Carrying the Lyre - NIHEI Tatsuhiko (Japanese ArtBooks Series)

First book of paintings by stage director Tatsuhiko Nihei, who caused a sensation in the Arab world in 1991 when he was invited to the Cairo International Experimental Theatre Festival for the first time from Japan, and was described as a poet of time and space concerning creation and disappearance. 110 paintings for children from the exhibition "Carrying Lyre", which was held in 2022, are included.

Tatsuhiko Nihei
Established 'total theatre Nihei Kan' in 1983 and invited to the 'Cairo International Festival of Experimental Theatre' in 1991 for the first time from Japan. Since then, he has performed in Tunis, Marseille, Ghent, etc. In 2001, he established the unorganised art group Filia Project, and since 1992 has performed in China, Canada and the USA under the stage direction of Mitsuko Hase. Member of the Guelb er Richat ensemble. Organised the 'Barlakka Grand Circus', which toured the country, and held an exhibition of children's paintings in 2010. Currently preparing a project for the end of modernity.

【Preface】
The last drop of silence has disappeared without a trace.
The sea of silence has dried up.

The sea of silence gave us the time of poems and the time of singing voices.
They once existed side by side.

Dried up and cracked, the sea of silence shows only the shadows of the poet's lips moving fast.
The poet is dead.
The poet, who was weaving poems from songs, is dead.
The poet's voice, is dead.

The landscape and the body have been abandoned and exiled
By the winds of destruction and pleasure that accelerated and peaked in the twentieth century.
Even the last parting as an encounter has been taken away from us.

With too much to withstand, the earth resolved to become a water planet,
Then shivered and sneezed.
A pandemic has fallen on this world.
The wind has lost its force and stopped.

Day after day plague doctors collapse, lured away by blue temptation with holes in it.
Along with many others who become mere numbers.
The time has slowly lost its speed.

When time nears its complete halt,
Will the silence start to whisper again?
Will the landscape and the body come to life again?
In the desert where only bones are buried, will some seeds start with a bit of hesitation to embrace the heat?

(Ask the old woman of the East for the secret of the seeds!)
(Ask the girl of the North about the universe swelling inside the roots of the tree!)
(The elephants of the South and the pelicans of the West have started their moves!)

With singing voices dead, and poems dead,
In the desert where the moon and the dream fade into each other before dawn,
The lyre, left beside the body of the poet, waits.
For songs, for poems, and for a poet.
In a gleam of light.
(Carry the lyre!)
(Carry the lyre!)
(Carry the lyre, to play the silence!)

To meet you again,
By the nameless sea.

Translator: S. Ohno