Milliarden Jahre Widerhall is a performative installation that opens up imaginative spaces, raising questions about connectedness and alienation from human beings and their terrain. Tanaka's exploration of this began during research trips to the contaminated zone of Fukushima. A place where humankind's ambivalent relationship with the earth is disrupted in a catastrophic event. The radioactive material caused a fundamental reshuffling in the earth's crust that has rewritten the history of the planet.
Tanaka documented her encounters with human, as well as non-human protagonists on site, in a diary and sketchbook. This resulted in a series of interdisciplinary works, which now, as elements of a performative exhibition, invite visitors on a sensual expedition into the impossible. Performance, lead stop-motion film, drawing and text, light reflections, concentrated movements and a reduced structure are brought into choreographic and architectural arrangements by Tanaka. This results in contemplative, sublime compositions that alienate and expand the dimensionality of our perception of depth and distance.
NAOKO TANAKA studied fine arts at the Tokyo University of the Arts and came to Germany in 1999 as a scholarship holder at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf. Since then, she has been developing performances and installations that closely combine choreography and visual art. She was invited to the Tanzplattform Deutschland in 2010, along with the artist collective Ludica. and the choreographer Morgan Nardi. In 2011, Naoko Tanaka created her first solo piece Die Scheinwerferin, which was successfully performed throughout Europe. The piece received the Prix Jardin d'Europe 2012 as well as the ZKB Anerkennungspreis at the Zürcher Theaterspektakel. In 2012 the performance was also shown at Sophiensælen, followed by the premiere of Absolute Helligkeit in the same year. With Unverinnerlicht (2015), she completed her shadow trilogy, which was shown in its entirety in 2017. Most recently, Tanaka showed the work Still Lives (2018) at the Sophiensælen. Here she realized the conceptual, as well as the spatial and sound design.
ARTISTIC DIRECTION, INSTALLATION, VIDEO, PERFORMANCE, TEXT Naoko Tanaka PERFORMANCE ASSISTANCE Isabel Garcia Espino DRAMATURGICAL CONTRIBUTION Dandan Liu LIGHT, TECHNICS Felix Grimm PRODUCTION MANAGEMENT Paula Häfele
A production by Naoko Tanaka in co-production with SOPHIENSÆLE and PACT Zollverein. Supported by Kunststiftung NRW. Media partner: taz.