Blue Passages
15 July 2016
Banyuls-sur-Mer, France – Portbou, Spain
multi-media installation, Walter Benjamin’s “Passages”
Torch Design
Ben Kikkawa
Video
Yoi Kawakubo
Sound Editing and Music
Syo Yoshihama
Photograph
Richard Nicholson
Costume Design
Kyoko Wainai
Curator
Yuki Miyake
with thanks to:
Dani Karavan
Kazuko Koike
Pilar Parcerisas
Jonathan Whitewall
Adam Wright
Yoosuke Takahashi
Nomura Foundation
Banyuls-sur-Mer, France – Portbou, Spain
multi-media installation, Walter Benjamin’s “Passages”
Torch Design
Ben Kikkawa
Video
Yoi Kawakubo
Sound Editing and Music
Syo Yoshihama
Photograph
Richard Nicholson
Costume Design
Kyoko Wainai
Curator
Yuki Miyake
with thanks to:
Dani Karavan
Kazuko Koike
Pilar Parcerisas
Jonathan Whitewall
Adam Wright
Yoosuke Takahashi
Nomura Foundation
Photo: Keizo Kioku
In Blue Passages a woman brandishes a burning torch and makes a tortuous journey across the Pyrenees from Banyuls-sur-Mer, France to Portbou, Spain. She walks in the footsteps of the German Jewish philosopher, Walter Benjamin, tracing the route of his doomed attempt to escape the Nazis in 1940. When Benjamin arrived in Portbou, he was refused permission to cross the border into Spain. In despair, he retired to his room at the Hotel de Francia, where he killed himself with an overdose of morphine. The woman in the video descends into the Portbou, carrying her torch through ‘Passages’, Dani Karavan’s memorial landscape sculpture dedicated to Walter Benjamin. The torch in the performance is inspired by the torch relay of the Olympic flame.
Photo: Richard Nicholson
Photo: Keizo Kioku
Photo: Keizo Kioku
