Stream – The pandemic and the various ‘withs’ that run parallel to our daily lives

The text was written for the performance Stream performed by Pijin Neji in March 2023. This performance, which mainly consists of text readings, looks back on the events that occurred in Neji’s daily life and the social situation during the pandemic period from 2020 to 2022. At the time, Tokyo Governor Yuriko Koike dubbed social life during the pandemic ‘with corona’. This naming normalizes the state of emergency, makes us accustomed to new rules such as wearing masks, sanitizing hands and staying at home, and puts the pandemic at the centre of society’s concerns. It had the extremely political and subtle effect of relegating other various concerns to the periphery. While I acknowledge the political cleverness of the naming, in the same way I dare to refer to the current state of 2024 as ‘with corona’, and also express the great concern of ‘with war’. The performance and the text are grief works in which I attempt to mourn them with the trivial aspects of life ‘withs’.