“Today’s tree is smooth and quite wet and slippery, so I decide to climb with bare feet. Bare feet give me a more intimate contact with the tree than shoes, the contact creates a better sense of security when I’m that high up …”
The Longest Wave We Surf
2018 ~
“There’s a very good reason I use nail polish: nail polish has its brush in the cap. There’s really no way – I don’t have enough hands – there’s no way I could use a paint can and separate paintbrush and hold the ant and not spill it all in the tree. Now I can simply hold the bottle with my pinky, dip the brush in the paint with my fingers, paint the ant and then put the whole thing back together without dropping everything out of the tree …”
“Follow that and you’re home, back between those same ferns and flowers where I’m sitting now. And that’s amazing too, I see this little ant with a white painted ass walking across the tree trunk in front of me, only 10 minutes after I dropped her …”
“And now that she knows that she is falling, she has to decide where she wants to go. Once she knows, it’s really just a matter of some very subtle movements. While keeping her body at about a 30-degree angle she is able to slightly move her rear up and down, because her waist has this amazingly flexible joint. She holds her legs high, especially her hind and middle legs, and extends them over her body …”
Concept and script: Erica van Loon
Performers: Hiroshi Sugiyama and Hirokazu Hayashi
Camera: Shinya Aoyama and Erica van Loon
Voice: Joseph Kudirka
Singing bowl: Taeko Naruto
Editing script: Amy Pickles and Ro Heinrich
Production coordinator: Yumiko Fujimoto
Production assistants: Yukari Sugiyama and Tamaki Sugiyama
Special thanks to:
Steve Yanoviak (Professor at the Department of Biology, University of Louisville)
Fabricio Baccaro (Assistent Professor at the Biology Department of Amazonas Federal University)
Akiko Takeo (Assistant Professor at Earthquake Research Institute, University of Tokyo)
Yudai Suzuki (sensei, 6th dan Aikikai, Tsukuba Aikido Association)
This work was created during two residencies:
ARCUS Project, Artist-in-Residence Program, Moriya, Japan
and LABVERDE, Art Immersion Program in the Amazon, Adolpho Ducke Forest Reserve, Brasil
Installation view of The Longest Wave We Surf
at ARCUS Project, Moriya, Japan, 2018
16 min. loop, HD 2-channel video with 4.1 surround sound
+ drawings on chalkboard and objects
