In recent years, Kobayashi has practiced a number of live performances to extend such processes explored in his video works. As a part of a performance series 14 EVENINGS at The National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo (MOMAT) last September, the artist presented a 2 hour performance after a text specifically created for the event by Asa Ito, a scholar in literature and performance. Ito quoted some actress on a TV show saying, “I don’t like watermelons because they taste like a rhinoceros beetle.”, and pointed out that a “leap in recognition” occurs while the natures of the actress, the beetles and the watermelon are lent and borrowed between each other. She argued that a “leap in time” would be similarly made possible by lending the nature of “human” to a “mountain”. “Objects” constructed according to this text were arranged throughout the museum space, and Kobayashi aimed to explain the structure of a time machine through words and attempted to execute a time travel. 

This exhibition will be presented in two parts – a sequel to 2-9-1 (2009), and a section of a video and objects created based on Ito’s newly written text M-U-R-D-E-R-W-E-A-P-O-N along with the video T-I-M-E-M-A-C-H-I-N-E created for the MOMAT event.

A live performance by Kobayashi in collaboration with Ikuhiro Yamagata has been scheduled on Thursday November 22. By presenting a group of such video works and performance in parallel along with objects re-assembled based on the new text, Kobayashi will attempt to make the audience experience the possibility and impossibility of a “leap” that develops around the recognition of object/action/language.