The phrase that Laurel Nakadate used the most in her lecture was citing her interest in the ridiculous and futile. This interest can be seen in most of her work. Her performances often seem to have no set statement or intention behind them. She seems to simply go out to interact with people in different ways fueled by her need to interact with people and meet strangers or acts out pointless or absurd situations and rituals pushed by her urge to commit to the ridiculous. Her films have scenes planned out and have a loose backgrounds like that of the story of six quietly depressed teenage girls and their lonely lives that play out, but the actors are untrained, the setting depended on these actors, and the plot though somewhat planned was an organic process informed by the participation of actors.
An important element and practice of Nakadate is her inclusion of ritual, whether it’s an intentional creation of the ritual, or her performance becoming a ritual in the end. She creates rituals with others asking to interact with her at times in varying forms of ritual from the mainstream birthday cakes and etiquette of the treatment of a dead body to one’s she made us just for the performance, like in Celebrations where at one point she asks stranger to try and help her raise a bird from the dead calling them the quiet strange rituals we don’t even think about. At other times she commits herself to perform seemingly senseless rituals for set periods of time. For twenty-four hours, in her performance of dancing all day and night at her childhood home honoring what happened there calling it ridiculous but necessary. For days at a time, traveling across the country in Where You’ll Find Me where she reenacts crime scene photographs in a macabre memorial finding empathy for the embarrassment of being found. In Love Hotel, she takes the vacation she was supposed to have with her estranged boyfriend and performs the act and ritual of making love to a ghost or memory in the end turning her performance into a therapeutic exercise acting out something we all do just in our minds not in reality. Finally in relation her yearlong performance of crying everyday of 2010, she spoke of really committing herself to something that has no point finding out even with no purpose the ritualistic act became an important part of her life.
As I learned about her work, I found that there is a purpose and therefore intention behind her work even if it’s the dedication to the irrational. I find this speaks to ritual on a large scale. Rituals only have meaning to those who participate and understand the meaning behind the actions. Some people may go through the motions of a ritual but until they understand the meaning behind their action they are not going to comprehend the meaning behind the ritual. An outsider may find a ritual from another culture or religion is pointless or even wrong but to those involved it is a continuation of heritage or praising the divine. In reference to the rituals around death Thomas Lynch stated, “You only have to blur your eyes to see absurdity of what we do for the dead”. The everyday ritual is the most apparent ritual with no purpose other than to soothe ourselves.
The most compelling body of work was her series she created when she documented the performance of crying everyday of 2010. It began simply with a real commitment to ritual of deliberating participating in sadness, which on a basic level has no purpose. Her documents began to evolve from perverse facebook photographs then became more about the individual nature of each act. At the end she began to feel alone because this private act of crying had become a ritual that kept her company… made her feel less alone. This is in a sense what we all do… participating in our personal and sanctioned rituals to keep ourselves grounded… soothing ourselves with our own quiet strange rituals as Nakadate said.
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