For those of you who were at the opening of Eiko and Koma’s Retrospective Project at the Zilkha Gallery last November, or saw Raven at the CFA this past July, I wanted to write to tell you that the Retrospective continued its journey last week with the opening of their installation, Naked, at the Walker Art Center in the Twin Cities on Tuesday, November 2nd. Naked is a living installation that Eiko and Koma have been working on for the past six months during their residency at the Park Avenue Armory. Eiko and Koma will perform Naked throughout the month of November, six days a week for an unbelievable six hours a day (with only a fifteen minute break)! The piece explores themes of nakedness, desire and the elasticity of time.
This is the first time that Eiko & Koma have created a living installation since Breath at the Whitney Museum of American Art in 1998. Unlike the single body that was present in Breath, both Eiko & Koma will always be on view during Naked, in much longer exposure and closer proximity to audiences than they have ever allowed themselves.
Eiko and Koma described Naked in an interview with Walker Performing Arts Director Philip Bither:
“By coming back to live and move in a gallery, we hope to collapse the time passed since Breath, a time in which we have lingered as much as we have aged. We are inviting a close look at another one-month period of time in our bodies, saying to our audience: Linger, stay here with your eyes, live and kinetically observe how our bodies move towards death.” –Eiko & Koma on Naked, 2010
For more information, see these links…
A description of the project on Eiko and Koma’s Website