The "Mobile Literature" series fuses bicycle-based mobility and projection technology with literary expression. Each installment transforms a bicycle into a projection device and visualizes a novel themed around a specific city, projecting its narrative onto the urban landscape as a canvas. In this work, Mobile Literature: London Calling, a novel set in London was adapted into a video piece. The act of cycling through the city at night while projecting the text onto the ground was presented as a video work.
I pedaled toward eternity, the pale glow of street-lamps guiding my way. The poison that keeps me alive hums in my veins.
Longitude 0°. Greenwich Mean Time.
Big Ben stands as if it has forgotten the very idea of hours, while a red double-decker slides past like a slow-motion memory.
London calling.
In this place where time knots in on itself, an old record spins; past and present mingle like half-finished cocktails.
Last night, drunk and half-lost in a Camden alley, I stumbled on a Wonderwall—swear to God.
Piccadilly, where memories blur. Soho, the city that never sleeps. A spray-painted portrait of Bowie gazes out from the brick.
If I could let everything go, I'd stripe the pavement with beams of light, circle the planet twenty times, and watch words vanish in two—maybe three—seconds.
Inside me there's a winter that never dries out, the kind of rain that soaks between your bones.
London calling.
I know—I'm hollow. I linger at the rim of the world, tumbling again and again in the same recurring dream, waking, sleeping.
I came here for the Oasis reunion, made my pilgrimage to Abbey Road.
I'm working-class too.
I am Shota Shimura, and this was the blue spring I once longed for.
So I brush fingertips against the end of time—ecstatic, yet aching to die.
What do I care about the rest of my life?
No taxes paid, no rent met, a quiet fade-out on benefits and uncovered medical bills.
Even so—chilled Guinness, wayward weather, green parks—being here feels right. I want it etched into me forever.
London calling.
A vague anxiety hovers. I could hurl myself into the concrete, pierce through in an instant—from this side to that.
I smother emotions too blurred for poems or songs, and with every push of the pedals I loop between solitude and elation.
I race through a corner of a city where no one knows my name, feeling I own the world—only to shrink back the next second into a wretched little man. Fate, I suppose.
Still, I set myself loose in this town. The world before my eyes exists for me alone, and I, monarch of this lonely empire, drink the wind with my whole body—invincible, boundless, invincible, boundless, invincible, and endlessly infinite.
This is mobile literature from Japan: wheels spinning, words rolling, and I—still alive.
Tonight, I'm a rock 'n' roll star.
Tonight, I'm a rock 'n' roll star.
2025 Video