Globally active across the free jazz, noise, and film scores scene, Otomo Yoshihide constantly expands the boundaries of expression and the nature of ensemble performance. This exhibition explores his core philosophy of ‘improvisation’ through a collaboration between Otomo, YCAM, and five genre-diverse artists. The pieces reveal a rich world in which diverse sounds and entities collide and resonate, in response to Isozaki Arata’s architecture and the surrounding environment.”
Highlight
みどころ
1.
大友良英「即興」の集大成となる大規模展
A Large-Scale Exhibition showcasing the full-scale of Otomo Yoshihide’s “Improvisation”
Improvisation sits at the heart of everything Otomo Yoshihide makes. For him, it’s not about performing something written in advance — it’s about responding, in real time, to the people and space around him: fellow musicians, the audience, even the room itself. In his view, no artwork is made by one person alone; it emerges from that same live, collaborative process. This exhibition takes that idea and gives it physical form. Decades of Otomo’s improvisational practice — usually experienced live, once, and then gone — are translated here into installation works you can walk through, allowing you to experience the work through a diverse range of spatial elements. It’s his most ambitious attempt yet to show what “being improvisational” means as a way of connecting with people and the world.
The theme of this exhibition is “IMPROVISATION!” The “ENSEMBLES” exhibition, my full-scale collaboration with YCAM in 2008, was a major turning point in my creative work, and “collaboration = ensemble” with diverse people was the overarching theme at the time. Having gone through the 2011 earthquake disaster and the pandemic, I have come to strongly feel that it is “improvisation” that makes “collaboration = ensemble” far richer. While “IMPROVISATION” is vital enough to be considered the root of my music, I have come to believe that it is also crucial for many creative endeavors — and even more so, for our future society. If improvisation serves as a foundation, society will become much richer. Eighteen years after the last exhibition, I would like to begin a new ensemble with YCAM and various people, themed on “IMPROVISATION” — which will surely mean looking back on my own starting point.
Mochida Atsuko is an artist known for intervening in the demolition of vacant houses, dynamically transforming the unique space and time found in each site.
In her new work, her art meets Otomo’s music and noise head-on. Atsuko’s pieces hold creation and collapse in constant tension; Otomo’s sound introduces another force into that mix. The two collide, contend with each other, and finally resonate — producing a spatial experience unlike any before it, crystallized in the new piece, “Dance”.
A house could be described as the smallest social unit, standing between the individual and society at large. By energizing its space and structure, I’ve made work that dynamically transforms the sense of home that everyone carries. This time at YCAM — with facilities and staff that are exceptional even by Japan’s high standards — I’m challenging myself with a dynamic, performative piece at a scale I don’t usually get to work at. Together with Otomo, I’m enjoying the process of creating a work that dances with supple grace atop unstable ground.
3.
トリビュート作品 坂本龍一との即興演奏を生成する
Tribute Work: Generating Improvised Performances with Sakamoto Ryuichi
The late Sakamoto Ryuichi — a musician who also had collaborating with YCAM — and Otomo have performed numerous improvisations together over the years, in the simple configuration of piano and guitar. Otomo’s tribute work to Sakamoto, “Duo,” recreates the characteristics of their 2010s improvisations without using any AI-based sound analysis or reproduction — instead, physical mechanisms are used to actually play the guitar and piano. For this work, YCAM InterLab extracted the traits of Otomo’s guitar improvisations and developed a device that performs them automatically. Under Otomo’s supervision, the piano’s improvisational characteristics were also recreated from keystroke data (MIDI) Sakamoto left behind. With neither artist present, the piece generates performances endlessly, forever.
Otomo’s first exhibition at YCAM, “Otomo Yoshihide / ENSEMBLES” (2008), was themed around collaboration with many artists and members of the public, as an attempt to expand on his musical work up to that point. Displayed throughout the entire YCAM building, all four sound installations featured systems — developed jointly with YCAM InterLab — that generated music on the spot, ensuring no two moments were ever the same. Since then, YCAM has gone on to collaborate with numerous artists from Japan and abroad, including Sakamoto Ryuichi, and now, 18 years later, a collaboration with Otomo comes to fruition once again.
