Back-flow to the junction

tsu-tsu (b. January 25, 1997) searches for and performs people born on the same date — January 25, 1997 — across the world.

The project began with an online birthday gathering. Participants joined from different countries, and what emerged was a series of “celebrations” shaped by regional customs, family structures, and economic circumstances. In the unusual atmosphere of a party where everyone is the protagonist, something shifted: conversation opened with strangers who shared nothing but a birthdate, and through that arbitrary connection, both what has already been lost and disparities that resist easy explanation became visible.

In the aftermath of the pandemic, many people have retreated inward, even as “diversity” circulates as a public slogan. tsu-tsu felt a need to find a different path through this condition — not by gathering people around a shared identity or cause, but by mapping individuals who are already scattered at random, linked only by the accident of a date.

This is a deliberately inverted approach to thinking about coexistence: rather than starting from a common site, it starts from distance. By encountering others who exist in parallel — born on the same day, yet living entirely different lives — we may begin to consider, through a kind of backcasting, the steps that could bring us closer without collapsing the distance between us.

To date, tsu-tsu has located birthday twins in Japan, Austria, England, the United States, the Philippines, and Poland. The project is ongoing.