Fire in the Year 2002

The Japanese visual and performance artist Yutaka Matsuzava visited Galleri Stalke in Copenhagen.

“Matsuzava will need nine witnesses,” said the gallery owner, looking encouragingly at the Berlingske Tidende correspondent.

Two hours earlier, the same gallery owner had left a message on the correspondent’s voicemail about a performance in the gallery that same evening at 22:22. Precisely.

The art critic looked around. There were ten people in the gallery. The tenth was a photographer

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All nine witnesses stood in meditative silence. First, they faced east, then south. Through the southern door came the highly esteemed Japanese conceptual artist Yutaka Matsuzava. A friendly smiling, well-dressed man in his late sixties

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Matsuzava stood facing his witnesses. Then he unfolded a piece of silk fabric with characters written on it. As he draped it over his head, he uttered a series of sounds, presumably in Japanese. It sounded like something out of a Tom Kristensen-style poem, and it was quite beautiful.

The happening was announced to last 2 minutes and 22 seconds, and they passed quickly. But before they ended, Matsuzava made his predictions:

“This place was under water in 200000002 before Christ. This place will be under fire in 2002.”

There was red wine afterward.

Matsuzava’s performance in the Copenhagen gallery was part of a long series of similar happenings, which began in 1981 and will conclude in 1991. Previously, these events have taken place at the Centre Pompidou and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

The next will be in 1990 at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam.

In Berlingske's conversation with Matsuzava, it also emerged that he was born on 2/2/1922, and he believes humanity will disappear in the year 2222.

By Torben Weirup/Berlingske tidende 22.6.1989

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