“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 ~
“She might chew on you a little bit, but she barely break the skin. And even then, you’d have to give her some really soft skin to work with. She herself actually has a very hard body, so there’s really no danger of you crushing her.”
“While you’re falling you have to make split-second decisions, because you are falling very fast, between 4 and 5 meters per second; that’s fast fast. During this time you have to quickly turn you body in the air, so that you are right-side up: with your belly pointing downward. And you also want to make sure that your rear end, your ass, is directed towards the tree.”
“The next day I return to the same tree with a bottle of white nail polish in my pocket. I want to figure out what’s going on… ”
The above are video stills and excerpts from the script of
The Longest Wave We Surf (2018 ~)
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
