Koki Tanaka, Abstracted / Family, 2019/2020
Koki Tanaka in conversation with Sally Tallant
- 23 November 2021
- 13:00 - 14:15 (GMT)
- Online
- https://dajf.org.uk/event/koki-tanaka-in-conversation-with-sally-tallant
- events@dajf.org.uk
- Tweet
Koki Tanaka is a visual artist whose diverse practice spans video, photography, site-specific installations, and interventions, and seeks to visualize and reveal the multiple contexts latent in everyday acts. In his early object-oriented works, Tanaka experimented with ordinary objects to explore ways of offering a possible escape from everyday routine. In later works, Tanaka asks participants collectively to navigate tasks that are out of the ordinary, seeking to reveal group dynamics in a micro-society and temporal community.
In this talk, Tanaka will reflect on his artistic practices, about living together, filming and acting, community and performativity, and his approaches to history over the years. It also includes his experience of being forced by the COVID-19 pandemic to reconsider his method of bringing people together. The discussion will be moderated by Sally Tallant, President and Executive Director at the Queens Museum in New York, who is currently leading a programme, ‘Year of Uncertainty,’ that brings artists, community partners, and co-thinkers together with the team to reimagine the museum.
Along with Tanaka’s newly published book “Reflective Notes (Recent Writings),” this talk should give us hints to help rethink how to live together during and after the pandemic.
About the contributors
Koki Tanaka is a visual artist. Following the natural disasters of March 11, 2011 in Japan, his works have reflected on the relationality that arises between human beings, and what Tanaka calls “collective acts”—experiments of various sorts that lack a fixed destination. Tanaka has shown widely including at the Palais de Tokyo (Paris), the Migros Museum (Zurich), the Kunsthaus (Graz and Zurich), the Hammer Museum (Los Angeles), the Van Abbemuseum (Eindhoven), the ICA (London), the Mori Art Museum (Tokyo), Skulptur Projekte Münster 2017, the 57th Venice Biennale 2017, the Liverpool Biennial 2016, the 55th Venice Biennale 2013, the Yokohama Triennial 2011, the Gwangju Biennial 2008, and the Taipei Biennial 2006. He received a special mention for his participation in the Japanese national pavilion at the 55th Venice Biennale (2013), and the Deutsche Bank Artist of the Year award (2015).
Sally Tallant is the President and Executive Director of the Queens Museum, New York. She was previously the Director of Liverpool Biennial from 2011-2019. From 2001-2011 she was Head of Programmes at the Serpentine Gallery, London where she was responsible for the development and delivery of an integrated programme of Exhibitions, Architecture, Education and Public Programmes. She has curated exhibitions in a wide range of contexts including galleries, museums, public spaces and non-arts contexts. She is a regular contributor to conferences nationally and internationally. In 2018 she was awarded an OBE for services to the Arts in the Queen’s Birthday Honours List.
