Pikadon Live @ NY and London
Special one-night performance to benefit UNICEF
melding sound, image and culture
Channeled by painter
Seitaro Kuroda
with special guest musicians
Toshinori Kondo
Bill Laswell
John Zorn
Milford Graves
Guy Licata
and Submerged
Live video installation
Directed by Toshiaki Ozawa
Designed by Reid Farrington
Monday October 3, 2005
8 PM
The Kitchen
512 W. 19th St.
New York
Ticket information;
212-255-5793 ext. 11
http://www.thekitchen.org/
Ticket Prices
$20
$45 ( with Autographed Poster )
$70 ( with Autographed Poster + Pikadon T-Shirt )
$95 ( with Autographed Poster + Pikadon T-Shirt + Pikadon book )
Proceeds to benefit UNICEF
For further information, contact:
Pikadon Project New York
Taku Nishimae
taku@zengo.com
917-450-4921
www.pikadon.jp
www.pikadon.org
NEW YORK (October 3, 2005)-In an unprecedented avant-garde fusion of art and music, PIKADON LIVE brings together a transglobal supergroup of performers for a special one-night benefit performance for UNICEF at The Kitchen in Chelsea. This radical multimedia event will explore live improvisation on stage, on canvas and on video, all as part of an effort to raise awareness of the costs of war and the weapons of war to our own lives and the lives of children-past, present and future.
Sixty years after the devastation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the lessons of those fateful days in August still run deep. As surely as there were children among the survivors, there were also too many who died. Survivors both young and old referred to the bombings as pikadon, which in Japanese means a flash of light (pika) followed by an explosive sound (don). In the year 2000, Osaka-born painter Seitaro Kuroda adopted the word for a series of "live painting" and grassroots educational projects that grew out of his work on the award-winning picture book and animation seriesWar Tales.
PIKADON LIVE is a series of collaborative pieces calling for the enrichment of life devoid of prejudice, dogma and borders. Through these collaborations, Kuroda seeks to create energizing thermal chain reactions throughout the world against mass destruction, thus forming new weapons of mass life-affirmation for future generations.
Central to PIKADON LIVE is trumpeter and composer Toshinori Kondo, who has collaborated with Kuroda on numerous live multimedia performances since the mid-1990s. Kondo's unique horn sound-which he augments with electronic effects and freestyle signal processing-has graced recordings for everyone from Herbie Hancock to DJ Krush. In 2001, he curated Japan's World Festival of Sacred Music in consultation with His Holiness The Dalai Lama, and he continues to blaze new musical paths around the world.
Joining Kondo are three fellow travelers, all veteran icons of New York's downtown music scene: bassist and producer Bill Laswell (Material, Praxis, Painkiller, Massacre and more), saxophonist and composer John Zorn (Masada, Naked City, Cobra, Painkiller and more), and legendary drummer Milford Graves (well-known for his work with the New York Art Quartet and avant-garde jazz giants like Albert Ayler and Cecil Taylor). Also taking the stage are two key members of Brooklyn's Ohm Resistance and Obliterati label collectives-drummer Guy Licata and DJ/beat programmer Submerged.
True to the multi-layered meaning of its name, PIKADON LIVE harnesses light, color and sonic energy, ideally fusing these parts into a vital, living and consciousness-raising experience through the improvisational power of art.
And this is just the beginning...
For further information, contact:
Pikadon Project New York
Taku Nishimae taku@zengo.com / 917-450-4921 / http://www.pikadon.org/
For tickets call 212-255-2793 / http://www.thekitchen.org/
Ticket Prices ; $20, $45, $70, $95
Master Action Painter Seitaro Kuroda
performs in New York and London
Seitaro Kuroda, born 1939 in Osaka, Japan, is an artistic phenomenon. ＜He has revolutionized art in Japanｃ, one says. It is indeed exceptional how Mr. Kuroda has kept an authentic art style, like live painting, fresh for over fifty years. His live painting refers directly to Tachism, also called Art Informel or Action Painting. Seitaro Kuroda has mastered that style fabulously, and how well it fits the culture of Japan. This October New York has the privilege of seeing master painter Seitaro Kuroda live in the program PIKADON PROJECT at The Kitchen.
Mr. Kuroda's type of work has over the 20th century grown from the insights of painters like Henri Matisse, Hans Hofmann, Georges Mathieu, Jackson Pollock, Sam Francis and many others. French painter Georges Mathieu started Tachism in 1950 and came to Japan as early as 1954 and 1957, even before becoming Europe's leading figure in Action Painting. Mathieu receives respect in the first proclamation of the famous Japanese concrete art movement Gutai, 1954-1972. American painter Sam Francis lives in Paris in the early 1950s picks up Tachism and moves to Japan in 1957. Many years later the seeds of this style grew successfully on Kuroda's talents. Even though Seitaro Kuroda started his design group K2 with Keisuke Nagatomo only in 1969 and began his live paintings as late as the 1980s, the inspiration of Tachism or Action Painting may have come to him directly.
It is breathtaking to see Seitaro Kuroda at work. In itself it is amazing how a painter could keep his hand as fresh as Seitaro Kuroda did over the thirty-five years of his career. In his first years as a painter thousands of works, also for posters and printed matter, were produced. Posters by Mr. Kuroda were selected twice for New York's MOMA collection. He also produced many wall paintings.
When his live painting performances started in the 1980s Seitaro Kuroda could be seen with music groups on stages throughout Japan and abroad. In 1994 the first film with twelve animated stories was made and others followed. A new animated movie as well as a documentary film are scheduled for August 2005, the 60th post-war memorial event in Hiroshima. On top, books, CDs DVDs with the dreamy or direct drawings of Seitaro Kuroda are being produced year by year. His language is universal.
This October, Seitaro Kuroda joins ‘PIKADON PROJECT’ on Monday 03 October 2005, at 20.00 hours. At The Kitchen a live painting by Seitaro Kuroda to live music of Toshinori Kondo is presented. The event will bring back the intuitive spontaneity, joy and lust for freedom of the 1950s. It is crucial for Seitaro Kuroda to accelerate speed to give vent to his subconscious. Working blindly scenes and persons come and go from his canvas. The principle here is to create from intuition. Impulsive gestures bring life to the material of paint and sound. The chance to experience this pure metier of impressionist painting and sound is unique. Seitaro Kuroda uses paint and movement in balance with his vitality and talents. A film of his inner visuals plays before your eyes. The thin sounds from the trumpet of Toshinori Kondo bring more shine and thrill to the ever-changing images.
On video the interaction of the two artists is endless. When Seitaro Kuroda finds a street, sidewalk or embankment to paint his fresh figures on, in that same moment Toshinori Kondo finds some strange sound-experience to embellish the just drawn figure. It is said that Action Painting laid the foundation for Happening, Fluxus and Conceptual Art. Toshinori Kondo's music background lies in Fluxus. Young Kondo especially loved John Cage, for some the ＜grandfather of Fluxusｃ. To see and hear Kuroda and Kondo work together offers an unforgettable mix of experiences to our six senses. It translates into a dream of vitality, love, friendship, change, warmth, and new visions at hand. Originally the theory behind this style was to run societies by the creativity of artists. Georges Mathieu referred to economist John Kenneth Galbraith for that. The ideals have meanwhile spread widely. To see Seitaro Kuroda at work in New York and London is welcoming back a cosmopolitan art style of great impact.
For the titles of PIKADON PROJECT by Seitaro Kuroda
www.pikadon.jp
Or English site
www.pikadon.org.
Louwrien Wijers
Artist & Art critic, Amsterdam 2005
