| Junko Wada - Tänzerin und Performerin - Junko Wada is an artist rather than a dancer. Calling her the latter places her work in a system of reference inappropriate to it. By moving her hands and fingers, and wide outreaching arms, Wada defines a space around her. The space is not a medium or dimension any more, in which a movement takes place, but a geometric shape, like a cube or a cylinder. Movements are shaping space. They are carving space in time. Junko Wada is a collaborative artist. As a dancer, she has worked with distinguished sound artists like Akio Suzuki, Rolf Julius, or Hans Peter Kuhn, as a performance artist, she has collaborated with countless musicians, visual artists, and writers. Making things happen, setting up festivals or performance serieses, in rural Japanese Tango as well in Berlin, Germany, became an important part of her work. Opening herself to another artist's work might be similar to accepting the unforeseen of open air environments in her performances. Wada's public diary writing seems to emphasize this openness. There, she puts down in writing what she is experiencing at the moment or where ever her thoughts might lead her to. The artists is less a source of expression than a faithful, observing witness. The usual direction of communication in art becomes turned around. The aspect of documentation, inherent both in Wada's diary writing and her multi-channel video installations, joins movement and visual art again, this time in a more conceptual way. The document talks about the idea, not of the of actual activity which took place in the past. Just like Wada's early canvases talked of the movements behind the brush strokes. The things remain the things that they are - they don't tell. They don't reveal. |