"At night I went home by taxi. I never spoke about anything with the driver.
I even forgot I am sitting in a cab. Strange that two stranger in one car having each their own thoughts drive the same direction together."
Akane Kimbara, 2007

I have forgotten that I am sitting in a taxi....
 
Akane Kimbara in EINSTELLUNGSRAUM
Opening text: Elke Suhr
 
....have you ever forgotten that you are in a taxi? Most of the time I stare on the meter and never forget that I have to pay after. So what has to happen when forgetting something like that?
 
'Akane Kimbara's work moves inbetween different poles'. This is how Anna Gudjonsdott’r starts the annotations to the exhibition of her former student at the HfbK (Hochschule fuer Bildende Kunst, College for pictorial art). Akane Kimbara studied there from 1999 to 2006, after having had finished studies of art in Tokio.
In the galery Helium-Cowboy, Hamburg and recently in Kunsthaus (Arthouse, a place for exhibitions in Hamburg) with 5-7-5 (the titel of the exhibition at that place) her very special drawings could already be seen meanwhile, and I am very pleased to be able to greet Akane Kimbara now with us after I had made contact at her diploma exhibition in 2006.

Well, which are those poles that Anna Gudjonsdott’r mentioned? Self and World, East and West?
I would like to continue following these signs and look somewhat closer at Akane's self-accusation: "I have forgotten that....".

Downstairs in the basement you see Akane Kimbara's video works with the named exhibition title.
As if in a black box cluster-like light signals appear and disappear. Cluster-like noise moduls catch the viewers' attentions untill he himself tries to differentiate between seen and heard, between place and room. Traditionally the Black Box is a metaphor for the look inside onself of people not yet analyseable by any brain physiologist.
Platon's cave is similar to this but is also different.
Our eyes aim fixable and try to hold onto what disappears.
The black between the light clusters, the pause between the accustical ensembles  Akane Kimbara is burdening the onlooker with. In the silence, in the none-picture, something can grow what usually keeps itself apart, usually when all attention is on the decoding.
What is able to unfold? "I have forgotten, that I am sitting in a taxi". The situation modulating itself shifts the reflection.

Forgetting happens selectivly so Wikipedia says. According to the Peters-principle events are forgotten depending on their emotional contents. Things that are irrelevant for us are forgotten faster than  things that caused strong emotions. Things which are connected with positive emotions are not as easily forgotten as things which are connected with negative emotions of the same strength. In different theories 'forgetting' has an important function in regards of dealing with information. So does 'forgetting' usually lead to a structuring of the contents of the memory, that is more important things become more poignant.

The taxi with Akane drives on some streets through Tokio, Vienna and N.Y.. Worldwide around the globe so-to-say, or is it not 'just' a film? In the 15 minute long part she does not choose structuring significant  spots with her camera but signs for the secret of the - only sensibly and intuitivley experiencable - ambivalent situation, that is the circumstance of the not-solved question in each language: where from, where to? Those passers-by who sit in a taxi somewhere in this world where do they come from, where do they want to go? What moves them? What connects them in each situation? Their misunderstandings, there attempts to orientate themselves are reason for Akane Kimbara's works in the some-where, in the no-where, in the silence, of the meant but only hintable.

Carefully and still can this be sensed when the on-looker instead of the taxi guest sits in darkness and sees fleeing light spots, so-to-say pre-speech signs, condense and dissolve themselves, catching bits of dialogs.

 


That what is more to sense than to see is what interests Akane Kimbara, that is what she lets appear in a few figures of concentrating disciplined contour lines in combination with significant signs of reference.
Related to our year theme SCHEIN Akane Kimbara insofar presents us here the hint, the appearance, the sign of a some-where which makes evident what has been blown away amidst the emotional whirlwinds of the daily trips. It depends on the onlooker to decipher the hint, to take part in the game with the meanings.
"My pictures always represent situations", she says herself. "Figures try to communicat with each other or with the
Akane Kimbara: "....I have forgotten that I am sitting in a cab..." 2007, installation,
drawing and video


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