijikata Tatsumi) and of politics of the body, a good example is the work of the performer and choreographer Murobushi Kō. This paper will analyse in specific the renovating intent visible in Murobushi’s project Experimental Body realised with his group Kō&Edge Co. in performances as Bibō no aozora (Shinjuku Park Tower Hall, 2003), Heels (Kagurazaka Die Pratze, 2004).

12/2015: a revised version of the paper with pictures is provided.