The Vacuum Cleaner

Statement of the Jury

Saturated, ageing high civilisations (in this case Japan’s) invariably claim some victims. The point of departure for Toshiki Okada’s work is a female hikikomori who is fifty years old and lives a life of social apathy in her eighty-year-old father’s house. She is watched, among others, by the eponymous vacuum cleaner that introduces itself from a floor- and dust-oriented perspective: “I’m the type who is more interested in the lower regions.” A grown-up son also lives with the father and daughter. Because he is secretly unemployed, he has a lot of time on his hands and loiters in parks and malls during the day. His new friend, who quit his job with Amazon after four days because he couldn’t stand the shitty work, is also part of the living arrangements. It’s a panorama including a bubble of affluence, social phobia, average working lives, lacking prospects, depression and McJob-misery. The performers’ gestures are always a little out of sync, following and enlarging what is said and felt: Blossoms of decay somewhere between being remotely controlled by society and the remains of one’s own agency.