I've never been to a coffee farm. I drink coffee every day. I don't know how many countries in the world produce coffee. But I do know quite a few different types. There's a lot I don't know about other things, and yet my body still remembers things. Aromas. Sourness. Bitterness. I've heard that coffee originated in Ethiopia, but does that mean that coffee originated on the African continent, where humanity originated? So, isn't coffee "everything"? So, for example, let's try turning coffee into sound. Maybe we could make a CD or a live performance. Or even turn it into an "experience" that anyone can participate in. We'll start with the three of us. At first, all three of us will be equally familiar with the coffee. In other words, coffee will intertwine with song, track, and novel. Then, one after another, it will intertwine with various people. We'll solve each question one by one. Are coffee cherries red, blue, or something unknown? We'll investigate as if we were painting with color. We'll collaborate as if we were painting with sound. There's only one thing we know so far. This project is about coffee, so it's sure to be an "awakening."
Light is shining. While most live music venues are closed off to the world of night, the ceremony venue is lit. The light is soft. In this way, a space is created for experiencing coffee. There are now five characters. Suzuki Yusuke appears to serve the liquid "awakening" to those attending the ceremony, brewing coffee using a device with a mysterious name. Then Kondo Keisuke, who had handmade team T-shirts for the first three characters, brews coffee on the spot with a brush in a cup with an "awakening" design he had painted on it. Light is shining in the venue, but it's unclear what color the light is. It's clearly the color of afternoon. But everyone knows what color the coffee is. The first three people take turns extracting something from the brewed coffee. First, there's the track. The track is a coffee cup of sound. It's an invisible plug extending out into the world. There's the song. The song is the tiny flavors scattered throughout the coffee. There's a reading. It's the same force as the body swallowing the coffee, or the arms turning the mill. When these first three people toast, their cups don't clink. But the sound that was certainly there floats within the light. And in the void where color should be absent, a sign quietly spreads. A black hole.
Coffee is a liquid, as anyone can tell. But is it really a liquid? It's originally made from beans, so it can't possibly be liquid, and beans are, in fact, plants. And now, as the afternoon event at the live music venue reaches its third year, the coffee takes on various forms of paper. Paper, paper. Of course, this refers to the paper cups the coffee is poured into, but it also refers to the cards on which each of the five members has written their name, which will be used to draw the new unit name. The paper cards are lined up face down. They are shuffled on a round table. They wait, face down, for one of the five names to be chosen. Each and every one of these cards is coffee. It all began with a coin, which became metal, which became two types of paper, both coffee, and the new unit name that was drawn was the coffee group. Like paper flying into an airplane, these are the kinds of leaps in naming. A coin is (always, always) governed by the force of gravity and rolls flat, yet it leaps from there. In the background of the coffee, there is space.
HELLO...Color has been thrown in. Gathered here are all things that are "coffee but not coffee/things that are not coffee but are coffee." The red typewriter, the computer lighting up the white apple, and the brown beans—all are important parts of a group. Stacks of silver stamp cards quietly conceal their color. SECRET...But this secret isn't meant to inflict negative emotions on anyone. What is hidden is, in other words, contained, and therefore excessive—a lingering aftertaste, if you will. Just as good coffee has an aftertaste, so does good music, good paintings, and good writing. Perhaps it's the same as sensing color from a piece of writing, the aroma from a painting, or the flavor from music. And it's also the way words, sound, and coffee are simultaneously pounded out of a red, red typewriter. That's right, COFFEE...So excessive, so extraneous and secretive, and yet so richly enriched, they're all gathered here. Those who are being ground, those who accumulate, and above all those who gather. And then they all drip together. The red machine is typing away, whispering: a ta ta kai mo-no...
Hideo Furukawa
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the coffee group
Keita Love Kojima, Keisuke Kondo, Yusuke Suzuki, Shuta Hasunuma, Hideo Furukawa
http://www.faderbyheadz.com/release/headz140.html