Shinji Wakasa
An artist based in Berlin and Tokyo.
Through the material construction of sound and music, his work gives spatial and temporal form to the contours of the untouchable.
CV
Work
Conceived for a vast subterranean space, Hakumei 1.0 unfolded as a fully blacked-out listening environment charged with overwhelming volume. Rather than presenting sound as something to be appreciated from a distance, the work deprived the audience of visual orientation and exposed them physically to a dense auditory field. Sound from the concept album Hakumei—created around the themes of death, the deceased, and Osorezan, a sacred mountain in northern Japan associated with the afterlife—was carved into the darkness as a spatial and bodily experience.
Lasting approximately 30 minutes, the work transformed the underground site into an immersive chamber in which hearing expanded as vision was extinguished. This installation marked the starting point of the Hakumei series, later developed through versions 1.n and culminating in the large-scale reconfiguration of Hakumei 2.0.