7.15pm:
Rie Nakajima (artist) sound performance.
Verina Gfader, introduction, reading from OTT book.
Emiko Kato (director/curator of Art Autonomy Network [AAN], Tokyo), presentation/talk.

8PM:
Merce Rodrigo García: conversation with OTT people and OTO people.
Screening: Hikaru Fujii, PROJECT FUKUSHIMA! (2012, 90min, Eng. subtitles).
Director, Cinematography, Editing: Hikaru Fujii. Musical director, composer: Otomo Yoshihide. Producer: Jun Numata.

Special thanks to Hikaru Fujii who provided this film document for free for this event!


Image from PROJECT FUKUSHIMA! (c) Hikaru Fujii


ORNAMENT EPIPHANIES: TOKYO

To celebrate the launch of OTT Book, OrnAmenT Epiphanies: Tokyo brings together artists and producers in a unique ornament-assemblage, featuring artist Rie Nakajima, curator Emiko Kato, architect and researcher Merce Rodrigo García, and artist and researcher Verina Gfader. The screening of Hikaru Fujii’s film PROJECT FUKUSHIMA! accompanies the sound and text-scape, highlighting the potential of art to engage with Japan’s precarious economical state after 3/11 and its local and global effects.

OTT Book (Engl/Jap, published by Art-Phil, Japan) documents and further explores ideas first proposed and discussed during OrNamenTTokYo Mobile lab, a Tokyo-based research project on the notion of the “common” in Japan across art, architecture, urbanism, activism, and sociopolitical space. In the format of an international and cross-disciplinary 3-day event, including urban walk, workshop, seminar and open kitchen at Art Autonomy Network [AAN], Creative Hub 131, Mobile lab investigated urban space, noise patterns and new forms of inhabitation/occupation; shelter structures inspired by public halls, conflictual zones and gathering points, drawing lines to mark a place; and histories of copyright and il/legal actions, migration, plants, herbs, medicine and labour.

Book contributors include: Kenta Kishi, David d’Heilly, Christian Dimmer, Hikaru Fujii, Emiko Kato, Joon Yang Kim, Hiroshi Ota (Tokyo Picnic Club), Takaaki Soga (Contemporary Art Factory, Tokyo), Dominick Chen, F. Atsumi (Art-Phil), Genichi Ide (Boat People), BCL Georg Tremmel and Shiho Fukuhara, Merce Rodrigo Garcia, and Verina Gfader.

OrnAmenT Epiphanies: Tokyo at Cafe Oto marks the fifth Ornament project in a series, presenting new participants and material; it introduces OTT Book through debate, screening and performance, initiating further transnational alliances and research on the “common” in the expanded cultural landscape of Japan.



OTT Book cover (left)
OTT workshop around the river banks along Futako-Tamagawa, Tokyo 2011. Photograph: Merce Rodrigo García (right)



BCL Georg Tremmel and Shiho Fukuhara, ‘seed balls distribution’ in Yanaka and Mukojima, OTT urban walk 2011 (left)
Open kitchen at AAN, 12 Nov 2011. Photograph: Merce Rodrigo García (right)

Art Autonomy Network [AAN], TOKYO: a-a-n.org/, 1x3x1.jp/
Hikaru Fujii: hikarufujii.com/
Art-Phil: art-phil.com/

RIE NAKAJIMA

Rie Nakajima is an artist working with installations and performances that produce sound. Her works are most often composed in direct response to unique architectural spaces using a combination of audio materials and found objects.

The works created for the purposes of "playing" the sounds she has in mind are often placed matter-of-factly on the floor or take the form of assembled objects that serve as sound makers, 
giving rise to inorganic spaces. Listening to the works in such finely honed environments brings to the surface in a pure way people's imagination, memories, and deepest thoughts. 



Nakajima graduated from the Department of Aesthetics and Art History at Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music and received a BA in Sculpture at the Chelsea College of Art and Design and an MA in Sculpture at the Slade School of Fine Art, London. Since then Nakajima has exhibited and performed widely both in the UK and overseas.

"Diverse objects such as marbles, whistles, nails, toys, ping-pong balls, paper cups and glass bottles were casually yet deftly moved around the surface of one of the cabaret tables. Random sounds resulted from their chance confrontations, her quiet concentration induced a spellbound gaze from surrounding spectators, simply awaiting the next sound." - Virginia Whiles

www.rienakajima.com



MERCE RODRIGO GARCÍA

Merce Rodrigo García is a London based independent architect and researcher. After studies at Bartlett School of Architecture UCL and the Centre for Research Architecture, Goldsmiths College, she is currently completing her PhD at Birkbeck College (Cultural Studies, Law) and at the Architectural Association.

VERINA GFADER

Verina Gfader is an artist and writer, currently Research Fellow in Cultural Theory at University of Huddersfield, whose work is organised around questions of what strategies and interventions one takes in relation to everyday systems, subsumed in narratives of agency and activism. Recent investigations include models, drawing, fictional institutions, and text with a focus on printed matter in between unregulated and sophisticated presentation.