Proteus Gowanus and Reanimation Library are pleased to present three performances with Ami Yamasaki. Yamasaki, whose Feather-Music composition is on display as part of the Migration exhibition at Proteus Gowanus, is a vocalist and multidisciplinary artist from Tokyo, Japan. The evening will begin with ENERGY, a sound meditation by Yamasaki reflecting on the events of 3/11 and 9/11 (the Tokyo earthquake and the attack on the World Trade Center). The second performance, (bird) bird, will be a collaboration between Yamasaki and Deborah Gladstein, experimental movement artist. And the final performance, sound and movement, will be a collaboration between Yamasaki and Mina Nishimura, a New York-based performance artist from Japan. 

With primal vocalization and movement, Yamasaki examines the relationship between humans and the universe, asking “How does the world construct itself?” For her, this question is a love letter to the world. Of this performance, Yamasaki says, “I think that this world of ours is like a net and we are each of meshes in that net. Wherever we may be, we are connected with everything. However, usually, we forget it. When some big thing happens, we remember and notice…It is through this connection that energy migrates. Even if separated, we are threatened by the energy, feel warmth, shed tears, feel joy and loneliness. And I think: I’m alive. I think: I’m not dead.”

Admission fee: $5

Ami Yamasaki creates art installations, directs films and is a performance artist. As a vocal artist, she has collaborated with Japanese psychedelic rock icon Keiji Haino and provided original music for choreographer Makoto Matsushima. Her elaborate installations have been featured at art spaces across Japan. She has received awards for her short films.

Deborah Gladstein is a New York-based experimental movement artist. She has received numerous Choreography Fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the New York Sate Council on the Arts, and has appeared on PBS television as part of the “Eye on Dance” series. Described by Jennifer Dunning of the New York Times as “compelling …mysterious and focused,” her work has been produced and commissioned by some of New York’s leading experimental dance venues, as well as by “Dancing in the Streets” to create site-specific works for natural outdoor settings. She is also a certified teacher of the Alexander Technique and T’ai Chi Ch’uan.

Mina Nishimura is from Tokyo, Japan and is a NY-based performance artist. She was introduced to butoh, improvisational dance and choreography under the teaching of Kota Yamazaki and has been performing nationally and internationally with Kota Yamazaki/Fluid hug-hug since 2002. In New York, she had the good fortune to perform in the works of wonderful artists such as Neil Greenberg, DD Dorllivier, David Gordon, RoseAnne Spradlin, Daria Fain/Phoneme Choir, Yoshiko Chuma/The School of Hard Knocks among others. Her own work has been presented by Dance Theater Workshop, The Kitchen/Dance and Process, Danspace Project, Movement Research, The Harlem Stage, Joyce Soho, Whenever Wherever Festival (Tokyo), and most recently, at Brooklyn Arts Exchange through their 2011-2012 AIR program. She was invited to dunaPart (Budapest) for research and exchange on DTW’s Suitcase Fund Program in 2008, and was danceWeb scholor at ImpulsTanz 2009 (Vienna). Nishimura teaches as a guest faculty member at Bennington College (Vermont, US) and at Whenever Wherever Festival (Tokyo).

Ami, a Tokyo artist and musician, is making a music-feather installation at Proteus by pasting millions of feathers made of torn paper to the walls, following a pattern dictated by the acoustical changes she perceives as she sings. Each feather works as a sound reflector or music instrument, changing the acoustics of the space. She sings, pastes, listens and, as she says, “little by little, the space starts to play its own music.”

During the process, Ami “feels herself completely vanished and becomes to the particles like electrons and neutrons for melting into the feathers and the music of the space. She feels both absence and existence, she feels she can travel everywhere.”

Ami needs paper donations to complete the projects. Please bring clear, white paper if you can. Off white and textured paper also welcome.

Aileen Bassis, Meredith Bergmann, The Brooklyn Museum Libraries and Archives, Lola Bunting, Marie Cieri, Viv Corringham, Dillon de Give,  Sarah Lederman, Portia Munson, Lance Rutledge, Randall Stoltzfus, Lorena Turner, and, in partnership with Reanimation Library, Ami Yamasaki.