Thursday 31 May 2018, 7.30pm
London-based artist Rie Nakajima bring two regular collaborators together to coincide with her ongoing exhibition at Birmingham's Ikon gallery, which combines found objects, largely made from concrete and metal, to make new kinetic assemblages; vehicles for a sonic adventure with an unknown destination.
Nakajima has previously brought her duo performance with Beligian musician, composer, inventor, and craftsman, Pierre Berthet – Dead Plants & Living Objects – and regularly collaborates with artist, Keiko Yamamoto under their O Yama O moniker; creating soundscapes inspired by Japanese myth, ritual, anthropology and everyday, non-spectacular sound worlds.
“One of the most touching performance I experienced last year was in Wysing Festival: O YAMAO, which on that occasion was Rie Nakajima and Keiko Yamamoto, playing in the circular Amphis space within Wysing’s grounds. How often are we in such intimate closeness to the materials of sound, the physicality of a naked voice, without chairs, microphones, distance, so conscious of light, climate, atmosphere, the nearness of other bodies, the permeability of a structure that is outside as much as in?” – David Toop
Rie Nakajima is a sculptor living in London. She creates sounds using a combination of motorised devices and everyday objects in the context of installations and performances.
Her art exists on the borderline of sculpture and music, open to chance and the influence of others. Improvisation is at the heart of her work.
The first major solo exhibition was held at IKON Gallery in Birmingham in 2018. She has also worked with Museo Vostell Malpartida (Cáceres), Annely Juda Gallery (London), Association de Le Cyclop (Milly la Forêt), ShugoArts (Tokyo), Donaueschinger Music Festival (Donaueschinger), Festival Météo (Mulhouse), Music for the Eyes Festival (Varmlands), Deep Time Festival (Edinburgh), Punkt Festival (Kristiansand), All Ears Festival (Oslo), Festival Archipel (Geneva), Cafe OTO (London) and many others. Collaboration is an essential part of her practice with frequent collaborators, Pierre Berthet, Angharad Davies, David Cunningham, Keiko Yamamoto, Max Eastley, Miki Yui, hans.w.koch, Marie Roux, Billy Steiger, David Toop and Akira Sakata.
“Highly experimental French sounds emanating from homemade instruments and recording constructs create quite a varied listening experience even for seasoned avant-garde fans... The construction of new instruments by Pierre Berthet are designed to dislocate the center of the listening experience and play tricks on the ear, forcing the listener to search of the sonic center of his music.” – All Music
Pierre Berthet lives and works in Liège, Belgium. Musician, composer, inventor, craftsman. He studied percussion with André Van Belle and Georges-Elie Octors. Improvisation with Garrett List. Composition with Frederic Rzewski. Music theory with Henri Pousseur. He designs and builds sound objects and installations (steel, plastic, water, magnetic fields, ...). He presents them in exhibitions and solo or duo performances. He worked with Frédéric Le Junter, Pierre Bastien, dj Low, Rudi Trouvé, and played percussion with Arnold Dreyblatt ("Animal Magnetism" on Tzadik, "The Sound of One String" on Table of the Elements).
Ikuro Takahashi is a Japanese drummer and sound artist. A central member of many groups from the Tokyo psychedelic underground from the early eighties. Some of the groups he has played with include High Rise, Kousokuya, Maher Shalal Hash Baz, Fushitsusha, Ché-SHIZU,Nagisa ni te, LSD March.
In recent years he has played under the name Anoyondekigoto, frequently a duo unit with his partner, the dancer Yoko Muronoi.
http://www.yamimimi.com/it/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ikuro_Takahashi
