THE COLLECTION ARTAUD

A label based in Berlin DE gardened by Yu Miyashita aka Yaporigami

Q&A

― Please tell us how you have started the label, The Collection Artaud which is named after Antonin Artaud.

Artaud's To Have Done with the Judgment of God (1947) is one of my favourite texts. I feel Artaud was a person whose inherent congruities and incompatibilities with societal norms always conflicted with inter alia "Society". This left Artaud no option but to confront a world in which drastic-yet-peaceful changes were, and still are, impossible. In a similar vein, I feel strange (social) restraint from Japan - my home country. When I read Artaud, I thought/felt that I was truly a human being with a "body with [properly-functioning] organs". While one could enjoy our capitalism-driven world as if it were a mere game, few noble beings endeavour to reject to possess the insensitivity and disinterestedness required to play such a game. And so I believe it vital for those [so-called "artistic type" of beings] to make ceaseless efforts not to change oneself in accordance with Society. In my reading of Artaud, I feel his writing is one such effort to break or dissociate from social pressure(s). I dedicated the label perhaps as a declaration: TCA is the excavation and re/constitution of Artaud’s beings (with organs) in our modern age. Should the existence of The Collection Artaud somehow proved that an Utopian Garden / Sanctuary can still (certainly) exist, that just might be it.

Proofreading: Benjamin I. J. Mintzer
(Last Edited on 17 Dec 2020)