Aine Nakamura

Art of Voice and Body
  performance, improvisation, composition, stories, poetry, theater, interdisciplinary art

I attune to depth of stories and create a sonic and visual space through my voice and body. I focus on the nuanced potentialities of my voice, and my body of listening and sensing. I try to cross boundaries within and outside of my body in my attempt to defy traditional power structures that preclude new ways of feelings. I think about sound of the snow outside the window, a song inside body, and memories at site. I listen to inner, silence, temporality of insects’ singing, unspoken and recovery. Based on concepts, site-specificity, time-transcending stories, personal ethnography and research, and through my time- and site-specific listening, I fold shapes and tell stories. I would transform myself from a cicada to an old man, from an infant to water, from a stone to a flower petal. Clothes and objects become calligraphy and connector of delicate stories. Recently, I am also interested in attuning to architectural features.

I acknowledge my transnational complexity and ambiguity, and self, which cannot be told simply through one disciplinary or cultural frame. While nurturing my spiritual, artistic and intellectual space through art, my aim has developed into a space for beings and audience members. My voice and body seek a borderless state of being, and I hope to respect the depth of undefined selves. My art is a vessel in addition to me being in body, for multiple and for feelings.

My recent works include my solo performance of sung and spoken voice and body Under an Unnamed Flower during an invitation to the 50th International Theatre Festival at the Venice Biennale (Jun 26-Jul 3, 2022), which focused on war, weaving, silk, mourning and mending, gestures and objects connecting the multiple; solo performance project Circle hasu We plant seeds in the spring of mountains, which I presented at Theatertreffen at Berliner Festspiele upon an invitation as a Stückemarkt artist (May 11-15, 2022) after its premiere at the Gallatin Galleries (Jul 16-Aug 13, 2021), focused on time-transcending healing and nature as I recovered in the rhythm of season change; Shades of Edge, premiered at The Lab in collaboration with visual artist Olivia Ting (Mar 9 2024), transcending between two worlds across the wall and out from folds and words; and solo abstract arts Yami and Iro premiered at Berlin University of the Arts (Mar 2 2023) and Kusottare! (Dec 4, 2022) at The Lab, focused on authorship of body and sensuality through my performance with paper and poems, which would change their shapes in poetic and unexpected ways.

I have presented my other performances, mixed artworks, compositions and collaborative works at New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, Abrons Arts Center performed with International Contemporary Ensemble, HfM Hanns Eisler Berlin, A Concert of Electronic Music in honor of Mario Davidovsky, Errant Sound, October New Music Festival in Finland performed with Mikro Ensemblen, Dias de Música Electroacústica, New York City Electroacoustic Music Festival performed with cellist Madeleine Shapiro, DiMenna Center for Classical Music for Bent Duo, Brick Aux with the same duo, and Center for New Music and Audio Technologies with Del Sol Quartet. My other appearances include theater work The Two directed by Dmitry Krymov (New York Theater Workshop project). I am also active as an improviser both in solo and collaborative settings.

Awardee of the Venice Biennale 2022 Site-Specific Performance Grant, the Fulbright Fellowship (2021-2022, Berlin), The Leo Bronstein Homage Award from NYU, and The Honorable Mention Award for the 2020 Pauline Oliveros New Genre Prize.
At UC Berkeley, I approach my art and study in an interdisciplinary way, working with teachers in the Music Department, the English Department and the Rhetoric Department, while in collaborative conversations in the wider university and in the Bay Area.

For my updates and information, please see
www.evaaine.com
@ainenaka