Antoine Levi/Ciaccia Levi, Paris
Daniel Jacoby
The sound piece Biwas. A somewhat robotic voice endlessly loops through a short story that refers to a misunderstanding with some plum-like fruits found one night near Sapporo.
One of the three edition of this piece is part of the Centre national des arts plastiques collection.
Transcription
The grass was full of yellow dots. Mostly in the shade of that one tree. The night was pitch black and those golden balls were the only elements reflecting of the car headlights, like a starry sky on the ground. They were biwas, I learned from her. Little yellow fruits. They look very much like plums, but aren’t. She put on the white cotton gloves she kept in the door pocket, got out of the car, and began to collect them. She had made that stop determined to get a good haul, and she filled up a plastic bag in no time. I went over and picked one up, very curious about their taste. I was about to bite into the biwa, when she stopped me. Don’t do that! I have a vivid memory of my grandfather eating them straight off the plant, the plum tree he grew in his garden. No worries whatsoever. But she insisted that the flesh was poisonous. Forget the outside. We’re just interested in the kernel. She sounded philosophical. Just the seed? And the flesh… I’ll throw it away, she said with no remorse. We both got back into the car and she drove off. There was silence. I was thinking about the flesh of the biwas, and she was probably picturing what she was going to make with all those seeds. Nobody said a word for a while. Not until she spotted something in the distance. She slowed down to double check and finally pulled over next to a tree.