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About this talk

All capital cities are assemblages made up of the human and nonhuman, where millions of human beings interact daily with complex technological systems and the built environment. Theorists have always been fascinated by this interdependency, and artists, by the 'life' that it creates. Millennial Tokyo has been particularly inspirational for an international range of writers and filmmakers who have attempted to represent its everyday existence, and for theorists – from urban studies, environmental humanities and sociology – who have thought about how agency is shared, distributed and passed around between human and nonhuman actants. In this lecture, Professor Kawakami examines two works that engage with the reality of Tokyo as a city of assemblages, showing these human/nonhuman interactions at work in two different kinds of space. First, Tokyo at night: the nocturnal city is a recognizably different space from that of the daytime, and the lecture shows how Michaël Ferrier, in his Tokyo: petits portraits de l'aube (2004), presents his after-dark experience of the city as an ever-changing creation involving moving pavements, fairy lights, underground passageways, human commuters and a rare species of asparagus. Back in the sunshine, the hero of Wim Wenders' Perfect Days (2023) is a deeply damaged man whose interactions with his nonhuman environment – the toilets he cleans, the van containing his tools, the trees in the park where he has lunch – are completely integral to his being; it is only as a part of this assemblage that he can survive. The lecture argues that nonhuman components of the city are equal partners of human individuals and communities in enacting the everyday of the enormous 'living' organism that is Tokyo. The lecture will be followed by a drinks reception in the Clore foyer. The lecture will also be live-streamed via Teams and recorded.

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