Hello. I am Rodion Trofimchenko. I was born in Tiraspol, studied psychoanalysis in St. Petersburg. In 2003, I moved to Japan and obtained a Doctorate degree in Art Theory. I worked as an independent curator. Now, I am developing Gallery-Neo.tokyo.
I have long been drawn to Aikido and the arts, but the life events and conditions of the pandemic pushed me more towards spiritual practice: yoga and meditation. I began to study dance and put into practice the transformative power of the art. I reconsidered my approach to the gallery, and I decided to expand it to a space where people can, through different practices move to a higher level of existence, transforming themselves. I called it „Neo.tokyo Multiplex for Body-Mind Transformation”. It includes five branches: Art, Philosophy/Psychoanalysis, Yoga/Meditation, Ankoku Butoh Dance, and Techno Music. In the fall of 2021 my father passed away. He left me a house in the center of Chisinau. I decided to build the first Neo.tokyo in it. I got a one-way ticket and started building. Right then something terrible happened. Nearby people started killing each other. Men, women, and children are dying, even though they could have lived. Many lost their homes. Many had to flee. The everyday filled with suffering and lies. Pain pierced me. I had to let it out. To do this, I had art – the Japanese dance Akoku Butoh. It can conduct pain and use it to touch in a person the place where awareness and universal love pulsate. Butoh originated in Japan in the 60s. The dancers cover their bodies with white to erase their features. With slow movements and a certain state of mind, they generate a movement that is not pre-calculated and not decided by Ego. Butoh creates an opening in a familiar reality, like an opening in a wall from which brick has fallen out, so that something universal—True—manifests itself. While practicing Butoh, I began to get out of “Rodion Trofimchenko”, from the framework of my personality. I found a Vitality beyond words, identities, beyond attachments: constantly changing, in motion, in Dance. I named it Mark Birth. On my shaved head in the very center at the back of it, I found a big birthmark. In a way, it’s Mark’s face. It is a mark of birth. My Birth Mark is a much more of a real I than what’s in my passport, isn’t it? Do you have a birth mark? Mark pulled me to the streets. He saw a place in front of the abandoned Hotel National. He immediately recognized it as a Stage: a place soaked in chill-clearing pain, where the power of Love vibrates under a crack ready to open. The first dance happened on March 7th. There are no words for it. We were taken to a psychiatric hospital, where the police determined that there was no crime, and a council of doctors – that it was „art”. We went out on the third day with a confirmation that there is a Human behind every uniform. Mark didn’t rest on that. He called me to the same Spot. We were united with pain and haunted by the image of the Japanese artist Dadakan, who in 1969, during the Vietnam War, walked with a simple inscription „Do not kill.” We made the same sign and Mark danced with it. He was „banging his head” against the “fundamental truth”, squeezing out to the surface what is in the center of existence, and what makes a human human. Understand, this is beyond arguments. This cannot be outmaneuvered by logic. To argue with this truth is to disintegrate yourself in all registers of existence. Do not kill! This time there is a video. It was shot by Sergey Stratulat. And photos by Oleg Bezerdik. The sound is Toki Fuko’s „Kattegat”. I’d like to share them with you. Butoh cannot be recorded. The vibrations it produces can only be lived through in the Here and Now. However, I think there is still Force in these images. So, I am sending them to you. I also thought it was important to point to a place where you can strengthen your link with a dimension that would prevent you from getting into a trap in your own head. I am also doing it to point to Butoh, to The Dance: those who dance do not kill. Share this if what you’re seeing resonates with you. This works. And now I leave you and return to building Neo.tokyo. Till next dance. Peace!
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