Relay Column: On What We Incorporate & Fashion (Yuri Umemoto)

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PROFILE

Yuri Umemoto

Composer. Born in Tokyo in 2002. Exploring a maximalistic musicality that draws from traditional sheet music and modern digital expressions, with a focus on sound expression in Japanese anime and MAD sampling techniques found in internet culture. His works have been performed by domestic and international performers, ensembles, and orchestras, and showcased at music festivals in Europe. He also provides music for fashion shows and television programs, collaborating with visual artists.

I have a strong desire to incorporate things I find beautiful into myself. Fragrant things are inhaled into the body, sounds draw my ear, and beautiful objects are placed beside me. For some, love reaches a boundary marked by merging with the body. For me, fashion is a forcefully alluring means to realize such a desire for unity. Merging requires strength, and it can sometimes turn into love or violence.

When an artist encounters something and treats it as their own, what kind of power is at play? Adorning oneself with the designs of others or other cultures, mastering people, creatures, or objects. In the midst of vague good and evil, the self-questioning continues.

As a composer, I constantly ponder this issue when creating music or artistic works. In creation, something is "incorporated" as "material." Operating within the context of traditional European art, I sometimes, as a non-European, can bring something from the outside world. When we incorporate the representation of a particular country, culture, or community into our art—as voices are snatched, traced, and brought into a different world. Voices are sampled, notated as sheet music, and performed for a specific world.