{"id":20434,"date":"2015-03-30T14:06:10","date_gmt":"2015-03-30T12:06:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/?p=20434"},"modified":"2015-03-30T14:06:10","modified_gmt":"2015-03-30T12:06:10","slug":"a-vulnerable-narrator-koki-tanaka-wins-artist-of-the-year","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/de\/article\/a-vulnerable-narrator-koki-tanaka-wins-artist-of-the-year\/","title":{"rendered":""A Vulnerable Narrator": Koki Tanaka wins "Artist of the Year""},"content":{"rendered":"

 <\/p>\n

\"Koki Koki Tanaka, 2014
\u00a9 Photo: Shota Matsumo<\/p>\n

\u201cIs there anything we can do to repair the devastated social bond of equality? Can we be more generous to each other?\u201d These are the questions that open Koki Tanaka\u2019s exhibition \u201cA Vulnerable Narrator\u201d. The Deutsche Bank celebrates its “Artist of the Year” 2015 at the Berlin Kunsthalle with an installation of videos, photos and drawings that zigzag from the artist\u2019s early poetic experiments with household objects in 2006 through his approach to cooperative work and his latest \u201cart activism\u201d performances.<\/p>\n

The entrance of the show has a striking set up of makeshift wooden structures and sandbags. This mise-en-scene sets the mood for “Precarious Tasks”, the collaborative action series whereby the artist filmed people\u2019s reactions to the failure of technical and social systems. Starting in 2012\u2013the year after the earthquake turned tsunami turned atomic disaster\u2013much of the work adopts a highly political stance.<\/p>\n

\"Koki Koki Tanaka Someone\u2019s Junk is Someone Else\u2019s Treasure January 9, 2011 Aktion, Videodokumentation (11min) HD Video, 2 Bleistiftzeichnungen, Palme, Wedel, Decke Pasadena City College Flea Market Realisiert mit The Box, Los Angeles copyright Courtesy of the artist, The Box, Los Angeles<\/p>\n

His art doesn\u2019t claim to be \u201coriginal\u201d, but rather a reinterpretation. \u201cI look back at history and then bring it to the present,\u201d says the artist in a talk. In \u201cPrecarious Task #7\u201d, he brings back Jiro Takamatsu\u2019s \u201cRemarks\u201d (his 1974 instruction piece about consciousness and body movement) by urging Tokyo participants to stay conscious about a specific social issue, in this case \u201canti-nuke,\u201d for as long as possible by wearing the yellow colour, turning thus the quotidian into political.<\/p>\n

In the 2012 performance \u201cSomeone\u2019s Junk is Someone else\u2019s Treasure\u201d, the artist enacted a sale in a flea market in LA where he sold dried palm trees, which can be found almost anywhere in the city. Through this experiment he recorded astounded buyers\u2019 reactions and when, expelled by the organisers, he forced them to rethink the definition of a flea market and what is considered valuable.<\/p>\n

Behind the monitor screening the video hang the drawings of David Hammons selling snowballs in winter in \u201cBliz-aard Ball Sale\u201d, and Yoshiharu Tsuge\u2019s \u201cUseless Man\u201d, whose protagonist sold stones on a beach. Here, Tanaka explicitly presents his influences. His concepts envelop the art that has affected him, which he not only adapts to the present day but also to his location; the geographical transformation of his ideas is his strength. In \u201cPrecarious Tasks #8: Going home could not be daily routine\u201d, he retraced the steps of London and Tokyo residents who had to walk home when their cities were in chaos in 2011 (riots and the natural disaster respectively).<\/p>\n

\"Koki Koki Tanaka Provisional Studies: Workshop #1, \u201c1946-52 Occupation Era and 1970 Between Man and Matter\u201d, 6 \u2013 7. Dezember, 2014 Aktion, Workshop, Videodokumentation Kyoto Municipal Museum of Art, Kurator: Shinji Kohmoto Anl\u00e4sslich der Ausstellung \u201cParasophia: Kyoto International Festival of Contemporary Culture 2015,\u201d im Kyoto Municipal Museum of Art und an anderen Orten, Japan Teilnehmer: Shinya Aoyama, Daisuke Awata, Kanji Azuma, Ryota Fujiguchi, Hikaru Fujii, Takashi Fujikawa, Hoshimitsu Fujita, Tomoko Funase, Atsuki Hirai, Osao Hori, Kaya Kawahara, Yuka Miyata, Yoshitaka Mouri, Yoshihiro Nakatani, Akiko Nakanishi, Isao Nishii, Maki Nishiyama, Akane Okubo, Masahiro Ochi, Taiki Saito, Tatsuya Sugimoto, Yusuke Takada, Momo Takeuchi, Kahoru Tachi, Shion Tanaka, Koki Tanaka, Kenji Tanaka, Michiko Tsuda, Joh Yamasaki \u00a9 Courtesy of the artist Christo, Wrapped Floor, Kyoto Municipal Museum of Art,1970, copyright Christo,1970<\/p>\n

Tanaka\u2019s positioning is mostly quite clear and local, so how about the positioning of his socio-political art in the quarters of a bank recently embroiled in corruption scandals? The work, which made his name in Japan, is definitely divisive. While it claims to be a positive reaction to a disaster by trying to crystallise the utopic and short-lived moment of collective action, it also promotes a political attitude in participants and viewers. Can art that\u2019s so outspokenly political be used as a political tool? \u201cArt activism\u201d is always problematic, especially if it\u2019s sheltered under a bank\u2019s umbrella. Perhaps Deutsche Bank is trying to redeem its image, one artist at a time.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Moreover, in Koki\u2019s case, there\u2019s the feeling that at times he didn\u2019t use art to raise \u00a0awareness of a social issue but instead used a socio-political issue to make art. Many of the \u201cPrecarious Tasks\u201d were made first with no clear intention of creating art and were only later used as such. So it actually feels as though the art is yet to come. Curator Britta F\u00e4rber was probably also aware of this and placed the inspiring \u201cEverything is Everything\u201d<\/a>, (2006) at the very end of the exhibition space. The multi-channel string of videos shows mass-produced goods being used in collective performances, encouraging us to evaluate the artistic potential of the quotidian. Simple but that works.<\/p>\n

Text von Will Furtado<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

“A Vulnerable Narrator” <\/a>by Koki Tanaka is on view at the Deutsche Bank KunstHalle in Berlin until 25 May 2015.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

More: On Harun Farocki’s<\/a> canonisation\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

More: Auto Italia’s Kate Cooper<\/a> embraces the inauthentic<\/strong><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  Koki Tanaka, 2014\u00a9 Photo: Shota Matsumo \u201cIs there anything we can do to repair the devastated social bond of equality? Can we be more generous to each other?\u201d These are the questions that open Koki Tanaka\u2019s exhibition \u201cA Vulnerable Narrator\u201d. The Deutsche Bank celebrates its “Artist of the Year” 2015 at the Berlin Kunsthalle…<\/p>","protected":false},"author":28,"featured_media":20436,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_kad_post_transparent":"","_kad_post_title":"","_kad_post_layout":"","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false,"_kad_post_classname":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[11856,139],"tags":[2530,2531,2532,2533,2534,2535,1049,2379,2536],"class_list":["post-20434","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sleek-art","category-art","tag-artist-of-the-year","tag-david-hammons","tag-deutsche-bank","tag-deutsche-bank-kunsthalle","tag-jiro-takamatsu","tag-koki-tanaka","tag-tokyo","tag-will-furtado","tag-yoshiharu-tsuge"],"acf":{"main_category":null,"legacy":"1","exclude_from_ads":null,"hero_title":null,"subtitle":null,"hero":null,"teasers":null,"facebook_image":null,"related_articles":null,"next_article":null,"sleek_card_focus":null,"content":null},"yoast_head":"\n"A Vulnerable Narrator": Koki Tanaka wins "Artist of the Year" "A Vulnerable Narrator": Koki Tanaka wins "Artist of the Year"<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/de\/article\/a-vulnerable-narrator-koki-tanaka-wins-artist-of-the-year\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"de_DE\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\""A Vulnerable Narrator": Koki Tanaka wins "Artist of the Year" "A Vulnerable Narrator": Koki Tanaka wins "Artist of the Year"\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"  Koki Tanaka, 2014\u00a9 Photo: Shota Matsumo \u201cIs there anything we can do to repair the devastated social bond of equality? 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