Property of Visibility: An Artist-led Discussion with Takahiro Yamamoto

Through a creative practice that centers social and physical visibility, Portland-based artist and choreographer Takahiro Yamamoto investigates the shifting dynamics between viewer and performer as they play out over time, through movement, reaction, and reflection. His practice engages the slippery relationship between visibility and agency, and how new viewer-performer relations can invite, entangle, and nourish simultaneous and multiple subjectivities. In his current work, Yamamoto explores questions of objectification and subjective empowerment, particularly as they relate to race, sexuality, and gender.

In concert with Carrie Yamaoka’s recto/verso exhibition, which also explores themes of visibility, perception, and subjectivity, this group discussion invites those with experience or interest in the relationship between visibility and live performance to join Yamamoto in conversation. Yamamoto will convene and facilitate discussion from within the recto/verso exhibition, lending an additional avenue for thought: the shifting, reflective surfaces that compose Yamaoka’s art will invite participants to consider the elasticity and opacity of their own bodies in and out of relation with one another. Along with Yamaoka’s exhibited work, short readings by Yamamoto, which will be distributed ahead of the discussion, will anchor the conversation. (Preparatory work need not be completed in order to attend.)

The discussion will begin promptly at 2 PM. All participants are invited to join us beforehand at 1:30 PM for an informal reception with light refreshments to meet Yamamoto and one another.

This program is in conjunction with Takahiro Yamamoto’s collaborative dance performance, Property of Opaqueness, co-presented by the Henry Art Gallery and Velocity Dance Center on October 6^th. Yamamoto is working toward a durational installation version of the work called Opacity of Performance, produced and presented by the Portland Art Museum, in the fall of 2020

Artist Bio:

Originally from Shizuoka Japan, Takahiro Yamamoto is an artist and choreographer based in Portland, Oregon. His approach to choreography is interpersonal and observational. He starts conceptual investigations with a question—currently about the ontology of performance, mutability of identity, and social implication of the gaze—as he invites collaborators to bring their own perspectives into the creation. Yamamoto has received support from National Performance Network, Japan Foundation, Regional Arts & Culture Council, and danceWEB Scholarship Program, among others. Both his performance productions and visual art works have been presented at PICA (Portland), Diverseworks (Houston), Contemporary Arts Center (Cincinnati), GoDown Arts Centre (Nairobi), Center on Contemporary Arts (Seattle), and others. Yamamoto holds an MFA in Visual Studies from Pacific Northwest College of Art. He co-directs the performance company madhause with Ben Evans, and is part of the Portland-based support group Physical Education with Allie Hankins, keyon gaskin, and Lu Yim.