Keiko Uenishi 上西啟子
Keiko Uenishi 上西啟子
(Photo Credit to Shinya Kigure)
Currently splitting time between Brooklyn, New York and Vienna, Austria, sound art-i-vist, socio/environ composer, and a core member of SHARE.nyc (http://share.dj/share) since 2001, Keiko Uenishi is known for her works formed through experiments in restructuring and analyzing one's relationship with sounds in sociological, cultural, and/or psychological environments.
Some of her known works include: Car décalé (légèrement), SOUNDLEAK: TheROOM (Simulation of neighbours) at Medien Kultur Haus, Wels, Austria, BroadwayDreams (web-based collaborative 'blink media documentation'), compositional interpretation for Christian Marclaysʼ object score, Sixty-Four Bells and a Bow at Whitney Museum of Art. She also created video, geographic sound-tags, upcycled clothes and food arts curated by Lab Binaer for City of Peace festival in association of FIFA Women’s Soccer Championship 2011, Augsburg, Germany. Uenishi also has a collaborative project LandFilles with Katherine Liberovskaya, with which they investigate in the usability of recyclable trash through their artistic social actions. Her current work is a PhD research with a working title Partitions: Dividers, Connectors, Gray-zones, Neighbours in Aural Space, for which she works with people in Brooklyn, NY; Vienna, Austria; Maebashi, Gunma, Japan. Later in 2017, she will create a new work Listening Experiments of Penumbrae at Research Pavilion, Venice, Italy.
Uenishiʼs works were presented in locations including: Whitney Museum of American Art, P.S. 1, DIA:Beacon, Lincoln Center, Sculpture Center, Park Avenue Armory, Eyebeam, ICA Philadelphia, MUTEK, ClubTransmediale, ZKM, MUMOK, Skolska28, Museu Serralves, Casa da Musica, ICA London, Tate Britain, Fortescue Avenue Gallery, Sydney Opera House. Her collaboration with artists including: Miguel Frasconi, Ricardo Arias, Klaus Filip, Christian Marclay, Ikue Mori, Kaffe Matthews, Marina Rosenfeld, Richard Garet, Takehisa Kosugi, DJ Olive, Aki Onda, Sawako, Kurt Ralske, HC Gilje, Nobukazu Takemura, Ryuichi Sakamoto, Merce Cunningham Dance Company.
Uenishi holds LL.B in International Law from Ritsumeikan University, Kyoto, Japan, MS in Digital Media from Polytechnic Institute of New York University and is a doctoral candidate at Akademie der Bildenden Künste Wien.
This AIR program is cooperated with Residency Unlimited and Taipei Artist Village in 2017.
Photo in residency
Works in residency
I continued to work on the "Aural memories of people in Taipei" that I started at Taipei Artist Village Treasure Hill (TAVTH) but tried to focus on the people in the area of Zhuwei. Upon having evicted from extreme flood situation at BCS when the heavy rain storm hit the region, residents including myself and stuff members of BCS, were taken cared at the local sweets store "Zhuwei Almond Milk Tofu Ice Shop" (體育公園竹圍杏仁豆腐冰) as BCS had the history of collaborating with the local store. The boss, Mr. 郭 was really kind to agree with my plan to take time and sit down in front of his store on one Sunday afternoon to encounter people who enjoy eating the desserts and/or simply passing by at the communal plaza. It was a similar set-up scheme, which I used at TAVTH prior to my residency at BCS. With using such set-up where people would casually walk by, I could make eye contacts and invite interested people to spend small amount (or any length) of time with me and talk about their memory from listening sounds in present/past (including dreams they had.) However, I had the bad luck of having heavy rain every day. Not many of the local people did come out or hang out. Accordingly, the hand-dyed & hand-written banner (with the used bed linen donated to BCS by a local hotel, which was dyed with lots of bamboo leaves growing at BCS) I made for the project, was given to Mr. 郭. He promised to keep it until I would come back to Zhuwei next time to continue the project. I was also invited to make a short sound performance in which I demonstrated experiments with objects found at their rehearsal room in collaboration with Ivan F Moran of Sun Son Theatre.
One of the last activities that I worked on, was to ask people working at BCS and 身聲劇場 Sun Son Theatre to talk about their aural memory from listening to make audio recording. It was a very interesting experience as it was my main focus to learn about the people and the place I got familiarized over the course of four weeks through their memory from listening. The knowledge through their account of recalling their experience through listening, opened up aspects and questions.