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I Invited Myself vol. I

Eiko Otake

2022 00:42:51 United StatesEnglishColorStereo16:9Video
Tags:
Artist Spaces, Eiko Otake: Media Work, Performance

Description

Eiko Otake’s I Invited Myself is a multi-volume installation which features choreography of place, movements of both performer and viewers, along with projections of selected video and film works created by Eiko over the last 40 years.

Unlike audiences to cinema, literature, music, and visual art works, the audience to contemporary performance work often experiences one newly created evening-length piece. Those audiences who saw the artist’s earlier works have an understanding of her trajectory, but younger or new audiences might not.  

Eiko Otake’s I Invited Myself is not a legacy project or a retrospective; however, its objectives are to display Eiko’s trajectory as visual landscape for her performances. By doing so, Eiko hopes to contextualize her current body for diverse generations of audience now and in the future. Eiko has already experimented with this idea in February 2022 by occupying the School of the Art Institute of Chicago Galleries, where she had access to 31 projectors and many connected gallery rooms.

This iteration was co-curated by Eiko and Elise Butterfield.
Camera by Ruby Que.

About Eiko Otake

For an overview of the Eiko Otake Collection and its subcollections, please visit the Eiko Otake Collection Guide.

Born and raised in Japan and a resident of New York since 1976, Eiko Otake is a movement-based, interdisciplinary artist. She worked for more than 40 years as Eiko & Koma, but since 2014 has been working on her own projects.  

Eiko & Koma created numerous performance works, exhibitions, durational “living” installations, and media works commissioned by American Dance Festival, BAM Next Wave Festival, the Whitney Museum, the Walker Art Center, and the Museum of Modern Art, among others.  

Eiko has performed her solo project A Body in Places at over 70 sites, including a month-long Danspace Project PLATFORM (2016) and three full-day performances at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (2017). In 2017, she launched The Duet Project, a multi-year, open-ended series of experiments with a diverse range of artists both living and dead. For the occasion of the 20-year anniversary of 9/11, Eiko presented her monologue Slow Turn, which was commissioned by NYU Skirball and co-presented by LMCC and Battery Park City.

Since 2014, Eiko and photographer historian William Johnston visited irradiated Fukushima several times to create tens of thousands of photographs of her dancing in Fukushima. In addition to presenting exhibitions, the book A Body in Fukushima was published in 2021, and Eiko edited a film of the same name, which premiered at MoMA’s Doc Fortnight 2022. She has created many dance-for-camera works and presented video installations and screenings.

Eiko has been the recipient of many awards including the MacArthur Fellowship, Doris Duke Award, Scripps American Dance Festival Award, and a Bessie’s Special Citation. She teaches at Wesleyan University, New York University, and Colorado College. Eiko's profile photo is by William Johnston.

See also: Eiko Otake: An Interview