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The (dis)location of time and space: trans-cultural collaborations in Tokyo

This collaborative article is drawn from research findings from the authors collaborative work with Japanese theatre company Gekidan Kaitaisha in Tokyo 2012, and also from the authors independent collaborative project ‘Site Memory Mapping Project: Tokyo Marathon Walk’, which also took place in Tokyo in 2012. The authors attempt to reflect the complexity of multiple perspectives within cross-cultural collaborations and to frame such collaborations as acts that allow transformation of the self. They draw upon Henri Bergson’s notion of duration, and time is discussed in terms of its non-linear temporality, and as it is experienced spatially within the performer body and in Kaitaisha signature practices. The article locates the authors as operating in, and dislocated by, time and space, in a geographical, spatial, cultural, philosophical and performative sense. They argue that through the performative practices, and the cultural and temporal/spatial located experiences they discuss, the self transforms/forms in the temporal/spatial specificity of the action.