Kazuya Nagaya & Ali Mahmut Demirel & Maurice JonesJP+TR/DE+DE/CA
© Timothée Lambrecq
Kazuya Nagaya is a Japanese ambient musician and sound artist active since 1999. He released 11 solo albums on domestic and international labels, such as Barcelona’s Indigo Raw and techno artist Dubfire’s label SCI-TEC. Nagaya has been involved in projects ranging from musical collaborations with Tibetan monks in Mongolia to works with Dutch fashion designer Iris van Herpen. He is the author of the books "For All the Radiant Darknesses” and “Nahal’s Bell”, and in 2016 designed his first Stone Circle Garden. Iwakura presents a continuation of his explorations of ancient Japanese culture, including the roots of Japanese Zen-Buddhism and Shintoism.
Ali Mahmut Demirel is a Berlin-based visual and video artist. After studying nuclear engineering and architecture Ali began making video art in the 90s, which took him from his native Turkey to New York to Berlin. After exploring minimalist computer graphics as part of his long-term collaboration with the electronic music producer Richie Hawtin aka Plastikman, he returned to nature as his source of inspiration. Iwakura is a continuation of his previous collaboration with Anthony Linell called Winter Ashes and his solo work Rock Forms.
Maurice Jones is a curator, producer, and critical AI researcher based in Tiohtià:ke/Montréal, Canada. He's a PhD student at Concordia University, Montréal, Artistic Director at Tokyo’s MUTEK.JP, and part of the Forum programming team at MUTEK Montréal.
Iwakura is an audiovisual performance for the full-dome created by video artist Ali M. Demirel, ambient musician Kazuya Nagaya, and produced by Maurice Jones. Originating from Shintoist mythology, Iwakura refers to the spirits that inhabit sacred rock formations found all over Japan. Through immersing the audience in Ali’s organic, visual material collected in the Kumano region, the birthplace of Japanese spirituality, with Kazuya’s meditative, ambient soundscapes inspired by Zen-Buddhist prayer rituals, Iwakura presents a profound journey to rediscover the sublimeness of nature.
The project was made possible by round 9 of the International Coproduction Fund of the Goethe-Institut.
