Nairobi Residence 2013

The second edition of an artist-in-residence programme inviting leading Japanese artists to Nairobi for a period of on-site production. This time, artist Yukihiro Taguchi and musician Shuta Hasunuma take part. Beyond offering Japanese artists a stimulating and thought-provoking production environment in a contemporary African city, the programme also creates an opportunity for Kenyan artists and citizens to learn together with them, exploring experimental forms of expression and approaches emerging simultaneously from Japan and Kenya today.

The invited artists hold workshops across Nairobi, producing music and video works with the participation and cooperation of local residents. The resulting works are presented in venues that are part of everyday Kenyan life—restaurant bars where people regularly enjoy music and film, and vehicles of the public transport system. A public lecture for Kenyan artists is also held at one of Nairobi’s leading art centres, further expanding these exchanges.

Artist Biographies

Yukihiro Taguchi was born in Osaka in 1980. After graduating from the Oil Painting Department, Faculty of Fine Arts, Tokyo University of the Arts, in 2004, he established a base in Berlin and has since taken part in exhibitions, residencies, and art projects across Germany, the Netherlands, France, Cuba, the Maldives, and elsewhere. He creates stop-motion animated video works using a digital camera in outdoor public spaces, gradually shifting existing everyday objects to open a crack toward another world of imagination. The process of production itself—intervening in and reshaping the surrounding environment and human relationships—carries within it the qualities of both workshop and performance. In 2008, he received the Excellence Award in the Art Division of the Japan Media Arts Festival and the Excellence Award of the Asia Digital Art Award. In 2011, he held a solo exhibition as part of the Mori Art Museum’s MAM Project 014. http://yukihirotaguchi.com/

Shuta Hasunuma was born in Tokyo in 1983. He has released numerous albums on labels in Japan and abroad, working across a wide range of genres from electronic music to orchestral performance, live performance, CD releases, and film scores as a composer and performer. He has presented work at major festivals overseas as well as at festivals, museums, art projects, and fashion shows in Japan. At the same time, he pursues a site-specific method of recording and filming the sounds and images around him with a recorder and video camera, then editing and composing them into new musical works. He has released the albums “Self Titled” and “OK Bamboo” on the American label Western Vinyl, and “CC OO” on the Japanese label HEADZ. His solo exhibitions include “have a go at flying from musicpart3” (2012, Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo, Bloomberg Pavilion) and “soundlike” (2013, Asahi Art Square). http://www.shutahasunuma.com/