Past Residents Yoichi Kamimura
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Field recording drift ice in the Sea of Okhotsk, 2020. Photo by Takehito Koganezawa
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Yoichi Kamimura, "Breathe You", sound installation view in a group exhibition "Michikusa: Walks with the Unknown" Contemporary Art Center, Art Tower Mito, 2020
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Yoichi Kamimura, "phantom power", 2019
Drawing chiefly upon his field recordings, Kamimura experiments with methods that draw upon sight, hearing, and other senses to perceive different scenes. His extensive body of work includes sound installations, paintings, video works, sound performances, and audio-works – unveiled in venues both within Japan and abroad. Kamimura refers to the field-recording process as an act of “meditative hunting” – in the process, he acts as an observer to the amorphous relationship between humankind and nature.
Kamimura composes his sound installations by creating highly-immersive “sound-scapes,” many of which draw upon our own biology to create unique sensory experiences.
Recent exhibitions and projects include From Seeing to Acting (Looiersgracht 60, Amsterdam, 2021), Mutable Ecologie (RMIT University, Melbourne, Online, 2021), Phonurgia Nova Awards 2021 (Centre Wallonie Bruxelles, Paris, 2021), Land and Beyond (POLA ANNEX MUSEUM, Tokyo, 2021), Floating Between the Tropical and Glacial Zones (Tokyo Arts and Space, Tokyo, 2021), Michikusa: Walks with the Unknown (Contemporary Art Center, Art Tower Mito, Ibaraki, 2020), Hyperthermia (emergencies! 39 – NTT Intercommunication Center [ICC], Tokyo, 2019), among others.
I will record vibrations of the traces of the ice sheet and make artworks under the theme of “lost article of the glacier.” The vast glaciers that covered Scandinavia in the old days made grooves on the surface of the land and polished them. The glacier was thought to have retreated 10,000 years ago. I am interested in the bedrock in Temppeliaukio Church in Helsinki. This church is built in a hollowed-out huge rock, and there are hollowed bedrock being exposed on the inner wall of the church. This bedrock space has excellent acoustic effects and is still used as it is, with the advice of the acoustical engineer Mauri Parjo. And you can see the traces of glacier on the surface of the bedrock. It can be said that this architecture is an acoustic architecture that keeps the memory of glacier.
Yoichi Kamimura’s residency is realised in the context of a collaboration between HIAP, Finnish Cultural Foundation and TOKAS – Tokyo Art and Space.