“Kengo Kuma / particle dance” is a documentary that grapples with the work of a single architect

Architect Kengo Kuma’s 15-year trajectory: A collective-verse-style (renku) woven from haiku-like fragmentary visuals.

Hiromoto Oka is bewildered. When he is filming, he is completely obsessed. Something happens one after another. Just chasing it is exhausting. Time flies away. With elapsed time and footage piling up before him, many times along the way, he must have told himself, “Okay, let’s wrap it up”. But still, the project moves on, the talks continue and ideas emerge and evolve depending on the situation, inside the architect, where no one can see. He can stop filming right there. It’s better that way so the footage can take shape as a cohesive film or a polished work. And yet, the real world moves on and continues to transform. This reality, that reality ー both must be included. And so 15 years have elapsed. Kengo Kuma / particle dance is a documentary that grapples with the work of a single architect.

The architect Kengo Kuma spends his days doing this and that, working not only all over the Japanese archipelago but also internationally. He doesn’t care if he is being filmed. He’s too busy to pay any attention. Hiromoto Oka, watching through the viewfinder, does not anticipate exactly what will happen either. He just tracks Kuma’s movements. As he follows, he often wonders at a single man’s sheer capacity to undertake. He knows it’s impossible to capture the whole picture. Yet, his instinct tells him to shoot ー he must shoot for now. People pass by buildings and gaze up at them, and yet they rarely do so consciously. What is a building? What and how does it mean or relate to our own body?

The film, therefore, is superfluous. It gives up on weaving narrative and stops pretending to provide the plot. Hiromoto Oka represents a collection of things he has witnessed, or moments that ー without even realizing it ー were caught on camera. Also, he shows this is how it was and this is how everything unfolded. Here and there, in the piece, wide landscape shots are inserted, soothing the viewer. It could be described as watching from afar. Odd time rhythmic figures released frequently heard in Kazuma Fujimoto’s guitar playing move in and out of phase with the pacing ー not of Kengo Kuma’s architecture, but of the footage carved out from his work. The effect is like a subtle moiré.

After experiencing 145-minuite film, I was lost for words. I need to find a proper way to put it into words. There are so many things in a state of flux, and people are left unable to digest them all. Are we throwing away the chance to face that indigestibility by settling for a lazy “Like”? This film jolts us out of lazy habits.