Centripetal Incorporealities
A rendition to Kazuko Tsujimura and the Nirvana troupe
In the exhibition, “the disappearing body”, Body_hacker (aka Sall Lam Toro) presents a site-specific installation and a durational performance series that engages Tsujimura’s concept of body disappearance, as well as ritualistic and minimal movements within oracular encounters. Activating reconstructed objects from Tsujimura’s performances, Body_hacker works with the archival material through choreographic transmission and spectral cohabitation connecting to the spiritual embodiment that was integral to Tsujimura’s conceptual art practice.
The installation is centered around a mirrored floor, composed of nine light-reflecting squares arranged in a 3×3 mandala formation. Together with Nirvana, the concept of ultimate liberation, the Mandala, representing universal truth in many spiritual esoteric practices, was a recurring figure in Tsujimura’s work, found in her collaborations with other conceptual artists such as Yutaka Matsusawa, and within the performance collective Parinirvana Paryaya Body (PPB).
In this installation the mandala’s symmetrical grid, also recalls the boxing ring setting of PPB’s seminal performance at the Nitto Boxing Gym in 1970.
Key elements from this performance such as the rejection of movement and narrative, as well as evocation of what lies within the liminal and mystical are reformulated in Body_hacker’s work. Within the mirrored structure and through the performances, Body_hacker enters into a trance-like possession, ceremoniously ritualizing remade objects, such as; the suspended white dress, masks, and straw effigy––all reinterpreted by Yoshiko Shimada––and each integral to Tsujimura’s visual and performative language.
Credits:
curated by and text by bluestockings (BS)
performed at Heirloom Center for Art and Archives, Copenhagen, Denmark the 19th June 2025
sound by Aase Nielsen
remade objects and costume by Yoshiko Shimada
mandala installation by body_hacker (aka Sall Lam Toro)
photo documentation by Malle Madsen, and courtesy Heirloom and Bluestockings (bs)
The performance was part of the exhibition Disappearing Body – Becoming Tsujimura presents the Japanese artist Yoshiko Shimada in collaboration with two Denmark-based artists: composer and sound artist Aase Nielsen, and performance artist Body_hacker. Together, they explore the legacy of the groundbreaking Japanese dancer and performer Kazuko Tsujimura (1941–2004).
Kazuko Tsujimura was part of Japan’s post-war avant-garde, active from the 1960s onward. She participated in a number of collaborations, groups, and collectives across art forms and introduced the concept of ‘dance without body, without dance’. Despite her extensive oeuvre, Tsujimura’s groundbreaking work was largely overlooked by history. A rich archive of photographic material from performances, shows, and fragmented installations remained untouched in stacked boxes at her brother’s home until 2017, when artist and researcher Yoshiko Shimada ensured the transfer of the materials to the archive of Keio University Art Center in Tokyo.
In Disappearing Body – Becoming Tsujimura, this archival material is presented to the public for the first time. The title of the exhibition weaves together Tsujimura’s lifelong artistic and spiritual explorations of body, dance, and movement with Yoshiko Shimada’s innovative performance and archival practice – across time and space. For decades, Shimada has worked to highlight overlooked practices of female artists and has reactivated artistic kinships in her own works through performance and reinterpretation of concepts, identities, and bodies.
The exhibition at HEIRLOOM showcases selected parts of Tsujimura’s extensive photographic archive alongside Shimada’s reinterpretations, in combination with new performance- and sound-based works by Body_hacker and Aase Nielsen. Here, archive and body meet, as the artists collectively evoke the sensibility embedded within the archive – through explorations of ideas around transgression and transfeminine expression in Tsujimura’s conceptual artistic practice. Her oeuvre is recontextualised through performances, reenactments, and interventions in the exhibition space, and the exhibition explores themes such as rituals, spiritual practice, kinship, and collective memory.
curation and text by bluestockings(BS)