Shiro Takatani's ST/LL at Napoli Teatro Festival

Shiro Takatani, artistic director and founding member of the Japanese collective Dumb Type, presented ST/LL at Teatro Politeama in Naples as part of the Napoli Teatro Festival Italia. The performance is a "visual and musical rewriting" of Lucretius's De rerum natura, featuring minimalist sets, water-covered floors, and abstract imagery captured by a spidercam. The work incorporates music by Ryuichi Sakamoto and Marihiko Hara, and includes incomprehensible lyrics in Ainu and an invented child language. The water element alludes to time and the origins of life, while the use of technology underscores the human-technology relationship. The performance was first staged at Biwako Hall in Japan in January 2016, where the dark backdrop and grand scale evoked the sublime; in Naples, the smaller, peeling-wall setting of Teatro Politeama replaced the sublime with lyricism. The show concludes with the contemplation of a deserted beach and a gray-blue sea, referencing the Fukushima nuclear disaster.