Akira Takayama will present the performance event “Delivery” at Kunstenfestivaldesarts, Brussels starting May 23, 2022.
Cited from Kunstenfestivaldesarts’s event page;
During the pandemic, food delivery services have seen far more demand as people, those having the possibility of quarantining, sought ways to have the outside world brought to their homes. Japanese artist Akira Takayama infiltrates the city in collaboration with the people who deliver this food. In their daily lives these modern flex-workers, many in particularly precarious circumstances, are often not considered. Their flashy uniforms and company logos are highly visible, yet their working and living situations remain unseen by most of society. As some of them have a hip hop background, Takayama invited them to create rap performances. In sharing their poetry and lyrics on the working conditions, they come to affirm a new kind of connection between delivery person and customer. For one week the Kaaistudio’s becomes a base and rallying point for their work with the artist. As a result, their poems and songs are not only disseminated in the city, but in this new space where the attention contrasts with the fleeting reality of the outside world.
Delivery
May 23 — May 26, 2022
Kunstenfestivaldesarts, Kaaitheater
French, English, Dutch
45 minutes
For further information please see Kunstenfestivaldesarts’s event page.
About the Artist
Takayama Akira
Born in 1969. In 2002, he formed the theater company Port B, and since then has been producing installations, touring performances and social experiments utilizing urban spaces as a way of engaging with cities and societies across the world. In recent years, collaboration with those from other fields including visual art, tourism, literature, architecture, and urban researches has seen the scope of his practice broadening further, and he has applied his theatrical philosophy and methodology to opening up new possibilities in a variety of fields. Major works include the Our Songs-Sydney Kabuki Project (Sydney), the Wagner Project (Yokohama), McDonald’s Radio University (Frankfurt, Berlin), Tokyo/Heterotopia (Tokyo), Piraeus/Heterotopia (Athens), Beitou/Heterotopia (Taipei), Beirut/Heterotopia (Beirut), Yokohama Commune (Yokohama), Compartment City – Vienna (Vienna), Referendum Project (Tokyo, Fukushima, etc.), and The Complete Manual of Evacuation (Tokyo, Frankfurt). He has participated in major exhibitions, such as Yokohama Triennale (2014), Maison Hermès (2015, Tokyo), Roppongi Crossing (2016, Mori Art Museum, Tokyo), Sharjah Biennial (2017), and Biennale of Sydney (2018). He is an associate professor at the Graduate School of Film and New Media, Tokyo University of the Arts.