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.

At some point, a distance emerged between me and my friends who had become mothers.

I did not speak to anyone about the strange pain and awkwardness that this distance brought until I met Yuko.
I had believed that such things were too prosaic—mere chatter—for someone engaged in artistic expression.

“It is temporality that divides us.”

Yuko, who is raising a small child, said this.
She spoke about how difficult it is to move back and forth between the animal, immeasurable time in which a baby lives, and the strict, linear time of society that moves relentlessly toward the future.

And I, meanwhile, was on the side of those who think only about moving forward, leaving people like Yuko behind.
Absorbed in uninterrupted progress, I had forgotten to have children.

But I do not know if that was the right choice.

Perhaps a temporality that continues to pursue productivity—casting aside those who are slower or weaker—turns human beings into combative monsters, and creates a world that kills children.

Even if I can no longer have children, I want to find a place where different temporalities can be reconciled, and to rebuild my friendships with women who have become mothers. But how?

This question gave rise to Quand le temps devient beauté?

Concept

Based between Japan and France, this project takes as its starting point the distance between women who have children and those who do not.
Through the tension between reproductive bodies and productive bodies, it reconsiders contemporary temporality in the form of a choreographic work.

The work unfolds as an immersive and durational celebration that invites people—immersed in the measurable and linear temporality of contemporary urban life—into a different sense of time.

The dramaturgy and choreographic method are still under consideration, but I would like to try a structure in which sequences of movement and music are repeated multiple times over a fixed duration.

There is no progress toward the future.
Time appears as a kind of non-productive repetition, yet each iteration is different—a cyclical and reversible temporality.

Will this allow the audience to recall the experience of being absorbed in the “present” during childhood?

As this particular experience of time accumulates in the body, how will it transform the bodies of the audience and the performers, and the concentration of the musicians?
What kind of state will emerge in a group that influences one another in this way?

Could this become a celebration that functions as a form of resistance to a world in which competition and violence are accelerating?

Audiences of all ages can come, leave, and return at any time.

We seek to create a communal celebration that heals our collective soul, which has long been wounded by productive time.

Current Phase: From Research to Creation

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).