Nao Nishihara & Aki Onda

NYC-based composer and performer Aki Onda and Yokohama-based sound practitioner Nao Nishihara began collaborating in 2015 while Nishihara was residing in New York as an Asian Cultural Council grantee.

Nishihara returns to New York Thursday, November 10th, to further develop their sonic and spatial exploration. The duo explores the architecture and acoustics of ISSUE's 22 Boerum Place theater site-specifically, presenting a non-directional sound/visual landscape by installing handmade instruments and analog equipment within a visually arranged set-up. Within this sonic field, the duo distinctly incorporates the movement of bodies and special lighting.

Nao Nishihara is an active practitioner of sound activities, research, sound art, recording, performance, and instrument production. Recent exhibitions include Tsushima Art Fantasia (2016, Tsushima, Nagasaki), Ende Tymes VI (2016, Knockdown Center NYC), Roppongi Crossing 2016 (2016, Mori Art Museum, Tokyo), IDIO Soundlab (Solo exhibition, 2016, IDIO gallery, NYC), Reinen der Ohren (Solo exhibition, 2015, Kunstraum Kreuzberg Bethanien Berlin), 燈著你回來 Lantern Festival (2015, THAV, Taipei) and more. He has also presented work at Super Delux Tokyo, Experimental Intermedia NY, Queens Museum NY, Judson Memorial Church NY. He did the Japanese translation of the books Sound Art (by Alan Licht, Film Art Inc., 2010) along with Kazue Kobata and Hiroshi Egaitsu, and A Brief History of Music (by H.U. Obrist, Film Art Inc., 2015) with Fumiko Uchiyama and others.

Aki Onda is a composer, performer, visual artist, and curator. Onda was born in Japan and resides in New York. He is particularly known for his “Cassette Memories” — works compiled from a “sound diary” of field-recordings collected by using the cassette Walkman over a span of last quarter-century. He creates compositions, performances, and visual artworks from those sound memories. Onda often works in interdisciplinary fields and collaborates with filmmakers, visual artists, and choreographers. His on-going projects include “Nervous Magic Lantern” with Ken Jacobs, improvisation trio with Michael Snow and Alan Licht, visual-sound installation/performance with Raha Raissnia, and site-specific happening with Akio Suzuki. Onda is a director of TPAM (Performing Arts Meeting in Yokohama) in Japan.