Iwasaki Museum, Yokohama, Japan / 2018

Site-specific performance for ARCADIA by Kyoko Fujiwara / sound design: Joel Cahen / Newtoy

Supported by University of Goldsmiths Art Research Award

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‘The Invisible Realm / Arcadia’ is a 40 minute performance that responds to sculptor Kyoko Fujiwara’s steel and glass installation at the Iwasaki Museum.

Fujiwara makes her work by hand, by herself, in her studio, a solitary space for physical labour, mental concentration, and artistic commitment. Dominique’s response considers this activity alongside ongoing conversations about Artificial Intelligence research with scientists at Tokyo Institute of Technology’s high performance computer lab. Her performance becomes a framework through which to consider the effects of advances in artificial intelligence on the body, labour and time.

In this piece she entices the viewer through the a hypnotically-paced movement that subverts the human dynamic of a normative, working, useful body. Unfolding with an uncanny seduction, her body reveals a materiality that gradually melts into the steel and glass of Fujiwara’s installation, revealing the complicity of matter as something biological, technological, and nonhuman.

“Her hand was shaking like an old robot or a badly made 3D animation. She looked like a sick old woman too: but she wasn’t. That’s because she didn’t show any emotion on her face. I wasn’t able to see any feelings in her, moreover, she didn’t seem to have any age. I felt her movement was unnatural. It looked like a character in a video game, which was forced to move by someone.” Kaoru Murakami (artist)