Meiro Koizumi

This is a video piece. A man covered in face paint is sitting at a table in front of a slab of clay and a black-glazed sculpture of an odd shape. There is a man behind the camera instructing him. He wants the man at the table to recreate the sculpture out of the slab of clay. While he is molding the clay, the man behind the camera asks the other guy some questions. Before starting, he asks the molder is he wants some water. The molder refuses. The man behind the camera proceeds to ask about where he’s from, when he moved, his parents’ divorce, and his relationship with his father. The man molding the clay begins to get frustrated with some of the questions. As the frustration levels rise, the man behind the camera says that they are going to start over. They start over and the man at the table asks for water. The man behind the camera says that he cannot have water until he makes the form. The guy gets more frustrated and says that the figure is too hard to finish. Eventually, he starts again and his hands begin to cramp. The man behind the camera instructs him to finish faster. Then he says that they are going to start again, from the beginning. After the third time starting over, the man at the table looked exhausted. The man behind the camera began again with the questions. At one point, the man at the table wasn’t even making the form of the sculpture. He was talking about the last time he saw his father and how angry he was at him. He just squeezed the clay with anguish. The man behind the camera tells him to stop when the clay looked a certain way, mangled and manipulated with depression, bitterness and resentfulness.
When I started my notes, I labeled this piece “Cruel and unusual punishment.” It felt like the artist was really playing with this man’s emotions to get a certain reaction out of him. Not only was the man instructed to recreate a highly conceptual sculpture, he was asked many details about his life, including very personal and painful ones, like his parents’ divorce and his last memory of his father. At one point, in the middle of talking about the last memory of his father, he punches the clay a few times to vent his anger. It was a very emotional piece and I felt angry after I finished watching it.
I really don’t have a lot to say about this work or the rest of the show. Maybe it’s because I’m not as much of an artist as the others in my class or school, so I don’t really “appreciate” the show as much as my teacher and my classmates.