Artist’s Statement — Kumiko Ueda

I, Kumiko Ueda, am a 46-year-old Japanese woman. I have never given birth.
Perhaps my time has already run out.

Birth rates are declining worldwide.

Over time, a distance quietly grew between me and my friends who became mothers. The pain was small yet sharp, and I never spoke about it with anyone until I met Yuko. I had long believed that such reflections were too prosaic, too ordinary for an artist to dwell on.

“What separates us is temporality,” Yuko said. She continued, almost as if cornered:

“You stand on the side of those who move relentlessly forward, thinking only of advancing faster and faster — leaving behind the time in which my children and I turn in circles, staying in one place.”

I was lonely. I did not have children.
We were searching for time — time that might reconcile our different temporalities.
But how?

From that question, Quand le temps devient beauté was born.

This Franco-Japanese project takes as its starting point the distance between women with children and women without, and through the tension between the reproductive body and the productive body, re-examines contemporary temporality. It is the first project I am developing in France.

Inspired by the form of the festive evening gatherings once common in Japan, the work unfolds as an immersive and durational celebration — one that invites people shaped by the tempo of the modern city to enter a different experience of time.

While the dramaturgy and choreographic method are still in development, I would like to experiment with a structure in which a 60-minute sequence of choreography and music is repeated multiple times. There is no forward progress toward a future; the repetition may appear non-productive, yet each cycle differs subtly from the last. Might this circular temporality allow the audience to rediscover the childhood experience of being fully absorbed in the present?

As this particular temporal experience accumulates in the body, how will the bodies of the audience, the performers, and the musicians’ concentration transform? What kind of collective state might emerge from their mutual influence?

Spectators of all ages may enter the evening whenever they wish, leave, and return.

Together, we seek to create a communal celebration — one that might heal the collective soul long wounded by the demands of productive time.

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The project has now completed its initial research phase.

With studio support from the French National Dance Center (CND) and La Ménagerie de Verre, we conducted two weeks of interviews (March and December 2025) with mothers in Japan and France, focusing on the tension between parenthood and dominant temporal structures.

In January 2026, we began the first concrete stage of creation, holding one week of collective discussions and testing different audience configurations.

The next phase will involve exploring compositional and choreographic methods together with collaborators, while developing the dramaturgical structure. The interview process will also continue, expanding to participants of all genders, with and without children.

The project is co-produced by Compagnie ProjectumÏ (France), Projectumi LLC. (Japan), and Precog Co., Ltd. (Japan).